If we backtrack to the life of an average man, most of us start our life as healthy individuals. It’s on the way to growing up that we begin to fall sick and face different kinds of health challenges. It makes sense to consider ways we can always return our body to the original health condition it was from the start of life. This is the right way to think. We need to deal with the root causes and prevent sickness in the first place.
Conventional doctors are trained to observe symptoms, diagnose diseases and cure them with drugs. The cycle goes in an endless orbit. The more the disease shows up, the more they try to heal it with drugs, in which case, they’re treating the symptoms most of the time and not the cause.
We have been getting it wrong. Seldom do we remember that “what you eat on a daily basis determines whom you become health-wise”? So, we chase symptoms and forget the daily diets that determine the strength of our immune system and the proper metabolism and functioning of organs in the body.
This is why medicine needs to involve nutrition and diet. It’s imperative that we emphasize the essence of foods in preventing diseases and rejuvenating and curing health challenges.
If we focus on diet alone and address it the right way, we will be able to prevent countless diseases from showing up, and the ones that showed up already, we can reverse and bid a lifetime goodbye to them. Small changes in everyday diet shape our level of health in the long run.
In today’s post, we want to discuss the natural defence that helps us to heal naturally and the foods that boost their action to prevent and treat diseases. But before that, it’s essential that we know the importance of the three meals we take every day to our health.
Why Food Is Important
Studies show that the common sources of diseases come from foods.
Chronic diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, ageing, obesity, cancer, and heart problems are different in one way or the other. However, they all have a point of connection – a common source from where each of these diseases emanates.
It’s like the electrical wiring of a house, where a series of connections emanate from a single terminal. Should there be a problem with an electrical spark or interrupted supply, we can easily go to the terminal and turn it off. Once we know the source, it’s easier to deal with the problems in any part of the house.
In the case of health challenges, the source that connects all diseases is our diet. The kind of food we eat and our manner of consumption play a big role in how much we succeed at getting better with our health. So, if we can deal with health from the foundation and focus on managing what passes through our mouth into the body, we can stop and overturn diseases.
It’s a sage saying that “prevention is better than cure”. When the topic of diseases is raised, we should be talking about preventing them instead of curing them. If we can stop health challenges, we wouldn’t need to work extra hard to provide ways to treat them. In short, one of the best ways to improve our wellness is to emphasize and concentrate on how what we eat defines our strength in preventing, fighting, and treating diseases.
Instead of using drugs to cure diseases, why don’t we experiment with foods and see what they can do? That way, we are taking advantage of nature in place of drugs that might end up with undesirable side effects.
The good thing is that food is a natural medicine that we take three or more times a day. Maybe we don’t pay attention to it because they’re not always prescribed. But it’s a good thing to realize that you can have some freedom in taking your three-meal medicines called food.
How our body responds to certain food under different conditions gives us a clue about how good food can help us improve our health. When you take things that are not supportive, your body reacts in some ways and vice versa. The key action is to figure out how to combine and channel our foods in a way that helps the body perform better.
Body Defense Systems And Foods To Enhance Them
The human body makes the top list of the greatest wonders of the world. The more you study and look into it, the more jaw-dropped moments you will have. We are designed to stay healthy from the time we are in the womb to the time of our last breath.
Assuming there is a blessed empire with abundance and admired treasures. The empire will surely have a line of defence with a series of weapons and armies to prevent enemies from attacking and conquering them. The human body works in the same way. We have naturally ingrained defence systems that combat and secure us from abnormal health conditions.
With those defence systems, we can treat and prevent diseases and maintain our health. And guess what? There are foods that can stimulate the systems to function better. Similarly, some foods can alter their performance, leading to health problems. Let’s have a look into the defence systems and what they can do for our health.
ANGIOGENESIS
Angiogenesis is a system that consists of blood vessels of up to 60,000 miles when combined. They are responsible for delivering oxygen and nutrients to every organ and tissue of the body. When we have an adequate amount of blood vessels, our body is healthy.
There are times when we might need more blood vessels to meet up with our growth needs. We need them to grow muscle, heal wounds, and so on. This is how they work to preserve our health and functioning.
An average man often has microscopic cancer within him, which does no harm since it has no access to blood. With just enough blood vessels to meet our good cellular needs, we’ll be safe.
In reverse, excess availability of the blood vessels can make a catastrophic mountain out of a molehill of cancer. When in excess, the blood vessel can come in contact with microscopic cancer in the body and trigger abnormal multiplication. This is when the problem of cancer begins.
With anti-angiogenic therapy, we can prevent cancer by cutting down on the number of blood vessels to starve the microscopic cancers and prevent them from becoming a tumour. The fascinating part is that we can channel some foods to execute the same function as anti-angiogenic therapy. Vegetables, fruits, seafood, tea, and coffee, among others, are perfect examples of foods that do wonders for our health by impacting the angiogenesis defence system.
STEM CELLS
At the point of birth, there are 750 million stem cells in our bone marrow. We generate into complete form through the natural stem cells in our mother’s womb. And when it’s time to visit the world, we come with enough of them to help us regenerate when we have cuts and other necessary situations.
Foods can coax our stem cells to move out faster and help us regenerate faster. A good example is a dark chocolate. By taking two cups of hot chocolate with eighty per cent of flavanol, you can double the number of stem cells that move out of your bone marrow and help us regenerate. This is reported to aid people above sixty years with heart disease to recover by regenerating their blood vessels and other circulatory organs. Thanks to polyphenols in the cocoa ingredient of dark chocolate.
GUT MICROBIOME
There are more gut bacteria than the stars on a bright night. We are talking of over thirty-nine trillion bacteria roaming the inside of the human body.
Seventy percent of our immune system is lined within the gut, and the bacteria are within the hose. This explains why gut bacteria can communicate with our immune system and are so effective in healing and preventing abnormal health conditions.
What’s the take? When you feed your gut bacteria unwanted foods, you’re harming your immune system and vice versa. Foods rich in fibre, carb, and fermentation properties feed our gut bacteria. Examples are bananas, leafy green veggies, and fermented foods like yoghurt and so on.
DNA
Very few among the literate wouldn’t know about DNA. But there is more to it than what is well known. It is not only a representation of our genetic identification but also a system that protects us from our environment.
Think of it. Lung cancer comes from inhaling harmful chemicals which damage the DNA. Skin cancer comes from ultraviolet light from the sun that hits the skin. But we are usually exposed to radiation and chemicals many times a day. Why are we not getting cancer? It’s the work of our DNA. It is designed to heal itself and protect us from the harmful threat from our environment.
DNA also contains an important strand called the telomere, which is very useful in the defence function. This strand is attached to our cells and degenerates when we do harmful things to our bodies. So, we should try to extend the shelf life of the telomere so that cellular ageing can be delayed.
As you must have known, foods also have a fair share of help to render to our DNA defence system. Some foods can aid the increase in elongation of the telomere and reverse ageing. Polyphenol-containing green tea, coffee, and leafy greens are a few of the diets that can support the DNA defence system in our body.
IMMUNE SYSTEM
You must have heard the importance of the immune system to human survival and defence from diseases, especially with the recent pandemic faced by the world. But do you know that the immune system is so strong that it’s capable of eliminating metastatic cancer spread all over the body? Probably not. This was evident even in victims above the age of seventy. It might be unbelievable, but it’s one of the truths you will hear today.
We can think about the immune system as a battalion army of soldiers with weapons, skills, and strategies working hand-in-hand to protect their territory from foreign and local invaders. The immune system is always ready to defend the body. It fights against external intruders like bacteria and viruses and inside intruders like microscopic cancer.
If you give your immune system a chance, it’ll do health wonders beyond imagination. The top three foods beneficial in this aspect are blueberries and broccoli sprouts. Broccoli sprouts have a hundred times more sulforaphane (that can starve cancer) than adult broccoli. So, you should look out for the sprout to get an extensive advantage.
Harmful Food To Our Defence Systems
As much as we have foods that help us to manage inflammation and improve our DNA, microbiome, immune system, stem cells, and blood supply in the body, there are foods that do the contrary to our defence systems. The three leading harmful foods are soda, sweetened beverages, processed meats, and ultra-processed foods.
The world health organisation classified Processed meat as a carcinogen, which means that it has a front position among foods that can lead to cancer.
Soda and Sugar-sweetened beverages also damage the gut microbiome and DNA, leaving us in a place of threat rather than security from diseases.
Ultra-processed foods, which include the instant foods we find in cans and containers, are another example. They are usually in packages and labelled with ingredients you can’t really pronounce or understand. These kinds of foods are very dangerous to human health. As mentioned earlier, they affect the defence system in the body and increase the rate of ageing by shortening the telomeres on the DNA. Therefore, they should be avoided as much as possible.
TREATING CANCER WITH FOOD
Cancer is a problem from the abnormal growth of cells. It doesn’t appear as a problem at first when it is in the microscopic stage. It only becomes a disaster when microscopic cancer comes in contact with blood vessels and generates serious tumours in the space of two weeks. The exciting part is that we can stop blood vessel access to microscopic cancer and prevent outgrowth.
Recently, anti-angiogenic drugs have been designed to counter the growth of cancerous cells by cutting off the supply of blood vessels to them. Can we do the same with food? Of course, we can.
Eating two apples a day can reduce the risk of colon and lung cancer. The thanks go to the quercetin present in the apple. Quercetin has a natural anti-angiogenic property that regulates the number of blood vessels in our body.
Green tea is also discovered to be an effective colorectal cancer risk evader. Green tea owes the gratitude of this function to its polyphenol constituents. Polyphenols are well known to starve cancer and prevent its outgrowth. Once they get into the bloodstream, they block the chance for the small tumours to meet with blood vessels, thus, preventing unwanted explosion and excessive cell growth.
TREATING INFLAMMATION WITH FOOD
Many people think inflammation is bad and should be avoided. Of course, they are correct. But that’s only one side of the truth. Inflammation has a share on both sides of the coin when it comes to our health. The good part is the swelling we see when we have a cut. It’s our immune system channelling the inflammation to fight against foreign bodies. As soon as the defence job is done, inflammation drops again. It only becomes a problem when it refuses to go down. Continuous inflammation is what causes serious health disorders.
Lifestyle choices are proven to affect inflammation. Generally, when we are stressed, inflammation goes up and vice versa. Since we want to keep down, we should do things that relieve us of stress. This is where meditation and sleep come in; they help us to relax and calm our nerves, and inflammation goes down.
Foods are also not left out. Cranberries do a good job when it comes to reducing inflammation because they contain anti-inflammatory polyphenols. Chocolate also contains anti-inflammatory properties. Other foods are Vitamin C, strawberries, guava, red bell peppers, and so on. Many fruits have anti-inflammatory properties.
What we want with inflammation is moderation and not totally shut down. Getting rid of inflammation means we are throwing away a defence mechanism. And the lack of enough army to defend the body might expose the body to diseases.
Since all these benefits are found in nutrients in food, can we just take supplements that contain the elements and get the same result?
WHOLE FOOD VS SUPPLEMENT
Supplements mean that we have singled out some element to be consumed into our body.
Whole food is a combination of the element we want and several other ones that are also beneficial to our bodies. We are not only getting quercetin from apples, but we are also getting the fibre that feeds our gut bacteria and many other elements, all of which aid in boosting our health.
Therefore, it’s always better to take whole foods than a restricted combination of some elements in supplements.
Supplements, as the meaning suggests, mean we are adding or complementing something that’s already existing. So, we don’t have to swap it for food. We are supposed to use it to top up on elements we are already getting from foods where necessary.
Foods are so good because we enjoy them, and they heal us. It brings family and friends together and tells us something about our culture and lifestyle. These are super combinations we cannot be more grateful and excited about. They bring about the healthiest life possible.
We need to eat not to satisfy our hunger alone but to enrich our life with useful nutrients that will keep the natural healing power within us working from birth to death. Focusing on eating good foods and eliminating bad ones can be enough to prevent and tackle up to seventy per cent of health disorders and chronic diseases that we face.
However, healthy eating habits have to start early. It works in a compounding effect just like unhealthy ones. One cigarette doesn’t kill instantly. It takes years before it demands the life of the victim. In the same way, fruits and vegetables don’t combat cancer in a day, but in the long run, they might help us dodge severe disease that usually calls for people’s life.
When we have health issues, it’s best not to just remove some foods from our list but also replace them with nicer ones that can boost and further activate our body’s defence systems. That will guarantee us to sound health in the long run.
If you find this post valuable, please give it a thumbs up and share it for others to learn that foods are sweet and enjoyable medicines. Before you go, which do you like most among the lifesaving foods we have mentioned in this post? We’ll love to know your answer in the comment section. Check out also these related posts like “The Hidden Components Of Tap Water Rendering It Unsafe For Consumption”.
Stay hydrated! We drink ionised water.
Recommended books for further reading:
- Keto Diet: Your 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, Boost Brain Health, and Reverse Disease
- Eat Yourself Healthy: An easy-to-digest guide to health and happiness from the inside out
- Water – The Wonderful and Unique Life Source
- Perfect Health
- Eat to Beat Disease: The Body’s Five Defence Systems and the Foods that Could Save Your Life
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