Food is medicine

I took this photo next to one of my favorite coffee shops in San Francisco in the Outer Richmond District. I don’t know why, but I love grocery store setups like this with the fruits and veggies outside, and all the various vibrant colors to look at. It reminds me of my time in Paris when a lot of shops had fronts set up like this.

I have been noticing lately that I have been more hesitant to trying western medicine lately, such as over-the-counter medicine. I have theories as to where this mindset might have come from, but I definitely know a part of it is because of how I am trying to live my life embodied again. This means listening to messages coming from my body, including its pain and not choosing to mask it with medicine all the time.

I am thankful for western medicine, though, so don’t get me wrong. I am more willing to take western medicine, however, if I know it can treat the root cause of certain conditions. Or, if it will help me do basic activities better, such as simply breathing. I am also thankful for the things I am learning about eastern medicine: inflammatory foods, anti-inflammatory foods, foods that relax me, foods that make up for certain nutrients during certain times of the month for me as a female, etc…

I even read this book not long ago called the Mind-Gut Connection, and part of what was discussed in that book was how our gut biome, as well as things we eat, can affect our emotions. Granted, there seems to be other things at play, too, such as how we handle stress and how that affects our gut biomes. In any case, this book confirmed for me that we really are what we eat. There is also this french biochemist who I have been following, Jessie Inchauspé, who writes a lot about glucose. Needless to say, I have been trying my best to learn about foods in relation to my body a lot the past couple of years.

I still love to eat sweets and sugar, and this month is my birthday month so I am definitely going to eat cake and my favorite desserts. But looking at my life as a whole, I am trying my best to learn about foods as energy and nutrition that can vitalize and heal me. So if anyone has any suggestions on resources, please leave them in the comments below (: