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That’s eighty-six million people,122 most of whom will become full-blown diabetics.
The current medical education system has yet to adapt to the great transformation of disease from acute to chronic.
“Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death” video on NutritionFacts.org, his granddaughter convinced him to try a plant-based diet.
“I’m grateful that my granddaughter has stopped seeing me as a sick old man,” Tonah concluded his note. “I feel young again, Doc.”
Also known as hypertension, high blood pressure lays waste to nine million people worldwide every year.7 It kills so many people because it contributes to deaths from a variety of causes, including aneurysms,
Just like having too much cholesterol or body fat, there are benefits to having a blood pressure that is even lower than the “normal” range. So even people who start out with a so-called normal blood pressure of 120/80 appear to benefit from going down to 110/70.
The two most prominent dietary risks for death and disability in the world may be not eating enough fruit and eating too much salt. Nearly five million people appear to die every year as a result of not eating enough fruit,16 while eating too much salt may kill up to four million.17
Having a “normal” salt intake can lead to a “normal” blood pressure, which can contribute to us dying from all the “normal” causes, like heart attacks and strokes.23
The American Heart Association recommends everyone consume less than 1,500 mg of sodium daily24—that’s about three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt. The average American adult consumes more than double that amount, about 3,500 mg daily.25 Reducing sodium consumption by just 15 percent worldwide could save millions of lives every year.26
Pop quiz! Which has been reported to contain the most sodium: a serving of beef, a serving of baked all-natural chicken, a large McDonald’s french fries, or a serving of salted pretzels? The answer? Chicken. The poultry industry commonly injects chicken carcasses with salt water to artificially inflate their weight, yet they can still be labelled “100 percent natural.”
The number-one source of sodium for American kids and teens is pizza.61 A single slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza can contain half your recommended sodium intake limit for the entire day.
People placed on low-fat diets start preferring low-fat foods over fatty options.66 Your tongue may actually become more sensitive to fat, and the more sensitive your tongue becomes, the less butter, meat, dairy, and eggs you eat. On the flip side, if you eat too much of these foods, you may blunt your taste for fat, which can cause you to eat more calories and more fat, dairy, meat, and eggs and ultimately gain weight.67 This can all happen in just a matter of weeks.68
There are three things you can do to shake the salt habit.69 First, don’t add salt at the table. (One out of three people may add salt to their food before even tasting it!)70 Second, stop adding salt when cooking. The food may taste bland at first, but within two to four weeks, the salt-taste receptors in your mouth become more sensitive, and food tastes better. Believe it or not, after two weeks, you may actually prefer the taste of food with less
Try any combination of such fantastic flavorings as pepper, onions, garlic, tomatoes, sweet pep...
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celery, lime, chili powder, rosemary, smoked paprika, curry, coriander, and lemon instead.72 Also, it’s probably a good idea to avoid eating out as much as possible. Even non-fast-food restaurants tend to pile on the ...
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I’ve already touched on whole grains and will go into detail about flaxseeds, hibiscus tea, and nitrate-rich vegetables. Ground flaxseeds alone “induced one of the most potent blood-pressure-lowering effects ever achieved by a dietary intervention.”116 Eating just a few tablespoons a day appears to be two to three times more powerful than adopting an aerobic endurance exercise program117 (not that you shouldn’t do both—incorporate flaxseeds into your diet and exercise).
Consumption of both raw and cooked vegetables is associated with lower blood pressure, but raw veggies may be slightly more protective.118 Studies have also found that loading up on beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils may help a little,119 so add those to your shopping list. Red wine may help, but only nonalcoholic brands. Only wine that has had the alcohol removed appears to lower blood pressure.120
But how do you do that with food? People tend to notice if you try to sneak 25 grams of ground flaxseed into their lunch.
salad every day. You could take nitrate- and nitric-oxide-boosting
Nitrates, concentrated in green, leafy vegetables and beets, not only help deliver oxygenated blood to your muscles by helping dilate your arteries but also enable your body to extract more energy from that oxygen—something never before thought possible.
For example, one little shot of beetroot juice has been found to allow free divers to hold their breath for half a minute longer than usual.
The beetroot-juice-drinking group exhibited greater endurance while using less oxygen. In short, the beetroot juice made the bikers’ bodies’ energy production significantly more efficient.
To maximize athletic performance, the ideal dose and timing appears to be 125ml of beetroot juice (or three three-inch beetroot, or 180 grams of cooked spinach159) two to three hours before a competition.160 It seems sports news programs are always talking about steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Why hasn’t anyone mentioned these mighty and perfectly legit performance-enhancing vegetables? Beets me.
You can make do with only one kidney. You can survive without a spleen or a gallbladder. You can even get by without a stomach. But you can’t live without a liver, the body’s largest internal organ.
Excessive alcohol consumption can lead to an accumulation of fat in the liver (what’s known as fatty liver), which can cause inflammation and result in liver scarring and, eventually, liver
Heavy alcohol consumption can cause a fatty liver in less than three weeks,9 but it usually resolves within four to six weeks after stopping drinking.10 But in 5–15 percent of cases, the disease continues to progress, and the liver starts to scar despite alcohol cessation.11
One to two drinks a day did lower the risk of heart disease for the “couch potatoes,” those living unhealthy lifestyles. But people who practiced even the bare minimum of healthy behaviors showed no benefit from alcohol. The lesson: Grapes, barley, and potatoes are best eaten in their nondistilled form, and Johnnie Walker is no substitute for actual walking.
This may explain why adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans has been associated with less severe fatty liver disease even though it is not typically a low-fat diet.29
NAFLD may also be caused by cholesterol overload.30 The dietary cholesterol found in eggs, meat, and dairy can become oxidized and then set off a chain reaction that results in excess fat in the liver.
Unfortunately, there is currently no vaccine for the hepatitis C virus, the most dreaded of liver viruses. Exposure can lead to a chronic infection that, over decades, can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. Hepatitis C is now the leading cause of liver transplants.36
The green algae chlorella looks promising for the treatment of hepatitis C. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study found that about two teaspoons a day of chlorella boosted the activity of natural killer cells in participants’ bodies, which can naturally kill hepatitis C-infected cells.
hepatitis E virus is now considered a zoonotic disease,
The shift in thinking began in 2003, when researchers in Japan linked the hepatitis E virus (HEV) with the consumption of grilled pork liver. After testing pig livers from Japanese supermarkets, the researchers determined that nearly 2 percent of the meat tested positive for HEV.43 In the United States, it was even worse: 11 percent of commercial pig livers purchased from supermarkets were contaminated with HEV.44
Aren’t viruses deactivated by cooking? Usually, but there’s always the problem of cross-contaminating your hands or kitchen surfaces while handling raw meat. Once meat is in the oven, most foodborne pathogens can be destroyed by cooking the meat to proper internal cooking temperatures, with an emphasis on proper.
These results help explain the role coffee appears to play in reducing the risk of liver disease progression.
After all, more than one thousand different compounds have already been found in coffee.92 More studies are needed, but meanwhile, moderate daily ingestion
of unsweetened coffee should be considered a reasonable adjunct to medical therapy for people at high risk of liver damage, such as those with fatty liver disease.
Hospital progress notes are written in SOAP format, a mnemonic for Subjective findings, Objective findings, Assessment, and Plan. I wrote: “Assessment: 11yo girl finishing last round of maintenance chemotherapy. Plan: Disney World.”
When healthy, your red blood cells deliver oxygen throughout your body, your white blood cells fight off infections, and your platelets help your blood to clot.
Leukemia (from the Greek roots leukos, or “white,” and haima, or “blood”) is a disease in which the bone marrow feverishly produces abnormal white blood cells.
fifty-two thousand Americans are diagnosed with leukemia, and twenty-four thousand die from it every year.3
Lymphoma cells multiply quickly and can collect in your lymph nodes, small immune organs that are spread throughout the body, including the armpits, neck, and groin. Lymph nodes help to filter your blood.
As we’ve discussed, cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, and kale, but there are many others in this family, such as collard greens, watercress, bok choy, kohlrabi, rutabaga, turnips, rocket, radishes (including horseradish), wasabi, and all types of cabbage.
When it comes to certain other cancers, like those of the digestive tract, antioxidant supplements may even make things worse.
Combinations of antioxidants like vitamin A, vitamin E, and beta-carotene in pill form were associated with increased risk of death in those who took them.
High animal protein intake can have a profound influence on normal human kidney function by inducing a state called hyperfiltration, a dramatic increase in the workload of the kidney. Hyperfiltration isn’t harmful if it occurs only occasionally. We all have built-in reserve kidney function—so much so that people can live with only one kidney. The human body is thought to have evolved the capacity to handle intermittent large doses of protein from our remote hunting and scavenging days. But now many of us are ingesting large doses of animal protein day after day, forcing our kidneys to call on
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This is because animal protein tends to have higher levels of sulfur-containing amino acids, such as methionine, which produce sulfuric acid when metabolized in the body. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are generally base forming, which helps neutralize acids in our kidneys.
Bottom line: When urine is more alkaline, stones are less likely to form. This helps explain why less meat and more fruits and vegetables appear so protective. The standard American diet yields acidic urine. When people are placed on a plant-based diet, however, their urine can be alkalinized up to a near neutral pH in less than a week.63
Some grains can be a little acid forming, such as bread and rice, but not pasta, interestingly. Beans are significantly acid reducing, but not as much as fruits are, with vegetables crowned the most alkaline forming of foods.
If the liquid in the toilet bowl remains purple or, even worse, turns pink, your urine is too acidic. Blue is the target. If your pee and cabbage
