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By
Colleen Huber, Naturopathyworks.com
Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. - Hippocrates
We truly live at a strange crossroads in human history.
Over the last few decades, the human species has been hypnotized
by the temptations offered by the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
The 1950s ushered in the "better living through chemicals"
age. And we believed, and we bought and swallowed and injected and
are still consuming them in massive amounts, and, most recklessly,
injecting such chemicals as ethyl mercury, ethylene glycol (antifreeze),
aluminum and formaldehyde into our babies as part of vaccines, without
any prior safety testing.
But now with massive chronic disease plaguing our most industrialized
populations, autism closely following children's shots, and
more pathology coincident with concentrated chemicals, we are beginning
to wake up from our long post-World War II slumber. Now begins the
next era when synthetic chemicals are starting to be seen as, however
useful in many applications, best kept at a distance from our bodies,
homes, public spaces and wilderness.
The old era of unthinking reliance on a synthetic existence is
showing severe disadvantages, just as the urgency to forge new relationships
with nature is becoming apparent. Plants and other whole foods are
coming into their own new era as naturopathic physicians and other
well-informed health practitioners rely on them for their central
role in healing.
Big Surprise
Within our lifetimes, whole food will eclipse pharmaceuticals in
medical practice, as the general public awakens to its far superior
healing capacity. But the allopathic profession will be the slowest
to catch on, just as most physicians of the early 20th century refused
to believe that absence of certain nutrients could bring on such
horrible diseases as scurvy, pellagra and beriberi.
Then as now, allopaths were eager to lay blame for these diseases
on microbes, until -- surprise, surprise -- limes cured the "limey"
British sailors of their scurvy, and we saw that Vitamin B3 prevented
pellagra, while Vitamin B1 prevented beriberi and Vitamin D prevented
rickets.
As usual, allopathy corrects itself long after the natural physicians
are already healing patients. In fact, evidence now shows that even
bubonic plague, which allopathy still attributes to bacteria known
as Yersinia pestis, was more likely to strike those with low Vitamin
C intakes.
But what would possess a person to think that food could possibly
be medicine?
The first clue is the structure of our intestines. Whatever comes
into the mouth later travels through more than 20 feet of efficient
tubing that extracts certain molecules from the food we eat, then
converts them to one common molecule, Acetyl Co-A, from which the
building blocks of the body are then made:
- Protein
- Glucose
- Healthy fats
The intestines are great little machines, but not omnipotent. That
is, they can convert food molecules to Acetyl Co-A, because food
has familiar and malleable combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen
and nitrogen. But it cannot do that with bizarre substances of which
the body is unfamiliar, such as petrochemical products and synthetic
substances used in pharmaceuticals.
The body has no experience with many of these substances, has little
clue what to do with them, and often excretes them, which may explain
why placebos so often equal or surpass drugs in clinical trials.
More often, though, as the body tries to either detoxify or wall
off the offending invader drug, it creates new metabolites, which
have multiple pharmaceutical effects, some of which may be quite
harmful.
The Efficient Eating Machine
Food, on the other hand, is right at home in the body, since our
species has always processed it, and we have become quite efficient
eating machines as a result. Therefore, we easily break down ingested
protein to its component amino acids.
In turn, these get rearranged into the proteins that our genes
tell us to make, all of the busy construction that takes place in
the womb, and for the rest of us: Replacement of lost skin and membrane
cells, Slightly longer fingernails, Hair, scabs over wounds, etc.
Carbohydrates and dietary fat get broken down to Acetyl Co-A and
rearranged to form the molecules our body needs to function, because
this is how our bodies have been handling things for all of our
existence as a species. How would the body be able to do that from
a pharmaceutical?
It can't. It's like trying to make your car run on orange
juice.
Except for the last century, in our industrialized society, both
humans and animals have almost exclusively relied on plants for
their medicine. In fact, it's noticeable that wild animals
still seek plants that are appropriate treatments for whatever illness
may be present. Even without access to our pharmaceuticals, animals
observed in the wild are still free of chronic disease, even when
living all the way to their maximum lifespan.
Our veterinary and zoo populations, on the other hand, present
a very different picture: Cancers, heart disease and epilepsy are
seen quite commonly among people's well-loved pets who are
subject to a highly processed diet as well as synthetic pharmaceuticals
by their well-intentioned owners -- that's us -- and the pet food
industry.
Whether we were created or evolved, we have been so intimately
connected to plants for all of our existence as a species that we
cannot live without them. We connect with plants and exchange with
plants down to our very cells and our smallest molecules.
That is why they heal us like nothing else can. Our historical
reliance on plants has been an integral part of every human society.
Plants and humans resonate on levels that are still beyond our comprehension,
including biochemical and physiological levels, and some would say
aesthetic and emotional as well.
How could humans and plants so closely have shared this Earth,
one with the other, and not had complementary, multi-faceted relationships
with each other? Hippocrates said, "Let your food be your medicine
and your medicine be your food." Medicine is what you get when
the most appropriate plant is given to an ill person. The plant
kingdom does play the major role of all foods in this wonderfully
beneficial relationship for us.
Quality Whole Foods: The Currency of Life
Whether you believe in creation, or evolution or are undecided,
most of us would agree that our bodies (that is our anatomy and
biochemistry, our metabolism of food) is substantially the same
as that of our recent ancestors. What happens when we substitute
factory chemicals such as synthetic food and pharmaceuticals for
water and the many different nutrients that our cells and our children's
cells and internal organs need simply to function well?
In fact, the very sad consequences of the latest generations'
food and medication choices is becoming more apparent everyday as
we are now seeing chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease
become epidemic in our society.
The United States has the worst health status (life expectancy
and infant mortality) of any industrialized nation, yet we spend
the most money on healthcare and take the most pharmaceuticals.
Why are Americans getting sicker and sicker while medicating ourselves
more and more?
Forget what you ate until today. What you eat from now on is vitally
important to your continued well-being.
Until just a few generations ago, our ancestors were wonderfully
fit and healthy compared with present-day generations. The majority
lived good, active, healthy lives and ultimately died peacefully
in their sleep.
Today, that is a rarity. Whereas chronic disease, chronic pain
and prolonged end-of-life care were practically unheard of for our
ancestors, such results are becoming much more the expected outcome
for us.
What single difference between these two centuries affects our
bodies the strongest?
The overwhelmingly different factor in our lives is the refined,
processed, chemical products that we eat, that our ancestors simply
did not eat. If our species, for better or worse, whether created,
evolved or in-between, performs best on whole foods (vegetables,
fruits, meats, etc.), then we can understand that putting synthetic
liquid or solid wastes in the body will simply trash our most valuable
possession: our own good health.
 Colleen
Huber, 46, is a wife, mother and student at Southwest College
of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Ariz., where she is training
to be a naturopathic physician. Her original research on the mechanism
of migraines has appeared in Lancet and Headache Quarterly, and
was reported in The Washington Post.
Her
double blind placebo controlled research in homeopathy has appeared
in Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, European Journal
of Classical Homeopathy, and Homeopathy Today. Her website Naturopathy
Works introduces naturopathic medicine to the layperson and
provides references to the abundant medical literature demonstrating
that natural medicine does work.
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