Jan 23 2010
Diet as Health Care
Some people believe that adjusting your diet is the only health care you need. I doubt this. As I mentioned in a post a year and some months ago (You Aren’t What You Eat) I have a relative who once believed, and still believes to a degree, that all physical and mental health problems are caused by diet. This person went so far to state that even homosexuality is the result of diet. (Maybe not enough red meat?) Sure, it would be fantastic if we could take a trip to the health food store whenever we were feeling poorly. But evidence for the effectiveness of this approach is meager at best. And that’s for run-of-mill, preventative measures. Once you have an illness, the effectiveness drops further. And I’m probably being generous here.
The belief that “it’s all about diet,” seems to stem from a faulty premise. That premise is that the human body is somehow perfect and only goes bad when we do bad things to it. Um, birth defects anyone? Diseases that run in families? Twin studies that show when one twin has a disease, the other twin is much more likely to succumb to it as well, regardless of differences in diet? And the list could go on.
The truth is, our bodies aren’t born perfect, nor do they develop and age perfectly, even when the person is diligent about changing his/her oil every 3000 miles and never fills up with cheapo fuel.
If the body is a temple, most of those temples have various cracks in the foundations from the get-go. (Sorry about switching metaphors in mid-stream.)
That said, there are number of studies revealing that there are indeed chemicals in some foods that can help treat or prevent health problems. Yesterday I encountered this one: Blueberry Juice Improves Memory in Older Adults. This finding was not the result of a diet shaman pulling an insight out of the blue. Rather, scientists conducted an experiment with actual blueberries. Well, the juice.
In the study, one group of volunteers in their 70s with early memory decline drank the equivalent of 2-2 l/2 cups of a commercially available blueberry juice every day for two months. A control group drank a beverage without blueberry juice. The blueberry juice group showed significant improvement on learning and memory tests, the scientists say.
While this finding is encouraging, I wouldn’t bet the health of my memory on it. Not yet. For one, the write-up doesn’t mention the number of “volunteers.” Nor does it provide the outcome numbers. How much better does the experimental group do than the control group?
Nevertheless, alternative-medicine types will likely use this finding to start prescribing a liberal inclusion of blueberries in the diet. The funny thing is, if the finding holds up upon further research, you can bet that the active chemical(s) in blueberries will be isolated and offered in pill form. In the future doctors might prescribe it. As part of conventional medicine.
In that example we can see how alternative medicine, in the form of specific diet supplementations, is immature medicine. Puppy medicine, you might say. And who doesn’t love puppies?
