Nutrition and Emotional well-being, how the food we eat influences our emotions.

In ancient Greece, Aphrodite was the goddess of Love and Beauty.

In Greek, the anagram of the word “Afroditi” gives us the word “Diatrofi”, which means “nutrition”.

The Ancient Greeks tell us that if we wish to have energy flowing in our bodies and in our lives, and to have mental and spiritual balance, nutrition is a vital prerequisite.

Pythagoras was mankind's first nutritionist after Asclepius. He taught that

“the soul is the harmony of the body. It belongs to the body in the same way that the sounds of a musical instrument belong to instrument that produces them, and it needs proper nourishment”.

He discouraged his students from eating animal flesh and from drinking wine. He studied the subject of food and digestion extensively. He also discouraged his students from eating legumes because he considered them difficult to digest. He believed in the value of raw foods such as vegetables, fruit, milk, honey, sprouted wheat, nuts and raisins.

Today we know that these foods contain all the necessary enzymes, vitamins and trace elements that the organism requires to have mental, bodily and emotional health.

The Orphics, the Personalist philosophers and Pythagoras excluded meat and fish from their diet, even though in those days the fish were not full of heavy metals and the meat was not full of hormones. Pythagoras maintained that flesh-eating is one of the root causes of belligerence. This has been confirmed by experiments on animals.

Ann Wigmore, the founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute describes the following case:

One of her colleagues, John McDonald, was breeding a colony of mice. For six months the mice were fed only grains. The colony was peaceful. Then he started feeding the mice with the leftovers from a nearby restaurant. After 20 days they were shocked to discover evidence of cannibalism. Mothers would eat their young, and the more aggressive males would attack weaker mice without provocation. They changed the diet of the mice to grains again, and after a while peace was restored in the colony.

Galen believed that meat increases the melancholic humour in the body. So, not only does it affect the body with its toxins, but it also affects the soul.

Dr. Bernard Jensen, known as the Father of Holistic Health, said that the day will come when we realize that we are nourished by the electromagnetic energy of the food and not by its material substance. Kirlian photograms record the energy emitted by seeds, a fact that proves that they have energy.

Foods carry vibrations that are added to our own. When an animal is being slaughtered, the hormones of fear (adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisone) course through its body and fill its flesh. When we eat its meat, in effect we feed ourselves with the panic of the slaughtered animal.

HIPPOCRATES.

Based on the teachings of the Personalists regarding the four classical elements (Air, Fire, Earth and Water), Hippocrates maintained that these elements express themselves in the human body via the four humours, which in turn determine the temperament and physique of a person.

When the four humours are in balance in the body, the person is healthy, has a calm temperament and a balanced physique. When there is an excess or deficit of one or more humours, there is an imbalance in the body and as a result we have specific health problems, temperamental disturbances and physical distortions.

The Sanguine type is the luckiest of the four.

The Sanguine type is

Carefree Optimistic Playful Flirtatious Witty

The Choleric type is

Hypersensitive Aggressive Explosive Full of energy

The Melancholic type is

Sad Moody Depressed

The Phlegmatic type is

Calm Unperturbed Cool Collected

The health problems faced by the Sanguine type have the characteristic of fever and inflammation. They range from acne to psoriasis, gastritis, ulcer and dry eyes.

The Phlegmatic type’s health problems have the characteristic of edema and swelling.

• Her metabolism is slow, so she gains weight easily.

• She suffers from indigestion and bloating of the stomach and the intestines.

• Bronchial problems.

• Allergic rhinitis.

The problems faced by the Choleric type are mainly neurological (migraines, headaches, tachycardias, arrhythmias) and ailments of the alimentary tract.

The Melancholic type’s problems are the same as the Choleric type’s but more acute. In addition, this type suffers from

• Depression

• Cancer

Hippocrates taught that doctors must teach their patients to eat according to their temperament, because what might be medicine for one person might be poison for another.

Negative emotions and depression are caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in key points of the central nervous system. The neurotransmitters are chemical substances such as dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin which regulate the transmission of signals between brain cells. This imbalance can be caused by nutritional deficiencies.

Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling, who worked on orthomolecular psychiatry, taught that a bad diet causes chemical imbalance in the brain (i.e. the 4 humours of Hippocrates). There are foods that promote emotional health.

Galen, who advanced Hippocrates’ work, taught that cancer is the long term effect of too much black bile in the body. He discouraged people from eating foods that increase black bile, such as meat, condiments and alcohol. “Happy and contended women do not get cancer”, he used to say.

Today, even though people may have a full stomach, they are malnourished to a lethal degree. This phenomenon is not caused by the lack of food, but by the over-consumption of unsuitable foods such as processed foods.

The more people distance themselves their traditional diet, the weaker the future generations become.

Francis M. Pottenger studied different groups of cats over several generations. One group he fed with the raw foods that cats normally eat. Another group he fed with the same foods as above, but cooked instead of raw. To a third group of cats he gave the raw food of the first group but mixed with condensed milk, which contains sugar. The cats of the first group lived longer and gave birth to healthy offspring, for two generations. The second group did not live as long, and the succeeding generations were less healthy that the previous ones. The third group gave birth to one generation which had many health problems. The second generation of this group was sterile and that was the end of this group!

Like the cats, each one of us inherits endocrinal code from our parents and we pass it on to our children.

You understand that the future of Greece, the future of all countries, depends on the health of its citizens.

There is only one solution, and the road to health is a one-way street. We must inform ourselves and we must become doctors of ourselves.

Remember: one gram of prevention is better than one ton of treatment, and the best time to start is today