The statistics on lifestyle diseases around the world are shocking but still unsurprising given the extraordinary access to lead lives of excess and depletion. It's easy (and cheap, by comparison) to eat fast food, sit, and be passively entertained. But, for many people around the world, this kind of sedentary lifestyle complete with heavy, rich, oily, and processed food is a major risk-factor for health imbalances (see The China Study and Eat to Live) that lead to:

• Cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure

• Obesity

• Type 2 diabetes, PCOS, and metabolic syndrome

• Cancers

• Autoimmune disorders

As frightening as this may sound, there is plenty of reason for hope. Traditional healers, from the past to the present, recognize that diet and lifestyle lie at the root of these kinds of troubles (see An Introduction to Islamic Medicine). In many ancient healing traditions, including the diverse ethnographies of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Asia minor, the food we eat is the starting point to transform our health. We'll explore this issue from the vantage point of wholistic healing to understand how the right food choices can make all the difference in improved health outcomes for many people.

Health in Imbalance

Changes in your body that you know just don't seem right but don't know why… Weird stubborn allergic reactions that you just can't shake… Stomach troubles that ruin your day and keep you up at night… These are just a few of the mysteries that affect us when we're dealing with systemic inflammation. It can manifest in so many ways, giving us issues with the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, neurological, or other body systems. In Eastern medical traditions, it would often be identified as stagnant heat and abnormal or deficient organ systems (Lung, Blood, Liver, Spleen, Kidneys) that prevent effective detoxing and elimination and interferes with proper nourishment throughout the body (see Between Heaven and Earth).

A lifetime or a prolonged period of sedentary living, limited to zero physical activity, imbalanced diet and deficient nutrition routinely fails to give the body what it needs to thrive and optimally function (see Eat to Live and The China Study). Your doctor may have identified plaque-formation/clogged arteries, hormonal imbalance, metabolic disorders, insulin resistance, abnormal cell growth, disrupted cellular lifecycle, or autoimmune disorders in which the body fails to recognize itself and attacks what it considers to be a foreign body. An imbalanced diet often comes from eating too many animal products and highly processed foods while not getting enough whole plant foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and seeds (see Eat to Live and The China Study). This is the most common issue from patterns of eating a Standard American Diet (SAD), or any diet based around animal-based foods like meat and cheese, refined grains like white rice, processed wheat, sugar and pastries, and highly-processed foods like junk foods, sodas, fast foods, and some kinds of packaged and frozen foods. The China Study and Eat to Live go in-depth to explore this issue of the role of the foods we eat and our level of health. This way of eating is only about taste and calories; there’s very little if any deliberate focus on the nutrition in these foods. Imagine the results after years of eating this way and not giving our bodies the ideal balance of the nutrients they need. The research is clear on the dangerous and high-risk impacts of the SAD diet: lifestyle diseases result.

It's no wonder many skilled physicians will advise diet and lifestyle changes to combat the damage being done. When physicians diagnose cardiovascular disease, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and some autoimmune disorders like allergies, a range of therapy options is available, including all natural diet therapy that requires following a plant-based diet along with lifestyle changes. Developing daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal habits that promote health and reduce disease risk factors is the objective. And the same is true for natural healers as well, we just take a different route to help you get there.

Natural Health in Balance

A healthy body in balance reflects a course of action, a set of habits and choices, that sustain nourishing and supporting your body's vital force. Between Heaven and Earth and An Introduction to Islamic Medicine both explore fundamental principles of natural healing. With the right internal and external environmental conditions within our body, our skin is soft, glowing and supple; our hair has a healthy sheen; the eyes are clear, bright, and shining; we feel great; we look great; we are energized. This is the healthy body in balance. Interestingly, traditional healers worked across a few lines of effort to help the body regain balanced health. These approaches, which emphasized how we maintain the body's internal environment, shared a few key principles of healing that focused on the diet, elimination channels, activity and rest, and social and spiritual connection.

Healing through Empowered Lifestyle Habits

Our internal environment is a reflection of our habits of consumption---nutritionally, mentally, and emotionally/spiritually and of elimination. When we drink pure water, eat clean (organic) fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes along with whole food supplements, we provide our body with the best sources of nutrients that it requires to thrive. Avoiding or severely limiting foods such as animal products (meat, dairy, eggs, etc.), fried foods, and refined starches and sugars reduces the digestive burden on our body, meaning it is not overtaxed with breaking down and processing these rough foods. In place of an animal-based diet, we build healing, deeply nourishing meals around plant-based whole foods (see The China Study and Eat to Live). Moreover, we should be breathing in pure fresh air, practicing stress reduction through loving self-care, positive thinking, and spiritual and emotional health through relationships and activities that do us good and help us burn off or minimize stress. We also cannot neglect the importance of detoxing and fasting to rejuvenate and prime our cells for a healthy reset such as with a 3-day juice fast.

By targeting diet, elimination, exercise, and stress reduction to restore balance to our system, health can be regained. Invigorating, stress-busting aerobic exercise is very important to include as well. Also quite important are the positive and enjoyable connections we keep, both socially and spiritually to nourish the heart and soul.

Healing Traditions on Health

Let's consider some of those wellness approaches, intersecting across the domains of Western, Chinese, African diaspora, and Unani-Tibb healing traditions. First, we need to recognize that the principles of harmonization and wholism feature prominently in many traditional medicine philosophies. Accordingly, humans are created beings existing within a created universe regulated, maintained, and sustained by the Creator. Living in harmony with broad parameters for health and well-being ensures not just personal health but that of our communities and the environment. The theme of micro and macro interdependence among all living things tells us that a creation's individual nature comprises a greater whole, and this synergy cannot be extracted or isolated and still maintain that same level of energetic quality.

According to the many traditions of energetic medicine, including Unani, Unani-Tibb, TCM, Ayurveda, and Tibb An-Nabawi, everything has its own temperament and nature to which a natural therapy must appropriately align. What might work for one person's constitution might not work for another's without first taking into consideration the individual's physiology, personality, and demography. Adding to that, the energetic quality and temperaments of healing compounds is also considered. That's why it would be difficult to say, for example, that a raw diet works for everyone, or vegan, or paleo, or keto, etc. Instead, healers of varying energetic traditions pair medicinal ingredients of certain energetic qualities with an individual’s constitution and ailment.

Very simply, some foods may be warming or cooling, drying or moistening. These same energetic qualities may also apply in theory, to people and illnesses, in varying simple and compound combinations. Lifestyle illnesses might be viewed as excess heat with stagnation or deficiency and responding well to therapies that are cooling, dispersing, and nourishing to promote balance and healing. 

Diet Therapy in Healing Traditions

The medicine we need comes divinely pre-packaged in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds; with some additional healing benefits to limited quantities of some animal products. Eating medicinally is a way to prioritize loading up on the miraculous phytochemicals contained in plant-based foods plus the energetic qualities of whole foods more generally:

• Soluble fiber like inulin to help balance blood-sugar and reduce inflammation

• Berberine-containing foods to promote liver and gastric juices, promote digestion, and cool inflammation

• Spices that warm and disperse stagnation

• Essential Fatty Acids like Omega-3s to support healthy immune function and clear heat

• Flavanoids for their rich antioxidant content to repair and restore healthy cellular activity.

Consider some of these foods to help cool excess heat, disperse stagnant fluid, and tone and strengthen cells and tissues.

Foods to Help Clear Inflammation

Anti-inflammatory Inulin: burdock, chicory, dandelion root

Cooling Bitters: dandelion leaves, yellow dock, barberries

Dispersing Spices: ginger, black pepper, cinnamon

Restorative Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs): kale, collards, chard; flax seeds; wild-caught fish; walnuts

Foods to Balance and Strengthen Specific Systems

Cardiovascular: ACV, garlic, leeks, onion, fruits, citrus & berries; dark leafy green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, carrots, tomatoes; beans, soy, lentils; sea vegetables; hibiscus; 

Endocrine: carrot, sweet potato, green beans, dandelion, chicory, burdock, dry beans; kale, collards, chard, chicory, dandelion; sea vegetables; dandelion root, burdock root

Immune: garlic, leeks, onion, fruits, citrus & berries; vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, carrots, tomatoes; beans, soy, lentils; hibiscus, carrots, ginger, soy, dry beans; shiitake mushrooms; sea vegetables

Reproductive: ginger, berries, carrots, burdock root, dandelion root, sweet potatoes, soy; sea vegetables

Get inspired by the wisdom of long-standing healing traditions for the enormous potential benefits for your health. Learn how to walk this path and take charge of your health with smart changes to your current diet and lifestyle habits. Try a new recipe, an herbal remedy, or even a cleanse. For more information on how to put this into practice for you, contact Rihla Wellness to discover comprehensive diet, herb, and lifestyle shifts for all natural health.

References

Beinfeld, H. and Korngold, E. Between Heaven and Earth (1991)

Campbell, T.C. and Campbell, II, T.C. The China Study (2016)

Fuhrman, J. Eat to Live (2003)

Khan, M.S. An Introduction to Islamic Medicine (2016)

Etkin, N.L. Edible Medicines: An Ethnopharmacology of Food (2006)