Food as Healer, Food as Slayer

September 29, 2005

http://www.mercola.com/2005/sep/29/food_as_healer_food_as_slayer.htm

By Mark Hyman, M.D.

Nowhere in medicine is there more controversy, superstition, confusion

and religious fervor than there is surrounding the subject of food

allergy and illness. Conventional allergists and immunologists

generally confine all interactions between food and the immune system

to the Type 1 hypersensitivity, IgE-mediated response.

Practitioners of integrative and alternative medicine have long

recognized the limitations of this point of view, yet have failed to

produce a viable alternative clinical model with which to test and

assess interventions based on complex dietary manipulations.

However, an increasing body of literature illuminates the potential

for more subtle interactions between the gut, food and illness.

(1,2,3) Despite the limitations of the assessment tools (electrodermal

screening) and the lack of a control group, the small sample size, the

lack of a standard, validated assessment tool for measuring outcomes,

Taylor, et. al, break ground in this pilot study. (4)

While cognizant of the limitations of their methodology, the authors

demonstrate that alteration of the diet to reduce its antigenic load

is correlated with a reduction in symptom severity in a condition that

has no known conventional treatment (multiple chemical sensitivity).

Certainly conventional medicine has recognized that food can harm.

Doctors have recommended avoiding certain foods to treat common

conditions. Low-fat diets for the prevention of cardiovascular

disease, bland diets to treat ulcers, low-salt diets to treat

hypertension, once medical dogma, now are relegated to the pile of

unnecessary or harmful advice.

Yet while medicine embraced these ideas, it has resisted the concept

that changes in diet can not only prevent disease, but can be used as

a therapeutic tool, often where no other exists.

The need to critically assess the role of diet as a therapeutic tool

in disease cannot be overstated. The need for a healthy diet is well

recognized in the prevention of chronic illness such as cardiovascular

disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer.

The Healing Power of Food: Largely Unexplored

The use of nutritional therapy in illness stops there. Using food as a

therapeutic tool in illness is a vast unexplored area of medical

science. The power of food as medicine lies in the exact domain where

current medical practice is weakest--in the chronic immune, endocrine

and degenerative diseases that afflict modern civilization.

However, the emerging science of nutrigenomics highlights the complex

role of macronutrients, micronutrients and phytochemicals in altering

endocrine, immune and metabolic responses that regulate the subtle

balance between health and illness.

The mechanisms whereby food acts to alter patterns of gene expression,

regulate complex immunological signals and shift endocrine responses

are being clarified.

The old idea that food is simply a vehicle for delivering energy in

the form of calories is giving way to a new model of food--food as

information. Our evolutionary adaptation to a particular diet has

perhaps set the conditions that alter gene expression patterns to

trigger illness, rather than support health in the context of an

unfamiliar landscape of fast nutrient-poor food, increasing sedentary

behavior and incessant stress. (5)

R.D. Laing said that, " Insanity is a sane response to an insane

world. " (6) Perhaps, the disease is a normal response to a diseased

world (and a toxic diet).

As a species, we once ate a complex unrefined wild diet consisting of

a wide variety of plant and animal foods rich in phytonutrients, fiber

and omega-3 fatty acids. Now, our monotonous diet triggers different

and diseased patterns of gene expression. The USDA reports that the

top nine foods eaten by Americans are:

* Whole cow's milk

* 2 percent milk

* Processed American cheese

* White bread

* White flour

* White rolls

* Refined sugar

* Colas

* Ground beef

All of these foods are foreign to our genome that evolved on a

Paleolithic diet. This mono diet creates altered patterns of gene

expression that lead to disease, including food allergy or

sensitivity. (7)

Dairy and gluten are two generally well accepted food antigens

responsible for an array of complex disorders including autoimmune

diseases, digestive disorders, endocrine disturbances and neurologic

and behavioral disorders. (8,9) These data must be the wedge into a

new framework for thinking about the relation of food, illness and health.

While many hurdles remain in the designing, funding and the

interpretation of research on the interaction between food and health,

it must be an area of highest research priority.

Food is our greatest ally in helping to prevent and treat illness, and

to help our patients to create health. We must separate religion from

science and assess the role of food as medicine, particularly in

chronic illness where current pharmacologic approaches fall short.

Clinical experience treating chronic conditions such as IBS, IBD,

migraines, autoimmune diseases, CFIDS, FMS, MCS, psoriasis, eczema,

urticaria, arthritis, and respiratory illness, enuresis and cystitis

with elimination diets must be translated into research protocols that

illuminate individual differences in response to dietary antigens and

their relation to diseases. This research will yield critical new

insights into the role of food as slayer and food as healer.

Mark Hyman, M.D., serves as editor-in-chief of Alternative Therapies

in Health and Medicine and is a medical editor of Alternative Medicine

Magazine and has his own web site at www.drhyman.com.

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