RESEARCH NOTE:
Meals that Heal - Healing with Foods

China's Remarkable Healing Gift

CBS This Morning aired a feature called "Meals that Heal." It began with these words:

"The U.S. government has opened up a stunning new area of research into foods commonly found in your own neighborhood supermarket. They are finding that certain foods can actually prevent dozens of diseases and in some cases actually treat them."

Dr. Bob Arnot then cited scientific research showing cabbage being effective against cancer, garlic against high cholesterol, onions against high blood pressure, kidney beans against diabetes, raspberries against arthritis, and licorice against ulcers. "You would think it would be coming from fringe medicine," said Arnot, "but...this is coming from the best labs in the country."

Chinese healers have taught for centuries that foods can heal. Our scientists and our government are acknowledging at last that it's true, which is encouraging news.

But the report also announced a $20 million government program to apply this news by developing "designer foods" for healing, isolating and synthesizing from plants. But will mixtures of chemicals retain all of the healing properties of foods?

It is impossible to translate the Chinese food-based healing into Western chemical terms because their higher properties cannot be described or re-created in purely chemical terms.

According to Chinese traditional medicine healers, the body is a group composed of various parts. When the group gets along, the body is healthy. When it doesn't the body becomes sick. To heal the body, then, we restore harmony within the group, which the ancient Chinese called Regeneration.

This focus on harmony is why there are no body-part specialists among traditional Chinese healers. To specialize in a particular part is to ignore the group - a sort of narrow blindness that makes group regeneration and harmony impossible. The key is communication among the group - among the organs and systems. For example, a group of four singers does not make a quartet. Four communicating singers make a quartet. The better they communicate, the better their harmony. Likewise, individual organs do not make a body. Communicating organs make a body, and the better they communicate, the better the body functions. Healing is a matter of encouraging the organs of the body to communicate, which regenerates the body - restoring it to health.

To achieve this harmony, traditional Chinese healers mainly adjust the way they live - the way we think, act, and eat. There are more forceful measures - such as acupuncture (which opens communication channels) and medicinal herbs (which function as biochemical substitutes, like drugs). But for long-term harmonizing of the body "group," it's the simple everyday things that are key - and none are more important than the foods we eat.