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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
A plan you cannot keep does more than fail. It quietly adds to the pile of evidence that nothing you do makes any difference, and that pile is heavy enough already. So aim at one thing you can carry with you, literally if need be. Something done imperfectly most days beats something ideal that never starts.
God wants ease for you, not hardship (Quran 2:185). That is said of a religious duty, and if a duty bends to what a body can manage, a health plan certainly can.
البقرة
شَهۡرُ رَمَضَانَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أُنزِلَ فِيهِ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانُ هُدࣰ ى لِّلنَّاسِ وَبَيِّنَٰتࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡهُدَىٰ وَٱلۡفُرۡقَانِۚ فَمَن شَهِدَ مِنكُمُ ٱلشَّهۡرَ فَلۡيَصُمۡهُۖ وَمَن كَانَ مَرِيضًا أَوۡ عَلَىٰ سَفَرࣲ فَعِدَّةࣱ مِّنۡ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَۗ يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡيُسۡرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ ٱلۡعُسۡرَ وَلِتُكۡمِلُواْ ٱلۡعِدَّةَ وَلِتُكَبِّرُواْ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ مَا هَدَىٰكُمۡ وَلَعَلَّكُمۡ تَشۡكُرُونَ
It was in the month of Ramadan that the Quran was revealed as guidance for mankind, clear messages giving guidance and distinguishing between right and wrong. So any one of you who is present that month should fast, and anyone who is ill or on a journey should make up for the lost days by fasting on other days later. God wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful
Qur’an 2:185read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Whether advice is realistic is a fair research question in its own right. Randomised trials have shown Mediterranean style eating can be taken up with high adherence well outside the Mediterranean, which is at least evidence that a way of eating can travel. Those trials generally supported participants rather than leaving them to it, so the support looks like part of what makes a change stick.
Murphy KJ, Parletta N. (2018). Implementing a Mediterranean-Style Diet Outside the Mediterranean Region.. Current atherosclerosis reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A small plan that actually gets kept builds the sense that your actions count, and that is what makes the next one possible.
If you want to use herbal remedies, two things carry most of the risk. Make sure whoever prescribes for you knows what you are taking, and buy from a source that has been independently tested.
If you are going to test whether a food matters, work out in advance where the plan will leak. School lunch swaps, a grandparent's biscuit tin, your own memory on a hard week: all of it decides whether the answer means anything.
Even where a herb has good evidence behind it, that evidence belongs to the plant and not to the bottle in your hand. Testing keeps turning up products that do not contain what the label says.