Using Food to Create Health Is Great Medicine

When eating a vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free diet becomes a lifestyle, the medicinal benefits may outpace those offered by strong prescription painkillers. At least this has been the experience of one London woman born with a rare condition that causes her chronic, near-constant pain.

Natasha Lipman suffers from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS, which renders the body’s connective tissue “too weak to hold the skeleton together correctly.” The activities of daily life can become traumatic: turning on a faucet may dislocate fingers or having blood pressure taken can pull a shoulder out of socket.

But today, Natasha is an active, smiling professional working as a web developer for Virgin Unite (the charitable arm of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group), a far cry from just six months ago when she thought she might never get out of bed again.

What made all the difference? Natasha calls it a “a plant-based, gluten free, refined sugar free, caffeine free, anti-inflammatory, high nutrient, long rotation diet.”

You can check out all of Natasha’s diet advice, including how to travel while eating healthy food, on her website nutritiouslynatasha.com.

In his Big Think interview, physician Mark Hyman explains why creating health is more important than treating disease: