Food as Medicine
Here at Fire and Ice Wellness we try to be well rounded in all thing’s health and longevity. In topics of wellness, food choices and diets are often at the center. This will be a four-part blog series about what key pillars we focus on when it comes to food choices and diets. Mastering your microbiome, eating intuitively, using food as medicine, and monitoring your body with integrative technology to see how you respond to your food choices, diet, and possibly your environment. Last week we discussed eating intuitively. This week we will be discussing using food as medicine.
As early as I can remember, there have always been supplements in my family’s medicines cabinet. The brand that my mother and father loved is called Shaklee. I remember taking their liquid-lee which was a multivitamin that tasted like liquid copper, but it was loaded with many essential vitamins and minerals. I’m sure today Shakelee has perfected the taste of this product, but back then it could have used a spoon full of sugar to help it go down. So why go through all of that? The philosophy was, we don’t get enough minerals and vitamins from our food. Like most people who take supplements or medicine, they become disconnected with the food that they set on their plate and even more separated from where their food comes from.
Losing faith in nature can be disheartening, especially since nature is where all our medicine comes from. We want to believe in nature, but also see the pollution and the trash that is making our planet ill. Adventuring into nature as a teenager and young adult, nothing seemed like it was untouched by trash and litter. However even in all of this trash I started to see that nature is really good at reducing, reusing and recycling. I am trusting in our farmers and food manufacturers that they are looking at nature for future strategies. One of the best examples of this is the biggest little farm. Kellogg has also announced they will be changing how they grow their rice crops in the Mississippi Basin to commit to farming practices that add to the value of our farmlands rather than take away value. Gabe Brown has become a well-known regenerative ag disciple that has shown the power of growing crops with this methodology.
So as the planet heals and key nutrient levels rise, it’s important that we educate ourselves with the right nutrients from the right foods. My parents started supplementing because they lost faith in the foods themselves, but our goal should be to put our faith back into nature. Plants generate all the medicine on the globe. Even the quality of our meat depends on the plants the animals eat. So, spend time getting to know your plants. A great read for this is The Plant Paradox. Plants just might be more intelligent than man.
So where do we begin when we start renewing our belief that food is medicine? Books can contain decades of knowledge and one of my favorite books on this subject is by Dr. William Li who wrote Eat to Beat Disease. He breaks down the health systems in your body and then provides foods that have been studied to benefit these health systems. I use it all the time even after I read it because he summarizes concepts and puts charts that easily allow you to see beneficial foods for each of this health systems.
I will give one nugget of information I have gleaned from reading his book and that is the benefits of cranberries. Wisconsin is known for their cranberry production so I find it fitting for locals to discuss the awesome health benefits of one of our states biggest commodities cranberries. Personally cranberries work well with my VIOME profile, but moreover they are a powerful fruit of mother nature. It’s important to listen to your body and ask the questions, what is it that my body is craving? I want to maximize my health in every way I can with the least amount of input. Cranberries are amazing at regulating angiogenesis, stem cells, the mircrobiome, and immune system. Three chemically active compounds found in cranberries are anthocyanin, ellagic acid Proanthocyanins which help creates an adaptive response to blood vessel growth, both reducing and growing blood vessels where they are needed. Cranberries also contain resveratrol which is a great pro stem cell compound. A very well-established gut bug called akkermansia is also a huge fan of cranberries. These bugs help produce a compound called Urolithin-A. Cranberry drinkers who drank 16 oz of juice for 10 weeks had three times the potency of gamma delta T cells and 148% increase in interferon gamma, both a powerful immune cells for the innate and adaptive immune system, this study can be found here study.
To conclude we can all obsess over our favorite foods and food choices, but the more diverse food selections we consume the better. A fun challenge that I have used, inspired by nutritionist Shawn Stevenson, is trying to eat 30 different plants a month. Sounds easy, but I find myself sometimes scrambling to get those last 10 plants in each month, plants can include legumes, and beans as well so don’t just think green.
