Can the Mediterranean Diet Reverse Disease?
Mediterranean Diet and Nutrition
It makes so much sense: “you are what you eat.” Veterinarians know the irreplaceable link between nutrient intake and. health. Actually, most of our pets eat better than most Americans. Your dog or cat probably eats a balanced formula of protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, vitamins and minerals. The Mediterranean diet may be the simple key to your longer and healthier life.
Yet, most humans chose our foods based upon taste, cost, emotional needs and convenience. The most commonly eaten food in America is heavily refined and nutritionally bankrupt white flour. Meanwhile, our livestock eat the more nutritious wheat germ and bran that we discard from whole wheat. When our crops are not doing well, we examine the soil for nutrients, fluid and pH content.
Our gardens prosper when we water, fertilize, and add a little broad spectrum mineral supplement. Many people do not fully understand the A sign posted near the junk food vending machines in a major city zoo warns: “Do not feed this food to the animals or they may get sick and die.” Think about it. Do you think that the food that might kill a 400-pound ape is okay for a 40-pound child who is biologically very similar?
If our gardens, field crops, pets, exotic zoo creatures and every other form of life on earth are all heavily dependent on their diet for health, then what makes us think that humans have transcended this dependence? What is your ‘O’ Ring?
There are over 100 different diets that are studied and followed around the world. Paleo, keto, vegan, all raw, ayurvedic, fruitarian, etc. The best studied and most nourishing of all these diets is the Mediterranean diet, which has been followed by people in the southern Mediterranean region of Europe for many centuries. The diet is plant based, with heavy emphasis on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, small amounts of chicken and fish, with rare samples of red meat and dairy. Garlic, tomatoes, red wine, naps, and hikes are an integral part of the lifestyle in Greece, Italy, southern France, etc. This diet has been shown in extensive scientific studies to dramatically lower the risk for heart disease, cancer, and all cause morbidity. The highly restrictive and immoderate diets mentioned above are probably not necessary and might be harmful, especially those people who avoid fruits and emphasize meat and fat.
Nutrition Facts
1) All creatures on earth rely heavily of the quality and quantity of nutrient in take for their health and longevity.
2) Wear are facing a serious “healthcare Meltdown” in which our huge investment in a” drugs and surgery” has not rescued us from sickness and early death. We cannot buy health, we must earn it through a healthy lifestyle.
3) The majority of us are malnourished due to poor choices at the dinner table. Our quantity of food intake is enough, and maybe too much. However, our quality of choices is way off. We eat too much of the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff.
4) The body wants to be well. By nourishing the “life forces” within, you set the stage for wondrous miracles of health to occur. Nutrition, exercise, attitude, detoxification, body maintenance, and genetics are the greatest forces that influence our health.
“There is a Link Between Eating Whole Foods and Good Health”
Can the Mediterranean Diet Reverse Disease
First world countries have among the world’s highest incidences of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and obesity; we seem to ignore the irreplaceable link between eating whole foods and good health. The Surgeon General of the United States reports that up to·65% of all disease could be prevented through proper nutrition. There is a basic flaw in our thinking about health care in this country. We treat symptoms, not the underlying cause of the disease. Yet, the only way to provide long-lasting relief in any degenerative disease, like cancer, arthritis and heart disease, is to reverse the basic cause of the disease. You can reverse underlying disease with these simple solutions.
The Mediterranean diet can help you improve your diet
For example, let’s say that the first thing I do every morning when I arrive at-my office is to slam my thumb in the desk drawer. After the first few days, it really hurts. As I continue slamming my thumb each morning, the thumb turns black and blue. I go to the doctor for relief. Doctor A tells me: “I will give you a prescription for an anti inflammatory agent, cortisone, to reduce the swelling in your thumb.”
I want another opinion. Doctor B tells me: “I will give you a prescription for an analgesic drug, to help you better tolerates the pain.”
I still am not convinced that I have the right “answer, so I get a third opinion. Doctor C tells.. Me: “I am going to have to amputate that thumb, since it is obviously defective.” The real answer is “stop slamming your thumb in the desk drawer” or reverse the underlying problem and allow your natural healing forces to take over.
Can the Mediterranean diet change the underlying cause of illness?
You might. say that my little story has nothing to do with your health problem. Let’s say that Mrs. Jones is suffering from degenerative rheumatoid arthritis. Her knuckles, hips, and other joints are so swollen that they limit Mrs. Jones’s activities. In this case, she could reverse the disease by avoiding the allergenic foods of dairy and wheat, while also taking supplements of fish oil, zinc, pantothenic acid, and bee pollen. Doctor A tells her: “I will give you a prescription for an anti-inflammatory agent, cortisone, to reduce the swelling in your joints.” Doctor B tells her: “I will give you a prescription for an analgesic drug, to help you better tolerate the pain. “Doctor tells her:” I am going to have to do hip replacement surgery because those joints are defective. “The correct answer is to change the underlying causes of the disease, or “stop slamming your thumb in the drawer”.
In our health care system, we usually shift symptoms with medication or surgery, as if in a bizarre “, shell game”, when we really need to deal with the fundamental cause of the disease. Nutrition, and in particular, super foods can help change the underlying cause of many health problems.
Heart Disease
Another example is heart disease. There are over 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the average adult body. When a person develops blockage in the arteries near the heart, open heart bypass surgery will be recommended for 360,000 Americans this year. In this procedure, a short section of vein from the leg is used to replace the plugged up vessels near the heart.
Diet, Exercise, Stress and Toxins and the Mediterranean diet
But what has been done to improve the other 59,999 miles left that are probably equally obstructed? A Harvard professor,· Dr. E. Braunwald, investigated the records from thousands of bypass patients in the Veteran’s Administration Hospitals and found no improvement in lifespan after this expensive and risky surgery. Why? Because the under lying cause; which could be a complex array of diet, exercise, stress, and toxins; has not been resolved. Bypass surgery treats the symptoms of heart disease like chemo and radiation treat the symptoms of cancer. Each provides temporary relief, but no long-term cure. What is the Difference Between Surviving and Thriving?
Can We Reverse Heart Disease
Meanwhile; Dr. Dean Ornish has spent years developing a program that could reverse heart disease, something that drugs and surgery cannot do. His program recently was found effective in a clinical study. When you deal with the underlying cause’s of a degenerative disease, you are more likely to get long-term favorable benefits. When you allow the cause of the disease to continue and merely treat the symptoms, then the disease just keeps getting worse. In hundreds of diseases and billions of patients, this obvious law holds true.
