Food as Medicine
Nutritional therapy is a holistic approach to health focused on giving the right, personalized nutritional requirement to healing foods, prevention and good health of an individual. Which includes guidance on certain toxins and allergens, detoxification, nutritional supplement and lifestyle plan.
Why the term “Food as Medicine”?
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, is a popular quote ascribed to Hippocrates (400 BC), emphasizing the importance of nutrition to prevent or cure disease. Recent studies have linked chronic disorders directly associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, especially obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes etc., while certain dietary habits possess functional medicinal qualities.
Nutrients found in foods have been proven to increase the rate of recovery from diseases, equally promotes hydration. An example is the role of fruits, vegetables and other high moisture foods contributing to total fluid intake, and the vital antioxidants used to aid cell recovery after battling an illness.
ALSO, READ: AN OVERVIEW OF HERBAL MEDICINE
Nutritional Therapy; Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes the importance of keeping a regular and balanced diet in accordance to one’s gender and constitution. A popular saying referring to the stomach as the child and the heart as the mother relates the heart health to the intake of food.
It further views food as possessing four properties that are, warm, hot, cold and cool and also carries five flavours, spicy, sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and relate this to the organs. Each flavour plays a different role in different organs respectively. And an imbalance occurs when there’s a disordered diet or being particularly addicted to a particular food.
For instance; if a food is too sour, the liver-qi (energy) would increase and the spleen-qi will decrease. when it’s too salty, it could lead to bone damage, impotent muscle and depressed heart-qi (energy), perhaps it may be too sweet, the heart-qi would rise, causing asthma, darkened skin and imbalance of the kidney-qi; and if too bitter, it could cause dryness of the spleen-qi, bloating of the stomach; if too spicy, tendons and vessels would become flabby and vigour would be undermined.
Conclusion
The body needs whole nutritious foods that holds a lot of benefits that can’t be replaced by supplements. Many illnesses can indeed be prevented and cured by dietary and lifestyle changes. However, diet alone cannot replace medicine in all circumstances.
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