I remember reading the quote below from Abdu’l-Baha many years ago and wondering exactly how in the world it would be possible to cure serious diseases with diet.
It is, therefore, evident that it is possible to cure by foods, aliments and fruits; but as today the science of medicine is imperfect, this fact is not yet fully grasped. When the science of medicine reaches perfection, treatment will be given by foods, aliments, fragrant fruits and vegetables, and by various waters, hot and cold in temperature.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions
Then I stumbled on this video from TED that illuminates one very real and practical path that is being taken by modern science. It is astonishing when we remind ourselves that Abdu’l-Baha’s words precede this research by more than 100 years:
Dr. William Li’s list of antiangiogenic foods
No. It's not astonishing. It's a very very old idea.
Dan, can you cite anyone else saying the same thing around the same time or before? Boyle's 17th century “wish list” is impressive but it doesn't include this.
The Neijing.
You mean the Huangdi Neijing? are you assuming it says something similar or can you show me where in that document it says it? Thank you
There are just a few approaches used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to apply therapeutic strategies and principles to correct “dis-ease” or patterns of disharmony. Food is one of them. Yes, “the Neijing” is the Huang Di Neijing. (It's usually just called “the Neijing” by practitioners unless they are referring to a specific part of it.) In The Su Wen (Basic Questions) Neijing, the first section of it, there is a long dialogue between the Emperor and Qibo where diet is mentioned quite a bit. This book is the foundation of all subsequent theory/methodology in TCM and diet has continued to hold a central place in Chinese Medicine. It's a vast area of TCM theory & practice. Qi, itself, which signifies the internal processes of transformation, warming, & stability in the body is symbolized by a character made from the radicals of grain and steam- meaning the transformation embodied in the life cycle of grain, and then grain being transformed by cooking into energy humans can use.
'Abdu'l-Baha's comments about food (and temperature of liquids) actually reflect widespread regional beliefs about healing and food. I don't think he was being very radical in his assertion. Byron and Mary-Jo Good are good sources of information there.
The relationship of food to medical systems is complicated. I am leery of people who undersell it OR oversell it. It can do what it can do, which is a lot- and in American culture we are completely ignorant and insane about food. (Like, we don't actually eat *food* we eat processed-food-like-substances.) But even an organic balanced diet can't cure/prevent MS or prevent Trisomy 18. It's not an all or nothing thing, and humanity will always have some medical suffering. Even when we're eating sustainably and well.
But on the other hand, I made homemade ice cream the other day, and I'm convinced it can cure anything.
Yes, here in lovely Dominica, many follow advice from “folk medicine” experts, based on knowledge passed down over generations. Here is an example.
For the first time ever, I was getting painful kidney stones (actually precipitated particles in the bladder). I later deduced these were caused by a powder to flavor milk drinks from the grocery store; and stopped using that flavoring powder, eliminating the problem in the future.
But what was the cure? A neighbor knew all the plants and what they did medicinally and instructed me to boil a particular little one, roots and all, to make a gallon of “tea” to drink over several days. This “tea” tasted terrible, but not that bad, and completely cured me dissolving the “stones”.
The alternative in conventional medicine would have been an expensive plane flight to get treatment with surgury, ultra-sound or whatever.
Next example: a little tea from three plants was “prescribed” for something — I forget what, something like a sore throat. It worked great. At a later time, I tried to prepare this tea again and almost killed myself. After recovering from my own tea, I showed the lady the three plants I used. Oh, she said, that one of the three is wrong; it is very poisonous. Moral of the story: do not make just any tea from any plant out there unless you really know what you are doing.
About anti-angiogenesis, it's very appropriate for him to quote the discoverer of Vitamin C, because ascorbic acid will actually help contain tumors. It seems that the process (including cutting off new blood vessel creation) cordons the rogue cells in and keeps them from growing and causing problems.
I see this as an allegory for what society will be like when “they give a war and nobody comes” – or a mugging, or a bank swindle, or an unfounded infallibility…
If we can all hold hands, tight and united, around society's tumors, we can beat metastasis! Being truly good is the macro world's equivalent of getting our vegetables!
Amado
Love your comment…
Barb
this is like the cnn news about the exhibition of islam in London
just ridicolo anzi ridicolissimo
come dire che il caffe e' una invenzione dell'islam
ma andate a quel paese tutti voi con i musulmani mohammadici
re: “in American culture we are completely ignorant and insane about food.”
And this is a recent development. Oil/chemical industries were looking for ways to sell product after WWII, and convinced government to support farming of cheap carbs (corn) which required giant fertilizer inputs, which come from oil.
Then, the cheap carbs became inputs into a vast mass marketing machine for “artificial”, processed foods.
As people became sick from eating the junk, the medical establishment got rich. Ronald Regan made things even worse in the 80s when he forced greed into medicine.
Obama's health care reforms are no where close to being radical enough to really solve the “health care” crisis in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish
http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/index.html
The doctor is right, but if you look around you, you will easily see that natural food is something expensive and which people that are poor can't afford in some parts of the world. Fix that!!
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