Food and Healing
As we have led up to, food and the nature of healing cannot be separated. Food is healing, not just in consumption but during the whole process, much of which we no longer take any part of. The body prepares and is just as much a part of the process as eating and digesting the food is. It is not a singular action. Digestion starts LONG before it even passes your lips. The body prepares for intake of nourishment all the time. When it’s selecting, choosing, or hunting it’s food it is already sending messages to the brain: of what it wants to eat, of what it’s going to do with the food once it’s in the kitchen, how it will be prepared. The body is already acting on its nutritional needs all the time. Even when you aren’t in this moment eating calcium foods, but the body needs it, it is already finding it somewhere in your body and moving it to where it needs it. Or it’s planning a craving so that you choose something with calcium, or it’s preparing hormones that will respond negatively when it doesn’t have what it needs. When you are preparing food, smelling the smells, hearing the sounds, your body is already producing enzymes in preparation for digesting it. Your stomach is already answering the cues to achieve appropriate acidity levels for optimal use of the food.
Your body is already preparing for what it needs to do with the food before it even goes in. Obviously what we put in is going to make a difference to health, as we previously discussed. Not only is healthy food part of the healing process by feeding and nourishing our bodies, giving building nutrients, using particular nutrients to heal, rebuild, and carry out toxins and wastes. There are many properties of our food that are given little thought. Sure, we can classify and organize them into like characteristics as the food pyramid allows us to do, however there is little talk to what function a food plays inside the body. There are many properties of foods that are not commonly thought of by conventional nutrition methods. We know we should eat vegetables, but do we really understand why? Because has anyone explained the importance to us?
Vegetation should make up 70% of our total dietary intake. The macro nutrient, proteins, fats, and carbs, build our bodies. However, vegetation is much less discussed other than that we should eat it. Vegetation has taken everything into consideration when it comes to providing for every system in our body, including the waste removal system, with a plan for clearing toxins out of the cells and then out of the body. Every need for the nervous system to get messages to the brain has been thought of with vegetation, and every need for problem substances in the body to be cleared has been thought of with vegetation. Every energy need has been thought of through vegetation, and every “medicine” need any time the body needs to ramp up its efforts and get assistance from food to clear harmful pathogens, bacterias, fungus, and parasites have been thought of through vegetation. All vegetation acts as eliminators as its top function, with additional functions depending on the type of vegetation. For instance, green leafy vegetation act as eliminators, tone the nervous system, remove toxins and benefit hormones and the entire endocrine system. Fruits are fast eliminators and serve a great purpose in quickly eliminating negative products from the body, and feeding the body’s quick sugar needs. There is a whole other category within the vegetative world that gets little attention other than for culinary uses: Herbs and other plant greens. These are the natural “medicines” to be consumed daily. I hesitate to call them “medicines” because definitely they are known to have medicinal properties, but concepts around the term of “medicine” suggests that a disease, illness, or symptom is present FIRST and then a “medicine” is taken to remove it. In the true understanding of healing food and vegetation, we need to understand that these foods of course are used as such in the form of “herbal medicines” but more importantly, these foods should be consumed daily not as a “preventative” but as the necessary actions to setting the stage for “health”. We want to instill a concept of understanding the function and purpose of this category of healing foods. The function is NOT as a preventative, though that it does, we don’t eat them in order to “prevent” anything. If that is the concept that is being constructed, then the negative concept (that we need to prevent disease) is still present. The concept is still present in the construct of the cells and builds with the idea that we are victims over disease. When, instead, you eat, with a picture of pure perfect health for the sake of it, the cellular constructive blueprint changes. You aren’t “fighting” anything, at the whim of anything as a victim, but as a knowledgeable chooser in setting up the environment for the body to build itself, heal itself, and take care of itself using the functional foods that were exactly designated to do so.
