ABSTRACT
Traditional Persian medicine (TPM) is a broad range of medicine practices that dates back more than 7000 years. TPM is valuable source of several manuscripts written by Persian physicians. The main aim of TPM is to maintain human health and primary prevention of diseases rather than the cure. Based on TPM theory, diet and lifestyle adjustments are the first step in disease management and the use of simple and multi-component medicines are the next steps. In other words, at the first step of disease treatment, Persian physicians corrected patient nutritional habits and prescribed a special diet for each person. There are several classifications of foodstuffs in TPM and different instructions for their use in health and disease. This chapter describes TPM approaches regarding foods and eating habits, as well as easy-to-use medicinal foods, along with the related supporting evidence in modern literature.
