Food as Medicine

Food as Medicine

Before we had a National Health Service in Britain, most people couldn’t afford to pay a doctor.

So they relied on natural medicines to cure most of their ailments. These medicines were usually based on food or natural ingredients such as herbs and other plants. Sometimes the ingredients were minerals, like chalk or magnesium, which were commonly available at little or no cost.

The ancient wisdom about what would work for what condition was passed from generation to generation, mostly by women.

That wisdom has been supplanted by the modern pharmaceutical industry who seek to provide expensive (profitable) solutions to treat the symptoms of an illness rather than cure it.

This has become big business because pharmaceutical medicines are either paid for or subsidized by the government or insurance companies. Needless to say these big pharmaceutical companies are very anxious to discredit and eliminate any natural solutions.

I am glad to say that there is a return to greater awareness and study of how our food and nutrition affect our health.

This has been accompanied by a growth in ‘holistic medicine’ that looks at the body and mind as a whole for the cause of an illness rather than just trying to deal with symptoms.

Then we have ‘Natural Medicine’ which uses modern techniques to extract the active ingredients, like vitamins, from plants and minerals to produce high-dose supplements.

Modern advanced medicine is a huge blessing which has saved many from ‘acute’ diseases and injuries. However, it is not able to deal anything like so well with the many ‘chronic’ conditions which afflict people in modern society.

Natural medicines or food supplements however have a much better track record of resolving chronic illnesses.

Useful Definitions – The terms Acute and Chronic are often misunderstood.

Acute illness means extreme and short-lived, because either you get better, or you die.

Chronic illness means long-lasting which slows you down but doesn’t kill you, at least not for a long time by wearing you down so you die of exhaustion..
It may help to remember the word Chronicle which means a ‘history’ covering a long time.

I hope this helps to bring the wisdom of Hippocrates up to date.
Yes,  if you know the term Hypocritic Oath taken by Doctors, it is the same as Hippocrates.

Love Jean

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