Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up
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About this ebook
In Farmacology, practicing family physician and renowned nutrition explorer Daphne Miller brings us beyond the simple concept of "food as medicine" and introduces us to the critical idea that it's the farm where that food is grown that offers us the real medicine.
By venturing out of her clinic and spending time on seven family farms, Miller uncovers all the aspects of farming—from seed choice to soil management—that have a direct and powerful impact on our health. Bridging the traditional divide between agriculture and medicine, Miller shares lessons learned from inspiring farmers and biomedical researchers and artfully weaves their insights and discoveries, along with stories from her patients, into the narrative. The result is a compelling new vision for sustainable healing and a treasure trove of farm-to-body lessons that have immense value in our daily lives.
In Farmacology you will meet:
- a vegetable farmer in Washington State who shows us how the principles he uses to rejuvenate his soil apply just as well to our own bodies. Here we also discover the direct links between healthy soil and healthy humans.
- a beef farmer in Missouri who shows how a holistic cattle-grazing method can grow resilient calves and resilient children.
- an egg farmer in Arkansas who introduces us to the counterintuitive idea that stress can keep us productive and healthy. We discover why the stressors associated with a pasture-based farming system are beneficial to animals and humans while the duress of factory farming can make us ill.
- a vintner in Sonoma, California, who reveals the principles of Integrated Pest Management and helps us understand how this gentler approach to controlling unwanted bugs and weeds might be used to treat invasive cancers in humans.
- a farmer in the Bronx who shows us how a network of gardens offers health benefits that extend far beyond the nutrient value of the fruits and vegetables grown in the raised beds. For example, did you know that urban farming can lower the incidence of alcoholism and crime?
- finally, an aromatic herb farmer in Washington State who teaches us about the secret chemical messages we exchange with plants—messages that can affect our mood and even keep us looking youthful.
In each chapter, Farmacology reveals the surprising ways that the ecology of our body and the ecology of our farms are intimately linked. This is a paradigm-changing adventure that has huge implications for our personal health and the health of the planet.
Daphne Miller, M.D.
Daphne Miller, M.D., is a practicing physician, author, and professor of family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. For the past decade, her writing and teaching has explored the frontier between biomedicine and the natural world. Her widely acclaimed first book, The Jungle Effect, chronicles her nutrition adventures as she travels to traditional communities around the globe. A contributing columnist to the Washington Post as well as other newspapers and magazines, Miller holds a medical degree from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from Brown University. She lives and gardens in Berkeley, California.
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Reviews for Farmacology
26 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating read. Connects so many threads of health and nature. Recommend highly.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is great because it really makes sense to connect physical health with the food that we eat and the communities we involve ourselves in. So important to know where your food comes from and what it has been treated with. There is a great deal of good sense here.
I also learned about hydrosols and I'm looking into buying some to add to my daily routine of natural products. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some interesting lines drawn here between sustainable agriculture practices and treating the human body in a like respectful manner, acknowledging the complexities and inter-relationships with our environment. The first chapter is kind of a review of what biodynamic farming is, chapter 2 emphasizes the best ways to encourage resilience in children, with special emphasis on asthma. Chapter three compares eggs produced two ways, and the levels of stress the chickens endure. Chapter 4 talks about IPM (integrated pest management) in a wine orchard and reflects on a very new approach to cancer management. Chapter 5 was perhaps the best, discussing ALL of the benefits that community gardening promotes, from lower crime rates to community engagement and beauty. Chapter 6 begins a discussion of aromatics distillation that I'd like to learn more about. By the end of the book, it was apparent that Dr. Miller loves to gad about the globe on any pretext. She does a thoughtful job of considering what she learns.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I just read this book for work and really enjoyed it. I thought she did a great job of appealing to trendy farm types, the medical community, and casual readers looking for a way to feel better. I also like that while she does promote farmers markets and healing plants, she's not extremist about it -- she still believes in modern medicine when it's truly needed.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One thing I’ve become passionate about is the local food movement. Yeah it’s an old one, but I’m a latecomer. There are a lot of books that link human health directly to food and those are necessary, but this book looks at the connection between the soil that grows that food (whether it be animal or vegetable) and our health. As a general practitioner, Dr. Miller became frustrated at her inability to “fix” some of her patients through modern methods and turned her attention outside of that. There are a lot of topics that get touched on in each chapter; gut flora and its differences across cultures and how that reflects in people’s health, egg production and how pastured v. factory affects egg nutrition, how a winery approaches integrated pest management and how that connects to cancer research, how urban farming can change individuals and neighborhoods for the better, natural skincare that actually works and much much more. She spends time with a variety of farmers, most of whom are dedicated to biodiversity and soil health. The idea that if you feed the soil first, anything you produce from it will be more healthy both for consumption and for the mechanism of the farm itself. I expected a chapter on Polyface farm with Joel Salatin, but even without him and the case is made well. Mono-agriculture and a lot of the techniques that follow on are just plain destructive and do not improve the health of people or anything else that eats what it grows. No, the book isn’t perfect and she makes some leaps of logic without tracing back to how she reached those conclusions, but it is a heartfelt book that seeks answers to difficult health questions. If you’re interested in how polyagriculture farming can improve your health, this is a good place to start.