“Food as Medicine”—A Bitter Pill to Swallow?

I was delighted when Jim over at Diet Blog asked me to do a guest post for his website. It’s a lively site and has some great content about weight loss scams, weight loss research and exposés of the diet industry. Jim wanted me to write a bit about “Nutrition as Medicine” and it was posted up there a few days ago.

I expected a backlash. I was ready for a flood of angry and hostile comments but I was relieved to find that most of the comments were supportive of the idea. Instead of responding to some of the comments over at Diet Blog, I thought I’d do a post here because the reply would be too lengthy to go on there.

Actually only 2 comments were hostile to the article; my replies are interspersed between the comments.

By “The Faddist”
“People have been eating healthy foods and using natural remedies for centuries and they did just fine… right up until they died around their 30th birthday. Now people eat junk-food, fill their bodies with chemicals, never exercise, and we just keep living longer and longer. We’ve essentially doubled life expectancy over the past 100 or so years. Why? Primarily because of modern medicine and pills.”

Very good point—we’re living longer due to advances in hygiene, dealing with infections, lower infant mortality and so on but the article specifically addresses chronic illnesses for which pills are heavy handed at best and downright dangerous in some cases. Pills cannot cure anything unless the underlying cause is resolved and the body can then resume in health, unaided. I was recently at hospital with my son. The registrar told me “All drugs have problems.”

Pointing to the past is somewhat of a smoke-screen. I’m talking about the best way to deal with modern problems. I absolutely agree that modern medicine and science is partly responsible for increased longevity, but that doesn’t alter the fact that pills don’t work for chronic illnesses—they don’t cure anything, they are generally sticky plasters.

You can’t really be suggesting that “eating junk-food and filling your body with chemicals” is going to produce health or make you live longer?

Many chronic illnesses don’t necessarily shorten your life. No, you often drag on and on for years of torment and gradually diminishing quality of life. I don’t like that vision of the future. Pills can certainly improve your lot in certain circumstances but it’s not the best we can do.

A triple by-pass will extend your life no question. But is it the best solution when heart-disease can be reversed with other methods?

Chronic illness is generally caused by not meeting the body’s physiological needs over extended periods of time—as is the case with the big killers, cancer and heart disease. How can that situation be resolved by a pill?

“This list seems like it was written by a child: ‘Cut your skin and in a few days it’s healed. Isn’t that amazing when you really stop and think? Your body can do amazing things given the right conditions.’ Yes, with a small scratch your body will heal itself. Get a deep cut and your body isn’t going to do much about it except maybe bleed to death. Go get some stitches and maybe you stand a chance.”

The stitches don’t heal anything but only allow the healing to take place. I’m not suggesting we abandon medicine and modern methods that work—just the ones that don’t work as well as natural solutions.

“‘Pills can buy you time, but never health.’ Trite and untrue.”

Why? That’s just a sweeping statement with no logic or evidence to back it up.

“I agree we should all strive to eat healthier but can we do it without the anti-science bias?”

Science is a beautiful thing. I’m NOT anti-science. I’m PRO good science. But a lot of what constitutes science is corrupted by those with vested interests in the outcomes. I would relish more independent objective scientific studies into the effect food as medicine and natural alternatives, especially studies of whole diets on whole people. But who will fund it? You tell me. Science is often not looking in the right places.

By “Different Nic”
“Maybe Tom Cruise wrote it. After all, everyone knows you can treat severe depression with ‘vitamins’”

I was very sick for 13 years. You don’t go through that amount of suffering without depression. I was suicidal many times. The only thing that ever worked for me was natural foods—in my case a raw plant-based diet and having mercury taken out of my mouth along with as much walking as I could handle. The turn-around in my health was staggering.

I read a rebuttal to Tom Cruise’s news comments by a psychiatrist pointing out that Ritalin was proven to increase dopamine levels in the brain. This is typical of errors in medicine.

Where is the answer to the question “Why are dopamine levels low in cases of ADHD?” More sticky plasters—not that I’m totally against the use of sticky plasters; they can be very useful in buying time in some cases. The original cause of illness is rarely addressed. Symptoms are observed and drugs used to alter the symptoms.

“I mean, if eating healthier works for whatever your illness is, great. But just because you feel better doesn’t necessarily mean that everything IS better.”

Well, if changing your lifestyle habits results in your symptoms going away, there’s a damn good chance that it was the change that allowed your body to regain its homeostasis. But I agree that often disease is masked by the body’s resilience. Often symptoms don’t appear until a critical stage is reached.

In this way, feeling good does not necessarily mean tip-top shape internally. Hans Seyle described this process in his work on adaption to stress.

“We have doctors and hospitals for a reason! I certainly don’t think we need to take a pill for every little thing, but most of this list reads like an exercise in paranoia. I have NEVER been to a doctor who just pushed a pill on me without talking about exercise, nutrition, preventative measures, etc. This holds true for mental and physical ailments.”

That is not the norm in my experience. It’s a lottery and you got lucky. There are good doctors, amazing doctors and rubbish doctors. Just like any profession. In your case—STICK! Doctors get very little in the way of nutrition education at medical school. They study disease, not health. If your doctor is enlightened, he probably taught himself.

“I’m sure everyone’s experiences are different, and I’m also sure that some doctors are better about this than others, but saying things like “Food is complex and so are you. The two have been working together for millions of years. Science and its main contributor–the drug industry like to identify one element, find out what it does, isolate it and put it in a pill. Nature doesn’t work like that and neither do you.” is just plain not true.”

Again, an unsupported sweeping statement but you don’t say why you think it’s not true. Maybe I’ll just take your approach and reply by saying OH YES IT IS TRUE SO THERE!

Of the positive comments, I love this the most;

By “Dr. J”
“I have always been humbled by the healing process! The way gaps are closed and shapes return to what they were is amazing. I can line things up, but then it’s out of my hands and a better surgeon does the rest.”

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