Let your food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food.
Hippocrates, c. 460 BC – c. 377 BC
Once, there was a time when our bodies were in peak condition because they got what they needed. We ate food that was simple but good for us, and exercise was a necessity in our daily lives. We have more than 100 trillion cells in our body, and in each cell, there are more than one billion biochemical reactions per second, every day and throughout our lives. Food is involved in all of these processes. Unfortunately, today’s highly processed food rarely supplies us with everything we need to function well. It provides the energy to survive and function on a day-to-day basis, but it leaves a lot to be desired if we want optimum health and vitality. Much of the food we eat consists of empty, useless, calories, with ingredients that have been processed beyond recognition.
We need food that gives us nourishment, not just energy. We also need food that stimulates our intestinal flora. We have a greater number of bacteria in our gut than we have body cells. These bacteria produce important vitamins and short chain fatty acids and are vital to our immune system. An imbalance may lead to a number of ailments, infections and inflammatory conditions. But while our food choices clearly affect our health, food should not be merely something you have to eat in order to survive or function well. Food should be a positive part of your life, something to look forward to, something that will enhance our family and social life. Food should not only be good for you, but should also appeal to your senses of sight, smell and taste.
Until a few decades ago, good doctors were ‘craftsmen’. They had to use all their medical knowledge, but most of all they had to use good judgment and intuition to find out what ailed their patients and how they could best treat them. Often, they had no idea what actually caused a disease, but strangely enough, their remedies - which to modern doctors might sound like old wives’ tales - did the trick. At that time, observation was a key word and was how the greatest discoveries and inventions came about. You did not need to know why cod-liver oil, vegetables and pulses were good for you; that was just the way it was.
Food is medicine, the best medicine we know of. In the past, we did not know how it worked as well as we do today. But as with all medicine, the wrong kind or the wrong dosage can have unwanted side effects or even cause illness.
Modern medicine has made tremendous progress in many areas and provides solutions to many acute and chronic ailments. But is has certainly not solved everything and all too often the available treatments address symptoms and not causes, while many times they carry the risk of significant side effects.
There is a lot of wisdom in nature and many natural foods and substances extracted from them can offer excellent solutions to many health problems- and more often than not- without significant side effects. It is however important to look at the scientific backing of various natural remedies, before using them and always under the supervision of medical professionals. Glukofix contains a natural ingredient that is supported by science, to the extent that it has been approved by the European Food Safety Agency to carry a health claim pertaining to the reduction of blood sugar increase after starch containing meals.