Earth represent solid food in various forms from apple to zucchini. Food is made of earth, the carbon element that is the backbone of all things solid.
We must be aware of our food choices and be conscious of our intuitive pull towards certain foods. This pull and attraction means the body demands certain specific elements required to rebuild cells and tissues. We must respect these feelings of intuition and not negate it.
Ancient Upanishads say Annam Brahma—food is god. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, is credited to have said the following:
“Let Food Bey Thy Medicine And Medicine Be Thy Food”
Hippocrates
Information abound in literature and periodicals about food, mostly good and germane, but some misinformation in circulation is so deep rooted that it is hard to dislodge, such beliefs as fat causes heart disease and sugar causes diabetes. Both of these statements have some truth to it but not the whole truth. Fat and sugar are the two most important nutrients, sugar supplies immediate requirement for energy and fats store the excess energy to be used later when energy supply goes down. These two nutrients are plentiful in the body. The belief that fat causes heart disease came about because researchers found that people who died of heart disease had their heart (coronary) arteries blocked. The blockage, upon closer examination, was due to cholesterol, a kind of fat. That was in the year 1854 when Dr. Rudolf Virchow described atherosclerosis as arterial deposit of cholesterol. Later in 1950s medical researchers found that heart disease patients had higher levels of LDL cholesterol and lower levels of HDL choleterol. LDLs are low density lipoproteins and HDLs are high density lipoproteins. Lipoproteins help carry cholesterol in the blood for transportation because lipids are not water soluble. LDL goes from liver to peripheral tissues and HDL return from periphery to the liver. Nobody know what they do but they did found an association between heart disease and LDL concentration and the reverse was true with HDL and so they called HDL the good cholesterol and LDL the bad cholesterol.
Then in 1970s scientists discovered the cause of familial hypercholesterolemia , a genetic disease which causes increase in blood cholesterol and premature heart disease and stroke. The cause was found to be a defect in the gene that controls LDL receptor. Decreased LDL receptors on cells means increase in LDL in the blood because cells are not able to receive and absorb cholesterol which eventually gets deposited in small arteries at the site of injury. This finding clearly demonstrates that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease and stroke rather it is defect or destruction of receptors.
Receptors are little proteins that stick out from the cell membrane like an antenna. They receive signals just as radio antennae receives radio signals. Signals can be chemicals like enzymes, hormones, vitamins, cholesterol, etc. or electrical signals like nerve firings.
When cholesterol receptors get destroyed, the circulating cholesterol in the blood cannot get inside cells and they accumulate in the blood. But how do the receptors get destroyed. The most common cause of destruction of delicate receptor structure is acid and poison accumulation in the body. This is the reason why people with familial hypercholesterolemia do not suffer from coronary heart disease in their childhood but they are diagnosed with the condition later in life when poisonous waste materials accumulation in the body exceeds elimination. When acid destroys the delicate structures of small blood vessels, cholesterol comes to the rescue to patch up the injury and gets deposited there. The more injury there is, the bigger the deposit that eventually cause blockage of blood flow. This is the reason why people with high cholesterol not only suffer from heart attacks but also pain in the legs and stroke in the brain.
The same reason can be applied to the cause of diabetes and sugar accumulation. Sugar level increases in diabetics because their insulin receptors are destroyed. This is the reason why diabetics need increasing doses of insulin injection and after few years the insulin injection stops working due to lack of receptors. The mechanism of sugar toxicity is found to be increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), a type of poison that the body produces in the process of extracting energy (metabolism) from sugar. When doctors say that sugar causes diabetes, it’s not the whole truth, sugar doesn’t directly cause harm to cells, it’s the biproducts of sugar breakdown and metabolism that causes harm. Sugar, especially glucose (sucrose is the plant sugar) is the main energy supply for the body. Every food item you eat whether it be carbohydrates, fats, or proteins must be first broken down to simpler sugar molecule for the body to be able to use them as energy. Sugar is the final common pathway for all foods including proteins. Protein consumption also causes increase in blood blood sugar level. Hence, sugar is not the culprit, it’s the metabolic ash (ROS) that causes damage and diabetes, which means diabetes is caused by accumulation of toxicity in the body and not by sugar.
In later half of 20th century news media was catching on and spreading the logic that fat and cholesterol causes heart disease and American Heart Association also declared fat as the cause of heart disease. But at the same time Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did something in total contradiction and declared trans-fats to be generally regarded as safe (GRAS) food. Obviously they got money from the trans-fat industry.
The government authorities and private foundations are swayed by financial incentives rather than public health interest. On top of that, information changes often when new scientific research comes out with new findings, making it all very confusing for people. But fortunately, this mess has all been sorted out 5000 years ago. Ancient science of health had figured out how to eat right for each personality type, body type, and metabolic type. This is real personalized medicine, more personalized than gene therapy because gene is only one component of personality. This ancient science instructs us about what kind of foods to eat for the kind of body and constitution we are born with and to take account of the conditions and environment we live in. Modern medical establishment has been ignoring this age-old wisdom, going against their father’s advice, promoting the false doctrine that medicines must be chemical entities manufactured by pharmaceutical companies. Nothing can be further from the truth.
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Food can indeed be a medicine or poison depending on individual conditions. If we are lacking some specific nutrients such as vitamins or minerals, eating foods with those nutrients is medicine. But eating foods laden with toxic chemicals turns into poison. There is no such thing as bad food or good food, every food item can be a medicine or poison depending on what we consume and how our bodies process it. Even poisons can turn into medicine in small doses. For example, oxalic acid is a strong acid that’s poisonous when ingested in high concentration but it is part of many vegetables especially dark greens like broccoli, cucumbers, and sprouts. Broccoli becomes medicine because the poison concentration is low. Man-made packaged foods and fast foods contain high amounts of poisons, preservatives, taste enhancers, food dyes etc. that become poisonous in high dose. Acetic acid is toxic in high doses but as part of vinegar in small dose is medicine.
Poison in small dose is medicine, medicine in large dose is poison.
To use food as medicine we must know what food is fit for our type of body. When we eat according to our metabolic type, the foods we eat are easily assimilated and digested that builds the body and strengthen immunity instead of producing garbage piles that needs to be cleaned up.
Food is the primary cause of waste and toxicity especially if the food is wrong for the individual. Every food when burned with oxygen (oxidation) to extract energy produce acidic ash just as extraction of heat energy from burning wood logs produce garbage ash. The toxic ash needs to be cleaned promptly or else it becomes a cause of disease. Nutrition must be balanced neither in excess nor in deficiency.
The primary cause of excess nutrition is consumption of energy dense foods like processed butter, cheese, processed meat, packaged foods, and fast foods. These high density foods have large amounts of calories for small amount of food which get converted into fats to store the excess energy. But fat accumulation is not simply a matter of excess energy and calories, fat accumulation also increases in parallel with increasing toxicity in the body. Modern foods, including the fresh foods, are full of toxic chemicals. Farm fresh fruits and vegetables are sprayed with insecticides and herbicides. Imported fruits and vegetables are irradiated with x-rays to kill bacteria and virus but in the process also kills the food. Packaged foods and fast-foods are loaded with exotic and toxic chemicals such as preservatives (benzoic acid, propionic acid, sorbic acid, sodium nitrite, potassium sulfate etc.), taste enhancers (artificial sweeteners), food dyes, artificial flavors (vanillin, ethyl butyrate etc). The United States Food and Drug Administration allows more than ten thousand such chemicals to be legally used by food manufacturers trying to fool your taste buds and increase their shelf life to make profits.
These exotic chemicals are treated as poison by the body. Any food ingredient that our ancestors did not consume is considered toxic because we don’t have the genes (DNA) to process these strange man-made chemicals. In low concentrations e.g. occasional soda or beer, toxins are excreted out of the body. But in high concentration these chemicals cannot be excreted because the output load is too high. They are instead sequestered away and quarantined inside fat cells. Fat cells are the protectors of the body, they protect us from cold temperature and foreign microbes and toxic chemicals. This is how people eating junk foods regularly get fat and obese. If you are a life-long consumer of these toxic foods, the concentration becomes too high for fat cells to handle and the poisons spill into the general circulation of the body and starts to destroy small delicate organelles in cells especially receptors on cell surface. Insulin receptors get destroyed and fatty liver disease and diabetes starts to manifest. When the liver and kidneys (excretion of sugar and toxins through urine) is unable to handle the load, the toxicity spreads to deeper delicate structures including capillaries (small blood vessels) of the heart and cardiovascular system causing peripheral vascular diseases (pain in the leg), hypertension, stroke, and heart diseases.
Importance of Digestive Fire
The gut is the only organ system in the body exposed to all kinds of exotic foreign substances, therefore, the whole digestive system is lined with first responder immune cells called Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissues (GALT) that constitute the largest mass of immune cells in the body like a big brigade of army ready to defend against unimaginable number of foreign agents, antigens, bacteria, parasites, and poisons. This standing army is always on alert to deal with exotic and chemically concocted food additives that are considered foreign antigens by the immune system. Anything strange and unfamiliar is considered foreign and antigenic and the immune cells goes to work against it, the reason why we get symptoms of indigestion; bloating, burping up food or liquid, burning sensation or pain, discomfort, nausea, and gas.
The gut has large number of microbial colonies called the microbiome consisting of bacteria, virus, fungi, and other microbes with symbiotic relationship with us, we give them food and they help produce vitamin B-complex and vitamin K for us. They number in trillions estimated to be equal to or more than the population of our own cells in the whole body although they are much smaller than our cells. Microbiome protects us from foreign microbes that are harmful. Tightly integrated with GALT they keep the immune system strong. This is the reason why probiotic supplements help boost immunity. They are like another division of immune system.
Oxygen kindles the fire of metabolism that transforms carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into usable form of energy called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). Every metabolic process needs enzymes, hormones, minerals, and vitamins. Many diseases can be prevented, improved, or cured simply by effective digestive fire and cellular metabolism with supplementation of minerals and vitamins.
The gut is so important for health that it has got its own brain, the enteric nervous system (ENS), that controls most intrinsic functions of the gut regulating its own motility, sphincter control, absorption, secretion, and blood flow. This is the reason why we can’t control our gut like we can control our muscles with brain. Because of such autonomous functions and complexity of neurons (an estimated 100 million neurons) scientists are calling it the second brain, a very good reason to listen to our gut feelings.
Modern science describes digestion as process of breaking down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into their smaller components; sugars, fatty acids, and amino acids respectively by the action of stomach acid, enzymes, hormones, and vitamins. Carbohydrates and fats are made of earth, air, and fire elements i.e. carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in varying proportions that gives them a unique structure. Proteins have additional water or nitrogen element in their structure Ancient science describes digestion as a seven-step process where food is first churned into chyle or juice which turns into blood, blood to muscles, muscles to fat, fat to bone, bone to marrow, and finally marrow to essence; sperm, ovum, and stem cells. Each step produces a side product as listed in the figure.
The process of digestion is a progression from gross to finer substances. Production of the seven tissues is achieved by digestive fire. Digestive fire is the transformative destructive force that change one form of energy into another. Improving digestion is a matter of kindling this fire with proper foods and tastes. Pungent, sour, and salty tastes increase digestive fire and burns toxins. Pungent taste is the strongest digestive stimulant. Sweet and astringent tastes decrease digestive fire. Pomegranate is good for building digestive fire. Fennel and Asafoetida are digestive stimulant. Raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar is a great digestive stimulant.