Abstract

GONZALEZ GRANDON, Ximena A.. Self-care and cancer prevention: from pre-Hispanic Nahuas to contemporary nutraceuticals. Rev. salud pública [online]. 2020, vol.22, n.3, pp.360-367.  Epub Sep 01, 2020. ISSN 0124-0064.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rsap.v22n3.87216.

The pre-Hispanic Nahuas had a medical system that included healing foods among their therapeutic practices. Nowadays, a new knowledge is born, legitimated by experimental sciences: the nutraceutical, a food with curative properties used in cancer preventive health models. In this article, I begin by proposing that pre-Hispanic knowledge can be validated epistemically and methodologically, if we appeal to the particular conceptual framework of the pre-Hispanic. Later, that the consumption of nutraceuticals, as anti-cancer drugs, can be thought of as part of primary and secondary preventive measures, as well as in the understanding of self-care practices in the framework of contemporary cancer bioethics. Specifically, that the consumption of nutraceuticals and Mexican pre-Hispanic foods can be legitimized as increasingly relevant wellness and prevention practices, at the intersection of the patient's experience and his or her context. The responsibility of those who suffer, within a sociopolitical context that is increasingly structured by the demands of vulnerability of the therapeutic market and the confessional strategies that give truth and validity to the figures of authority over whom they suffer, is gained in the practice of knowing and understanding oneself within contextual intersubjetivity.

Keywords : Nahuatl prehispanic; healing food; epistemological pluralism; nutraceutical; biotechnology; anti-cancer; lycopene (source: MeSH, NLM).

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