This is so exciting! Something really HUGE and potentially life-changing is about to happen in the U.K.
I noticed in the TV listings that a new series, ‘The Food Hospital’ begins tonight, 1st November 2011. Channel 4 have billed it as a ‘Specialist Factual Series’ which will be ‘examining the science behind using food as medicine’. Brilliant!
The series will feature experts such as a Professor of Gastroenterology (the digestive system), a specialist Dietician and a GP who will be assessing the effects that certain foods can have on the specific health problems of some of their patients.
Since training as a Dietician, this has very much been my focus as well. In addition to this, I was taught to cook by my grandmother, who - as a former school meals supervisor - passed down valuable nuggets of information such as the importance of cooking vegetables lightly in order to retain their vitamin content (and in turn our own health). This was a relatively new way of thinking at that time, back in the early 60s.
The 2005 book, 'Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs (by Holford and Burne) further cemented these principles in my mind, as did Professor Jane Plant’s 2006 book ‘Eating for Better Health.
However, my training in hospitals indicated that medical conditions to be treated with special diets were limited to Diabetes (restricted carbohydrate), kidney problems (a low-potassium diet), and the occasional low-fat diet for patients having gallbladder surgery.
In recent years, as I struggled to find answers for my own chronic fatigue illness, my efforts to put an all-round programme using diet and nutrition into place were dismissed by GPs. Despite this, I have come across some incredibly forward-thinking Nutrition experts and scientists, and one Doctor I encountered - a fatigue specialist - enlisted nutritional methods as part of a regime that she had recommended for me. I said in a previous blog that, between the two of us, we arrived at a management programme involving 27 nutrition supplements per day (all natural substances, but containing a higher dosage than that found in food), allowing me to be up and about and functioning normally, as opposed to being bedridden – for which I am eternally grateful.
The evidence for the success of the regime was my own wellbeing and recovery, but unfortunately Doctors traditionally receive just about half a day of nutritional education during their 7 year medical training, and there are not enough ‘peer reviewed’ studies (where controlled experiments are carried out and the results checked by the researchers’ medical colleagues) to convince them that nutritional methods get results. But increasingly, substances that Nutrition experts have known about for decades are, very slowly, coming into mainstream use (folic acid for pregnant women is one example).
I firmly believe that the future of medicine is for everyone to be treated with a tailor-made nutrition programme based on test results (if deficiencies are indicated), alongside the more typical medical treatment.
Each day, our bodies need a certain amount of nutrients in order to function properly and stay healthy, but it is shockingly easy to be deficient in various nutrients (a form of ‘malnutrition’), even in the Western world; because of our modern staple diet of white flour, white sugar and hydrogenated fats, the nutrient levels in our body can easily be thrown out of balance.
Perhaps, Channel 4’s new series will plant the seeds of change in the thinking of the medics. It can only be a good thing for patients that a major television channel is broadcasting such a programme at peak viewing time – meaning that the subject is really coming into the ‘mainstream’ consciousness.
With the small number of patients being studied during the series, there may not be conclusive results over the relatively short duration of the experiment and this could perhaps give critics grounds to argue that dietary methods do not work. However, viewers can apparently be part of the 'largest ever' scientific study into how changes in diet can improve - if not cure - some illnesses and ailments, by joining in online.
So let’s hope that the medics keep an open mind. It remains to be seen, but I will be on the edge of my seat with anticipation, hoping for a wider recognition of food’s incredible health benefits from now on.
Update: At the end of the programme tonight Channel 4 mentioned that there is a book to accompany the series, written by the featured experts. It is available from Amazon which you can reach directly by clicking the link here:-
The Food Hospital
If you live in the US and would like to look at the books mentioned in this blog post, please click the links below;
Food is Better Medicine Than Drugs
Eating for Better Health
I noticed in the TV listings that a new series, ‘The Food Hospital’ begins tonight, 1st November 2011. Channel 4 have billed it as a ‘Specialist Factual Series’ which will be ‘examining the science behind using food as medicine’. Brilliant!
The series will feature experts such as a Professor of Gastroenterology (the digestive system), a specialist Dietician and a GP who will be assessing the effects that certain foods can have on the specific health problems of some of their patients.
Since training as a Dietician, this has very much been my focus as well. In addition to this, I was taught to cook by my grandmother, who - as a former school meals supervisor - passed down valuable nuggets of information such as the importance of cooking vegetables lightly in order to retain their vitamin content (and in turn our own health). This was a relatively new way of thinking at that time, back in the early 60s.
The 2005 book, 'Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs (by Holford and Burne) further cemented these principles in my mind, as did Professor Jane Plant’s 2006 book ‘Eating for Better Health.
However, my training in hospitals indicated that medical conditions to be treated with special diets were limited to Diabetes (restricted carbohydrate), kidney problems (a low-potassium diet), and the occasional low-fat diet for patients having gallbladder surgery.
In recent years, as I struggled to find answers for my own chronic fatigue illness, my efforts to put an all-round programme using diet and nutrition into place were dismissed by GPs. Despite this, I have come across some incredibly forward-thinking Nutrition experts and scientists, and one Doctor I encountered - a fatigue specialist - enlisted nutritional methods as part of a regime that she had recommended for me. I said in a previous blog that, between the two of us, we arrived at a management programme involving 27 nutrition supplements per day (all natural substances, but containing a higher dosage than that found in food), allowing me to be up and about and functioning normally, as opposed to being bedridden – for which I am eternally grateful.
The evidence for the success of the regime was my own wellbeing and recovery, but unfortunately Doctors traditionally receive just about half a day of nutritional education during their 7 year medical training, and there are not enough ‘peer reviewed’ studies (where controlled experiments are carried out and the results checked by the researchers’ medical colleagues) to convince them that nutritional methods get results. But increasingly, substances that Nutrition experts have known about for decades are, very slowly, coming into mainstream use (folic acid for pregnant women is one example).
I firmly believe that the future of medicine is for everyone to be treated with a tailor-made nutrition programme based on test results (if deficiencies are indicated), alongside the more typical medical treatment.
Each day, our bodies need a certain amount of nutrients in order to function properly and stay healthy, but it is shockingly easy to be deficient in various nutrients (a form of ‘malnutrition’), even in the Western world; because of our modern staple diet of white flour, white sugar and hydrogenated fats, the nutrient levels in our body can easily be thrown out of balance.
Perhaps, Channel 4’s new series will plant the seeds of change in the thinking of the medics. It can only be a good thing for patients that a major television channel is broadcasting such a programme at peak viewing time – meaning that the subject is really coming into the ‘mainstream’ consciousness.
With the small number of patients being studied during the series, there may not be conclusive results over the relatively short duration of the experiment and this could perhaps give critics grounds to argue that dietary methods do not work. However, viewers can apparently be part of the 'largest ever' scientific study into how changes in diet can improve - if not cure - some illnesses and ailments, by joining in online.
So let’s hope that the medics keep an open mind. It remains to be seen, but I will be on the edge of my seat with anticipation, hoping for a wider recognition of food’s incredible health benefits from now on.
Update: At the end of the programme tonight Channel 4 mentioned that there is a book to accompany the series, written by the featured experts. It is available from Amazon which you can reach directly by clicking the link here:-
The Food Hospital
If you live in the US and would like to look at the books mentioned in this blog post, please click the links below;
Food is Better Medicine Than Drugs
Eating for Better Health
