For the last several months I've shifted my view about food. I see it as medicine, and my body reflects this. I'm eating healthier than ever and all my vitals are better than ever.
I get blood tests twice a year due to my diabetes. My blood pressure is typically around 92/60 mmHg. My LDL (lousy) cholesterol is usually around 108 mg/dl. Some would say a little high, yes, it's in the family, but my HDL (good) cholesterol is an astronomical 107 mg/dl. My triglycerides are 50 mg/dl. I've got a heart Al Pacino would say is "strong like bull" and my A1C (average measure of sugar in my blood over two to three months) is 5.7 percent -- that's in the normal non-diabetic range.
I'm not a doctor or a dietitian, but I am a health expert. An expert on my health, particularly what I eat and how it impacts my body. Frankly, you're an expert on how you eat and how it impacts your body too.
I think we have a tendency to look at food as something separate from us. And it is, when it's sitting on a shelf in the deli or in the freezer aisle of the supermarket. But as soon as you eat it, forgive me for stating the obvious, it becomes a part of you. And you, to a good degree, become as nutritionally healthy as it is. Double-fried cheese-flavored corn chips anyone?
I know I've written about this before, but maybe never as bluntly. But I can't shake this thought -- "food is medicine." I see the evidence everywhere I go. Like the overweight woman unwrapping her McDonald's super-sized burger and fries on the subway. Or a group of bright and slim twenty-somethings chowing down on, as David Kessler author of "The End of Overeating" says, salt on sugar on fat on salt on sugar.
That's his description for most foods we eat -- from doughnuts to goliath- sized cinnamon buns to middle America-chain restaurants' platters of artificial creamed spinach in a refined white bread bowl and triple-fried chicken with double-fried won tons and tomato-like sauce-slathered ribs. In 30 years, those twenty-somethings will be carrying around an extra 25 pounds and have three health conditions.
This said, I'm not professing to eat a perfect diet, just the value of eating one. But seeing food as medicine does make me more motivated to eat more foods that are nourishing me, than sickening me. All over America we see the proof of unhealthy foods' side effects: heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, obesity, joint problems, sleep and respiratory problems, guilt and frustration.
You can't be healthy by just cutting down on the junk you eat. You've got to also pump up the healthy stuff. To that aim, here's a great list of 40 Best Age-Erasing Superfoods that Men's Health magazine published. It's also the bulk of my diet.
It's not different from what we keep hearing we should eat -- lots of veggies, some fruit, non-fat dairy, lean protein, whole grains, healthy fats like nuts and avocado, and beans. But what I hope you'll take away from this post is if you look at what you eat as medicine you'll think twice before you reach for artificial, chemically-treated, metabolism-messing non-food foods.
As Michael Pollan, author of "Food Rules" says, Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. That's pretty much what I do and eating this way, along with moderate portions, gives me the lipid profile I consistently get and automatically maintains my weight.
I'll also tell you, lest you think I'm a monk or a martyr, that fried calamari, occasional cheese or flourless chocolate cake, crusty bread and olive oil, most anything friends make for dinner and eating everything in my house on those occasional nights when the world tips out of balance, also co-exist with my healthy eating. Well, Pollan's last rule is, "Break the rules once in a while." Oh, and wine usually accompanies dinner. Thank goodness years ago some French marketing guy said it was healthy.
Since I've spent a lot of years transforming my tastes and habits, I offer you these tips to help you do the same. It's one thing to intellectually agree "food is medicine" and another to jumpstart a healthier diet.
-Food As Medicine Tips:
Follow Riva Greenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/diabetesmyths
Darya Pino, Ph.D: The Myth of Superfoods
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This is exactly right. It's part of how food works like medicine in the body.
But most people need to learn how to be "body aware". How food affects your energy level, sleep, digestion, even joint pain is similar for many people in my practice. Which foods help people lose weight and keep it off, in contrast, seems quite individual.
But few of us are well-trained enough to notice, for example, that eating salmon for dinner the night before makes our joints feel less creaky, or that barely sweetened, probiotic-rich yogurt can help with eczema.
It is well-documented that the right diet can lower cholesterol, regulate blood pressure, improve IBS, vanquish constipation and more.
This is actually accepted by mainstream medical authorities, but not aggressively promoted, because most physicians have not been trained in nutrition. I received 4 hours in medical school, and just 2 hours in cooking school.
We reviewed over 3000 clinical studies for ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine to find how foods work for 40 different conditions, and Riva is right: food does work like medicine in the body, and that small steps make a big difference.
My goal: to show that the food doesn't have to taste like cardboard. Doctors can and should write recipes on prescription slips too. Here's a start: free healthy easy fun recipes at http://ChefMD.com
Here's another question.Whether you see "food as medicine," healthy food helping to keep you healthy, do you see unhealthy food, fast-food and refined foods, chemically-laced foods and high-fat and sugar-foods as a cause of so many of our health ills today: cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammation-related conditions like atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis?
I wanted to say thank you for your article since I believe food is a medicine. I am also honored that you linked to my website for the article: "40 Best Age-Erasing Super Foods". To your readers thank you for the opportunity to share my passion for health.
Since losing over 300 pounds and helping teens world-wide achieve a life of passion through solid nutrition I am thankful when sites like Huffington Post and Riva Greenberg write on such important issues.
I didn't mean to ramble, but my Thanks again. It's all about spreading the mojo!
Tollie...
http://health-actuary.blogspot.com
The term "bad cholesterol" is clever pharmaceutical marketing disguised as medical education. LDL is not "bad" cholesterol, it is a lipoprotein particle, a kind of shuttle for fat-soluble compounds that you eat (be they trans fat and harmful, or beneficial omega-3). LDL carries cholesterol and most other fatty nutrients, including vitamins A, E, and K, and brain-building phospholipids from your diet to organs that need them. For a more useful way of interpreting your cholesterol numbers, read about "the lipid cycle" at http://drcate.com/the-lipid-cycle/
This one is about the research billionaire Murdock financed to find "the healthiest foods on earth":
http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2009/09/an-86-year-old-billionaires-recipe-for-lonevity/
Mens' Health magazine has its own list it calls "age-erasing superfoods":
http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2010/07/age-erasing-superfoods/
Then there's Dr. Oz's "Reboot Diet": http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2010/01/oz-reboot-diet/
And Doctor Ann Kulze's cheap health food: http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2010/05/cheap-healthy-food/
Yep.
The comments below include the false claim that certain foods ward off cancer. Another commenter claims that the best treatment for high cholesterol is a certain kind of diet, despite the medical fact that the most serious cases are genetically based and can not be adequately controlled without drugs.
Yet another person claims inflammation can be treated with food, but the fact is that no diet change can help as much as a baby aspirin with breakfast.
I know that this will send many food faddists into a frenzy. I'm sure they sincerely believe this bunk, which is found on all kinds of loony web sites. But it's a simple fact that food is not medicine. Food is food. Anyone who says otherwise is repeating a very old bit of quackery that should have died years ago.
It's really hard to die of something as curable as hodgkins, but my friend came very, very close. People don't realize how often this kind of craziness happens.
I haven't heard much from the macrobiotic cult recently; maybe they all died after trying to use medicine as food.
Trust me, I would not stop using insulin to manage my blood sugar just because I think food is also a form of medicine. But I would encourage everyone to make the bulk of their diet healthy foods. riva
What I want to acknowledge is the fact that food is NOT medicine! The wacky idea that a chronic illness can be treated with diet is baloney.
I'm a littel surprised there is a negative reaction from some... maybe part of that comes from the definition of "Medicine".
If one's concept of "medicine" is solely from a pharmaceutical frame, I can see how that person would think teh concept of food as medicine was a crock.
But pharmaceuticals are not the only effective medicine -- and in some cases they aren't the _most effective.
"Medicine is the science and art (ars medicina) of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine That certainly includes food as well as herbals.
Then there is the Native American "Medicine"... "good medicine" has a more whole definition than solely a concentrated chenical compound directed at treating disease.
How rich teh world is, with a broad spectrum of medicine!!