Diseases You Can Heal With Food Author: Vanessa Phillips In early human histor…

Diseases You Can Heal With Food
Author: Vanessa Phillips

In early human history, it was believed that disease was a divine intervention and often, a form of punishment.

Enter Hippocrates.

The Greek physician, from circa 300BC, is considered to be the father of modern medicine. He is credited as being the first person who believed that disease was as a result of natural causes and medicine was a separate discipline to religion.

As he began to elaborate on the cause of disease, he noted that they may be a product of environmental factors, like living conditions… and diet.

Defeating disease, a timeline of nutritional interventions

In the early 1900s, the era of vitamin discovery began, explains research published in BMJ in 2018.

With diseases like beriberi (thiamine deficiency), scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), pellagra (niacin deficiency) and rickets (vitamin D deficiency) causing disability and death in epidemic proportions, vitamins were identified and isolated from food.

This provided an opportunity to ‘treat’ these deficiency-related diseases with synthetic supplementation.

Almost 7 decades later, in the 1980s, the focus in high income nations shifted away from nutrient deficiencies to nutrition interventions, especially with chronic disease.

But what followed was years of controversy, conflicting results from one year to the next, and general confusion about the role of diet in your health.

So, where do we stand now?

Nutritional interventions in 5 prevalent non-communicable diseases

1. Obesity

Westernisation, urbanisation and mechanisation in many countries, says the World Health Organisation, are the leading causes of obesity, pushing populations towards a high fat, energy dense diet that contains more sugar and animal products as opposed to complex carbohydrates and fibre.

Evidence now supports nutritional interventions such as:

Managing meal frequency.
Moderating portion sizes.
Increasing fibre and complex carb intake.
Increasing at-home meal preparation.
Making healthy food choices (such as brightly coloured fruits and veggies, oily fish, nuts, legumes and lean meats).

2. Type 2 Diabetes

The American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) position on Medical Nutritional Therapy for diabetes aims to manage blood glucose levels, improve blood lipid levels and maintain blood pressure levels to those as close to normal as possible.

These interventions include:

Eating foods like fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, legumes and low-fat dairy.
Low carb, low calorie diets, particularly for those who are overweight or obese to reduce impact on blood sugar imbalances and to avoid excess energy intake.
Those at risk of diabetes need higher fibre diets and are encouraged to eat wholegrains as the evidence suggests it improves insulin sensitivity, increased insulin efficacy and reduces insulin resistance.
Despite conflicting data around low glycaemic diets in diabetes management, the ADA recommends eating low GI foods as they typically contain more fibre and other nutrients.

3. Heart disease

One of the best targets for the prevention and management of heart disease is assessing the dietary-associated risk, explains an article published by the journal Nutrients in 2016.

And with heart disease – despite showing a decline in the last decade – still being the leading cause of death, there’s a real urgency to find ways to treat and, possibly more importantly, prevent its occurrence.

Both the Mediterranean Diet and Diet Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) have been well-studied and produced remarkable effects in the challenge against heart disease.

4. Cancer

Diet plays an important role both during and after cancer treatment, suggests the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Selecting the right foods not only nourishes your body but it can also promote healing and repair and reduce the risk of recurring cancers, or the development of other cancers or chronic diseases.

While there is no one diet that treats or prevents cancer, evidence-based nutritional interventions suggest that a healthful diet, one that is rich in a variety of fruit and vegetables, wholegrains and legumes, and is low in red meat, particularly processed meat, and is low in energy-dense foods, may fight cancer.

5. Respiratory diseases

Diet and nutrient intake are important considerations for obstructive lung diseases like asthma and COPD, confirms an article published by the journal Nutrients in 2015, and are not only to be considered for the management of these condition, but also in their prevention.

The Mediterranean diet has been shown to have protective effects on allergic respiratory disease, and as part of a maternal diet during pregnancy, has provided evidence to support the reduced risk of asthma developing in their offspring.

Conversely, a westernised eating pattern is strongly associated with higher asthma frequency and exacerbation in both adults and children.

It’s important to note that nutritional interventions are not the only factor influencing the advancement or development of disease.

As an article published by the Journal of The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2016 states:

Interventions that target disease on multiple levels are far more successful than those targeting one level or factor on its own.

But taking the above into account, diet and nutrient intake deserve their place.

The BMJ also predicts that we’ll discover more about dietary complexities and how they affect the host, gain more solid evidence on multiple treatment options including diet, and how nutritional interventions will form a fundamental role in the prevention and treatment of disease – all to come in the very near future.

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