Change your food, Improve your health

Functional Medicine

In an earlier post I had mentioned about my recent increase in blood sugar level and how diabetes is reversible. There I had mentioned about Dr Mark Hyman, and I have learnt that the medical practice that doctors like him practice is called Functional Medicine.

Today all around us, specialist doctors are on the increase and general practitioners seem to be on the way out. Here is the definition of General Practitioner taken from Wikipedia.

• General Practitioners intend to practise a holistic approach that takes into consideration the biological, psychological and social factors relevant to the care of their patients. Their duties are not confined to specific organs of the body, and they have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues. They are trained to treat patients of any age and sex to levels of complexity that vary between countries.

Doctors focus on specializing to increase their earning potential. From here you can have an indication about an average doctor's earnings. Only the geriatrician and palliative care physician, both to do with very old and terminally ill, earn lower than a Family Medicine Practitioner.

Medical Specialist

Wikipedia has a long list of medical specialists. Specialization can be organ based, disease based, medical technique based etc. A medical specialist is restricted to treatment in a specific domain of expertise. What happens when someone needs to consult more than one medical specialist at the same time? Each doctor gives his own medical treatment, often without taking into consideration treatments given by other doctors. So the patient does not get a specialized treatment taking care of all issues in an holistic manner. Doctors who practice Functional Medicine treat the patient in an holistic manner by working at the root cause of the problem.

The Bible Food

In an earlier post I had mentioned that I believe in the God of The Bible. Genesis 1:28-30 says

28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.

So the early God given food was vegetarian for both man and animal. After The Flood, non-vegetarian food was added as seen in Genesis 9:1-3.

So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.

People who lived before The Flood lived several hundreds of years, with Methuselah living the longest at 969 years as seen in Genesis 5:25-27.

25-27 Methuselah: Methuselah was 187 years old when his son Lamech was born; afterwards he lived another 782 years, producing sons and daughters, and died at the age of 969.

When I look at Genesis 11 I see that the life of successive generations seems to be decreasing. In Verse 28 Haran dies before his father. Could the vegetarian food before The Flood be the reason for their long lives? Could God have supplemented non-vegetarian food after The Flood because of the devastation caused to the original plant kingdom in The Flood?

Food as Medicine

When we think of medicine we only think of some chemical substance that we get from the chemist. We need the doctor to prescribe that chemical substance. As a second thought we might ask the doctor the food that we may eat. Functional Medicine considers food as the primary source of medicine and nutrition. Hippocrates, father of western medicine, is said to have quoted "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food". 

Today we seem to have forgotten what Hippocrates advocated. Our body is built up based on the food that we eat. The chemicals that we ingest in the name of medicine produce wide variety of side effects. Today, properly prescribed FDA approved drugs are supposed to be the third leading cause of death in the US. Check this article "Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Killing 225,000 People Every Year". Check also this article "Death from Prescription Drugs: The New Epidemic Sweeping Across America". Do we have any statistics for similar deaths in India?

Changes in my food habit

Because of blood sugar elevation problem, as any one would expect, I have stopped all processed sugar. In addition to that I am trying to stop all processed food. The reason being, food processing industry destroys almost all nutrients, and the food that we eat are only non-nutritional food. I am trying to eat most of the food from the collection shown in the above image, where possible raw. I have gone from white bread, to brown bread and now to whole wheat multi-grain bread. I have replaced Coffee with Green Tea. My blood sugar level is continuing to improve. Basically, I am moving away from man-made factory food to God produced food, directly from His Factory, The Ground.

Arvind Kejriwal 'The Gambler' and 'The Plowman' of The Bible

Kejriwal's Gamble

On 14th February, the Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal resigned, because his Aam Aadmi Party could not pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in Delhi Assembly. The thought process here being, since the Aam Aadmi Party did not have the majority in Delhi Assembly, it is better to seek a fresh term with a better majority that will allow them to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in the new assembly. Wikipedia defines "Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods." Essentially Aam Aadmi Party has wagered its present seats in the Delhi Assembly for additional seats in a future Assembly.

Plowman

That set me thinking about what The Bible says about this thought process. From what I could remember from The Bible, I did not see any wise person gambling away a current advantage, for a perceived better future advantage. In fact, Jesus in Luke 9:62 says “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” The Bible expects its followers to carry out a chosen task to its logical conclusion. Proverbs 20:4 says "The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing." Unlike the gambler, the plowman when he plows the ground will have a very definite harvest determined by the crop he plants. The Bible in essence demands diligence, and not a frivolous attitude.

This is the day, now is the time

The God of The Bible is basically a God of the present and emphasizes living in the present, and not in the past or the future. Romans 13:11-14 says "But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!"

Jan Lokpal Bill

From the resignation action of Arvind Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party is projecting that the Jan Lokpal Bill is even more important than governing Delhi. The primary duty of a 'govern'ment is to govern. I am certainly disappointed, that a Government that was elected to govern Delhi, in a short period of seven weeks, has chosen to give such a large importance to a document called Jan Lokpal Bill over the actual act of governing Delhi.

Wikipedia states that "The Jan Lokpal Bill aims to effectively deter corruption, compensate citizen grievances, and protect whistle-blowers. The prefix Jan (translation: citizens) signifies that these improvements include inputs provided by "ordinary citizens" through an activist-driven, non-governmental public consultation."

Corruption

Wikipedia defines "Political Corruption is the use of power by government officials for illegitimate private gain." In my thinking, what the Aam Aadmin Party has done in Delhi fits into this Political Corruption view. Aam Aadmin Party was the government and it used its government powers to gamble away the government for the illegitimate private benefit of the Aam Aadmi Party. The loss of governance in Delhi has to be borne by the Delhi residents. Meanwhile the Aam Aadmi Party is forcing additional election expenses on the Nation on its gamble to come back with greater majority. Which Jan Lokpal Bill will try Aam Aadmi Party for its Political Corruption?

Mother Nature and Father God

Who are you?

You are an intelligent person. You have your own will. You also have your own emotions. Additionally, you also own a physical body somewhat like you own a vehicle. As I mentioned in an earlier blog "The GOD I believe in", you are not your body. Alternately, your body is not you. Any one taking a space flight will need a space suit, to survive in space, which is hostile to your physical body. After returning from space, the space suit is put aside. Similarly, your body is your earth suit, designed for you to live in this physical world. With your mind, will and emotion you make changes to the world in which you live through your body.

How did you get your body? We do not have human body shops to order one. Your mother produced it for you. What will happen to your body when you put it aside? It will decay and turn into earthly materials it is composed of. It is the life in you that keeps your body living.

Mother Nature

A mother is a living person with a mind, will and emotion of her own. From time to time we keep on hearing about Mother Nature. Who is this Mother Nature? Where is the residence of Mother Nature? Does this Mother Nature have a personality? There is a two way relationship between a mother and her child. How do you have a relationship with Mother Nature? Wikipedia defines Mother Nature as '... personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of mother ...'. Your mother gave your life and nurtured you. Since nature is impersonal, personification of nature leads to lot of wrong assumptions in the mind of people.

Father God

I guess the people who personify Mother Nature are the people who are looking for an alternate to Father God. In an earlier blog I had shared about the God I believe in. Father God of The Bible has personality and has mind, will and emotion. God of The Bible in Exodus 3:14 says about Him, "I AM WHO I AM". One of the important characteristics of a mother is her love for her child. Can Mother Nature love? The God of the Bible is a loving God. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life".

Next time whenever you see the term 'Mother Nature', please examine if the statement can literally be true. Try to substitute 'Father God' instead of 'Mother Nature' and see if it makes sense.

Your body

In The Bible Psalm 139:14 says "Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it". You have a wonderful body. Did you or your parents do anything to make it the way it is? Each and every part of your body is so complex and purposefully designed. Yet evolutionists attribute the complexity of an intelligent work to non-intelligent Mother Nature.

According to a National Geographic article the human body is estimated to have anywhere between 5 billion to 200 million trillion cells. The following image of human cell is taken from here.

See how complex a single cell is. How numerous they are in a human body carrying out many different functions. Do you think a non-intelligent impersonal mother nature could evolve into this level of complexity without intelligent design?

The following image is taken from here. This structure shows the signalling mechanism that cells use for communication.

Some of our complex systems are designed using computers and intelligent software. Who designed and implemented this complex cell pathway signalling without computers and software?

Diabetes is reversible

In general I have been reasonably healthy. I hardly had the need to visit a doctor. The last time I had to visit a doctor was to get the doctor's signature in my driving licence renewal form in 2011.

Some times towards the last week of January, I felt uncomfortable at work. So, I went to a hospital to see an emergency doctor. The CT Scan and ECG were okay. When they took my blood sugar level, I came to know that I had elevated blood sugar level. Since this is the first time I had elevated blood sugar level, the doctor has advised me to bring it under control by diet and exercise.

In the past I had not shown any interest in studying medical facts. My August 2010 blog "He sent His WORD and healed them" show where my faith in healing is. Before I wrote that blog, I had started to study about divine healing from the Internet, because of my wife's brother, Ranjit's health. Ranjit had a stroke, and was partially paralysed and lost his speech. I was learning on how to pray for Ranjit's healing according to biblical principles, while he went about with his regular medical treatments. The blog "Mother, oh my mother dear" is a poem that Ranjit wrote when his mother passed away.

Some times in August 2010, Ranjit went to a hospital in Delhi, for regular medical checkup. Because of the stroke, Ranjit had mobility problem, and the hospital advised him to get admitted so that they could do all the tests without too much inconvenience to him. After about two or three weeks in the hospital he passed away. The type of things I saw at the hospital, when he was admitted there, created a negative impression of the medical community in me and some of that are reflected in my Facebook posts from time to time. The blog "O! Ranjit My Son" is a poem his aunt wrote in memory of Ranjit.

After my elevated blood sugar level diagnosis, I have started scanning the Internet to understand about blood sugar level control. My search has led me to Dr Hyman, who teaches "Food is medicine", and shows that Diabetes can be reversed by right food, in his web site Blood Sugar Solution and his books. So, for the moment I am trying to understand his teaching and working on changing my food habits to bring my blood sugar level under control.

I have nothing conclusive to write here about the effectiveness of Dr Hyman's methods, but I am posting this blog hoping that this information may be useful to some one else also.

Dr Mark Hyman Videos.

From the YouTube Videos, I have found that there is a large Church, led by Rick Warren (Author of Purpose Driven Church, Purpose Driven Life etc.) that has an organized program called the Daniel Plan. based on Dr Hyman's materials.

'F J Pandiaraj blogs' Facebook page

So far, I have not been a regular blogger. Occasionally, I have blogged in the past. There was only one post in 2013 and before that four in 2010.

I noticed that in January 2014 alone, I had posted 6 times. Most of these blogs had to do with comparing some real life happening with a view point from the Bible. So looks like the desire to compare what is happening in life, with what the Bible says, seems to be growing in me. Don't know how long this interest will sustain.

In my Facebook page, almost all the friends I have are personally known to me, and have met them some time in real life. There are a few others, who are my Facebook friends, because I wanted to follow some thing they had to say. Only my Facebook friends can post in the time line of my Facebook account.

I have created the 'F J Pandiaraj blogs' Facebook page, so that I can have friends who may not be personally known to me, yet will be able to post in this page. That helps me to keep my Facebook page separate from blog related posts.

Any Facebook user should be able to visit this page and from there follow the blogs and post their comments in Facebook.

If you have Facebook friends who might be interested in my blogs, please go to this page and invite them to like this page.

Please feel free to express your opinions about the blogs here.