Food is Your Most Powerful Drug
Food is our most powerful drug. Every food contains hundreds of biochemical compounds. There are general food guidelines that support good health you have probably seen or are even adhering to right now. But does that mean they are right for you? And your unique health situation?
Let’s review. In general, many nutritionists and health professionals agree with these to lists: Food to Eat and Food to Avoid.
FOODS TO EAT
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Choose organic and non-GMO whenever possible.
Drink plenty of filtered water. No plastic bottles. Water flushes the kidneys and escorts toxins out of the body, hydrates cells and supports healthy function.
Fruit in small amounts – berries, green apples, lemons, limes and coconut are best.
Vegetables – eat greens at every meal and eat the rainbow! Diverse colors are best because they contain rich vitamins and phytonutrients. Root vegetables (beets, yams, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, yuca, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, celery root, horseradish, daikon, turmeric, jicama, Jerusalem artichokes, radishes, and ginger) are nutrient dense and help feed probiotic bacteria in the gut.
Eggs and meats – choose organic, free range and grass fed.
Healthy fats and oils – avocado, avocado oil, organic, raw, grass-fed butter or ghee, cold pressed olive oil, olives, fresh flaxseed oil or ground flax seeds (keep in freezer.) salmon, sardines, and krill oil.
Raw nuts – be aware that peanuts have a high incidence of mold contamination.
Sunflower, pumpkin, hemp and chia seeds.
FOODS TO AVOID
Processed sugar.
Artificial sugar or sugar substitutes – even these are inflammatory to the gut.
Processed foods – found in a bag, box or can.
The general rule of thumb when grocery shopping is to shop the exterior walls of the store: the fresh produce, the meat department and the refrigerated section. Avoid the center aisles where much of the processed food is housed.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
These general guidelines are great for many people. But these lists to not take into account a person’s metabolic individuality.
The best diet for you is:
Not what your friend says works for her.
Not what some magazine article says.
Not what some nutrition “expert” says.
Not what you see advertised on TV or online.
Not what the latest and greatest “diet book” says.
Why not? Because your body has specific requirements for food based on your genetics. And it has specific requirements for ratios of macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat) that your allow your body to function at its greatest potential.
Healthy foods are good to eat BUT not all healthy foods are right for your body!
This may be a forever thing (what your genes dictate) or a temporary one (what is contributing to inflammation right now because of dysfunction.)
FOOD AND YOUR HEALTH
While it is important to eat the correct food ratios for your genetic makeup, it is also important to understand how illnesses such as BII result in a cascade of dysfunction in the digestive, immune, hormonal, detoxification, neurological, and energy systems. These dysfunctions can greatly contribute to your food needs or even dictate food you need to avoid.
Inflammation is oftentimes the body’s response to a person’s most commonly eaten foods, even if organic and listed in the Foods to Eat list above. The is because with a permeable or leaky gut, food is not getting broken down or digested properly, large food particles enter the bloodstream, and the body tags them as invaders and mounts an attack. Antibodies and inflammatory cytokines create inflammation. Foods frequently eaten perpetuate this.
Inflammation is implicated in almost all disease processes. So, the end game for healing is to decrease inflammation.
Functional lab tests help determine leaky gut and food sensitivities. As a FDN-P, I can help guide you through what can be a very confusing and overwhelming life change. I would love to speak with you about how I can help and what your next steps may be on your personal health journey!