Eat to Taste

"Lose weight!" I do believe that doctors must take a course on harangue for that simple exhortation. For who, it seems, does not get ordered by their family physician to take off a few pounds? A handful of us, yes, may be encouraged to gain mass. But they appear to be the outliers. We should envy them.

Still, most of us could stand to drop a few pounds. One way, perhaps, would be to not eat as though the meal in front of you is the first thing you've had in a week. Take your time and enjoy the taste of the food.

I'm trying to employ that manner of eating, though with little real success just yet. But I have my moments.

Just yesterday morning, in fact, a bowl of cereal in front of me, I forced myself to eat more gently. Rather than jam a heaping tablespoon of it into my mouth (I probably should have used a teaspoon, I know) I let the bulk of the cereal slide back into the milk. Further, I actually chewed that lessened helping instead of immediately forcing another huge spoonful into my gaping maw. This chewing the food led me to an interesting discovery.

A surprisingly pleasant, sweet taste appeared on my tongue. In eating slowly and deliberately, mind you, it hit me. I was tasting the raisins in the raisin bran. I was eating slow enough to taste the food. And it tasted good. No; it tasted great. I suppose because I was in fact tasting rather than inhaling my breakfast.

I'll have to try that with other meals. And maybe it could help me lose weight, although I'm sure my doctor will simply dredge up another personal habit of mine to criticize. 

Faith and Good Health

Metro Detroit doctor Earlexia Norwood prays. She prays for guidance while diagnosing illnesses, and sometimes prays with her patients. It's because she believes that faith helps the healing process, and that medicine can't do everything.

There has been much research on the connection between faith and healing. Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, says that there have been many studies into the issue of religious belief and curing the sick, and that around two-thirds of them find a healthy correlation between the two.

It is fascinating to hear Detroit physicians and surgeons so accepting of the role faith plays when treating their patients. True doctors, those open to the fact that they can't do it all medically, are more than willing to give the higher powers of religion their due. After all, they became doctors to help people. The desire to help is naturally unselfish and welcomes any aid which it may get. It makes you wonder how much healing we might receive in any and all walks of life if we were self effacing enough to put faith at the center of curing all societal ills and not only the physical.