CHAPTER 1 How Foods Heal "Medicinal Foods" through the Ages--From Ancient to Modern Times If you''re familiar with my Green Pharmacy (or Farmacy, as I like to call it), you probably think that it''s all about herbal remedies. That''s partially true. Herbs have always been near and dear to my heart, and they still are. However, research over the past few decades has taken the Green Pharmacy in a new and interesting direction--away from the health food store and into the supermarket. A growing body of literature indicates that a number of plant foods-- fruits, vegetables, spices, and even beverages--offer many of the same healing powers that you''ll find in herbal remedies. Foods, however, have a distinct advantage over their herbal cousins: Instead of depending on capsules, tinctures, and teas, you can incorporate foods into delicious, flavorful meals that are as satisfying as they are healing! Of course, we all know that fruits and vegetables are healthful. That''s why the government recently increased its recommendation from five servings to nine a day. But only now are we learning just how healthful they really are.

To begin with, they''re high in fiber, low in calories, and devoid of or low in harmful fats. But that''s not all. Most have hundreds, if not thousands, of medicinal com£ds, each of which has a specific impact on your health and well-being. As a result, you can choose to add various plants to your diet to treat certain ailments. For example, I eat celery almost every day to prevent the pain associated with gout, and garlic is part of my diet because I know it can benefit my heart and possibly even help control my chronic Lyme disease. Over the next few pages, I''ll give you some background on how plant foods heal, so you can gain a greater understanding of their role in your health. Then, in the chapters to come, I''ll help you plan your own regimen to treat specific conditions with specific foods. Food as a Historical Healer The idea of "food as medicine" is hardly a new one.

In fact, when you consider that ancient man lacked the technological capability of today''s chemists, it only makes sense that their medicines came directly from nature. In fact, evidence of using food to heal dates back thousands of years. Ayurveda, the traditional healing art of India, is a perfect example. It borrows many of its ideas from Hinduism, incorporating multiple therapies that include herbs, massage, and meditation. Ayurvedic practitioners may even go so far as to try a new diet to prevent or treat specific conditions. One medicinal food from Ayurveda may be familiar to you: turmeric, which often shows up as a spice in Asian cuisine. Aside from its unique flavor, turmeric may also prove a helpful treatment for people with arthritis, Alzheimer''s disease, and some forms of cancer. Although the research evidence isn''t yet conclusive, it''s certainly highly suggestive, and my own experience using turmeric as an anti-inflammatory has been extraordinarily positive.

(For more information on turmeric, see page 28.) Ayurveda, also commonly referred to as Traditional Indian Medicine or Traditional Ayurvedic Medicine (TAM), shares this focus on food with another ancient form of medical practice, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM works from the concepts of "yin" and "yang," which in ancient Chinese philosophy refer to the two fundamental forces in the universe--the aggressive, hot, go-get-''em force (yang); and the passive, lie back and chill out force (yin). You get sick when these two forces fall out of balance in your body. By now you''re probably wondering what all of this has to do with food. In TCM, the foods you eat are seen as having yin properties--cooling and moistening--or yang properties--warming and drying. Depending on the condition you have, your practitioner will help you make food choices to restore balance between the two forces. For example, if you have a mucus- producing cough from a cold, your balance is skewed toward the yin, so you''ll want to treat it with warming, drying foods like ginger tea and hot vegetable soups.

As you can see, we borrow some of our ideas for treating illness from the Chinese, whether we''re aware of it or not! Better Living through Chemistry? TAM and TCM are a far cry from Western medicine, which views food as the source of nutrition but ignores its healing properties almost entirely. That''s not to say the American view of the diet--seeking a balance among protein, carbohydrates, and fat--doesn''t make sense. It does. But it''s limited--very limited. The Chinese and Indian approaches basically say that the body will react in certain ways to certain foods. After all, we have co-evolved with and made use of the plants in our environment throughout the history of our species, so it only stands to reason that we would develop special relationships with some of them, as we have with members of the animal kingdom. Now contrast that with our notion of modern medicine, which I like to call "better living through chemistry." Most synthetic drugs have been in use for only a few decades rather than a few thousand years, so the body just isn''t used to handling them as it handles foods.

What''s more, most plant foods contain thousands of bioactive com£ds, each of which plays a unique role in the body. By contrast, the viewpoint of modern medicine is that we''re looking for one "silver bullet," the so- called active ingredient--and all the other helpful com£ds in any specific plant are tossed out and forgotten. I''m not saying that all drugs are bad. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Drugs have saved the lives of many people. But it''s tough to argue with the numbers: In 2005, pharmaceuticals killed at least 140,000 people in the United States--that we know of. The number may be even higher. As far back as 2002, the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association recognized this problem, calling adverse drug reactions "a leading cause of death in the United States." Now compare that with herbs and supplements.

Altogether, they caused an estimated 29 deaths in 2005. The numbers speak for themselves. The purpose of this book is not to scare you away from taking your medicines. After all, I need to take pharmaceuticals myself every now and then. Rather, what I''m hoping you''ll do is "think outside the pillbox" and realize that by taking a different approach to what you eat, many conditions--and the medicines needed to treat them--can potentially be avoided completely. The Supplement Scare As you''ve already seen, supplements have proven safer than pharmaceuticals. However, this doesn''t necessarily place vitamin supplements beyond criticism. Their effectiveness, most notably that of the "big three" antioxidants--vitamins A, C, and E--has come into question in recent years.

In the recent HOPE (Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation) study, more than 10,000 heart disease patients received either 400 IU of vitamin E or a placebo every day for six years. At the end of the trial, the researchers concluded that vitamin E really didn''t do much better than the placebo at preventing death or other adverse outcomes from heart disease. Vitamin C is generally considered safe even at high doses (though more than 1,200 milligrams can cause diarrhea in some people). But recently, the effectiveness of "megadosing" with vitamin C for illnesses like colds and flu has come under some fire. As the National Institutes of Health points out, more than 30 clinical trials with more than 10,000 participants have looked into the role of vitamin C in preventing colds, and no significant reduction has been noted. Vitamin C supplements may play a role in reducing the duration of colds, however. Vitamin A (which exists in foods in the form of pre-vitamin A as well as carotenoids such as beta-carotene) has also been studied in supplement form, and it has shown some effectiveness for some conditions. The evidence indicates, however, that if you smoke or drink alcohol, you may want to steer clear of supplementing with pure beta-carotene, since it could actually increase your risk of lung damage, including even lung cancer.

Again, none of this is meant to scare you away from supplements. Quite the contrary; I take a number of them, and I think that multivitamins are a great means of getting a full complement of healthy nutrients in an economical way. I just find it interesting that when a single, specific bioactive com£d is isolated, whether in a pharmaceutical or a supplement, the result is never as dramatic as people expect. That''s because in nature, the com£d works in combination with many others to bring healthful benefits to the body. Those combinations exist in only one place--whole foods! The Food Renaissance In recent years, you''ve probably noticed that you''re hearing less about familiar nutrients, such as vitamins A, C, and E, in nutrition news and more about exotic-sounding ones, such as lycopene, quercetin, and resveratrol, to name a few. The reason is simple: Researchers are beginning to look beyond the macronutrients in foods, and they''re discovering micronutrients and phytochemicals. Some of the benefits these com£ds offer stem from their antioxidant potential. In the simplest terms, antioxidants help your body by neutralizing free radicals, unstable oxygen molecules that the body can overproduce after exposure to toxins such as cigarette smoke, pollution, and even unhealthful foods.

Beyond their antioxidant potential, many com£ds help specific parts of the body remain healthy as well. Beta- carotene, lutein, and cryptoxanthin are g.