You are what you eat! Our food is literally what makes up our entire selves. Food, through the digestion process, is broken down and reorganized to make up the building material for our bodies. If you put garbage in, what can you expect besides parts that deteriorate and malfunction sooner than intended. This includes the oh-so-important brain, the control center for thinking and communication. The decisions we make everyday regarding what to put in out bodies is crucial. Food can be your poison, it can be your fuel, it can even be your medicine.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” ― Hippocrates
For a body or brain that is healing (for example post stroke, brain injury, vocal fold damage, or just daily wear and tear) high quality building blocks are essential. According to the Cleveland Clinic websit
e "During the healing process, the body needs increased amounts of calories, protein, vitamins A and C, and sometimes, the mineral, zinc." Because our bodies are designed to digest and assimilate food and not chemicals, it's ideal to get these nutrients from a varied diet made up of fresh whole foods.
It's easy to be overwhelmed by the diet tips that are out there. For example eat garlic to lower blood pressure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8361870), or eat blueberries, green tea, and other antioxidant rich foods to prevent cancer (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/antioxidants). Randomized controlled trials testing these claims are sometimes inconclusive, but many people find that following guidelines like these make a big difference for their healing and wellness. Still, you can eat garlic for every meal, but you may still suffer from high blood pressure if your overall diet is out of balance and lacking high quality macro and micronutrients (found abundantly in fresh whole foods).
What do you already know that you could change about your food that would promote more health and healing for yourself?
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