Nutrition has never been at the top of my priority list, in fact, you are more likely to catch me with a steak on my plate than a salad.
When a friend recommended a documentary to me about the powers of natural healing, I was more than a little skeptical.
The documentary was called Food Matters, many of you have probably seen this already, or at least heard of it.
If you have not seen it yet, I would recommend it to almost anybody who actually cares about living passed 60.
I was personally quite impressed with the film, and while I may not go out and start my own farm tomorrow, I will be trading in a few of my unhealthy habits for a few healthier ones.
I decided to touch on a few of the films larger points, as well as a few natural remedies that they discussed.
If some of these items sound too good to be true, then I urge you to do your own research, after all, it is your body, and your responsibility.
While the film delivered a lot of nutritional advice, it dealt largely with the pros and cons of natural medicine versus modern and western medicine.
Some modern medicine is necessary such as anti-biotic, but as the film points out, most of today's medicine simply fixes us, while proper nutrition could allow our body to fix itself without the use of things like chemotherapy.
This is a rather bold statement, but when you consider that the human body is programmed to know how to create life through pregnancy, the idea that it can also heal itself of things like heart disease and cancer is not that farfetched.
If this claim is in fact the truth, which a lot of evidence suggests, then why are we as a country not taking bigger steps to better nutrition? According to Food Matters, the answer is simple.
There is no money in healthy living.
If we as a nation were to start focusing on proper nutrition and less on pills and other medicines, you could expect to see a huge decline in the job market.
Think of the amount of jobs that would be closed down as a result of pills no longer being needed.
If people were no longer getting sick, how would doctors and drug companies survive? The film did a great job of citing examples and statistics to support all of their claims.
A statistic that I found hard not to chuckle at was the ratio of vitamin related deaths versus medicinal related deaths.
When vitamins were first introduced into the market, there were claims made against them.
Most of the claims stated that a multi vitamin was in fact unhealthy for us, and we should stop taking them.
The film broke down the amount of confirmed cases of people dying from a multi vitamin in the past 23 years, and the number was 10.
When they looked at how many people have died from things like surgery going wrong, and prescriptions that have adverse reactions to the human body, the number was well into the millions for the past 23 years.
It would appear that multi vitamins are in fact nowhere near as dangerous as the medicines that we are being sold.
While you are out picking up your multi vitamins, here are a few other natural remedies to consider.
1.
Anxiety and depression - 3,000 mg of Niacin a day can help with depression symptoms.
Niacin is part of the B vitamin family, and helps with anxiety and stress levels.
Cashews are also very beneficial for treating minor depression.
Cashews contain an amino acid called L-Tryptophan, which is a natural de-stressor.
2.
Detoxification - A diet consisting of all organic foods is a great way to naturally detoxify your liver.
3.
Arthritis - While this was not mentioned in the film, I came across this while doing a bit of my own research.
Shark Cartilage is beneficial for arthritis, as well as cancer.
There are very few studies that have been done on this, but the research that has been done already all points to the same area.
4.
Cancer - Vitamin C is beneficial for many different things.
The big one that was pointed out in the film though was for the use of treating cancer.
When vitamin C is injected directly into the blood stream in high dosages, the vitamin c will actually attack the cancerous cells, but cause no harm to your beneficial cells.
The extra vitamin C will also boost your body's natural defenses.
A lot of research still needs to be done on these natural remedies in order to show whether proper nutrition can really replace modern medicine, but the evidence provided so far is very promising.
At the very least, eating healthier can't do any harm to us, so what is the harm in giving it a shot? If nothing comes from it, at least you feel and look better!