Nature healing From Anti Inflamatory Nutrition and Strength Training to Forest Bathing
Dr. Luis May
A German physician in 1930s Eastern Europe treated patients with natural therapies—sunlight, exercise, clean air, and wholesome food. Decades later, frustration with conventional medicine led to adopting holistic practices focusing on anti-inflammatory foods and lifestyle changes to heal chronic illness. Strength training improved health, function, and independence, enabling active living. Regeneration extended to soil restoration by converting barren land into a thriving forest and farm through composting organic waste, embodying nature’s cycles of healing. Health sovereignty arises from nurturing inner soil through nutrition, movement, and light.
"True health sovereignty begins with daily decisions that shape our biology, our future, and our freedom—from the soil within us, nourished by nutrition, movement, and light. Give your body the chance to heal, regenerate, and thrive."
Summary
- Medicine shifted from natural healing to pharmaceutical focus, prompting a return to holistic methods like light, movement, and nutrition. - Anti-inflammatory, whole foods improved brain fog, energy, and overall health, leading to a shift from conventional to natural medicine. - Strength training enhances function, bone density, insulin resistance, and independence, supporting active, sovereign living. - Regeneration of barren land through reforestation and composting creates rich soil, enabling sustainable farming and ecosystem restoration. - True health sovereignty arises from nurturing the body’s “inner soil” via nutrition, movement, and nature’s rhythms, echoing ancestral healing.
Article
From pills to soil: how one doctor is reviving ancestral healing practices
At El Salvador's Reclaiming Health & Longevity Symposium, Dr. Luis May shared his journey from disillusioned physician to advocate of holistic medicine
Returning to his grandfather's healing wisdom
"When the soil is contaminated, it doesn't thrive; give it time to rest, to clean, to heal, to regenerate, it becomes alive again."
These weren't the words of a farmer but of Dr. Luis May, addressing a packed room on Monday at the Reclaiming Health & Longevity Symposium in El Salvador. His presentation, "Nature healing: From Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition and Strength Training to Forest Bathing," traced an increasingly urgent return to the healing practices that mainstream medicine has largely abandoned.
Dr. May opened his talk with a poignant connection to his past – his grandfather, a German physician who practiced in Eastern Europe during the 1930s, before pharmaceutical companies dominated healthcare. "He started his own natural clinic where patients were treated with sunbathing on the rooftop, daily exercises, forest walks, breathing natural air, and enjoyed home-cooked healthy meals," Dr. May explained.
From drug dispenser to healer
After graduating from medical school, Dr. May found himself increasingly frustrated with conventional approaches. "I felt more like a drug dispenser than a healer," he told the audience, describing his small practice in the surf town of Playa El Tunco.
This disillusionment led him to explore natural medicine, beginning with his own health transformation through anti-inflammatory foods. "My brain fog cleared up, my energy levels improved, and in general, I felt the best I felt in all my life," he said.
The physician soon began treating patients with lifestyle changes rather than prescriptions – eliminating processed sugar, refined flour, and artificial ingredients from their diets. This led him to establish Soya Nutribar, which became not just a business but an educational platform.
"Food is information, a message directly to our microbiome, our hormones, and our immune system," Dr. May emphasized, highlighting how nutrition education became central to his practice.
Strength as a path to sovereignty
About three and a half years ago, Dr. May discovered another crucial element of health: strength training. More than aesthetic improvement, he described profound functional benefits – improvements in chronic pain, blood sugar regulation, and overall physical capability.
"Strength training isn't just aesthetics; it's function, independence, and the sovereignty to do what you love," he said, explaining how he now incorporates a gym in his clinic where he personally coaches patients.
This approach, he argued, creates true independence – the ability to work, play, and engage with life without physical limitations. "It gives you sovereignty to not depend on anybody else, to be able to work the land, build, and do the things that you want to do."
Regenerating the land as a model for healing the body
Perhaps most compelling was Dr. May's parallel between human health and environmental restoration. He described purchasing barren land in Tamanique in 2007, with clay soil that was "almost infertile." Through careful reforestation with cypress trees, composting, and regenerative practices, he transformed it into a thriving forest lodge with rich, black soil.
"Every fallen tree, every decayed leaf, every compost pile is nature teaching regeneration," Dr. May explained. "It's incredible to see how nature gives back when you simply give it a chance, when you simply stop destroying it."
The organic waste from his nutrition bar now feeds the soil at his forest lodge, completing a regenerative cycle that mirrors what he teaches patients about their own bodies. "Forest bathing isn't just a metaphor. It's quantum biology in action—light, water, magnetism, talking directly to your cells," he said.
Coming full circle: the soil within
As the three-day symposium in El Salvador continues, Dr. May's message resonated with the audience's search for health sovereignty – taking control of wellbeing through daily choices rather than relying on conventional medical systems.
"I encourage every one of you to take health into your own hands and to treat your soil and improve your inner body by nutrition, by movement, and by light," he concluded. "True health sovereignty begins there, in the daily decisions that shape our biology, our future, and our freedom from the soil."
In a fitting conclusion to his journey back to his grandfather's approach to medicine, Dr. May reflected: "From the same soil that was once exhausted, we built a living forest. And from that forest, we built a home."
Part of Reclaiming Health & Longevity Symposium