Let Food Be Thy Medicine

Way back in ancient times Hippocrates (born 460AD) wrote “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” What a wonderful concept!

Before the new age of commerce, supermarkets, and mass marketing most folks ate much more simply. They either grew what they ate, or purchased what they ate from a local farmer. They cooked it themselves, from scratch…no prepackaged breads, cakes, or anything else. No mixes with questionable ingredients. When you grew and cooked your own food you knew what you were eating.

Yes, I know it takes longer, it takes a commitment, but you get more satisfaction from the work and effort you put in, and as a bonus your weight will drop, your health will surely increase and you can enjoy explaining to others how you accomplished what they could not!

When you cut out the excess salt (also called sodium, among other names, on the product label) you will find that your weight drops significantly because your body is no longer acting as the county water reservoir! For example: when I stopped drinking soda pop, I lost 30 pounds in 1 month! That was the only change I made at that point, I stopped drinking soda, and lost weight! So simple, yet so healthy!

By reducing the water weight and the caffeine load in my body I also reduced the negative impact on my heart and blood pressure both of those offenders had inflicted. But coming off the caffeine was interesting; I developed headaches at first, splitting headaches! What I found was that that the soda pop I was consuming had citric acid in it. So I added some lemon juice to the water I was drinking and ate a few oranges and strawberries, the headaches eased off.

By eliminating the soda pop I also lowered the amount of sugar I was consuming so I not only lost weight, I also slowed down the inevitable tooth decay and gum damage it can cause! Plus I found out later that these drinks contain high levels of phosphorus which can interfere with the absorption of calcium! My family has a history of osteoporosis; I needed my calcium for my bones!

Changing the diet from the processed foods like soda pops are just one small example of what it means to have foods be your medicine. Not only do we need to eliminate the offenders, we need to add the more positive foods to our diet regime. We need to learn new ways of preparation to eliminate the destruction of the nutrients before we even consume them. And finally we need to make that commitment I spoke of earlier; it is a commitment to ourselves. As Roger Williams, PhD said “The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task.” Part of our commitment is to provide our bodies with the resources to heal itself and to then stay healthy!

Specific foods also help our bodies deal with specific ailments or disorders. So finding out what to eat to promote our health, depending on what is happening within our bodies is vitally important to our overall health.

Finally an ancient Ayurvedic Proverb…

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.

When diet is correct medicine is of no need.