Food is Medicine

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There is a saying attributed to Hippocrates from almost 2,500 years ago, "Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." Even in ancient times (or maybe especially in ancient times) nutritional excellence was recognized as vital for good health. In our western / American culture, we've slid very far from any semblance of nutritional excellence. The good news is how easy it is to return to it.

There is mounting evidence of how right Hippocrates was, and how beneficial a whole food, plant-based diet is to our health. Consider The China Study, where Dr. T. Colin Campbell did exhaustive research of over 50 diseases in the US and compared the results on our population to that of rural China. The point was that there are vast regions of China where a very homogeneous, healthful diet was consumed by incredibly large populations. By studying heart disease, diabetes, cancers, etc., and comparing these to the diet they were eating, you could draw valuable conclusions about how eating habits affected health.



Their biggest conclusion was that western diseases (coronary artery disease, diabetes, and numerous cancers) were directly related to the levels of animal-derived cholesterol in the blood stream. The good news was that a plant-based diet would reduce and even reverse the damage done by a high-cholesterol diet. Nutritional excellence is beneficial for lowering cholesterol and providing vital micronutrients, providing healthful results across the board, not just for a specific ailment.

Check out the overview of The China Study here (from Wikipedia):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study 

The conclusion of The China Study, according to cardiologist Dr. Mimi Guarneri, founder of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine: food is related to positive and negative health outcomes; what we eat matters! 

It is fascinating to me how our bodies willingly and obediently go along with whatever foods we eat, and do their best to assimilate that food (whether nutritious or not) and keep going. The slow decay we see in our physical health as a society is directly related to the fact that we don't see the cause and effect of our eating habits. There is enough delay between eating an un-nutritious food and the ailments it may cause, that we don't draw any correlation, and go on literally eating ourselves to death. The great news is that at any time we can begin to live as if our food is medicine, and the medicine we need is in our food, and bring our bodies back to functional health and eventually optimal health.

By the Way

There is an ancient Indian precept which clearly frames the issue of our food functioning as medicine:
"When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.
When diet is correct, medicine is of no need."

A bold statement, but that says it all.

Want something else to chew on? Check out the documentary, "Forks Over Knives" featuring Dr. Campbell and his research.