Chronicle/ Can food be used to treat disease? The position of Professor Moustapha Mijiyawa

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Extract from the article: Hippocrates said: « Let your food be your only medicine ». Hippocrates was the greatest physician of Antiquity and the father of medicine. This quote reveals a divine, social and health truth. A food is defined as a consumable substance, a commodity,

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Hippocrates said: « Let your food be your only medicine ». Hippocrates was the greatest physician of Antiquity and the father of medicine. This quote reveals a divine, social and health truth. A food is defined as a consumable substance, a commodity, a food, a living thing, for the feeding of a population. It is also any substance likely to provide living beings with the elements necessary for their growth or preservation. These foods include fruit and vegetables, cereal products and pulses, dairy products, meat, fish, water and salt.  Food is consumed to provide the nutrients and energy necessary for life and development. For centuries, even millennia, mankind has discovered that natural foods have preventive and curative properties against disease.

The preventive and curative power of food

A number of studies have shown that a healthy, balanced diet can help prevent cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. Live foods help to keep vital organs such as the heart, liver, lungs, intestines, blood vessels, kidneys and brain working properly.Food has a positive effect on mood, morale, thinking, sleep, memory, sexuality, pregnancy, productivity at work and learning.In short, living foods are life's prime mover.The key to health is linked to food choice and standards.This truth is causing controversy among the general public, due to the positions taken by certain medical practitioners who maintain that the power of food over health is an exaggeration.For these practitioners, only medicines rhyme with health. Pharmaceutical drugs, to be more precise.

Health promotion through food is not a language that is widely accepted or used. This is why the health system appears to be a patient production apparatus. The purchase of medicines is a heading that runs through all public health projects, but prevention activities or health promotion through good practices, including good nutrition, are barely mentioned.This is something that needs to be promoted if we are to achieve major public health results.

Population health through diet

Togo has embarked on the process of Universal Access to Healthcare for All or Universal Health Insurance. But if this programme is to achieve its objectives, the first step must be to ensure that people have a good diet.It would be very dangerous for this programme not to place the emphasis on health education, and instead to expect the insured to go to the health centres for treatment. 

Can food heal?

To answer this question, we refer you to the publications of a well-informed specialist. He is the Minister for Health, Prof. Moustapha Mijiyawa.On his personal blog, he publishes some very interesting articles on health in general and diet in relation to health in particular. In the article « Let your food be your only medicine », he demonstrates the historical and current veracity of the virtues of natural or living foods for health, and then recommends the following: « as long as you can heal with food, don't heal with medicine ».

In a poem entitled « Food and health », in the first stanza to the last two lines, the Minister for Health says: « The impact of food on health » / « Covered with a great many illustrations ». Yes, there are many illustrations and palpable proof that food can heal, that its primary role is to ensure health and life. Eating should be an art, a way of taking charge of our health and a pleasure.

A pleasure that these days is focused on taste and the effect it has on the tongue. And that's the tragedy of today's industrially processed foods, which put the emphasis on pleasure, taste, refinement and food escapism, while neglecting natural nutrients.Living or natural foods heal.They are endowed by the Creator with vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients to prevent, avoid or treat disease. This is true.African communities have known it ever since.It is a scientific truth that must be put into practice.It's for the good of our communities.  

Gamé KOKO