Food: Our Most Valuable Medicine

Food is our most valuable medicine.  What we eat shapes how we feel, how we think, and how we live.  When we lose connection with food, our cells suffer, causing organ and hormonal stress.  Part of any great healing plan involves cultivating an intimate relationship with what we eat.  Without this, even the most powerful plans fall short.  Although many find changes to diet difficult, with proper guidance, time, and coaching, anyone can adopt new patterns and create new behaviors.
Food is one of my passions, I read about it in my spare time, I cook every meal my family eats to ensure quality and taste and I try to continually update my knowledge base and resource lists to help others get access to what will nourish them most.

I also believe that food is what cures us, you can take the best, most expensive supplements the world has to offer but without good food, nothing fantastic will ever happen. Why? Because eating is the only common thing we do besides sleeping every day. And we do a lot of it. In addition, with the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country alone, it cannot be ignored. People don’t become obese and diabetic because they have too few vitamins or supplements in their life, it happens because the quality of the food supply has become so degraded that what they are eating is causing insulin resistance, cross-immune activity, and cellular degeneration.

When I was studying medicine, the impact of the changes to the food supply was not as apparent. At that time, often it was just a matter of letting someone know not to eat fast food, to cut down or eliminate sugar, to add lots of fresh vegetables and some fruits, drink water, and exercise. Many could successfully transform their health by eating fresh foods from regular stores and have significant changes occur. But about 7 years ago, I noticed that this was no longer so possible, many people were coming through my doors, providing examples of what they had eaten and it would include fresh foods, vegetables, meats, cheese, and often whole grains in the form of bread and pasta. On the whole, the diets were ok, needing some changes but ok, and yet, many of these same people were presenting with complaints inconsistent with what should be fairly good health given their diet and lifestyle habits. In spite of valiant attempts to address digestive and behavior issues, we continued to see challenges. I realized that the nuances of the food he was being fed had created massive changes in his body that were difficult to circumvent.

Food needs to be unaltered, fresh, prepared, and grown in the most natural and un-manipulated conditions. Unfortunately, this is not how much today’s food is grown. Vegetables and fruits grown through the “magic of science” with manipulated genes and the ability to withstand the application of pesticides are not better for you, they do not increase crop yields as is commonly touted and they do not provide hope of curing world hunger. What they do, is introduce untested genetic manipulations into the food supply, in some cases, these genetic manipulations are also joined by viruses and bacteria that have been spliced into the genetic code as part of some pattern of pesticide resistance.
When humans eat these foods, studies have clearly shown that it causes an alteration in the immune system, changes, and accelerated proliferation of cancerous cells in the digestive system, cross-reactivity, and auto-immune stimulation along with numerous other issues. As a result, anyone can go to the store, and with good intentions buy genetically modified tomato or zucchini and without knowing it, do dramatic damage to their body. This effect is not isolated to humans, it occurs in animals too because animal feed is one of the largest economic vehicles for genetic manipulation of crops. Feed grain is big business and in order to continue to make it so, now 80% of the feed grain produced in the US is genetically modified. When this meat is eaten, it results in the same issues as when the foods are eaten directly. And eating grain-fed organic meat is not protection, as it is no longer true that organic meats are free of GMO contamination.

All of these things were part of what woke me up. Realizing that eating good food and eating clean food was not always the same thing. That long term sustainable health requires adherence to eating clean food. In addition, I have seen that often chronic food allergies are not food allergies but sensitivities to the changes in food and the concomitant damage to our gut, and when clean foods are eaten, over a period of 6 months to two years, the sensitivities go away, and health returns.

It is my goal that everyone would become inspired to love food again, to understand and seek out local, clean sources of food, and uses them to develop a love of cooking and eating. Food is beautiful, it sustains our health, it supports our longevity, and it keeps us thin, but I do mean real food, not pre-manufactured diet products and low-fat flavor-enhanced nonsense that often get passed for food. Here, you will find recipes, techniques, tips, links to studies, and constantly updated information to guide you on your food transition so that you can experience long term enduring health!

Blessings

Dr. Julie