SHOWCASE MAGAZINE | 2018
THREE THEORIES OF FOOD’S HEALING
POWERS
There are dozens of scientifically plausible ways food
can affect health. However, three umbrella theo-
ries fuel and shape much new research into food’s
healing and preventive powers. These three theories
focus on:
• Disease- fighting antioxidants in foods
• The unappreciated pharmacological powers of fat
• New kinds of food “allergies”. Intolerances or
sensitivities
If you understand these theories, you can better
appreciate how food can counteract or promote
disease and how you can best protect yourself.
ANTIOXIDANTS
Many of our health misfortunes are due to perver-
sity of oxygen. Yes, the very stuff that gives life can
also help take it away. It’s a remarkable proposition –
that our cells are perpetually besieged by toxic forms
of oxygen, our existence wiped out, a molecule at a
time, by the element’s fierce destructive powers. At-
tacks by continual bursts from oxygen reactions help
dog our arteries, turn our cells cancerous, make our
joints give out and our nervous systems malfunction,
in fact, the new theory about oxygen has revolution-
ized the scientists look at the genesis of disease has
revolutionized the way scientist look at the genesis
of disease and its prevention. It is the single most
significant line of inquiry behind science’s strong
new belief in the power of food to thwart bodily
deterioration. So far, scientists have linked destruc-
tive oxygen reactions to at least 60 different chronic
diseases, as well as to ageing itself.
“The older we are, the more oxidized we get”, ob-
serves Helmeut sies, M.D., chairman of the depart-
ment of physiological chemistry at the university of
Dusseldorf Medical School in Germany, and a lead-
ing scholar on the subject. In less gentle terms, we
are all somewhat like a piece of meat that has lain
around too long. We are going rancid; some of us
are faster than others. These are the crucial ques-
tions. Why do certain people go bad more quickly or
conversely, why do some folks age less rapidly and
seem less prone to disease? How can we slow down
the destructive process?
As Dr. Sies explains, the oxygen theory of disease is
not very subtle. Two formidable forces are in combat
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