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Discovering
Nutritional Therapy
by Patricia Quinn
Nutritional
therapy is a system of healing based on the belief that food, as nature
intended, provides the medicine we need to obtain and maintain a state of
health: our food is our medicine and our medicine is our food. Although some
health problems require specific medication, many conditions can be relieved
effectively with nutritional therapy. These include disorders ranging from
chronic fatigue, energy loss, insomnia and depression, to backache, skin
complaints, asthma, and headaches.
Nutritional
therapy will also benefit you if you have no specific illness, but want to
maintain a state of optimum health. It is safe for babies and children as well
as adults, and the change of eating patterns that is typically prescribed
usually has far fewer side effects than synthetic medicines.
Nutritional therapy is a
holistic discipline; nutrition as the key to good health is the all-embracing
fundamental principle used since the time of the famous Greek doctor and founder
of western medicine, Hippocrates, to help people of all ages to stay at their
personal peak of energy and vitality. Today, new insights of food scientists
play a significant role in the practice of nutritional therapy as preventative
medicine.
During the last fifty years,
many wonderful breakthroughs have improved our understanding of the role of food
in our lives. But at the same time, many of us are realizing that food is the
cornerstone which, in our modern lifestyle, has been rejected by the builder.
The speed at which we live and
work — the pressure of the deadline — pushes us into a fast-eating culture,
where quality of food becomes secondary. Eating on the job, on the run, under
pressure, denies us the experience, the purpose, and the role of food.
Eventually it denies us our very lifestyle. Modern supermarkets are stocked with
many instant meals, but more often than not, these meals are far lower in
nutritional value than those prepared at home with fresh organically grown
ingredients.
For all the benefits
agribusiness has brought the people of the Western world, the disadvantages of
the modern food industry include extensive use of chemicals in food production.
There is also a loss of the vitality intrinsic in newly harvested food because
many products are transported vast distances before they reach their
destination. Of course, this is the case with many of the so-called “fresh”
foods on our supermarket shelves, as well as with those dishes that have been
pre-cooked and packaged before reaching the supermarkets.
Lifestyle and nutrition are
intimately linked, and our lifestyle defines itself partly from the tradition of
the country we live in, and partly from our attitudes. How do you really want to
live? Given the choice, would you prefer to eat well every day, to exercise, to
breathe clean air as often as possible, to drink a reasonable amount of water in
order to keep your bloodstream clean and able to wash out toxins? This choice is
available to all of us, but to exercise it we need to understand the impact on
our well-being of different foods and learn from direct experience what kind of
eating pattern best suits our lifestyle.
What is
Health?
In a dynamic and good state of
health, our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual components all live in
harmony with each other. For a wider comprehension of health, it is interesting
to look at the issue of “healthiness” not only from the Western but also
from the Eastern viewpoint. The ancient systems of Chinese and Indian medicine
go back more than 5,000 years. These cultures used — and continue to use —
whole plants in their treatment, whereas orthodox medicine uses extracts from
plants which are often then replicated by synthetic products.
The two systems of medicine
diverge at the point of prevention. Eastern practices include the preventative
care of the whole person as a primary aim — to maintain good health. The
formula for good health is:
• life force
• good-quality blood
• proper nourishment
Our daily diet will make
good-quality blood, which in turn promotes the flow of healthy energy. We need
to ask ourselves daily questions. What is my physical health like today? Do I
have a sense of well-being? Do I have plenty of energy? Do I sleep and eat well?
How we feel each day is built upon our past actions, our past dietary practices,
whether we have had physical exercise, whether we have been mentally active, and
on our general attitude towards life.
Tiredness
versus Fatigue
Fatigue is very prevalent in the
present day. The healthy person who uses his or her entire body in the ways
described above during each day will feel tired — the pleasant feeling of
having worked hard. This individual’s body will be able to relax completely
and recuperate at the end of the day. This is not fatigue — it is the body’s
natural need for rest. It is during rest and recuperation that the body cleanses
itself of all the toxins that build up during activity. If the body is not given
a chance to self-cleanse, a state of fatigue will become persistent. When it
becomes chronic, fatigue may indicate underlying problems, such as infection,
immune system weaknesses, glandular problems, or lymphatic congestion, as the
body’s systems become clogged by waste.
What is
Illness?
Illness develops in four stages:
• tiredness, changing to
fatigue —
no amount of rest seems adequate
• irritability
• symptoms
• illness
The Eastern approach to health
divides the causes of illness into two: those that come from within and those
that come from without. Those from within are mostly products of our lifestyle,
traditions, and beliefs. The ways we can be affected from within are as follows:
• excess of emotions, even
positive ones such as joy, can affect the heart
• excess of anger can affect
the liver
• excess of sadness damages
the appetite, the stomach, spleen, or pancreas
• excessive grief can affect
the lungs
• shock, fear, surprise, or
fright can affect the kidneys
Part of the process of
nutritional therapy is to help us restore the proper balance, to bring about the
harmony we lack.
The “Four
Doctors”
The basic needs of our physical
bodies to eliminate toxic waste, as described above, are being denied to us by
the life we lead in modern Western society. What we require to attend to these
basic needs I call the “four doctors”:
1. sunlight and fresh air
2. proper exercise and
sufficient rest
3. good food
4. pure water
While our ancestors lived mainly
outdoor lives, we tend to live largely indoors, denying ourselves the most
pivotal requirement: light. Our whole body depends on the reception of light in
order to carry out vital functions — the regulation of the appetite, our
patterns of sleeping and waking, aspects of our behavior, and the health of our
nervous system. Fresh air is necessary for us to exchange the toxins and
pollutants in the body with at least an equal amount of air. Otherwise, we
develop acute respiratory problems from overload; our cities do not have
sufficient trees to breathe back oxygen into our environment. Trees act as “lungs”
by filling the air with life-giving oxygen.
Water is the greatest treat for
the body. It is the river that carries all the nutrients around the body to the
brain, and to every single cell in the body. The brain is the first place to
suffer dehydration — it then becomes difficult to think or make appropriate
decisions. In recent studies, it was found that water more than food helped give
long-distance walkers the energy to finish. Likewise, those driving long
distances need a snack, as well as a break of fifteen minutes or so, in order to
maintain their concentration on the road. In both of these examples, the simple
remedies prevented emotional and psychological imbalance, which drains the body
of its energy supply and causes fatigue.
The
Role of Food in our Lives
By experimenting with the
effects of different foods, many people find they also revise old beliefs about
the role of food in their lives. Nutritional therapy is not just about eating
different types of food — it is also about increasing your awareness of how
you eat and of where the food you eat comes from, of how you store and prepare
it, and of how you perceive yourself and your place in the web of life. The
benefits of nutritional therapy are sometimes immediate, but its study is
timeless and its effects can bring about long-lasting changes in your attitude
to life.
Recently, Dr. Henry Dreher —
author of The
Immune Power Personality — reminded us of certain characteristics we
can all develop which increase our ability to be healthy. These characteristics
include
• having the ability to
recognize when the body is signaling to us that it is in pain or feeling tired
• identifying emotions such as
anger or sadness
• connecting these states to
food we have recently eaten and so learning to identify the effects different
foods have on us
• developing a sense of
control over our health and over the quality of our lives, because the way we
live — as well as the way we eat — is part of the way we nourish ourselves
Nutritional therapy helps us
consider our human immunity in the context of a rapidly changing environment by
deepening our understanding of the constant ebb and flow between ourselves and
our outer world. Our immunity is part of the entire picture — a relationship
between our own evolving and our world. “Whole body” immunity concerns all
aspects of life: ensuring that the physical body has the correct nutrition and
appropriate healing therapies, enjoying good emotional health by nurturing the
feelings, learning to make choices from a position of unbiased awareness and not
from the “victim” or “martyr” approach.
Nutritional therapy requires us
to acknowledge that we are body, soul, mind, and emotion. Accordingly, it
incorporates all these aspects of our lives, with the objective of maintaining a
healthy mind and soul as well as a healthy body, developing an open-minded
outlook and a positive attitude to ourselves, and learning to see any causes of
stress in our lives as challenges rather than threats.
This
article was
excerpted from
"Discover Nutritional Therapy"
by
Patricia Quinn
Info/Order this book
About The Author
Patricia Quinn, a
nutritional counselor and kinesiologist who specializes in working with
children, has a private practice in Dublin, Ireland. This article was
excerpted with permission from "Discover Nutritional Therapy"
published by Ulysses Press. Ulysses Press/Seastone Books are available
at bookstores throughout the US, Canada, and the UK, or can be ordered
directly from Ulysses Press by calling 800-377-2542, faxing
510-601-8307, or writing to Ulysses Press, PO Box 3440, Berkeley, CA
94703, email
ulysses@hiddenguides.com Their website is
http://hiddenguides.com
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