Dr. Joel Fuhrman, one of our favourite MDs advocating the miraculous strength and resilience our bodies have to restore health, lose weight naturally and thrive, spoke recently about how the body works to resolve chronic conditions without using medications. Join us to hear more:
Isn't that an interesting point he makes that we often use medications to suppress symptoms that are our bodies' way of expelling toxins in the process designed to restore our health. Like when we take an aspirin or Tylenol for a headache, we can be suppressing the natural process of detoxification occurring in the brain (think not drinking coffee for 3 days.) Or if we take a med to suppress a cough or fever, we can be suppressing the body's natural mechanism to expel mucous, toxins or fight off infection.
So often, because we feel uncomfortable with these symptoms we think there's something wrong and getting it to stop is moving us toward greater health. That makes logical sense when we think that getting well would mean feeling better. But sometimes, in the natural process of restoring balance and healing, we may feel worse before we feel better. As such, Dr. Fuhrman suggests we may not want to reduce our fever, cough or headache unless it's threatening our health or life.
If we want to reduce the frequency or degree of symptoms like these, the best way is to reduce the toxins we take in from the outside and produce within our own metabolic system. We can do this significantly with diet and lifestyle changes, particularly a whole food plant based meal plan.
And that was a pretty strong parting comment where he says that traditional medical care using medications to control symptoms can actually shorten lives by overriding and overlooking the resilience the human body has. Yikes.
The recipe is Lemon Greek Potatoes. I love the flavour the lemon, garlic and oregano give to potatoes. See what you think.
To Your Amazing Health,
Connie and Bill
Lemon Greek Potatoes (Serves 2-4)
- 6 good size potatoes, quartered into 1” cubes
- 2 lemons, juiced (save the lemon skins)
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 tablespoons dried oregano
- ½ cup vegetable broth or filtered water
Preheat oven to 400º F.
Add potatoes to a baking pan (8” x 12” works great). Cook 40 minutes.
Pull pan from oven and drizzle lemon juice over potatoes. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon (of 2) of garlic powder and 1 tablespoon (of 2) oregano over dish. Stir to coat potatoes evenly with the garlic powder and oregano.
Add the lemon skins to the baking dish to infuse the potatoes with more lemon taste.
Add vegetable broth or filtered water.
Cover dish with parchment paper and on top of that, aluminum foil.
Cook another 20 minutes and remove from oven.
Remove parchment paper and aluminum foil, add remaining garlic powder and oregano, and stir.
Cook in oven uncovered another 10 minutes and serve.