Bold statement huh, let me explain.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as ‘the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.
The backbone of the western medical system is general practitioners (GPs). In Australia, a consultation with a GP is roughly 10-15 minutes. How equipped do you think our GPs are to promote physical, mental and social well-being in 15 minutes? Seems pretty impossible to me! In 15 minutes, they can listen to symptoms, prescribe and refer for testing - that’s it. This is a reductionist health system that focusses on symptomatic relief rather than delving into the cause and piecing together a holistic picture of an individual’s health. We are more than our symptoms and the cure is often found in long-term lifestyle adaptations, and not with a pharmaceutical.
In my opinion, the foundations of our health system are broken.
Think about it, we are what we eat!
This is a term that is used frequently but how often have you truly considered the meaning of this statement. Let’s break it down and delve into some basic chemistry.
All things are composed of elements. Our bones for example are constructed from minerals and organic compounds including collagen and other proteins. Our bodies have a continuous process of cell turnover which means, every second, cells in all parts of our body are dying and we are making new ones. Therefore ,we need a constant supply of these elements and organic compounds. That supply comes from the foods we eat.
If our bones are built from proteins and minerals, and bone cell turnover is happening every second, doesn’t it make sense that we eat a sufficient amount of proteins and minerals to ensure we maintain a healthy bone structure? That means consuming enough of these nutrients from good quality whole food sources.
Obviously, not only our bones are required to be maintained through food and nutrient intake. All human body cells are constructed from a complex arrangement of elements, fats, proteins and other nutrients. A person is made of over 37 trillion cells and approximately 1 million of those cells die each second. Those 1 million cells need to be replaced and we can do this through the fuelling of our bodies with food! We ARE proteins and fats and vitamins and minerals. Not only this but all the chemical processes which happen in our body are possible due to the nutrients contained in food. That means the nutrients a person consumes supplies the energy required to make those 1 million cells every second. Those nutrients provide the energy to move your muscles and the energy for thought. (While you're here, check out this delicious recipe containing all these important nutrients just mentioned).
So, if we ARE what we eat, and we are suffering with symptoms and disease, what we eat is also fuelling those symptoms and that disease.
However, the opposite is possible. Health can be the outcome from what you consume. Eating a good quality, whole food diet full of essential nutrients in the way they were intended, is a great starting point for the foundations of health. A healthy body and a healthy mind are often quoted as being integral to happiness so you’re halfway there if you choose to nourish your body with real food.
Working with a professional, an expert in the field of human biochemistry and nutrition, an individualised eating pattern can be established just for you, to promote health and happiness by reducing symptoms, reversing disease and preventing illness.
This is where things can get complicated. Understanding the chemical processes at play in symptom presentation is a specialist field. Clinical nutritionists and naturopaths spend 3+ years studying food and the nutritional make up of our bodies and specialise in understanding the intricacies of the statement ‘You are what you eat’. We undertake continuous education to maintain regulated registration from governing bodies as qualified specialist practitioners.
GPs spend – on average – less than one week studying nutrition in their 7-year degree, or even as low as 25 hours of nutrition study in a 4 year degree - I know, shocking. The structure of learning and compilation of subjects in those 7 years is quite bewildering when you consider that we, humans, are what we eat. We are a complex, ever evolving, collection of cells and molecules that are turning over at an incredible rate, fuelled by the food we eat. We are fats and proteins and minerals and vitamins.
There are many modern disease conditions that could be prevented through a good diet. Lifestyle diseases like heart conditions, diabetes and any condition exacerbated by obesity or excess adipose tissue (fats) are mainly down to lifestyle and nutrition, and yet prevention is not part of the syllabus - but how could it be? With the globalisation of food, advancements in technology throughout the last 100 years and the corporatisation of the health system, doctors are under incredible pressure to relieve symptoms quickly so we can get on with our busy lives. The National Health System is no longer set up to delve into patient cases and provide comprehensive individualised advice. I’m not sure of the evolution of this but it would be easy to hypothesise that as everyday life became busier and more demanding, finding ways to keep people going, through illness and disease, became necessary. As we became conditioned to this 9.00 am – 5.00 pm lifestyle, running our children to school and extra curricular, maintaining a social life etc., we naturally were left with no time to be sick. When life doesn’t allow you to be sick, doctors are pressured into providing symptomatic relief to enable life to go on at the same pace. Drug companies see the market to develop drugs to help us stay busy and stay on the hamster wheel – and so the cycle continues. Humans are not designed to function that way, and illness and disease doesn’t heal when we are suppressing symptoms with medications and not treating the root cause. Treating the root cause takes time, time many people don’t think they have - but who doesn’t have the time to be healthy and what is more important than your health?
Health once again needs to be the goal and taking the time to prevent disease and get to the root cause of symptoms, is the way to achieve it.
We ARE what we eat and we can either feed disease or feed health through our food choices. So, if you want to get to the bottom of symptoms and understand what a healthy eating pattern is for you I recommend seeking the help of a nutritionist or naturopath