healing with food
For millennia, food is an integral part of our lives. It gives us sustenance and fuel to keep our bodies moving, but it also is part of our cultural heritage and our family stories. So much of our lives are built around food. But what if food is our medicine too. What if instead of seeing food as just what we eat to keep moving every day, or even for enjoyment, we saw it as the means to heal our bodies and to keep them at their optimal health. What is your view of food?
food is thy medicine
The great Hippocrates, which is where the medical Hippocratic oath originates and is considered the Father of Medicine, once said “Let food be thy medicine.” And he wasn’t far from the truth. While food in today’s society is primarily seen as a means to fill the hunger pains, in earlier times it was used for so much more.
Food is medicine. It isn’t akin to it, it is medicine. Whole foods are what our bodies need to survive, but they also help us to thrive. We are made up of trillions of cells. Each of those cells needs to receive energy in order to work. That energy is derived from the foods and liquids we ingest. Our complex digestive system then goes to work breaking those materials down into what our cells’ mitochondria can use to make ATP (adenosine triphosphate), our cell energy current.
But what if we don’t consume foods that breakdown into materials our body knows how to use? What’s worse is that in the Standard American Diet (SAD) people consume more chemicals in their food than they realize? What does that do to your body’s chemical breakdown of food. That creates deficiencies in micronutrients and our cells inabilities to create the energy needed to function optimally, as well as toxicity levels that will over burden your body’s filtering and immune systems.
This is why making lifestyle changes that include nutritional improvements is crucial for your overall health. Making those changes into a whole foods diet allows your body to reset itself and begin to heal what was once a dysfunctional body into a more functional body.
tips on how to make nutritional improvements
Like anything else worthwhile in life making changes to your lifestyle takes work, but the results are worth it. Here are a few tips to get you started on making nutritional improvements:
Cut out seed oils. Choose healthier fats for your cooking such as avocado oil, tallow (grass-fed), coconut oil, butter (grass-fed), ghee, and extra-virgin olive oil.
Remove refined sugar. Refined sugar is very inflammatory to our bodies, and increases spikes in our blood glucose. When our blood levels get saturated with sugar, our body kicks into high gear to compensate for the higher levels to rid the abundance of sugar from the blood. This causes a chain reaction that if it doesn’t get under control creates what we know as Type 2 Diabetes.
Focus on whole foods as the majority of what you eat. Simplifying your diet to include just whole foods allows for your body to take in the nutrients it craves with out all of the chemicals and refined sugar products within it.
Read the labels on any processed food item. This is a critical step in your quest for nutritional improvements. If you are going to eat any processed foods, please read the labels and know what you’re putting into your body.
If you’re not sure where to get started, I’m happy to meet with you to go over what you can do to improve your nutrition.