A guide published by the World Health Organization (WHO) addressing the concept of food as medicine, healthy dietary guidelines from some countries outside the US (India), and one newspaper article featuring a surgeon in Florida promoting nutraceuticals for COVID-19, were some of the few meager offerings by traditional sources. However, despite a plethora of science and research on the topic, it has been even more unusual to encounter a discussion regarding the links between GMOs/pesticide-laden foods and today’s poor health. We can do better.
The way forward is to move beyond Pill for Ill medicine and reorient our health system to a food-focused medical model. As our foods have become engineered and by-products of laboratories and the technocracy, patients and practitioners alike have been engineered and manipulated to believe that food is not important to health. Rather than making a bee-line to the prescription pad when confronted with illness, a redirect to the local farmer’s market should be in order.
While there is no need to throw the baby out with the bath water, reliance on pharmaceuticals can be shifted towards a reliance on our pantries and ovens. In order to offer the type of care that advances the proposition that food is the key integral factor to health, practitioners will have to think beyond the pill.
This type of ecomedicine model is the foundation of a new chapter, Regeneration Health. In this model, health can be sought and achieved only if the food ecosystem in itself is healthy. The sequelae of the healthy food system is the regeneration of soil with the additional benefits of soil restoration, which is offsetting environmental degradation. Our ultimate health is inexorably linked to the health of our soil. The future of our health is tied to regenerative agriculture.
From the dark throes of the pandemic, the holistic health movement has galvanized in the birth and creation of a new, enlightened international campaign, Regeneration Health. This platform will focus on the reorientation and education of the public regarding what real health looks like. The main thrust of this new chapter is to recreate health as a positive experience and move away from monopolized, profit-driven narratives. Regeneration Health will maintain its position as a center of excellence, a source of consumer-friendly resources and educational materials, networking and outreach in the arena of holistic/integrative health.
Along with our allies in the organic food movement and health freedom arena, Regeneration Health will team up with leaders in the regenerative food movement such as the Organic Consumers Association and Regeneration International. A true testimonial to our success will be when the provision of healthy, nutritious and non-toxic food is the centerpiece for public health campaigns. Rather than coerce our present model towards this health paradigm switch, we are calling for the generation of a new model, incorporating many of the tools already found in the holistic health toolbox.
Stay tuned for more information as we unite in the creation of this new coalition in 2022.