Nutritional healing

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[edit] Overview

Nutritional Healing is an established scientific approach aimed at balancing the needs of the human body through the use of healthful, nutrient-rich foods and, many times, dietary supplements. Nutritional healing offers the belief that nutrition plays an important function in virtually every medical condition. Nutritional healing employs wholesome food and supplements to encourage the body’s natural healing, which it does by: boosting the immune system, detoxifying the body, restoring beneficial digestion, and/or correcting any vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Nutritional healing is also a complementary medicine, meaning it can be used alongside conventional medicine (with your health-care provider’s approval). Additionally, nutritional healing is as concerned about prevention of health problems as it is at encouraging the body to heal itself.

[edit] History

Nutritional healing is likely the oldest form of medicine. People have known, throughout history, that food plays an important role in maintaining or restoring health. As Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said, "Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food".

[edit] Dangers

The human body has the wonderful ability to heal itself if provided with the right circumstances. In other words, if you provide your body with wholesome foods for a long enough period of time, you should become, and likely remain, disease free. The trouble with nutritional healing is that complete healing may take a long time. Although some improvement may be seen within days or weeks, and remarkable improvement in months, it may take a couple of years for the body to fully restore health. Another glitch is that health problems respond best to certain foods, so a person may need a proper diagnosis and knowledge of the certain nutritional needs. Also, while there are very few side effects associated with eating wholesome foods, overuse of supplements can lead to disaster. Additionally, like all forms of medicine, what works for one person may not work, and may even be harmful, to another.