5 Things You Need to Know About Diet Therapy

1. Cure Thyself With Food

Diet therapy is a way of treating an illness with the food you eat instead of traditional medicine. The idea is that food is medicine and by altering your diet, you can reduce the risk of certain illnesses, prevent their onset or greatly reduce the effects of a particular disease. Diet therapies are particularly popular in many complementary and alternative medicinal practices such as Ayurveda, whose primary form of healing is diet control. Food is used to control the three doshas, which is how all living beings are classified.

2. Diet to Treat MS

The Best Bet Diet is a popular and effective approach to treating MS. Because the goal of the Best Bet Diet is to slow and ideally reverse, the progression of MS, there are severe diet restrictions. For example, dieters must avoid all dairy. This includes all animal milks, butters and cheese and yogurts that are made from them as well as all products that contain animal fat dairy products. They should also avoid gluten and all the products containing gluten, as well as legumes and all the products that contain them. Refined sugars don't have to be completely eliminated from one's diet but it is recommended that it be avoided whenever possible.

3. Cancer Prevention Grows on Trees

With as much as 90 percent of cancer caused by environmental factors, including diet, following the right diet has become one of the ways people reduce their risk of getting certain types of cancer and to treat the cancer they may have. Dietary changes will be most effective with cancers of the large bowel and the stomach and to the lesser extent breast and lung cancers. Diets that are low in fats, high in whole grains and fruits and vegetables and that aren't full of cured, pickled or smoked foods have been shown to reduce the risk of various cancers.

4. Munch on Illness Preventing Foods

There's also the belief that certain diets offer a greater resistance to illness. Diets followed by Seven Day Adventists have shown a significant reduction in the risk of certain types of cancer and heart disease in the group. Other diets, such as the Eskimo diet, lead to healthy lives with minimal risk of various illnesses even though their diet is high in fat. Other eating habits, such as those followed by Asian and Mediterranean peoples, have also shown a reduction of their risk of heart disease and certain forms of cancers.

5. Relieve ADD and ADHD With Diet

There has been significant research that shows diet can be an effective treatment for ADD and ADHD. Although it's still in the early stages, there have been several studies showing that diet may be the cause of some children's behavioral problems. While there is no set diet in place, diet therapy for ADD/ADHD, is becoming a more used method in treating children who suffer from the disorders.