Food As Medicine - Musings from a Foodie Physician

Over the years as a physician and a foodie, I have conducted my own scientific experiments on the effects of food on health.  Of course my primary subjects in this study have been my family and my pets!
I’m happy to say that all the experiments have been a glorious success, from healing my stepson’s asthma to curing sinus infections, colds and ophthalmic migraines to healing my dog Jazmine’s Lyme arthritis to a level where she can go for walks, spar with her buddy Boosie (a 2 year old Chiweiner who is full of energy).  I am happy to say that I can see the ‘puppy look’ in her eyes again at age 13.

Having been raised by two scientists (my parents) who are also foodies and amazing cooks, I grew up in a home where the smell of roasting spices and bubbling lentils were a common Sunday afternoon sensation.  If I scraped my knee, my mom would make a turmeric poultice to heal it, if I came down with a cold, fennel and ginger tea resolved it.  A cup of over-boiling chai was ever present as an afternoon elixir after a hard day at school – luxurious tea time during hot Indian afternoons that I cherished and a memory that will forever be held in my heart.  This was my original imprint – Food is Medicine.

It still is and will be as long as we are on Earth.

One of the only places that this is not a truth is in the traditional medical system.  Here we are in 2013 with hundreds of thousands of studies on the power of food to heal almost every ailment on Earth, but Corporate Medicine in its endless quest for pharmaceutical management has lost its common sense. For some reason, it is unable to wrap its brain around the concept of – Food is Medicine.

In this blog, I want to share what I love to do most (second to being a mom to my beautiful grown children and pets and spending glorious and cherished time with my family, friends and patients) – cook, smell, create, grow, experiment and live on the wild side with food – all kinds of food – herbs, spices, soups, stews, curry’s and concoctions that will heal colds to high cholesterol and heart disease.

I will share what I've learned from my ancestral roots and all the travels where I have explored different tastes and sensory pleasures with unique foods.  I have also witnessed my patients heal hundreds of ailments over two decades with foods that I will share as we explore the beautiful and medicinal qualities of food together.

What it Feels Like to BE with My Patients

Today I was thinking about the animating force in my body, in all our bodies, in life itself.  This animating force is SOUL.

Rumi says from the moment we are born, our soul is seeking union with Source.  This is the driving force of seekers.  I feel that the closest we can connect to Source in this life is through LOVE.  Music, poetry and art are all ways that come close to feeling the energy of Soul and connection with Source.  Another way to feel it is with people we love.  When I am with my patients, I always feel it.

I began feeling this sensation in my heart early on in my career.  It felt like the bliss of union, of connection and resonance.  It brought with it joy and lightness of being within me – a numinosity.  The moments I spent and still spend with my patients are indescribable, priceless and timeless.  These moments of soulful union are blessings in my life.

It feels something like this – “we are both here in this sacred space together, connected in a ‘soul contract’ to explore and seek a path to healing and wholeness.”

I can say that there is no other feeling quite like this one.  Maybe I can venture to say that it emerges from a portal in my heart that flows from my Life’s Work.  I don’t quite have the words to express what it feels like inside of me to be with my patients. Maybe BLISS is the best descriptor. Of course bliss is borne from LOVE.  Love flows from Soul as it seeks union with Source.  Being with my patients connects me to Source.

I am sure many other physicians feel this way; at least I hope they do.

The Need to Transform the Existing System of Healthcare

There is a movement underfoot in our country that is provocative and exposing. Our shadow is up and it is unraveling itself in all of our institutions. When I left the medical system at age 36, I did so because the corporate intent that I was expected to enable – sick care, felt ‘unethical’ to me. Sick care was not what I was trained to serve. It was not what my heart and soul went into medicine for. But it was required of me by the medical system to generate profit. I was required to keep people sick in order to keep my job.

Deep inside, I knew I was a problem solver. This is what I loved about Internal Medicine. I wanted to uncover the causes of symptoms and ease suffering by working with people to figure out the causes for their illness and how to tap into it to find solutions with them. If our premise is that life is full of precision, then we should be able to figure out the purpose and meaning behind our symptoms and suffering. Our suffering can also help us become real. It has an alchemical effect on our ego that strips it from being ‘all knowing’ to becoming a student of life.

I love medicine. It excites me and it stimulates my thinking at many levels. As physicians, we need to use our knowledge from a context that serves the vocation of medicine.  We also need to use it responsibly and humanistically. This is what we have lost and must regain in health care today. We must open the currently closed system of medicine while maintaining a high standard-of-care. An open system grows and evolves.  A closed system stays stagnant and is based in fear.  Today’s health care system uses fear to keep patients coming.  Its revenue depends on this.

An open system will of medicine is cost effective and patient centered. Its context examines what is wrong but also “what is right about what is wrong”. When we explore symptoms and illness from this framework, we can heal our patients at causal levels. We can use the pathological model within the larger context of a healing model, seeing pathology as a symptom rather than an end.

This context is transforming medicine and evoking health at The Ommani Center for Integrative Medicine. This is a prototype of an ‘open system’.  This was a way I could make medicine REAL and restore and reclaim its SOUL. Becoming Real is the calling of our time. This is our collective path. This can transform our medical system and restore it to what it was originally intended to be.  This will involve physicians who are open to working from this context and patients who expect it.

Midlife as Alchemy

What is Midlife? What is Menopause? What is at stake?
What is our Conditioned-Self?  What is our Authentic-Self? How do they differ?
In my 22 year history as a physician who has worked with thousands of brave and courageous men and women with stories of wounding, suffering and healing, I can say that I have been able to identify the differences between these selves and the intrinsic power that emerges when one leaves the Conditioned for the Authentic Self.  The Conditioned-self is who you were told you SHOULD BE. The Authentic-Self is WHO YOU ARE.   For the first half of our lives, the Authentic-Self is buried beneath the Conditioned.  In the second half, we must re-emerge Authentic.
There is a powerful shift that occurs in midlife when our physiology and soul intersect at this gateway to make room for the REAL to emerge.  This creates a felt space between the Conditioned and Authentic selves.  The traction of the conditioned one pulls at us, urging us to behave from familiarity based in FEAR.  All the ‘shoulds’ fear us into staying stuck.  Fear is the feeling that adapts us in the first half of our lives.  We adapt to be accepted.  Adaptation conditions us. It creates a shell around our Authentic –self that waits patiently for us to awaken.  We learn to withhold our truth; we say ‘yes’ when we want to say ‘NO’. We over-ride our true feelings to be accepted and loved.  For decades we live this way.  We construct our lives from choices that emerge through our conditioning.  We become part of society’s ‘herd’.   We normalize this identity and close our eyes.
When we turn 40, something changes.  A soft whisper fleets through our body and mind, suddenly with no warning.  Sometimes we don’t really hear it, sometimes we try not to.  It beckons us to awaken, to bring LIGHT to our choices.  It says, ‘Who are you really?’  This frightens us.  If we don’t listen, it moves in deeper, rises stronger – as fire, as density -anxiety, depression –in our bellies, pulling us in.  We begin to sweat, to hot-flash; we awaken at 3 am with minds racing and fear coursing in this unknown place.  In the middle of the dark rises a whisper of comfort, the voice of our Soul pulling us in – to connect, to open, to awaken and deliver us finally to our Voice and our Truth.
If we do not listen, it may call to us as cancer, divorce, tragedy, devastation, that forces us inward to evaluate, deconstruct and  make ourselves new.
All this sorting and sifting, transforming and reinventing – THIS is midlife.
This is menopause.
This is not a sickness or a  deficiency. This is NOT a pathology.
This can NOT be medicated away.
This is HERE to stay and it will offer us the fire of alchemy into which we must step to make ourselves WHOLE.
The voice of the Authentic-Self will rise from ashes of the conditioned one as adaptations fall into the fire to be transformed.  If we willingly lean into this, our voice will emerge – FINALLY- the TRUE voice we will use to heal the world.
We will spread our wings and fly out from this fire into life again with wisdom and an inner eye that can never be closed.