Hippocrates

In a live held on 06/01/19 at instagram.com/DrIcaroAlves I talked to hundreds about the “Real MEDICINE - Understanding and Rescuing the Medicine of Hippocrates”. In this live I talked about the importance of medicine based on the teachings of Hippocrates, prioritizing healthy lifestyle habits.

Hippocrates is considered the FATHER of Medicine: so much so that every doctor, upon graduating from medical school, is obliged to take the Hippocratic Oath (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juramento_de_Hipócrates), a beautiful set of precepts that it would really be great if all doctors followed in their daily medical practice (of course, adapting its historical references to current times).

The original oath

“I swear by the physician Apollo, by Asclepius, Hygiea and Panacea, and I take all the gods and goddesses as witnesses, to fulfill, according to my power and my reason, the following promise:
To esteem, as much as my parents, the one who taught me this art; to make a common life and, if necessary, share my property with him; to have his children as my own brothers; to teach them this art, if they need to learn it, without remuneration or written commitment; to make my children, my master's children and the disciples enrolled according to the regulations of the profession participate in the precepts, lessons and all the rest of the teaching, but only the latter.
I will apply the regimens for the good of the patient according to my power and understanding, never to cause harm or evil to anyone.
I will not give anyone a deadly remedy or a piece of advice that leads to loss. Likewise, I will not give any woman an abortifacient substance.
I will keep my life and my art immaculate.
I won't practice carving, even on a confirmed calculation; I'll leave that operation to the practical people who take care of it.
In every home, I will enter for the good of the sick, keeping away from all voluntary harm and seduction, especially the pleasures of love, with women or with free or enslaved men.
What I have seen or heard in or out of the exercise of my profession and in the company of society, that I do not need to divulge, I will keep entirely secret.
If I fulfill this oath faithfully, may I enjoy life and my profession happily, honored forever among men; if I depart from it or violate it, may the opposite happen.”

The first “doctor” in history was the Egyptian “Imhotep” (2650 years BC), but Hippocrates is considered “the most important” for the great set of ideas, classifications and teachings in medicine that he left behind. Among them, the most famous is the phrase “Let your medicine be your food, and your food be your medicine”, so often replicated in an erroneous or incomplete way. Let me explain:

By definition, a remedy (or medicine, almost synonymously) is any resource or substance that serves to combat, reduce or help cure (where possible) symptoms, pains, illnesses or “ailments”. Food, in turn, is any substance that serves to feed or nourish, that serves as a source of matter and/or energy so that organisms can carry out their vital functions. So it's clear that Hippocrates wasn't just talking about “food”!

The “root” of Hippocratic Medicine, therefore, in the light of this phrase and the Oath, would be best described as: that the main thing in Medicine is, as a way of preventing and treating, to seek first and foremost to nourish the body properly and thus optimize its own mechanisms of prevention, self-repair and strengthening.

Only via food? No. The human body needs several different “nutrients” in order to function properly: the vitamins, minerals, fibers, proteins, fats and carbohydrates that come from our food (and/or supplementation), but also, importantly, oxygen, water and energy (solar, heat and even various energies that we exchange with other people and our surroundings, but which science is only just beginning to understand).