When it comes to weight loss or maintaining a healthy weight, adding a healthy source of protein is an important part of boosting your metabolism and burning fat. As we all know most people eat meat as their main source of protein. However a new research suggests that people who eat meat as their main source of protein could be shortening their lifespan by a large margin. On the other hand, researchers suggest that people who eat mostly vegan or vegetarian diet tend to live longer and have a better quality of life.
There is more to diet than just considering a vegan diet or eating more herbs to stay healthier. There is a long history going for thousands of years in consideration of the consumption of vegetables and herbs for health reasons and well as for medical healing.
Going back thousands of years, the Persians, Romans, and even Egyptians (to a lesser degree) had indicated many benefits of vegetables and herbs and had many medical practices and cures based on such knowledge. The Persians had an extensive list of cures more than 2500 years ago based on herbs containing powerful ingredients (including health promoting nutrients, antioxidants, and phytochemicals) that would promote or help the healing if used properly. In fact, the pharmaceutical companies use these herbs to make prescription drugs and sell them for a 1000% profit, simply by offering a higher dose to address a particular illness.
This is where herbalists disagree with pharmaceutical companies and suggest that nature knows best and nature has already integrated cancer-fighting properties into our food supply chain, through vegetables and herbs, and further stress that there are many other ingredients in our vegetables and herbs that work together for maximum effect and singling out an ingredient and increasing its dosage may not be as effective as the combine effect which addresses the overall balance the makes the dosage much more powerful for healing rather than just higher dose of one ingredient. This idea has been much more acceptable by scientists which suggest that the total combined effect of all the ingredients (even if some of the ingredients are less potent) help the absorption, the processing, the extraction of nutrients, and the body’s reaction that all combined will result in helping the counterbalance of reactions in the body to be more balanced and synergistic and creating a harmony that the body find familiar and accept and utilize in healing process. Overdosing just one ingredient may be found to be alien in the natural processes inside the body and may diminish its effectiveness.
All herbal remedies today are based on the understanding that combine effect of all the ingredients in herbs and vegetables are more important than isolating just one ingredient and increasing its potency. Does nature know better or our pharmaceuticals? Many would however argue between the two, depending on their confidence in the medical industry vs. mother nature, or depending on the financial benefits or their own personal agenda or investment portfolio. Pharmaceutical companies’ approach through concentration and synthetic development of commercial drugs have resulted in a huge concern for one of today’s biggest problems which is defined and characterized as the increasing side effects of these powerful synthetic drugs that are often at such doses that the body has a hard time to absorb and adapt without a major reaction of one sort or the other – sometimes quite drastic life-threatening reaction.
It is important to know what Phytochemicals are and to discuss them briefly here. For the last 5 decades, almost all research in nutrition has indicated that diets rich in vegetables, fruits, healthy grains, and some legumes appear to reduce the risk of a wide range of diseases, chronic and acute illnesses, and even cancer and heart disease. These studies all had clearly obvious results-based conclusions that most of the underlying causes to disease, heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. is related to the effects of foods partly due to antioxidants. The higher the level of antioxidants the better the healthy body and the lower the antioxidants the more probe to getting sick and being unhealthy. Once this was understood, medical researchers focused heavily on understanding antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and the process of protecting cells against damage from oxidation through studies that discovered the benefits of fruits, vegetables, and gains containing a healthy group of health-promoting substances that is now referred to as Phytochemicals. These are known as the health promoting, biologically active substances in plants that are responsible for their health-promoting cells that are responsible for color, flavor, and most importantly “natural disease resistant chemicals” or in other words, nature’s own medicine cabinet provide for humans (and animals) to make sure they remain healthy and have a disease-fighting food supply for longevity and for fighting cancer. Phytochemicals seem to fight cancer by blocking the growth and expansion of cancer cells and scientists believe it does so by intercepting and blocking the steps in the process of cancer development or expansion then allowing immune system to kill it or contain it. In many cases, cancer starts or grows through a carcinogen taking over or invading cells, while for instance, broccoli having sulforaphane (a Phytochemicals) that blocks and activates a group of enzymes that attack and remove the carcinogen out of the cell before it can cause harm. This is incredible to consider since it is quite easy to get a healthy dose of Phytochemicals with each meal by eating vegetables like broccoli. Other vegetables offer Phytochemicals to help protect you, such as cabbage, kale, parsley, mint, etc. and all have been created by mother nature to protect you from illness. Isn’t that just amazing?