"Let Food Be Thy Medicine..."

"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." Hippocrates

Although many of us think this quote is part of the Hippocratic Oath, it is not. After reading through several versions of the oath, it is in agreement with the spirit of it but not an exact quote from it.


How far we have gotten away from this premise that the food we eat should be our first and primary and even perhaps our only medicine! Perhaps that's because most of our so-called food has had all the life-giving properties taken out of it. If you meander through the aisles of any modern grocery store, you will find very little real food in it. Even most of the "fresh" produce isn't really fresh. The vast majority of it was picked before its prime and had some sort of artificial process done to it to make it more or less palatable! This kind of food could never be construed to be beneficial to our bodies, much less be medicine to them!


Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, roughly 15 years ago or so, I spent much of my time and energy looking for things. It seemed as though I was living in a fog, unable to remember the last place I set my glasses or what I had gone to the refrigerator to get. It began to worry me, thinking of the possibility of early onset of Alzheimer's disease. But I didn't know what to do about it. We had recently lost our middle son in Hawaii. For the story, you can go to this link. I imagined that I was suffering from stress, grief, etc, which to some extent, I'm sure was the case. In about March, my husband decided to do a fast and together, we decided to radically change our eating habits, adopting what is known as the Hallelujah Diet. You can check out their website for details if you're interested, but the basic principle is that you juice vegetables and you eat about 80% of your food raw. You also eliminate from your diet all dairy products, caffeine, salt, sugar and processed grains.


I was completely astounded by the impact this diet had on both my health, my energy, my digestive system and my memory. Within a month to 6 weeks, I had more energy than I had ever had in my entire life, my chronic constipation I had had since early childhood went away, never to return, my memory became so vivid that I could go into a group of people and remember every single name after hearing it just once, the fog lifted and I began to enjoy life once again.


While this is a rather dramatic and absolutely true story, I tell it to illustrate the powerful healing property of REAL food! I no longer eat 80% of my food raw, although I would do so again in a heartbeat if I found myself back in the position I was in 15 years ago. Our family now eats sensibly, including a nice amount of raw food straight out of our organic garden, we shop very little at the grocery store and take some very helpful dietary supplements. I'm a firm believer that in our society today, supplements can and do fill in the gaps in our busy schedules, enabling our bodies to better utilize the food we take in.


What do you think? Should food be our medicine? Is it yours?