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Complementary and
Alternative Medicine with Curative Intent: Macrobiotics
| This study uses qualitative medical anthropological
methods to evaluate the effects of macrobiotics on health, healing and
cancer prevention.
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The basic
macrobiotic diet is primarily vegetarian: whole grains,
vegetables, legumes and soy products, sea vegetables, some fish and some
fruit, and is low in fat, sugars and processed foods.
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We are collecting
healing narratives, self-reports of lifestyle and health, and food
diaries, and conducting extensive interviews with about 100 macrobiotic
practitioners and 25 macrobiotic counselors.
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A principal aim is to answer why people adopt
macrobiotics and why they stay on, stop or modify the diet.
We will also consider short- and long-term effects of
macrobiotics, its use as a complementary or alternative cancer therapy
and, for those who claim that macrobiotics helped them, how they used
macrobiotics and conventional therapy, and the course of their disease.
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This research aims to provide associative evidence to provide the
groundwork for future prospective studies on macrobiotics. We have
focused on gaining a broad understanding of the actual practice of
macrobiotics in the Columbia, South Carolina, area.
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Columbia has had one of the most active macrobiotic communities
in the United States for the past 15-20 years.
| The study of macrobiotic
practice is complicated by the fact that macrobiotics is not just a set
of dietary guidelines. Rather, food is seen as medicine and medicine as
food within the oriental concept of balance. Macrobiotic counselors are
reluctant to give hard and fast rules because in their understanding no
foods are necessarily bad for a healthy person, except when eaten in
excess. Thus macrobiotic practice is highly individualized. The adoption
of macrobiotics is also usually associated with a wide diversity of
alternative healing practices and other lifestyle changes. The
qualitative approach is thus essential for the study of the holistic
context of health, healing and diet in people’s actual lives.
Principal
Investigator: Jane
Teas, PhD
Co-Principal
Investigator: Joan
Cunningham, PhD
Project
Coordinator: Puja Verma, MSPH
Consultant:
Ginat Rice, Macrobiotic Chef and Counselor
Graduate
Assistant: C. P. Kanwat, MBBS
Interviewers:
Jane Teas, Ginat Rice, Puja Verma, C.P. Kanwat, Angelica Kushi.
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