Food as Medicine

#health #environment

It is probably not news to those of you who have been following me for a while that I have way too many ideas and not enough time or resources to implement them all.

One is to create a budget medicine website. The idea being that you take the easily available natural products and you document what conditions / ailments they help people with. You invite in a community to weigh in on the recommendations, to talk about side effects or their own personal experiences, and to provide advice and help for those who are looking into using these alternatives.

Before a lot of the drug companies came along there were natural remedies passed down from generation to generation and used with some success. In some cases drug companies are using elements of those natural remedies in their drugs.

For example red yeast rice has the same effect as lovastatin does on cholesterol and has somehow ended up being banned in the US. I use a hot drink made from cayenne pepper, honey, and lemon to cure my sore throats instantly. I take tumeric and cayenne to help fight inflammation in my body and I read studies have shown tumeric works almost as well as ibuprofen . I take gin soaked raisins which seem to help me with arthritis pain (psychosomatic?)

We are at a point in America where way too many people can't afford medication. In other parts of the world the medications just aren't available. A lot of folks don't realize that there are some cheap alternatives to drugs. In some cases I am convinced that after paying for their meds people don't have enough let to buy food to eat right which means their health conditions are just going to compound over time. Wouldn't it be great if they could alter their diet and gain a lot of the benefits they currently experience from their meds without the costs? It may not be possible for every medication but at least having options makes people a little better off.

Anyway this article made me think once again about that goal. 


This extinction will have a big impact on us as a species as well


A project about 12 down my list of things to do. Maybe one day to have the funds to rigorously test natural foods and herbs against big pharma drugs and quantify the results. No one is throwing tons of money around to determine exactly what impact asparagus and other foods have on disease.

An Ayurvedic Doctor once told me 'food is medicine and medicine is food'. Everything we take into our body has an effect on us. One of the keys to good health is to understanding what that effect is. It will be different from one person to the next but there are certain common results that are observed and can be leveraged. If we take the time to capture and analyze the data and share it.

Stay healthy.