Can Food Be Used As Medicine To Fight Disease?

Is food considered to be a medicine? Well that depends on a number of factors. The nutrients your body needs are obtained from the healthy diet of food and drink you consume. If a person eats well they may minimize or even prevent obtaining a number of serious medical problems including cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease.

In order to consider the various aspects, lets define how a food can be a medicine. In order for food to behave like medicine, the food should reduce the risk of a specific medical problem from occurring or cure the medical problem. Examples of foods that border on medicinal effects include:

• Beta carotene: Your eye vision is usually protected against degeneration by eating dark green and dark yellow vegetables and fruits containing beta carotene that is converted into vitamin A, vitamin E, zinc and vitamin C.
• Calcium: Strong bones are developed early in life by consuming adequate amounts of food containing calcium. It will also help to protect the bone density as the body ages.
• Beans: Cholesterol that circulates in the bloodstream will be reduced by the soluble dietary fiber contained in beans. Heart disease is reduced as a result of keeping the cholesterol from sticking to the internal artery walls.
• Wheat bran: Eating food that contains insoluble dietary fiber will reduce constipation and related problems. Food will move more quickly through the intestines and the undigested stuff will be converted into softer stools.

There are some diet plans and foods that are very good for your health. Your daily diet should make certain to balance the fats, proteins and carbohydrates consumed to help maintain your overall health. Some of the diet plans that help promote good health and reduce health-related problems include:

• Cholesterol: The low-saturated-fat and low-cholesterol diet will limit the amount of fat consumed to less than about 30 percent of daily calories and the cholesterol consumed to less than 300 milligrams. It also helps with weight reduction.
• High Blood Pressure: The sodium-restricted diet (low in salt) will lower water retention in the body. Benefits include help in treating high blood pressure, long-term liver disease and congestive heart failure.
• Digestion: The digestive tract will better enable processing of food with a high-fiber diet. It will help prevent constipation, reduce the possibility of colon infection and irritable bowel syndrome.
• Liver and Kidney: The low-protein diet will help reduce the protein waste products from body tissues. This in turn reduces damage to liver or kidney tissue.

Can food help fight off cancer? That's a tall question and the answer could be maybe. Cancer is the root of many diseases and not just one disease. No one food helps protect against all cancers but some foods help protect against specific cancers of the body. Here is a short list of such foods:

• Low-fat foods: A well-known fact is that cells will reproduce based on the energy they receive. Some out-of-control cells (i.e., cancer cells) will reproduce as a result of specific dietary fat ingested. Colon cancer appears to be receptive to meat fat.
• Dietary fiber: The body is not able to digest dietary fiber. For years it has been thought that consuming a lot of dietary fiber would reduce the risk of acquiring colon cancer. Even though dietary fiber definitely speeds up the processing of food in the digestive track, certain large medical studies confirmed that dietary fiber does not normally protect against the occurrence of colon cancer.
• Vegetables and Fruits: Antioxidants are chemicals that do not enable molecular fragments to link up and create cancer-causing compounds. Vegetable and fruit plants contain some of these antioxidants.

The benefits derived from eating a healthy diet on a daily basis are not the cure-all when a person has a life-threatening illness. Such a person with said illness should always listen and abide by their doctor's evaluation and prescription. Food and diet should not be seen as a substitute for anticancer drugs, antibiotics, vaccines or other drugs to fight body diseases.

Terry has been writing articles online for over 5 years. Not only does this author specialize in diet, nutrition, vitamins, fitness, weight loss and sports, you can also check out his latest review and tips on Customized Baseball Gloves and Spalding Baseball Gloves for the best baseball equipment and supplies.

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