I believe that food is the best medicine. Not because I’ve read it or heard it, but because I’ve seen it and lived it. 

Bodies wants to heal but the wrong foods can add insult to injury. Instead of focusing on repair, your body is putting out fires. You may have tried some healing diets in the past, but the key is finding the right one, and it can be tricky to get it right.

But when you do find the right diet it’s a deep solution with few side effects. You can heal the underlying issue and move on, instead of managing symptoms forever.

In the next three blogs in this series, I’ll cover a different group of digestive healing diets, including my insights about each one.

Unfortunately, there’s no one diet that right for everyone. 

We can best learn what works for us by learning from the successful healing stories of others and testing it out for ourselves.

Next week we’ll cover the Paleo Diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the Gut and Psychology Diet. These are all grain-free approaches to healing the gut. 

But this week, it’s story time!

I am sharing two true stories from my life about the healing power of food and why I am so against pharmaceuticals.  

Some pharmaceuticals may save lives, but mostly they’re overused, misused or solve one problem and cause another. Pharmaceuticals are not a great solution. But the reason they are so popular is because doctors push them and they don’t require any uncomfortable changes to eating habits.

Here are two examples of using the “Farm”acy versus the Pharmacy.

The tale of two teens

The teenaged girl in this story is named Angela. And yes, she’s me!

 

Angela’s parent’s are Ukrainian emigres. They come from a culture that believes bacon is healthy and that you could freeze your ovaries if you sit on cold marble stairs during the winter.

For this reason, they know little about nutrition. Angela ate Twinkies and drank Mountain Dew growing up and no one told her to eat her veggies.

Angela had terrible allergies growing up. Her eyes swelled, her nose ran, her throat itched and all the sneezing and wheezing exhausted her. The allergy tests said that she was allergic to pollen, dog and cat dander, dust, ragweed, and mold.

Angela got weekly allergy shots and she often took an over the counter medicine called Bendadryl, which made her fell heavy, tired and slightly nauseous. When she felt worse, she was put on a steroid called prednisone.

These are the side effects of prednisone: dry mouth, mouth sores, bloating or stomach pain, black stool, anxiety, glaucoma, cataracts, severe pain in the joints, long-term migraines, insomnia, osteonecrosis, painful shoulders, painful hips, peptic ulcers, abdominal pain, blurred vision, indecisiveness, mental confusion, unusual weakness or fatigue, depression, psychosis or mania, weight gain and facial swelling. It increases the blood sugar of diabetics.

But this is the biggie: it also depletes beneficial bacteria and we know that can lead to….IBS.

The allergies persisted despite the treatments. Sometimes it got better and sometimes worse. But no one knew what else to do.

When Angela starting eating differently to treat her IBS, she found that cutting out sugar, grains, dairy and processed foods completely alleviated her allergies. She didn’t figure this out until her early 30s, but it totally transformed her concept of the relationship between health and food.

Teen # 2

Quin is Angela’s stepson. Ironically he also suffered with bad allergies. His staple food was pasta, growing up. When he moved in with Angela and her husband a year ago, and started hearing all about elimination diets. He finally decided to try it. He cut out sugar, wheat, dairy, soy, corn, peanuts and eggs for a few weeks.

Almost immediately his allergy symptoms subsided significantly. It seemed like a miracle but it was actually just biology. His food sensitivities were causing his allergies. Problem solved.

The tale of two dogs

Mishka is Angela’ dog. He came from the breeder with an ear infection. The vet tried medicated ear drops but the stubborn infection kept coming back. When the vet mentioned it was a yeast infection, Angela knew what to do.

She put Mishka on a raw-meat, grain-free diet along with probiotics to treat it.

After a month Mishka was healed and hasn’t had a health problem in five years.

Turns out Mishka was just as sensitive to crappy, processed, commercial food (just like Angela) And unfortunately that’s what the breeder fed him. He continues to thrive on the doggie version of the Paleo diet! He never gets human food except for plain yogurt.

Angela also walks and often watchs the neighbor’s dog Frodo. Like Mishka, Frodo is a Yorkie/Maltese mix. They are a year apart in age but Frodo is not as healthy as Mishka.

Frodo’s owners are doctors, so whenever Frodo got sick, he’s treated with medication. He’s been seriously ill three times and hospitalized twice.

Ironically, poor Frodo has HGE, the doggie version of IBS.

Angela tried to convince his owners to feed him a raw meat, grain-free diet with probiotics but they didn’t want to. But she was finally able to convince them to stop feeding Frodo human food, like chicken curry, only after he was hospitalized.

The tale of two poops

You can tell a lot about a person or dog’s health from their poop. Frodo’s poops are often scary while Mishka’s are healthy. I will spare you the details and images, but Frodo’s poop looks bizzare, like it came from outer space.

When Frodo stays with us, while his owners are on vacation, I feed him what Mishka eats, and his bowel movements become normal and healthy again.

If you’re curious about what your bowel movements say about your body and constitution, here’s an Ayurvedic guide to deciphering your poop.

Food matters

Yes, food matters. But if you’re a person with a sensitive constitution, it matters even more.

The food you eat might be affecting you in a seemingly unrelated way. It can affect your mood, cause back pain or even vision problems.

So if food is medicine, it’s just a matter of finding the right prescription. Hopefully this series will give you the comprehensive information you to explore the options available

Do you have any healing food stories to share? I would love to hear them in the comments.

And please share this blog with someone who needs to hear about the healing power of food.

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