Can Food Be Our Medicine?

Sometimes I wonder if we humans are the solution or the problem. There is no doubt that there is a lot that humans have achieved, and we have advanced a lot in almost all fields. But even then the problems in the world haven’t decreased we have simply replaced some old problems with the new ones. Since the world is in clutches of a medical problem right now, let’s focus on that spectrum. The new virus (COVID-19) emerging from bats is holding the world captive. Ergo it doesn’t come as a surprise that people are rethinking food, and food habits. This brings me to our question of today can food be our medicine, even though it is a centuries-old debate.

Now in simple terms a lot of our problems have crop-up from food, so eating right can lead up to improvement. After all, food is sustenance and also our primary and natural source of getting the body all its required nutrients. When we eat the right foods we boost our immunity and we can to some extent control our risk factors. When considering major population affecting diseases, like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular ailments, just the medications never seem to do the trick. All doctors prescribe lifestyle changes which generally include dietary changes in tandem with medication. This simple factor highlights the importance of food as having some role to play in health and sickness. But does this suffice to prove the famous quote (supposedly by Hippocrates) “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

I am a firm believer in eating healthy and that food done right is the way to follow for health, however, in certain conditions, it cannot replace medicine. The very obvious point demolishing the notion is even healthy people fall ill, and medication then becomes a must. Secondly, as I mentioned before a lot of our issues come from eating the wrong food, so sometimes food is the problem, and it requires the prescribed Rx solutions.

 Also, healthy food is a very vague term. Of course, there are thousands of studies, theories, diets no dearth of material on what is described as healthy, but the reality is what may be healthy for me, may not be healthy for you. What works for you in fever might not relieve me of it. Then there are also so many other considerations like climate, what is available, a person’s preferences and condition. For example, Indian staple foods are different within the country itself, forget about comparing it with other countries, so what my grandma considered food won’t be recognized the same way by an American’s granny (look up the granny rule). So it is never specific like medicines which are designed specifically to treat a condition.

Food does aid health and healing and helps the medicines to work better, however, it can’t replace medicines when they are really needed! So eat right for your type to stay healthy and in case medical intervention is needed, please do consider it!