Food healing

Herbs have been used my many cultures for thousands of years

Plants generate all kinds of chemicals, naturally, and people have been taking advantage of this with varying degrees of effectiveness.

So what about foods that heal? It's not actually the foods themselves that heal. What they do is provide you with nutritional support which allows your body's natural regenerative powers to do the job. Vitamins and minerals provide necessary components to build all the compounds that the body needs, as well as clean up things like excess free radicals. Obviously if you fill up on the tasty fat filled fried foods at the local burger joint you're missing out on some of these nutrients.



Foods have one major benefit that herbs and (even less so) pharmaceuticals don't... our bodies evolved, over millions of years, to process these foods, whether animal or vegetable, and make the best use of what they have to offer.

Red, yellow, and green veggies provide a variety of anti-oxidants which protect against a number of degenerative diseases by destroying free radical molecules in the body. This can help with environmental (pollution) damage and there's a growing body of evidence that they help with cardiovascular problems as well. (But, not if you eat them just once.)

Apples have a great assortment of nutrients, especially if you eat the skin. They help with constipation and diarrhea, improve lung capacity, and help to cushion the joints.

Seaweeds provide a rich variety of nutrients and help to support the hormonal, lymphatic, urinary, and other bodily systems. They've actually been called the Ultimate Vegetable.

Spices contain a number of phytochemical and phytonutrients. These chemicals, and others, work as anti-oxidants and micro-nutrients. Tumeric, for example, contains curcumin, which some research has show to have some effect on colon cancers. Spices such as ginger, nutmeg, cumin, and coriander, help block the effects of aflatoxin, a mold that is believed to cause liver cancer, among other ill effects.