We hear about the benefits of diet and exercise on a daily basis. Nutrition and a healthy lifestyle are touted as the go to preventative measures for good health, but what about food as medicine?
Have you ever considered the potential for food to literally heal? I didn’t, until I was diagnosed with MS about 10 months ago. After experiencing the side effects of numerous rounds of steroids and transfusions, side effects that literally made me feel as though I were dying, I said enough was enough and I began exploring alternative ways to approach my illness. I was surprised to find that a diet tailored toward healing the effects of MS was the most well-recognized, effective alternative method out there. Food designed to heal! I figured that in comparison to the costly, time consuming treatments I had already tried, a “diet” was certainly worth the effort if it could work!
And work it has! The diet I am referring to is the Swanks MS Diet. The doctor responsible for introducing the Swanks Diet noticed that there was a correlation between the rise in the occurrences of MS and the changes in the food we consumed in a post-industrial era and believed that returning to a diet composed of real food, high in nutrients and low in saturated fats, could treat MS from a holistic perspective. At first the diet seemed highly restrictive in comparison to my previous highly-processed, nutrient-void diet but once I explored all of the “new” foods available to me and saw the changes it made in the symptoms I experienced, I began to build new, healthy relationships with the foods I consumed. I began to correlate certain foods with how they made me feel, how my body reacted, and I began to crave the things that were changing my health from the inside out. Within a short 6 months, I was attacking MS on my own terms, completely naturally, and I was feeling great!
However, the power of eating food to heal is not limited to MS. There are so many other diets and nutritional remedies that are used to heal a variety of maladies and illnesses. For example, anti-inflammatory diets are known for improving illnesses whose roots lie in the inflammation of the body, such as arthritis, heart disease, and even cancers! The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential recommend diets low in salt and sugar for patients overcoming debilitating neurological disorders. Using food for medicine doesn’t even have to be a complicated diet either! Simple home remedies, such as ginger root for an upset stomach or chamomile tea to help one sleep, are great examples of how easy and convenient healing foods and herbs can be! Western medicine is the last to arrive at this party though, Traditional Chinese Medicine has been using the properties of the food that patients consume, to promote healing for centuries!
Our bodies even go so far as to tell us the foods they needs to heal!
Unfortunately, these signals have become misconstrued in our modern, highly-processed diets. The good news is that we can reprogram our minds to recognize these signals and use food to address deficiencies and illness within the body. For example, when we crave pastas and breads, our bodies are trying to tell us we need chromium. So rather than address that need with potentially unhealthy choices that will be high in calories and/or sugar and void of nutrients, we can try combining eggs and avocados to provide the chromium our body craves in a nutrient dense, high protein, healthy fat dish! Check out this infographic from Bookatable for some other healthy alternatives to satisfy cravings and heal your body: http://www.bookatable.co.uk/blog/curb-your-cravings-the-healthy-way.
So the next time you reach for the latest prescription or treatment, ask yourself if you’ve given your body the opportunity to heal from the inside first. Have you explored the power of food? If food can provide us with sustenance, comfort, social interaction, livelihoods, and even entertainment, why not use it for healing as well?