‘Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food’
All very well for Hippocrates, you may say. He lived in Ancient Greece and didn’t have to contend with an abundance of cheap and available processed food; a sophisticated food industry with vested interest, power and plenty of money to distort the science; and an baffling array of experts all taking conflicting and contradictory positions as to which food is even healthy.
This is true, but the advice remains, none the less.
Herbal medicine treatments at this practice, will always include some serious consideration of diet. Strategies will vary, and always will be tailored to the individual, but generally will reflect insights from practitioners and nutritionists such as Yudkin, Atkins, Dukan, Seignalet, Harcombe, Whals, Briffa, Mercola etc. You may recognise themes associated with low GI, low carb and Paleo diets. With extra vegetables.
The links to resources below aim to inform, educate and inspire to healthy eating choices. They do not reflect a balanced range of all the dietary advice that exists. They reflect the preferences, and support the clinical experience of this practitioner – who acknowledges there will be contradictions, tensions between, and inconsistencies even within the information presented below!
Hoping you find something that helps you.
| Minding your mitochondria Terry Wahls MD, clinical professor of medicine and research academic, developed multiple sclerosis and was eventually confined to a wheel chair in 2006. The video describes her journey back to health through eating the right food. It starts slowly, and as yet her work on this has still to be published, but this is a great, clear presentations of what is good to eat and why. If you watch just one video, make it this one. Dr Wahls also does an excellent series of talks on u tube ‘Food as Medicine, Brain Health’ – technical but very accessible. | |
| Paleo in a nutshell Food Part 1 Nice and clear u tube video summarising the rationale behind the Paleo diet. | |
| What’s wrong with what we eat New York Times journalist, Mark Bitman argues that over consumption of junk food and over consumption of industrially raised meat is bad for the individual and disastrous for the planet. Interesting figures and potted history of changes in U.S food consumption over the last 100 years. | |
| Fish I have loved Chef Dan Barber introduces a farming project in Spain that perhaps begins to square the circle of eating wild food, and sustainability. An inspiring example for the future. | |
| Anne cooper talks school lunches Articulate and impassioned call to put more resources into feeding American school children and teaching them about food. |
| Fasting, Dieting and Detox Picking the elimination diet or ‘Spring Cleaning’ detox strategy that is right for you. My article. |
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The Dark Side of Wheat In this mediumly technical article, Ji Sayer re-frames our understanding of celiac disease towards the concept of appropriate response as opposed to gene linked idio-pathology. |
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Opening Pandora’s Bread Box Ji Sayer continues to explore how wheat may be problematic in our diets. |
| How Deadly are Nightshades This article from Georgia Ede’s blog – explores some of the science behind the possible effects of the nightshade family (ie tomatoes, potatoes, peppers etc). |
