Food is Medicine: Optimizing Your Health The Easy Way With Great Nutrition

Nutritional Medicine

Integrative Medicine, holistic health, nutrition, diet, weight loss

Image: Food is Medicine

Regardless of your health goals – losing weight, improving aerobic endurance, reducing cancer risk, or simply optimizing your overall, holistic health – nutrition and diet are the foundation for your health. This article is an introduction to our series on how to optimize your health through diet and nutrition. Stay tuned for more.

Nutrition History

Nutrition and diet have a long tradition in medicine, with the Hippocratic Oath, and even before:

“… I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment …”

That makes great sense to us. We believe the maxim that “food is medicine.”

Some Nutrition Facts:

  • Nutritional medicine dates back 2,500 years to the medical systems of ancient China and Greece.
  • The oldest medical text, Chi Po’s “Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine” recognized food selection and proper cooking as the cornerstone of prevention of illness.
  • In ancient Greece, Hippocrates emphasized the need for grains and vegetables in “The Book of Nutrients.”

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

Nutrition Now

  • Lifestyle may contribute to more than half of all deaths annually in the USA.
  • Examples of our nutritional failings:
    • According to the US NHANES II study, 41% of the population ate no fruit on the survey day; only 25% had a fruit and vegetable.
    • Of women over age 35, 75% failed to meet the RDA (recommended daily allowance) for calcium.

So, How to Use This Information?

Optimize Your Diet and Nutrition

This is an area of your life that is changeable. Your nutrition does not depend on your genetics. It depends on simply following healthy principles and great nutritious diet. A healthy diet does not mean starving yourself or eliminating foods that you enjoy. Finding wholesome alternatives, in reasonable amounts, is the goal. Good tips include: eat un-processed foods. Replace processed sugars with natural alternatives like honey. Consider visiting your farmer’s market to find healthy additions to your diet. Your local organic market is a great place to meet people who share your new healthier lifestyle. For the healthiest diet, take a look at the Mediterranean diet.

For more on optimizing your health, stay tuned. We publish one article here about every 1-2 weeks, so check back frequently. Or, so you don’t miss great info, simply sign up to receive updates automatically in your inbox.

Comments

  1. Very informative write up! I browse your site fairly often and you always post really great
    stuff. I shared this on Facebook and my followers really enjoyed it.
    Keep up the great work! 🙂

Trackbacks

  1. […] Many lifestyle factors affect hormonal health, including diet, stress, exercise and sleep. The main drivers of hormonal imbalance are food and stress. And you can control both! Remember: food is medicine. […]