The idea of using food as medicine has been around a long time.
Hippocrates said, "Our food should be our medicine.
Our medicine should be our food.
" He also gave us the Hippocratic Oath that physicians still use to guide themselves today in practicing medicine, and our pill-happy nation remembers him better for this than his statement about food.
The Chinese have been around longer than the Greeks, and they have a saying too.
It has a nice rhyme that is lost in translation unfortunately, but I've done what I can to replicate it: "At morning eat to fullness, at mid-day eat for fitness, at evening just plain eat less.
" If anyone is familiar with the long history of China, then he knows that China was once such a great empire that it called itself the Middle Kingdom, meaning the center of the universe, before falling behind the times, being carved up by many imperial invaders, and purging itself in its confusion of its culture to adapt to new and foreign ways.
I understand that traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, existed tenuously side-by-side with orthodox or Western medicine for a long time.
TCM might even be looked down upon today in some circles.
I personally have known people who have poo-pooed TCM.
But, TCM is making a comeback.
In Taiwan, all doctors are now being required to study gastroenterology.
(They may have a different word for it, but it's the specialty of digestive health and digestive medicine.
So, gastroenterology sounds right.
) General practice physicians, cardiologists, neurosurgeons-everyone must also double specialize in gastroenterology.
This is a pretty big endorsement by the medical community in Taiwan of the importance of digestion among the body's processes, and it is a return to the root of medicine, which is food.
We've read in headlines here and there about eating bigger portions of food earlier in the day and eating more protein earlier in the day and such, but here is an entire medical community saying you are not only what you eat but you are also when you eat.
Further snippets of medicinal eating: eat fruits and vegetables-not fats-in the evening, don't eat late at night (say after 8 P.
M.
) before sleeping, beans are really good for you-different color beans have different healing effects (green mung beans for liver health, red azuki beans for circulatory health, white beans for respiratory health, etc.
)...
But yeah, looks like it's time to re-consider not only what but when to eat.
by James Lee
Hippocrates said, "Our food should be our medicine.
Our medicine should be our food.
" He also gave us the Hippocratic Oath that physicians still use to guide themselves today in practicing medicine, and our pill-happy nation remembers him better for this than his statement about food.
The Chinese have been around longer than the Greeks, and they have a saying too.
It has a nice rhyme that is lost in translation unfortunately, but I've done what I can to replicate it: "At morning eat to fullness, at mid-day eat for fitness, at evening just plain eat less.
" If anyone is familiar with the long history of China, then he knows that China was once such a great empire that it called itself the Middle Kingdom, meaning the center of the universe, before falling behind the times, being carved up by many imperial invaders, and purging itself in its confusion of its culture to adapt to new and foreign ways.
I understand that traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, existed tenuously side-by-side with orthodox or Western medicine for a long time.
TCM might even be looked down upon today in some circles.
I personally have known people who have poo-pooed TCM.
But, TCM is making a comeback.
In Taiwan, all doctors are now being required to study gastroenterology.
(They may have a different word for it, but it's the specialty of digestive health and digestive medicine.
So, gastroenterology sounds right.
) General practice physicians, cardiologists, neurosurgeons-everyone must also double specialize in gastroenterology.
This is a pretty big endorsement by the medical community in Taiwan of the importance of digestion among the body's processes, and it is a return to the root of medicine, which is food.
We've read in headlines here and there about eating bigger portions of food earlier in the day and eating more protein earlier in the day and such, but here is an entire medical community saying you are not only what you eat but you are also when you eat.
Further snippets of medicinal eating: eat fruits and vegetables-not fats-in the evening, don't eat late at night (say after 8 P.
M.
) before sleeping, beans are really good for you-different color beans have different healing effects (green mung beans for liver health, red azuki beans for circulatory health, white beans for respiratory health, etc.
)...
But yeah, looks like it's time to re-consider not only what but when to eat.
by James Lee
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