FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE: ORGANIC GARDENING FOR THE BODY

With a growing emphasis of food as medicine and nutrition-related disease, there should be a sense of urgency to protect the quality of our food as well as accessibility to Houston’s growers, local producers, and real traditional unadulterated foods.

When examining farming methods, sustainable farming can be thought of as working with nature to allow her to produce bounty by ensuring healthy vital soil composition with biological nutrients, compost, and organic minerals, encouraging beneficial bugs and pollinators, and harvesting produce when ripe and at peak of nutritional density. When we focus on supporting soil and the life within it (beyond the produce growing in it) we also have improved water retention with less run-off. Conventional farming is unsustainable, focusing on only three nutrients in the soil (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) rather than the hundreds of micronutrients, minerals, and compounds required for optimal development a nutrient dense product. Also, conventional farming is in some ways a battle against nature, working to kill weeds, insects, modify genes, and only catering to the top soil with synthetic fertilizers thus using the soil as a dead anchor rather than a vital source of nutrient exchange. When we only focus on feeding only the plant, we are farming or growing with limits and producing food that is lower in nutrients.

Treating disease in conventional medicine is comparable to conventional farming. This can be seen as focusing on management of conditions by working against the function of the body with medications that block metabolic pathways, inhibit feedback mechanisms, and lead to new undesired symptoms. Symptom management vs. a holistic approach to the body is similar to only working with the top soil of your garden rather than feeding the soil as a whole to ensure less need for external input.

Nutritional density is directly correlated to the root structure and when we feed the soil vs. the plant (treating root vs. silencing the symptoms) such as seen in sustainable methods, the roots need to grow deeper in order to search for nutrients below the surface.

Produce that has to fend for itself without herbicides, insecticides, pesticides against pests, insects, and drought must develop its own shield of protection for survival. This shield is comprised of biocompounds or phytonutrients that have beneficial impacts on our bodies upon consumption. These beneficial impacts come in the form of antioxidants, immune system regulators, anti-inflammatory, detoxifying, and cancer fighting compounds. Organically or sustainably grown produce has more phytocompounds (79% more Quercetin and 97% more Kaempferol) than those seen in conventionally grown foods as well as higher ascorbic acid (vitamin C), lower levels of nitrates, and higher zinc to phytate ratio.

NATURE BEATS MAN IN ALL ACCOUNTS!

Antibiotic resistant organisms, breast milk vs. formula, grass-fed vs. grain-fed proteins, wild vs. farm-raised fish, etc. Nature provides if you let her. For example, dandelion plants tend to grow in calcium-deficient, compacted soils, and their massive tap roots bring calcium back up to the surface. Its seed won’t even germinate unless, to some degree, these soil conditions exist. Also, some “weeds” as we call many of them are forms of super foods to the body! This can be seen with dandelion’s effects on cleansing the liver and promoting detoxification. Or in the nutritional density of wild foods such as purslane, miner’s lettuce, or blackberries, as they tend to be 10-100 times more nutritionally dense than those selectively grown and harvested. Understanding the natural workings of the body allows for a functional medicine practitioner to assess the level of dysfunction and teach the body how to return to balance through nutritional support.

FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE IS SUSTAINABLE GARDENING OF THE BODY!

Rather than silencing the symptoms of imbalances going on below the surface, it is important to understand why the undesired symptom is occurring and how to work with the body through nourishment and removal of irritants to create systemic balance. Treating the body from the root cause through restoring the gut “the soil of the body” with beneficial bugs/microbes “probiotics”, and minimizing toxin exposure promotes optimal conditions for the body to thrive. When we work to improve the functionality of the body rather than block biological pathways and work towards replenishing nutritional deficiency from processed foods or “food-like products” of the industry, we can achieve balance for the body as a whole without side effects!