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“Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food “ Hippocrates. A Greek physician (460-378 AD) |
food & diet
Food as Medicine
There is a place for coffee, cake, hamburgers, alfalfa sprouts, muesli and chocolate in our diet, they only become a problem when inappropriately consumed. Any food can become a health hazard when eaten to excess. Bad foods are only bad because they are either eaten to excess or at an inappropriate time. There is no such thing as a set balanced diet for all of us. For each person there is an individualal amount of nutrient each of us need to function at optimum levels which is different for each of us.
We need to individualise nutrition. People are now becoming more aware of what they should eat and should not eat largely from a lot of half truths advertised by food manufacturers trying to convince us that their product is 'natural' or make you like the beautiful people in their advertisement. Even uranium is natural. Every day it seems a new book is written on nutrition. The Raw Food Diet, The Vegetarian Diet, The low Cholesterol Diet, The High Fibre Diet, The Israeli Army Diet, all setting out generalised complicated or extreme ways we should eat. These regimens are often so complicated it seems the only people who understands them are the ones who wrote the book.
A good Naturopath will take into account the sum total of an individual's loading and give some guidelines for the person to follow in food selection to bring the body more into balance. Then we can start to re-educate our taste buds to more accurately discern and tell us what we need to eat and when.
Our bodies are already giving us messages as to what we need to eat. To develop the capacity to listen to our taste buds we need to uncover the things we attach to the simple act of taking nourishment on board. We need to separate food and the reasons for eating; Laziness, can't be bothered to prepare appropriate food and eat whatever is easiest. Habitual eating of particular foods over many years, the young who eat junk foods due to peer pressure. Manufacturers preparing food in whatever way that will keep costs down. Eating food as a reward, food you have to be good for to deserve. Eating to make you feel and look better and have more friends. Treating yourself to luxury foods if you feel depressed or bored and then feeling guilty about it. In all these situations, and in many others our choice of foods is inspired by imbalance. If you eat something which you think you shouldn't have, at least enjoy it. It will be a lot easier for your system to digest food if guilt is not being digested with it.
When we are able to listen to our taste we will be in a better position to select foods which make up the true individualised balanced diet for ourselves, but this takes practice to bring out our true taste buds. It may mean what we have in the cupboard is not the right thing for tonight, and if we are tired and it's 10:30pm, are we going to follow our true taste and go to the shop to get it?
Many digestive disorders are actually stress related. The only place in the body that has the most nerve connections, apart from the brain is the gastrointestinal tract. It becomes easy to blame food alone rather than changing how we live life. Diet modification is a useful tool in treating digestive disorders but behaviour modification is just as important.
There is a place for coffee, cake, hamburgers, alfalfa sprouts, muesli and chocolate in our diet, they only become a problem when inappropriately consumed. Any food can become a health hazard when eaten to excess. Bad foods are only bad because they are either eaten to excess or at an inappropriate time. There is no such thing as a set balanced diet for all of us. For each person there is an individualal amount of nutrient each of us need to function at optimum levels which is different for each of us.
We need to individualise nutrition. People are now becoming more aware of what they should eat and should not eat largely from a lot of half truths advertised by food manufacturers trying to convince us that their product is 'natural' or make you like the beautiful people in their advertisement. Even uranium is natural. Every day it seems a new book is written on nutrition. The Raw Food Diet, The Vegetarian Diet, The low Cholesterol Diet, The High Fibre Diet, The Israeli Army Diet, all setting out generalised complicated or extreme ways we should eat. These regimens are often so complicated it seems the only people who understands them are the ones who wrote the book.
A good Naturopath will take into account the sum total of an individual's loading and give some guidelines for the person to follow in food selection to bring the body more into balance. Then we can start to re-educate our taste buds to more accurately discern and tell us what we need to eat and when.
Our bodies are already giving us messages as to what we need to eat. To develop the capacity to listen to our taste buds we need to uncover the things we attach to the simple act of taking nourishment on board. We need to separate food and the reasons for eating; Laziness, can't be bothered to prepare appropriate food and eat whatever is easiest. Habitual eating of particular foods over many years, the young who eat junk foods due to peer pressure. Manufacturers preparing food in whatever way that will keep costs down. Eating food as a reward, food you have to be good for to deserve. Eating to make you feel and look better and have more friends. Treating yourself to luxury foods if you feel depressed or bored and then feeling guilty about it. In all these situations, and in many others our choice of foods is inspired by imbalance. If you eat something which you think you shouldn't have, at least enjoy it. It will be a lot easier for your system to digest food if guilt is not being digested with it.
When we are able to listen to our taste we will be in a better position to select foods which make up the true individualised balanced diet for ourselves, but this takes practice to bring out our true taste buds. It may mean what we have in the cupboard is not the right thing for tonight, and if we are tired and it's 10:30pm, are we going to follow our true taste and go to the shop to get it?
Many digestive disorders are actually stress related. The only place in the body that has the most nerve connections, apart from the brain is the gastrointestinal tract. It becomes easy to blame food alone rather than changing how we live life. Diet modification is a useful tool in treating digestive disorders but behaviour modification is just as important.