When we talk about eating healthy food it is not, only to get into good shape or to reverse disease, as a punishment. It is about using nature’s gift to provide you with all the solutions for healing your body as you go about the job of living your life. As a doctor and a surgeon, people would look at me quizzically when I would suggest to them some food remedies for ailments especially for children and adults coming with symptoms of nutritional deficiencies.

They would only want medicines and supplements, especially if their insurance company would pick up the bill, rather than altering eating habits.

So I would begin to explain that the medicines are just symptomatic relief which is ok for a few days but what after that. Every chronic condition needs to be treated from the root and food and lifestyle is a much better way to achieve it rather than pills, even if they are harmless multivitamins. It is any day better to pop in pomegranate seeds rather than an iron tablet.

Till a few generations back, in India, all ailments were managed in the kitchen of the house, not in the hospitals. I have grown up in an environment where there was faith in traditional medicine and home remedies, as is the case in most households in India.

When I was invited as a speaker in a workshop named “Living without medicine” at a beautiful outdoor location I was very excited. I was speaking alongside a naturopath and a botanist where each one gave their own take on how the right nutrition can heal the human body.

I was honored to be a part of such a workshop as this was my way of showing respect to the ancient sciences of Ayurveda and understanding more of Naturopathy and acknowledging their power to heal which very few doctors would want to give their stamp of approval to. Amongst the speakers was a cancer warrior as well, who spoke about how she fought and won over her cancer by a combination of modern medicine and traditional Naturopathy. It was indeed an inspiring story.

After hearing all of them I realized that the science behind good nutrition and its effects on the human body is so vast that no one person or no one science can possibly know it all. But the least we can do is, have an open mind to accept the diversity and incorporate whatever we can in our lives.

As a surgeon I feel, it is about time that modern and traditional sciences came together to heal the human body. No one science can replace the other completely but rather, be used as adjuncts to each other.

Food can nourish, heal and cure and that is why there is no replacement for good nutrition in our journey to stay fit, healthy, and even disease-free.

The right nutrition is the only way to cure all silent problems which might be starting up in our body and which might make themselves evident once it’s too late, if not taken care of by our body immunity

It is impossible to pick up all things in time to cure them. The first and most important line of defense is our own body immunity and when we eat well we feed that immunity. So think beyond weight loss………think of health and being disease-free and living a meaningful life. Be very picky about what you eat. Take some time to learn about the food choices you make and how they are serving you. The least we can do for our body is – feed it enough and feed it right. It's never too late. Start today.

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