There is a dangerous trend in the world of food and health blogging. It’s the one where there’s a grabby headline claiming a certain food is the magic cure for some disease or symptom.
Headlines I’ve seen include things like “Top 8 Superfoods that Heal Your Entire Body,” and “17 Superfoods that Heal Disease”, and “16 Foods to Cure Common Illnesses”, and “The 5 Best Foods for Your Heart.” These are real headlines. The problem is that none of it is true.
Such writers offer hopeful claims that turmeric ends inflammation or coffee detoxifies the liver or bananas cure anxiety or raisins cure high blood pressure or yogurt cures constipation or ginger cures nausea.
They drive me crazy because people are already so incredibly confused about what to eat, how to heal, and how to use root cause analysis plus food to bring health and happiness into their lives. These headlines do nothing to alleviate health problems, change thinking to the new paradigm of true, functional nutritional healing, and, for me, they are just plain annoying in their utter click bait transparency.
If you are continuously bombarding your body with inflammatory foods (foods that are inherently inflammatory like sugar, or foods that your body does not tolerate), then all the turmeric in the world won’t save you. It is dangerous to tell people otherwise.
Food needs to be used all together in a diverse and wholesome diet for real health to arise from a diseased body. The true relationship between our bodies and our food is far more complex, and far more interesting than these random headlines would have you believe.
Life is complex. Our bodies are complex. Deal with it.
Health does not arise from a junk food diet – plus raisins. That’s ridiculous. Real health is built cell by cell, molecule by molecule, week by week, year by year. Health and happiness arise out of a diverse, well-rounded, organic, properly raised, properly prepared, whole food diet. And yet, even when we eat this way, dysfunctions can still arise – and spiral. Often, a more specific functional analysis and specialized protocols are needed.
Are you nauseas all the time? It could be an issue with your liver or gallbladder. The way to really overcome it is to figure out what is triggering the liver or gallbladder issue. Are you eating a low fat diet, too much sugar, not enough beets or drinking too much alcohol? Are you exposed to too much toxicity that the liver can’t handle or do you have a yeast overgrowth or hormone imbalance taking the liver beyond its abilities?
Sure, ginger might somewhat help alleviate nausea, which for you might be a symptom of a dysfunctional liver or gallbladder. But ginger does not CURE nausea! It does not heal the liver or the gallbladder or fix sticky bile or eliminate the toxic burden that is clogging the liver and causing the nausea in the first place.
Let’s say you have a parasite in your gut like I did. Mine was Blastocystis Homynis. I got hives every time I ate food and I just couldn’t heal until I recognized what exact parasite I had and figured out how to kill it and then repopulated my gut with a healthy microbiome while healing the cells and function of my intestinal lining.
If I had read any number of these types of articles that claim coconut oil heals the gut, or a Paleo diet is what’s need for all gut problems, or if I had simply taken allergy drugs to calm the hives, I would have consumed massive quantities of coconut oil, almond flour and Claritin yet my gut still would not have been healed. (I did all of those things in my quest towards better health). Inflammation would have continued and dysfunction would have spiraled into worse and worse health problems.
If I had killed the parasite but not removed foods that were causing inflammation for me, my gut would not have been given the opportunity to actually for real heal.
If my sugar addicted client with signs of cardiovascular dysfunction had listened to the articles claiming that everyone with cardiovascular disease should be eating oatmeal every morning, she would never have overcome her sugar issues, her insulin would have continued to surge, and her cardiovascular system would not have been able to heal.
The body doesn’t heal with a magic pill or a magic food. It doesn’t even heal with the top 8 magic foods. That’s the allopathic style approach to treating disease. It’s an approach that views a diseased body as less complex and less miraculously wise than it really is. It misses the forest for the trees. It views the magic drug or food as “The Healer.” These inputs, though, are just the ingredients that The Body uses to heal itself. We who inhabit the body, are more like its gardeners – providing water, food, the right conditions so that it will miraculously grow and survive and thrive.
This magic food magic pill approach is incorrect. It is lazy thinking. It is an outdated paradigm.
While there are certainly genetic exceptions, most diseases that most Americans are currently experiencing are from missing nutrients, toxicity and too much stress. The chemical factories (our bodies) that we inhabit are in need of certain types of care that raisins or oatmeal simply will not address.
I love raisins and oatmeal but my god, people, we have got to learn to separate a marketing campaign from wellness advice and from real healing protocols that are formulated to work for what you specifically have going on. We have to learn to understand the complexities of our own bodies and stop listening to click bait health “advice”.
Our bodies, after years of assault from malnourishing and toxic foods, or outside chemicals or too much stress, don’t need a magic pill or the top 5 trendy foods of the moment to recover. They need deep nourishment, rest, and clean wholesome living plus a clear, focused approach to analyzing and dealing with your specific issues.
What most of us need is not a list of the top 7 foods that cure cancer. Rather, we need an entire lifestyle upgrade that is based on a foundation of understanding the inner workings of our bodies and our personal dysfunctions. Then, we need wholesome food, plenty of rest, and also time to be outside, play, daydream, connect with others and be creative.
Leafy greens won’t cure insulin resistance without an entire food and lifestyle upgrade. Yes, leafy greens are super important in a healthy diet and super important in overcoming sugar addiction and blood sugar handling imbalances. However, the leafy greens alone are not the magic super food that will “cure” cancer or diabetes or whatever. The whole lifestyle makeover is where you will find the magic, the healing, the real truth of what your body needs. Responding to the findings of your root cause investigation and implementing what you learn your body needs, is the magic pill.
We have to understand our own disease tendencies and dysfunctions and address them specifically. We have to live healthy to be healthy. There is no shortcut. 11 super foods that will fix everything simply does not exist. We live in a made up world where we glorify quick fixes and short sound bites. We have forgotten that the sound bite is the not the thing. The thing is deeper, and more interesting and more complex.
Your body, your disease, your diet, your mental state, your ability to sleep deeply and feel joy and not anger at the slightest provocation, are intertwined. Raisins won’t fix your anger problem, but a transformation from a lifestyle filled with junk food, stress and toxicity to a wholesome, nourishing lifestyle, really might. Coupling it with a serious understanding about what is actually going on with your health, will take you further than a blog about how red wine has antioxidants so let’s glorify the heck out of red wine.
We want to be healed but we haven’t yet come to a place where, as a society we understand what it truly takes to bring about healing – to unleash the innate built-in healing power of the body. We don’t trust our bodies to know what to do. Most of us hate our bodies. Most of us don’t even know that our beautiful, smart, amazing bodies actually have built in balancing systems. That these balancing system are the systems that create healing. Most of us don’t even know that our bodies know how to heal if given the right inputs. Most of us don’t even know that our bodies are diseased because we have treated them poorly, and not met their immutable needs.
A disease feels permanent. It sounds hopeless. We grab and cling to random answers and incorrect marketing campaigns while never getting better using that magic pill – magic food allopathic model.
Working with a functional nutritionist, you can access a serious evaluation of your personal imbalances. You can learn exactly what’s going on inside, THEN upgrade your food, decrease your stress, and use the right supplements, herbs or complimentary practices for your needs.
You are worth more than “3 Simple Tricks to Heal Your Gut” or whatever the supposed health headline is today. Your body needs what it needs, and you might not find it in the pithy text under a click bait headline.