ingredients will make you feel as if you are in a top-class restaurant rather than taking your medicine. In this section we will look at how different soups can treat as well as prevent problems relating to the following body systems:
Energy
Immune system and detoxification
Circulation (including brain, nerves, eyes, ears)
Bones and joints
Hormones
If you are feeling sceptical, and believe that only powerful medicines can reverse health problems, think again. How many people do you know who are taking prescription medicines for long-term health conditions? Are they being cured? Prescription drugs can make you feel better while you are taking them; in fact some drugs, including those for high blood pressure, are essential for your own safety. But drugs do not usually cure long-term problems. If they did, the problems would not be long-term! Over many years, a combination of genetics, stress and faulty lifestyle silently changes a person’s internal environment and body chemistry to produce ailments and ill-health. No drug has ever been able to reverse this process. Food and nutrition are the real key not only to preventing ill-health but also to reversing it.
There’s plenty of scientific proof too, although it’s widely scattered and the work is poorly funded. My book Treat Yourself with Nutritional Therapy (see Resources, page 277) lists hundreds of scientific research studies written up in many different scientific and medical journals ranging from the Lancet to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Some doctors do pay attention to this research, and treat their patients using a nutritional approach. Some of the organizations to which these doctors belong are listed under Resources on page 277.
I’VE ALREADY CHANGED MY DIET FOR THE BETTER!
If you are still sceptical because you have already made some healthy changes to your diet without feeling any better, this could just mean that you haven’t yet found the right changes you need to make. With so many books bombarding you with different opinions about nutrition, it has become a very confusing subject. Bear in mind also that curing a health problem requires a lot of extra effort compared with just preventing it. For instance, take one of my cases, whose name was Richard.
CASE HISTORY:
RICHARD
Richard packed shelves in a supermarket and was 32 years old. For eight years he had had what appeared to be a huge scab measuring about two inches in diameter on his slightly balding head.
Richard had consulted many doctors with this problem. ‘They just dab at it with stuff and then send me away,’ he said in desperation. ‘They won’t tell me what it is and nothing they’ve given me has ever stopped it.’ His self-confidence had been destroyed by this problem. He confessed that he couldn’t stop thinking about it and imagined that other people were always looking at the scab. He really wanted a girlfriend, but believed that no-one would want him with this unsightly problem.
Richard had worked hard at his diet. He had grown up on a diet of very ordinary food: ‘meat and two veg’, chips, fries, lots of sweet tea and coffee. He had never consumed excessive amounts of sweets, chocolates or soft drinks, and his saturated fat consumption was no higher than the average. In the last year he had made efforts to eat more vegetables and salads, and had given up most fried foods as well as biscuits, cookies and the occasional bar of chocolate. There was no improvement in his scalp condition.
I explained that like his doctors I did not know what could be causing his problem, but that skin conditions usually responded quite well to making more drastic dietary changes. These were often only required temporarily until the condition cleared up. Richard was prepared to go ahead and see what could be achieved on that basis.
I gave Richard a diet that completely excluded saturated fat, dairy products and red meat, which contain arachidonic acid, a pro-inflammatory substance found in animal fats. Arachidonic acid can also be made within the body, but if excluded from foods eaten in the diet, the overall body load will be decreased. The diet also excluded tea and coffee, artificial food additives and alcohol. I asked Richard to make lots of home-made soups and to throw every vegetable he could think of into them. He did this with pleasure. I also asked him to take vitamin A and zinc supplements, and fish oils, plus some herbs which would help to rejuvenate his liver.
Nothing much seemed to happen for the first few weeks, then we noticed that as Richard’s hair grew, the scab seemed to be gradually lifting off with it. By the 10th week it had grown out completely, and the skin underneath was normal.
Cases like this are not unusual. It seems so sad that more people don’t realize just how much can be achieved with dietary therapy. Richard’s confidence and sense of self-worth had been severely scarred by so many years of enduring this unsightly problem.
Energy problems can range from getting easily tired after exertion to feeling exhausted almost all the time, no matter how much rest you have had. (This extreme condition is known as chronic fatigue syndrome or CFS.)
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