Hippocrates (460-357 BC), the father of medicine said, “Let food be the medicine and let medicine be the food.” The former part of the sentence is for the sick, the latter is for the healthy. For the sick, positive natural foods are the true natural drugs and not commercially marketed drugs, which are not conducive to health as all of them have adverse side effects. For the healthy, natural foods are the means of freedom from disease. Hippocrates fully believed that natural foods have unlimited power to sustain health and restore it when lost.
There is hardly a health problem or natural bodily process that is not influenced in some way or the other by the foods we eat. There has been an increase in the variety and frequency of diseases in proportion to the process of the degeneration of foodstuffs through refining. Researches carried out on separate varieties of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs, have shown that natural foods possess the property of curing almost every kind of disease. These researches indicate that certain specific foods can serve as powerful natural drugs like laxatives, antibiotics, antidepressants, antiulcerants, analgesics, tranquillizers, cholesterol reducers, cancer fighters, fertility agents, antihyper-tensives, diuretics, anti-inflammatory agents, blood vessels dilators and so on.
Food can thus be redefined as miracle medicine that we can use in preventing and treating diseases of all kinds and in boosting mental and physical energy, vigour and well being. The adoption of sensible eating of natural foods can thus free mankind from all diseases. Natural foods, contain all essential vitamins, minerals, trace elements and other constituents, whereas in refined foods they are largely absent.
Natural foods like seeds, nuts and grains, vegetables and fruits can serve as powerful natural drugs. This describes in great detail the specific pharmacological action of specific natural foods, as established by scientific studies. This information can serve as a guide to the readers to treat common diseases through use of specific foods, besides adopting a well balanced natural diet consisting of 80 per cent of alkaline forming foods like fruits and vegetables and 20 per cent of acid forming foods like cereals and pulses. It would however be advisable to consult a biologically-oriented doctor or an expert naturopath in case of serious illnesses.