Reprinted by permission from Indian Country Today

Native Foods and Healing Ways

By Brenda Norrell
Indian Country Today

Salmon promotes a healthy heart.

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. -- A new book on "superfoods" encourages eating 14 foods to revolutionize a person's health, including traditional Native foods including beans, pumpkin and salmon.

Native healers, however, say food is only one ingredient on the path to good health, which depends on the balance and harmony of body, mind and spirit. For instance, research scientists have proven that the beat of a drum in a traditional Native ceremony leads the brain to deeper alpha waves and makes more profound thinking and learning possible.

Recently, author and physician Dr. Steven Pratt released "Superfoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life." The book recommends a diet packed with beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, wild salmon, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts and yogurt.

Pratt points out that the foods actually represent categories. For instance, salmon, rich in omega-3 fatty acids to lower blood pressure, is in the group with tuna and trout. Blueberries and strawberries share the same health-giving nutrients.

In the Navajo way, however, food alone does not produce health, which depends on harmony and balance of body, mind and spirit.

Hualapai medical doctor Frank Clarke pioneered scientific research showing the healing benefits of traditional healing ways of Navajos and other Indian tribes, including sweats, herbs, running and even a plunge in the snow at dawn.

Dr. Clarke said holistic health is nothing new to Indian people. Diné singers (medicine men) have long known what modern science only recently discovered, it is impossible to heal a person without treating the entire human being - body, mind and spirit.