Living and Eating the Natural Way

It's not just for hippies anymore - learn about natural livingand what it means to your diet.

By Norine Dworkin, published on March 01, 2001 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004

These days, more and more health professionals recognize that good health depends largely on good behavior. Most hospitals now have behavioral medicine divisions, staffed by psychologists, psychiatrists and physicians to ensure patients get the best overall care. The American Psychological Association's health psychology division is also devoted to integrating biomedical information about health and illness with current psychological knowledge.

This new professional mindset is propelled by the public's overwhelming fascination with alternative treatment approaches. Simply put, more people are turning to complementary and alternative medicine to cure what ails them. According to a survey published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the number of Americans using alternative therapies rose from 60 million in 1990 to 83 million in 1997. Many of these therapies were used for centuries, but lost prevalence with the advent of modern medicine. So why are they now regaining favor? Not only are we dissatisfied with conventional medicine, say the results of another survey that appeared recently in JAMA, but alternative treatments mirror our beliefs, values and philosophical attitudes.

Still, as unhappy as we may be with Western medicine, many Americans distrust anything with no scientifically proven benefits, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration--our go-to for what's safe and what's not--has no jurisdiction over herbal remedies and dietary supplements.

The good news is that scientists are beginning to unravel the mysteries of how certain substances work in the body to protect against illness and age-related decline. In 1992, Congress established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). A division of the National Institutes of Health, NCCAM has three primary goals: evaluating the safety and efficacy of natural products; supporting the scientific study of those products; and evaluating the practices that implement them.

The public's need for safe alternative medicine is evidenced by NCCAM's steadily rising budget, which jumped from $2 million in 1993 to $68.7 million in 2000. With such financial backing, evidence touting the benefits of alternative therapies is increasing, and society is embracing newly proven ways of obtaining health.

One foundation for a healthy life is eating a balanced diet. Hippocrates said, "Let food be our medicine." But even with the most virtuous diet, factors like over-processing rob foods of the nutrients necessary to prevent deficiencies and provide therapeutic benefits. "We're getting cheated," declares Phyllis Balch, C.N.C., coauthor of Prescription for Nutritional Healing (Prima Publishing, 2000). "Most of us aren't getting the nutrients we need."

Multivitamins and multimineral supplements aren't foolproof either, as conditions like memory loss may require more, or different, nutrients. Or think of the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids--promising for improving brain function and warding off depression--which are consistently AWOL from the average daily diet.

"Prevention of chronic disease is a different issue than nutrient deficiency," says Clare Hasler, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois Functional Foods for Health Program. "In some instances, you can't get nutrients at the levels recommended for chronic disease prevention through diet alone."

With so many things to consider, how can we stay abreast of the latest and ever-growing health findings? Visit www.nccam.nih.gov, or check out The Natural Healing Companion (Rodale Press, 2000).