Everyone knows the value of food for providing the energy our bodies needs to function, but when it comes to ailments far fewer view food as potent medicine.
Nevertheless, medical pioneers like Dr. William Li, are changing that view. In his new book, Eat To Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself, and this video, he describes how that focus is shifting. Having trained or been involved in research at some of the top medical universities in the world, Dr. Li is an extraordinarily credible individual. So when he notes that the research now shows that “food is or can be more powerful than drugs for healing disease,” that is an astonishing claim. And one worth pondering.
In this YouTube video of Dr. Li’s talk at the Exponential Medicine (http://NextMed.Health) conference, he describes a “global awakening” with regards to the importance of food as medicine, and the progress and innovations in this international movement.
If you don’t have much time, after the 3 min intro you can skip to 11:30 to learn more about the new ways in which Food has been shown to achieve results as good if not better than pharmaceutical meds
Among other things he talks about how the food we eat influences our health, wellness and disease, noting that world wide 11 million deaths a year are attributable to poor diet. And in a look at various diseases, dietary risk, was identified as the # 1 risk factor for these various ailments. That, he notes, is one reason why the medicines of tomorrow will likely combine the best of both worlds.
While his presentation uses examples largely related to cancer, if you explore this website, for example the first of the 7 Pillars of Brain Health, you will see that it’s largely about diet and nutrition.
In August, our blog was on the importance of diet and nutrition in reducing depression and suicide, an often ignored though major cause of cognitive decline.
Dr. Li’s findings reinforce the above noted research as well as the writings of Thomas Shea, PhD, Biologist and Alzheimer’s researcher at UMass; Dale Bredesen, MD, former director of the Neurology departments at UCLA; Vincent Fortenasce, MD, former professor of Neurology at USC; David Perlmutter, MD, board certified in Neurology and Nutrition, and many others who have been teaching for years that our diet is the most critical determinant of our state of health, especially brain health.
More recently a study of more than 3,000 individuals followed for seven decades has provided “new evidence suggesting that improvements to dietary patterns… may influence cognitive performance and help mitigate, or lessen, cognitive decline in later years."
It’s evident the Creator(s) of this world (God and “Mother Nature”) knew what they were doing when they created our bodies and this planet. And placed in our environment foods that contain the nutrients needed, not only to sustain but often times heal our bodies, from the various maladies endemic to our environment, and the hazards of this world.
So it's refreshing to see evidence of an increasing number of well-educated people coming to the realization that the health of our brain and body may, as much as anything, depend on what we choose to eat on a daily basis.
