The best medicine is food! Aspirin helps too

[Freestyler777]

I am a licensed acupuncturist for about five years, and I can tell you what Hippocrates, the founder of western medicine said over 2,000 years ago: The wise man has food for medicine and medicine for food.

Of course, you need crisis intervention and pain management too, but it is better to invest in food to prevent the illness than cures after the illness has taken effect.

Just my opinion.

 

[David Weatherly]

Agreed! Both Chinese and Indian systems focus on food "cures" There are some great books available.
You are what you eat and people tend to forget that.

David

 

[Nomad]

Eating healthy and nutritious food is always a good thing and can indeed be very preventative for a large number of illnesses. Specific foods to cure specific diseases I am somewhat more skeptical of, although certainly a number of natural products (digitoxin, taxol to name a couple) have been very helpful in this regard.

If you jump on the Kevin Trudeau bandwagon and think there are a bunch of "secret", "natural" cures for cancer and other usually fatal diseases "that they don't want you to know about", then I have to call BS on that one.

 

[girlbug2]

I am of the same opinion. I started a Paleo diet this Fall and am just not getting sick like I used to in past years at this time. Prevention is much better than cure!

 

[tellner]

And for hundreds of years there was an adage in Europe: "Every cook is half a physician"

 

[David Weatherly]

I am of the same opinion. I started a Paleo diet this Fall and am just not getting sick like I used to in past years at this time. Prevention is much better than cure!

If I may ask, which book or set of guidlines are you using?

David

 

[tellner]

In attempting to return to my ethnic roots I've started on the Amphibian Diet.

• Eat anything that moves which is narrower than your shoulders.
• If it doesn't quite fit use your eyeballs to push it down.
• Spit up the chitin.
• Evert your stomach and wash it once a week.
• Stay away from hornets and bombardier beetles.
• And don't eat the green shiny flies. They taste like crap.

 

[Dao]

I totally agree I found a few sites with theories proving food can affect health and emotion.

http://biomedx.com/microscopes/rrintro/rrintro.html
http://www.biomedx.com/zeta/

 

[Dagney Taggert]

Buy a juicer!

No wheat.
No refined white sugar.
No packaged crap. (Mac and Cheese however, is a viable source of calcium)
Endless salad and vegetables.
Lean meats, from a variety of sources.
Water.

My goal is to keep the docs far far away.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I take a low-dose aspirin every day. Men over the age of 40, I am told, should consider it. Coated, so no stomach bleeding. Cuts the risk of heart attack or stroke by a huge percent - just by doing that one thing.

The older I get, the more I realize that of all the drugs we have developed over the years, aspirin truly is a wonder drug. It's amazing stuff.

 

[Flea]

I occasionally volunteer at a local soup kitchen, and I remember at the end of one shift I sat down to a meal of the leftovers. Two women (shelter residents) at the next table were talking nutrition, and the importance of eating produce. They only had access to frozen and canned, and they said their bodies could really tell the difference. They sometimes got the shakes, their thinking would get cloudy, and they had more dental problems (all of which was compounded by a lack of health coverage of course.)

Another anecdote: I have a friend with severe bipolar disorder. She used to find herself in hospital about every eight months on average. She's always been a healthy eater, but she switched to an all-organic diet along with some other mindful changes. Now she's hospitalized once every 5-6 years on average. Cool!

I'm the same way. I've found over the years that my body has become increasingly sensitive to my nutritional input; if I don't eat enough brown and produce-ey I get logy and depressed after just a couple days. I can't afford to go organic, but I have a passion for cooking so I have a lot of control over what goes into my food. It's very rewarding to take care of myself in this simple way, with such profound dividends.

Thanks for the reminder, Freestyler.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

My wife is really getting into the 'local food' thing. Lots of farmer's markets, locally-grown produce, organic of course, and that sort of thing. I am told that local honey is great for helping with allergies - could be, but I do love honey, so I'm happy enough to try it and see.

 

[Empty Hands]

Aristotle, the father of modern science, thought that women did nothing more than incubate the man's seed to produce a baby. Don't romanticize the "great wisdom" of the past. Our knowledge has been hard won, it would be a shame not to use it.