Inspiration: When Cordain became a college athlete in the late 1960s, he sought food that would improve his athletic performance. The article that changed his life was "Paleolithic Nutrition," a now-famous paper published in 1985 in the New England Journal of Medicine. It made the case that human beings could be most healthy by emulating the diet and exercise patterns of the Stone Age. Cordain was sold. He speculated that modern health problems didn't start with packaged snack foods but with the advent of agriculture. People began eating more and more—including more high-carbohydrate, fatty foods—all the while stuck in the bodies of Stone Agers. So to maximize our health and fitness, Cordain concluded, we should emulate Paleolithic man.
Food as medicine
Tieraona Low Dog, M.D.
Home base: Tucson, Arizona
Claim: The use of plants and herbs—as both food and medicine—can enhance our health and well-being.
Claim to fame: Appointed to President Clinton's commission on alternative medicine; advises the National Institutes of Health.
Argument: A diet based on plants and whole foods is in itself medicinal, as are dietary herbs and spices, which not only promote wellness, but can cure disease. If you're healthy, such a diet will render supplements and extracts generally unnecessary.
Her regimen: "Predominantly plant-based," with meals made almost exclusively from scratch. Recipes take advantage of a wide variety of spices and herbs. In addition, she takes a multivitamin and omega-3—and exercises—daily.
Must-do recommendations: Low Dog's regimen for the healthy is based on a simple but powerful lifestyle makeover. Not only should you eat a whole food diet, says Low Dog, but "You should also sit down at a table at least once a day and eat with a fork." For people who are ill, there is an entirely different set of recommendations.
Physical activity is also a must. "Thirty minutes every day, no exceptions," says Low Dog, a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do. "Think of it the way you think of washing your hair."
What she's most interested in now: Low Dog is exploring the roles patient beliefs and cultures play in the treatment of disease. "I'm looking at how to work within someone's beliefs," she says. "How do you talk to patients when their culture and beliefs directly collide with your own?"
Inspiration: In Low Dog's family, which is part Native American, "folk remedies were definitely 'it,'" she says. "You had to have a hemorrhage or broken bones to go to the doctor." But as she points out, while her heritage inspired her interest in integrative medicine, she has gone far beyond the confines of any one culture. Her approach to healing draws not only on remedies from Native American cultures, but also from the traditions of Mexican-Americans and African-Americans, Appalachian midwives, and Vietnamese and Korean healers—as well as mainstream medicine.
Her herbal expertise predates her M.D. by several decades. "I was an herbalist, a massage therapist, a martial arts instructor, and a midwife," she says. She even opened a shop—Tieraona's Herbals in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Ultimately, she decided she needed the training to diagnose disease and prescribe stronger medicines.
The Qigong Show
Effie Poy Yew Chow
Home base: San Francisco, California
Claim: The practice of Chow Medical Qigong—a system of slow, meditative movements and regulated breathing to facilitate the flow of qi, or vital energy, through the body—can restore health and movement to even the sickest of people.
Claim to fame: Appointed to President Clinton's commission on alternative medicine.
Argument: Qigong builds energy so that people can overcome toxins in the environment and imbalances in the life force that cause illness, Chow says; its focus on breath and slow movement maximizes the body's oxygenation.
Her regimen: It would be an understatement to say that the basis of Chow's own regimen is the practice of Qigong. It is, in some ways, the entirety of the regimen. "Qigong is a lifestyle," Chow says. "What I teach is what I live." Included in these teachings are dietary approaches, meditation, and the use of supplements as well as Western medicines, when needed.
Must-do recommendations: Practice Chow Qigong exercises and meditation movements, which "exercise the internal organs as well as the neuro-muscular-skeletal system," says Chow. In addition to the practice, she requires a positive mental attitude, giving each client a "prescription" for "at least eight hugs and three bellyaching laughs a day." Says Chow, "A positive mental attitude with love and intention is 75 percent of healing."
Research nuts and bolts: Chow often points to research into the effects of acupuncture needles and how they affect the meridian system (the set of interconnected pathways in the human body through which qi circulates), as well as MRI studies that have shown that the slowness of Qigong practice is better able to spike the body's electrical fields—its qi—than are weight lifting or jogging.
Inspiration: Though she grew up in a family from Canton City in southern China, surrounded by herbs and other staples of traditional Chinese medicine, Chow began her career as a nurse.
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