Nutrition is Key

If someone handed you a glass bottle marked “poison” and then told you to drink it, would you? Let me ask it differently: if they put on a lab coat and wrote poison on their prescription pad, would you do it? I think more heads would nod for the second one, am I right? Don’t worry, this is no fault of your own; we’ve been trained this way. Every day, patients are hurt by the pharmaceutical industry, when they could be adapting their lifestyles instead. Critics even go as far as calling the pharmaceutical industry the “sick industry”. I’d liken our situation to that of the Queen’s in “Snow White”, who asked the woodsman to go kill Snow White and collect her heart in a box. She had no idea that it in reality was a pig’s heart until her mirror told her. So my purpose in delivering this message is much like the mirror’s: to reveal that “pig’s heart” that exists in the world of drugs. Thousands of people die every year because they take medication that actually makes them sicker and the alternative that I can offer to that is this: food.

You may be thinking now “How could medicine, which usually makes me better, be bad?” and to answer that, I would retell a story that Dr. Andrew Saul, a contributing expert for the documentary “Food Matters”, uses as an example of our flawed drug industry. Dr. Saul tells of a friend that he had that was depressed in a way that was detrimental to their health. This person wasn’t able to eat at the dinner table with his family; rather, he preferred to sit in a corner alone. Worried, one of his family members went to see Dr. Saul, who recommended that the individual include more niacin in his diet. Dr. Saul, who had read of niacin’s medicinal benefits in a medical study, says that when the patient ate niacin-rich foods such as eggs, asparagus, and whole grain products, he was eating at the table with his family again. But when he was put back on the depression medication, he was back in that corner again. Oh, how about a quick statistic? Around 106,000 people die every year due to unexpected drug reactions. I think the amount of deaths due to nutrition is significantly less.

Now that we are on the subject of nutrition, it is important that I say this: food is your body’s medicine. But you most definitely would like to know how, so I won’t keep you guessing. According to the experts at MedicineNet.com, the best thing to do for yourself is to eat low-energy-dense foods. This can prevent, and I quote, “heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, gout, gallstones, and certain cancers.” Just imagine being able to cure the most prevalent and deadly disease just by modifying your diet a bit. And yes, that would mean that you’d have to obey mom and “eat your fruits and veggies” but whose life is it on the line? Antioxidants are extremely good for you, studies showing them to have the ability to lower risk of heart attack, help brain disorders, and even raise life expectancy. So I, and most medical experts, would recommend eating foods like apples, raisins, beans, and broccoli, which are antioxidant powerhouses. Finally, even though you may not know it, you may have a deficiency such as scurvy, a Vitamin C deficiency, or beriberi, which you get from not enough thiamine. By the way, all of those vitamins are found in, you guessed it, food, particularly fruits and vegetables.

So now that we’ve covered that base, how far should you delve into this lifestyle? Should you get rid of your high blood pressure medicine and eat carrot sticks? No. That would be ridiculous. By all means, take the medicine that your doctor prescribes. But nutrition, even though it is not a magic antidote, will help you immensely and lower your dependence on medicine. Another question that could come up is, “how should you affect your diet?” Well, the team that created “Food Matters” (which is a fascinating documentary that I highly recommend) thinks that 51% of your food should be raw or uncooked. Now, before you freak out, I am not telling you to dig into a big heap of raw meat. That would be disgusting and would bring on a whole new set of problems like food poisoning or botulism. But eating salads, fresh fruits and vegetables, or even a handful of Craisins or nuts instead of Doritos certainly could hurt, could it? And finally, let me answer this question: “How does all of this help?” When used correctly, this could someday mean less dependence on prescription drugs. And you wouldn’t want to be one of the 106,000, would you?

So, if you take anything at all from your past five minutes of listening, I hope it is this: nutrition is key to staying healthy, but medicine is not evil. I personally take a multivitamin every day. But before you put your life on the line with a drug, consult Mother Nature first. She’s been around for a quite a while.