Food, Inflammation, and Disease – Part 1
I never thought I would be writing about food and disease, as I am no expert. But, we all have people in our lives battling some form of disease, it might be ourselves. My husband has diabetes and has issues with his back. He deals with a lot of pain. He takes medications that keeps his issues in check, but they are expensive, do not fix the underling problems, and have side affects that can be very harmful. I have been doing a lot of web searching and have come to the conclusion that a lot of our common health problems are caused by our diet.
Our bodies evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. People ate lots of different plants so they got lots of different phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals plus proteins and non-saturated fats. Humans also ate meat but only when they could find it and kill it, and this provided proteins and saturated fats. This was good for the people of the time because their bodies would store the fat to be used when there was no food around. Today, there is an abundance of food. Not everyone has access to it because many staple foods have been turned into commodities to be bought and sold for profits. But that is a different subject. Many of us actually eat too much food and too much of the wrong foods. Meat has gone from a once and awhile food to an every day food for some. Our bodies still want to store the fat so we have something to sustain us when we don’t have food, but today, generally that is not a problem. So we keep on storing the fat and that can cause problems for our health. We also tend to not eat enough plant foods, and if we do, it is a very limited variety of plants so we are not getting the wide variety of phytochemicals. Our soils are becoming depleted because of industrial farming practices, so the plants we are eating are not as nutritious as they once were. And on top of that, we now eat a lot of highly processed foods that no longer have all the good for you components of whole foods. There are also pesticides present in some of our foods, and chemicals that are bodies can’t use and in some cases are harmful to us. Our bodies have to work hard to get rid of these chemicals, and they may also get stored in our bodies which can lead to health problems.
Just like the Earth is becoming overwhelmed with all the pollution we are producing and releasing into the environment. Our bodies can become overwhelmed, and sometimes can’t keep up and systems start to fail, and diseases happen. This is a very basic description, as there are many factors involved, but I do believe if we get back to basics we can help our bodies to heal themselves. There is no one solution for everyone because everyone is uniquely different, so what works for one person may not work for another person. We each need to figure out our own unique body’s requirements. Some people will thrive on vegan diets, while others will thrive on plant and animal diets. Reducing the amounts of highly refined foods, deep fried foods, refined sugary foods, and adding more fruits and vegetables (of different colours) is a good start. Also, if you can eat local and organic foods, this should provide you with more nutritious food because plants loose their nutrients as time goes by after they are picked. Eating organic helps reduce the pesticides that we may consume otherwise, and is healthier for our environment, as pesticides get into the soil, water, and air. On an economic note, this helps keep money in our local economy supporting our neighbours.
