Annemarie Colbin, in her book, Food and Healing, presents a chapter on altering diet to combat specific conditions. Her recommendations are based on her own experience as a student of macrobiotics and health food, and a teacher of natural healing and balanced eating. As well as her observations of those whom she treated in consultations, and the transformations of her students over the years. Despite her background in macrobiotics and vegetarianism, Annemarie isn’t dogmatic about food – she recognizes that what is healing for one person, during a particular period of their life, may not be healing for others, or even for that same person at different stages of their life.
She takes as her cue the fact that regular foods have been used for their medicinal value in most traditional cultures. The underlying principle is one of restoring balance. Illness is considered a state of imbalance within the body. And like in homeopathy, she believes that remedies can cause similar symptoms to that which they cure – if the symptoms they can cure are not present, and they are taken in sufficient quantity. So, the remedy should no longer be taken once the symptoms of...