“Let food be thy medicine and medicine by thy food.” – Hippocrates, 431 B.C.
Hippocrates, known as the father of western medicine, stated this truth more than two thousand years ago and it rings just as true today as it did back then. Other natural therapeutic remedies – including body work, nutritional supplementation, exercise, deep breathing, yoga and meditation – certainly have their place in an overall plan for optimal health, but what we put into our mouths on a daily basis often sets the stage for a life of vibrancy or one that can be filled with dis-ease.
While it has long been known that food can either support the body or cause it to break down, it has only been recently that scientists have uncovered how individual foods function in the body and exert their healing effects. In particular, the last decade has seen an explosion in clinical research aimed solely at determining and identifying how and why specific foods exert their beneficial health effects.
It is now known that many fruits and vegetables contain compounds called phytonutrients that can dramatically influence your health. This is because it appears that phytonutrients can directly influence how your genes relay messages to the rest of your body. Therefore, consuming regular amounts of these phytonutrients can prevent your genes from making negative changes and increase the positive messages your genes send to drastically improve your overall health.
Because there is so much information out there on so many different foods, we are going to do a series of posts that highlight one or two foods along with the salient health benefits you can receive from making these foods a regular part of your daily diet.