Ancient Wisdom Rediscovered

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
– Hippocrates, Father of Medicine, 431 B.C.

Phytochemicals; fatty acids; monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats; anti-oxidants; polyphenols. These are food terminologies that define superfoods. Superfoods are the perfect example of foods being medicine and medicine being food.

There is more to foods than just the regular vitamins and minerals that we were taught about in school. There are certain foods that have been discovered to be superior sources of disease-fighting nutrients which our bodies cannot make themselves, such as those previously mentioned. Superfoods are essential nutrient powerhouses, packing a lot of punch in terms of health benefits and with only small amounts of calories. They have been shown to help reduce the risk of chronic disease, maintain a healthy weight and overall well-being, and prolong life.

“There are certain foods that have been discovered to be superior sources of disease-fighting nutrients which our bodies cannot make themselves …”

There is more to eating than just completing three meals a day, satisfying our cravings, or overindulging in unhealthy foods – which may seem incongruous as such habits are considered excessive. Our unhealthy and thoughtless eating practices do not offer any real and lasting value to our well-being, and given the current state of our planet and of our food production and consumption, Hippocrates’s statement has certainly become more relevant now than it has ever been.

Indeed, eating for good health these days should not only mean eating to sustain our body’s needs in order to function well; it should also mean eating to prepare our body to defend against health risks. As another popular proverb goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The sad reality is that our way of eating is actually making us unhealthier instead of healthier. Eating is supposed to sustain us, to make us stronger and live longer, to help us fight diseases and heal from injuries faster. Instead, our unhealthy food choices and eating habits have become the cause of so many of our health problems. This is unnatural; this is unwise.

What The Ancients Knew & Practiced

When it comes to health, ancient wisdom has so much to offer us if we would only listen.

Modern science and medicine may have made huge leaps and bounds in improving our understanding of human health and the human body; but so much wisdom from ancient practices and beliefs persist to this day because at the core of these practices and beliefs is the fundamental and genuine understanding of how to fulfill our body’s most important needs, day in and day out, for lifelong good health.

“… ancient medical practices – most of which we now consider alternative medicine – also based on their fundamental understanding of their environment.”

Our earliest ancestors may not have understood the science behind vitamins, minerals, and essential nutrients; nor may they have known about the complexities of injuries, diseases, and ailments. They simply lived in harmony with nature. They developed ancient medical practices – most of which we now consider alternative medicine – also based on their fundamental understanding of their environment.

They may not have performed experiments in a laboratory or published peer-reviewed scientific studies; their methods may have been rudimentary and archaic by today’s standards; but their quest for knowledge was not complicated and tainted by the fear of losing grant funding or by what is profitable for them and the industry they work for.

The purpose of their quest for knowledge was to bring the body back in harmony with nature when it becomes ill or injured and to preserve this harmony; it was not driven by a desire for profit or fame. Indeed, many of the greatest medical discoveries in history were made with the purest of intentions. This is the biggest difference between ancient medicine and modern allopathic medicine.

This excerpt from an article on Hopkinsmedicine.org explains it best:

In the days before medicine, food was medicine…or at least it was seen as such. A browned apple for an upset stomach, chicken soup for congestion, champagne for septicemia (Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Eudora Welty said her Mississippi father swore his use of the bubbly saved her ill mother’s life). It was sometimes hard to establish cause and effect (Garlic as an anti-vampiric? Hard to find test subjects), and yet generations of pantries held foods sworn to bind, purge, ameliorate, instigate, invigorate…in short, improve one’s well-being.

And then came modern allopathic-oriented science, which until recently tossed nutrition—and its potential effect on both maintaining health and calming illness—into the compost heap. The reasons were myriad. Politically, no one had ever been elected on an anti-cheeseburger platform, so administrative pressure to funnel government dollars toward nutritional research traditionally was nil. Similarly, big pharma was scarce with cash, because they can’t patent a food’s natural properties. And from a practical viewpoint, studying food with its thousands of chemicals and nutrients is incredibly complex. By comparison, targeting and studying a single drug for efficacy in a double-blind model was far more straightforward and lucrative to both researchers and industry.

(Source: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/w10/feature2.cfm)

It is true that our earliest ancestors dealt with much simpler health problems, and that is exactly the point. They did not have to deal with the chronic and complicated diseases that we now face and which we brought upon ourselves through our unhealthy practices and careless treatment of the environment.

“… recent clinical studies have been proving much of our ancient medical wisdom to be true …”

Modern medicine is slow to catch up on what our ancestors have already discovered a few thousand years ago and which we continued to practice until we subscribed to allopathic medicine. But recent clinical studies have been proving much of our ancient medical wisdom to be true and modern science and medicine are, albeit begrudgingly, starting to acknowledge the wisdom behind Hippocrates’s words.

Back To The Basics

A return to ancient wisdom means going to basics – or, more specifically, the basics of healthy eating.

Our earliest ancestors lived longer and healthier lives because they appreciated the healing properties of food. If we are to successfully fight the dangers that our modern way of living pose to our health, then we must recognize the wisdom of ancient health and medical practices and beliefs and let these guide us back to good health.

What this means is going back to subsisting on organic fruits and vegetables, as well as unprocessed whole foods, whose amazing properties have been shown, by modern science, to be extremely beneficial to our health.

We must strive to prevent diseases, instead of simply hoping to cure them when they occur, by making our bodies stronger through healthy foods that provide the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats we need, as well as the essential nutrients that offer protection against cancer, chronic diseases, premature aging, and injuries, among many others.

When we let food be our medicine and our medicine be our food, we eat with the goal of preventing health problems by fortifying our body with the right kinds of foods and avoiding the wrong ones.

If sustenance equals life, then good sustenance equals a good life. Θ