10 Reasons to Choose Food as Medicine

Proper nutrition and exercise as the best medicine really struck home in my family. My brother suffered for years with Manic Depression/Bi-polar disorder. He was constantly off and on serious mind altering medications.

One day, he started working out and eating right (he thought he would have a better chance of meeting women), and within a month, everyone noticed a difference in him. Within 6 months, he was off his medication and remaining stable. It changed his life. A little while back, he fell off the eating right and exercising wagon and the extreme mood swings started to return. Thankfully, he jumped right back on the wagon.

If eating right and exercising had such an impact on his severe issues, imagine what it can do for the more subtle issues that often don't become noticeable until it is too late.

The first prescription to any patient should be eating right and exercise, then followed by other reasonable medications - in the short term - that may help alleviate symptoms until the patient can solely rely on a healthy lifestyle again.

It may sound odd, my eye sight has improved since I started eating better and exercising.

Brian

I know of several (Bipolar) people who said their mood swings get a lot better if they just stay away from sugar.

None Given said:
I know of several (Bipolar) people who said their mood swings get a lot better if they just stay away from sugar.[...]

My mother is bipolar and the only times that she was ok to be around when I was growing up (she only got on medication when I was 23) was when she was on a ketogenic (Atkins) diet. As soon as she got out of ketosis, into maintainance, the manias and depressions returned.

When I started my current diet and started eating way more vegetables and way less sugar, my mood improved drastically. Drastically. As in, I was depressed and considering going back on anti-depressants but I'm better now. I'm less tired in the afternoon, too.

I hate to say "Me, too," but … me, too, regarding sugar as a way to manage mood swings. The elimination of sugar and white flour also helps control hypoglycemia.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies don't make any money when we consumers turn to nutrition instead of our doctors, who always seem to have their prescription pads handy. "A pill for every ill" is one of my hot-button issues.

Thanks for this post.

People have been eating healthy foods and using natural remedies for centuries and they did just fine... right up until they died around their 30th birthday.

Now people eat junk-food, fill their bodies with chemicals, never exercise, and we just keep living longer and longer.

We've essentially doubled life expectancy over the past 100 or so years. Why? Primarily because of modern medicine and pills.

This list seems like it was written by a child:

"Cut your skin and in a few days it’s healed. Isn’t that amazing when you really stop and think? Your body can do amazing things given the right conditions."

Yes, with a small scratch your body will heal itself. Get a deep cut and your body isn't going to do much about it except maybe bleed to death. Go get some stitches and maybe you stand a chance.

"Pills can buy you time, but never health."

Trite and untrue.

I agree we should all strive to eat healther but can we do it without the anti-science bias?

Maybe Tom Cruise wrote it. After all, everyone knows you can treat severe depression with "vitamins".

I mean, if eating healthier works for whatever your illness is, great. But just because you feel better doesn't necessarily mean that everything IS better. We have doctors and hospitals for a reason! I certainly don't think we need to take a pill for every little thing, but most of this list reads like an exercise in paranoia. I have NEVER been to a doctor who just pushed a pill on me without talking about exercise, nutrition, preventative measures, etc. This holds true for mental and physical ailments. I'm sure everyone's experiences are different, and I'm also sure that some doctors are better about this than others, but saying things like "Food is complex and so are you. The two have been working together for millions of years. Science and its main contributor--the drug industry like to identify one element, find out what it does, isolate it and put it in a pill. Nature doesn’t work like that and neither do you." is just plain not true.

The Faddist said:
People have been eating healthy foods and using natural remedies for centuries and they did just fine... right up until they died around their 30th birthday. [...]

I have a particular problem with #5. A pill for every symptom is a pet peeve of mine and a common approach in Western medicine, but there are some actual treatments for the cause. There is such a thing as holistic medicine, and dismissing it is silly.

Not to mention the cases where treating the symptom is necessary, like with Diabetes Type I. Sure, it won't heal the pancreas, but treating the high blood sugar with insulin is vital, and when used with a good diet, can lead to good health. What I'm against is the idea the person will take one pill for the neuropathy, one pill for the high cholesterol, one pill for the high blood pressure that are all associated with the diabetes instead of trying a diet solution.

"Medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts."

I have always been humbled by the healing process! The way gaps are closed and shapes returned to what they were is amazing. I can line things up, but then it's out of my hands and a better surgeon does the rest.

I believe the chinese have a saying that goes," For the first 30 years we cheat disease...for the next 30 disease cheats us."

For those on here in their first 30, I would give this some consideration.

Dr.J said:
I believe the chinese have a saying that goes," For the first 30 years we cheat disease...for the next 30 disease cheats us." For those on here in their first 30, I would give this some consideration.[...]

That's why I exercise and eat the type of diet I do at 21 years old.

Dr.J said:
" For the first 30 years we cheat disease...for the next 30 disease cheats us."[...]

I have heard that you have to keep probiotics refrigerated, and to buy probiotics off the shelf at room temperature is not a good idea.

A healthy diet can do wonders for much less severe illnesses. Most people know not to have any dairy when they are congested from a cold. Traditional Chinese medicine/culture, as well as Indian (aryuvedic?) use the different properties of food to manage sympoms and keep the organism balanced to avoid illness. Chilly outside or stomach not digesting well? Make ginger tea.

Exercise has been proven to help alleviate some symptoms of depression as has accupuncture (in a double blind university study). I firmly believe these should be mandatory in treatment for anyone with depression. I know first hand the power of feeling like there's something you can do to manage--even if partially--this disease. Whether or not people should stop taking or never take medication for depression is between them and their doctors.

Most importantly, I hope that no one who is suffering from mental health issues reads these comments and thinks they can manage their issues just fine on their own with diet and exercise. GET HELP! You CAN feel better and it does not make you crazy or weird and you won't necessarily have to take medication. But you should speak to someone about they way you are feeling so you have a professional support system. You are not alone.

Vicks said:
Most importantly, I hope that no one who is suffering from mental health issues reads these comments and thinks they can manage their issues just fine on their own with diet and exercise. GET HELP! [...]

I totally agree. In a health crisis, talk to your doctor first, manage the crisis, then see if natural methods can help. Ask your doctor if lifestyle has anything to do with it. If he says "no", then get another doctor :-)

I've responded to the couple of the negative comments over on my site (just click where it says "Passion for Health" above). The article does have an anti-science feel but I want folks to know that I'm not anti-science, just pro the most natural solutions if and when they exist. Prevention is better than cure.

Cheers
~Mike

Doctors don't heal you. Doctors may give you the tools, but ultimately, the body heals itself, albeit with the help of medicine.

Dear The Faddist,

Oh how wrong you are. This is just the kind of thinking that people follow when they have no clue and have not studied their history. Rather than spout stats and stuff, do your own research on famous people and how long they lived. Unfortunately stats were not kept on common folk. You will see that people like Leonardo da Vinci (among others) lived long lives, even into their eighties and nineties.

The thing that The Faddist states is a common misconception started by our current medical system in order to present itself in better light. Once the Catholic Church too medicine away from commoners and put it in the hands of nobles, the number of children, mothers or both dieing during the birthing process or soon after, rose sharply. These guys had no clue what they were doing, but the church wanted the control and the way to control people was to create a top down system: Church > Nobel Men > Law Enforcers > the rest. Women didn't matter, only men did. If you remove this fact, increased death in child birth, and just look at the population and when people died naturally, you will find that many lived about as long as we do today, and some even longer. Stats are manipulated to say what the person spouting them wants them to say for whatever motive they have.

So, if you look at stats, always ask, who created them, why, how and who paid for them results.

As for people living longer on junk food, well, studies that have lasted 25 year or more have proven that we can not live on junk food and the longest lived people eat whole, unprocessed organic food. Look at rural Chinese, the Mediterranean region and Okinawan people, to name a few.

As for medicine increasing our life-span, ha. If there were no artificial life extending machines or drugs, people would be dying much sooner than they are. Life in a bed with machines attached, is not life, but artificial life. If people followed a diet similar to the one before the chemical age of whole, unprocessed organic food, similar to ones that the healthiest people in the world follow, we all would live into our 80s or even 90s. Studies have proven that food can reduce disease by 70% to 90%. That is better than any medicine Allopaths can come up with.

Food can either shorten you life, kill you or let you live to a natural end, where you die in your sleep, disease free. The choice is yours, if you educate yourself.

Good try The Faddist.

We dig our graves with our teeth.

shortly after my teenage years, i began eliminating processed foods and i have continued this gradual adjustment for the past 30 years

i firmily believe only including foods completely in their whole natural state

it's alot better to do gradual adjustments than a huge adjustment.

i believe the most important foods are seed based foods, which most likely are 75 - 80% of the foods out there.

I include lots of lentils, olive oil, lots of parsley, kale, carrots, cabbage... you got the hint these are all whole foods

at age 48, i'm still quite strong/healthy with none of the common degenerative diseases... you can't stop growing older, but to a point you can continue to make gradual adjustments and there's plenty of time to make those gradual adjustments