 There seems to be this idea in alternative medicine That you see in California a lot that whenever people get sick or they get a serious illness like cancer and they survive They beat the odds For some reason you always tend to hear things like Fasting is what did it or green juice is what did it or more often in some extreme dietary change is what did it? Now I thought having heard this before from other people that this would be a very very important topic for this video on why I do Not think food will cure most illnesses and why this is a very very important thing to discuss a guy's dr Hine doctor of Chinese medicine now a very important question or a very important statement actually will follow the question after Going back thousands of years of Chinese medical history There's always been a distinction between what is considered food grade Medicine and what is considered medical grade medicine and a very important book that talks about this distinction It's called the Shen Nong Ben Xiao Jing this book goes back several thousand years and it classifies Medicinals if I can say that into various categories now it breaks them down into the three main categories The first is the upper level medicinals The second is the middle level medicinals and the third is the lower level medicinals now These are categorized for a very important reason number one they're categorized based on their strength and the safety Upper level medicinals have low toxicity. They can be taken for a long time They don't have a lot of side effects lower level medicinals have a strong effect of physiology meaning they can treat serious illnesses but they're really not safe to take long term because they can have side effects and a lot of them have a certain degree of Toxicity but that toxicity in other words like an alkaloid in the plant is used to treat an illness what's very very important is that we have these three grades and Throughout Chinese medical history people have mentioned things like this is a food grade medicinal or Medical grade right but the distinction between what's food grade and what is used as a medicine is very very important And the fact that this book going back thousands of years distinguishes between this is a Lower level medicinal meaning. It's very strong and is required to treat serious illness versus an upper level medicinal Which is a higher safety profile, but which may not necessarily be able to treat illnesses or serious illness and Food is often in that upper or middle grade medicinal category Now why is that important number one the most important thing is because if food were enough to cure and treat illnesses Why would medicine even exist now? Let's talk about something else. Let's give the example of ulcerative colitis I've seen patients where they are having 10 15 20 bloody bowel movements with pus per day and they can only eat two foods You know rice and maybe some kind of meat like fish or chicken. That's all I can eat Now a person like this even with a really really strict paleo diet like I've seen people Manage ish their symptoms with a very strict paleo diet. No starches. No carbs or specific carbohydrate diet but what inevitably happens is that they're doing great for a while and then something causes them to flare and At that point food is not strong enough at all to treat that flare and most often They'll end up getting prednisone or something like that from their physician To calm the flare and then they can go back to their food grade therapy The problem is that I have not seen anything besides Chinese formulas that are strong enough to manage that acute flare That's the reason why prednisone for example is given that a strong immunosuppressant is given for that pattern When there's this acute flare up if food was enough to do that that I think somebody would have figured that out by now I'm sharing this not to discourage people but just to be Evidence-based that if I really saw the evidence that food could treat all serious diseases You know these these stories of people going on these crazy fasts or the gersin I think the gersin therapy these high doses of fruits and vegetables If I thought that were really the thing that worked I would recommend it But I don't think that's the thing that worked because I think that there are Based on thousands of years of evidence and based on the obvious clinical evidence There are stages and grades of illness and there are stages and grades of interventions and therapies You know some people call this the therapeutic order, you know You intervene with low-level interventions before going to surgery obviously that's really important to know Because I think a lot of people run around thinking that green juice is gonna cure every problem And I don't just don't see the evidence of that and so it's important having been a sick person now multiple times Knowing what it's like and knowing what it's like to feel disappointed by both conventional medicine and alternative medicine I think it's really important to be realistic about what is needed to treat serious illnesses And I think for a lot of them food is not enough Maybe for some maybe even pretty serious diabetes Could reverse with you know, you can have good clinical results with diet All right, you can change those symptoms dramatically For other patterns as well But I think understanding that some interventions are food grade some are medical grade and within Chinese medicine We have formulas that are considered more food grade and herbs that are more food grade versus more medical grade Only at this stage in depth this strength formula will treat serious illnesses So the good news is that I find that Chinese formulas encompass all those areas of the spectrum both food grade You can take a low dosage or more Conservative formula over time let's say for digestive problems or you can ramp up to something that is very very strong for an acute ulcerative colitis or an acute autoimmune flare to help manage those symptoms and It's important to know when to differentiate between the two and that's because Chinese medicine has always been a primary care form of medicine For thousands of years everything from chronic illness to the acute hospital system was Chinese medicine back in the day whenever that day was and So there is a very refined and sophisticated way to understand. Is this a food grade problem? Or is this a medical grade problem and knowing when to use what so I thought I would share that because you know I see living in California for the first time how often the distinction between What people believe will heal an illness and what really does in my experience is There's often a big rift there and so I would thought I would shoot this video because it's a very interesting distinction in Chinese medicine food versus medical grade and a very important distinction in daily life because You're ill the only thing that matters is the healing of that illness, right? That's that's the number one thing So we have to be realistic about what works. All right, you guys, so that's all I have for you today Again, I have a free download below this video Which is five daily rituals that can help you add years to your life potentially with Chinese medicine And if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine You can look up the info on my private practice and clinic the link right below this video to get my phone number and my contact info