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America’s number-one killer is a different kind of terrorist: fatty deposits in the walls of your arteries called atherosclerotic plaque.
You could be feeling perfectly fine one moment, and then an hour later, you’re gone forever. That’s why it’s critical to prevent heart disease in the first place, before you even necessarily know you have it.
The Ugandans experienced more than one hundred times fewer heart attacks than the Americans.
The extraordinarily low rates of heart disease in rural China and Africa have been attributed to the extraordinarily low cholesterol levels among these populations.
To drastically reduce LDL cholesterol levels, you need to drastically reduce your intake of three things: trans fat, which comes from processed foods and naturally from meat and dairy; saturated fat, found mainly in animal products and junk foods; and to a lesser extent dietary cholesterol, found exclusively in animal-derived foods, especially eggs.26
The optimal LDL cholesterol level is probably 50 or 70 mg/dL, and apparently, the lower, the better.
If your blood test results came back with a total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL, your physician might reassure you that your cholesterol is normal.
Plant-based diets have been shown to lower cholesterol just as effectively as first-line statin drugs, but without the risks.39
One of the most amazing things I learned in medical school was that within about fifteen years of stopping smoking, your lung-cancer risk approaches that of a lifelong nonsmoker.42
“Tomato Effect.” The term was coined in the Journal of the American Medical Association in reference to the fact that tomatoes were once considered poisonous and were shunned for centuries in North America, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.57
America’s number-two killer, lung disease, claims the lives of about 300,000 people each year.
Lung disease can come in many forms, but the three types that kill the most people are lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and asthma.
Lung cancer is diagnosed about 220,000 times each year in the United States and causes more deaths annually than the next three cancers combined—those of the colon, breast, and pancreas.1
According to the American Lung Association, smoking tobacco contributes to up to 90 percent of all lung cancer deaths.
Men who smoke are twenty-three times more likely and women thirteen times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers.
About 85 percent of women with breast cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis, but the numbers are reversed when it comes to lung cancer: 85 percent of women die within five years of a lung cancer diagnosis. Ninety percent of those deaths are due to metastasis, the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body.8
Researchers took thirty men with high cholesterol and had them consume three to four shots of kale juice a day for three months.
What the kale did do was substantially lower their bad (LDL) cholesterol and boost their good (HDL) cholesterol10 as much as running three hundred miles.
fumes
Unfortunately, there is no cure for COPD, but there is some good news: A healthy diet may help to prevent COPD and help keep it from getting worse.
The two most serious brain diseases are stroke, which kills nearly 130,000 Americans each year,1 and Alzheimer’s disease, which kills nearly 85,000.2
That’s called an ischemic stroke (from the Latin ischaemia, meaning “stopping blood”).
fibre
Animals have bones to hold them up; plants have fibre.
Increasing fibre intake by just seven grams a day may be associated with a 7 percent risk reduction.13
Though stroke is considered an older person’s disease—only about 2 percent of stroke deaths occur before the age of forty-five17—the risk factors may begin accumulating in childhood.
For much of human history, we ate so many plants that we got upward of 10,000 mg of potassium every day.23 Nowadays, less than 2 percent of Americans even reach the recommended daily intake of 4,700 mg.24
When it comes to food, the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.
So eating a few oranges before snowboarding may help keep your fingers and toes from getting as chilly. But while warm digits are nice, the reduced stroke risk associated with higher citrus intake is even nicer.
A recent study of 150,000 Americans was able to examine the issue more thoroughly. Higher stroke rates were found among individuals sleeping six hours or less, or nine hours or more. Those at lowest risk got around seven or eight hours of sleep a night.34
Thankfully, the body calls in its defense squad, known as antioxidants. They arrive at the scene and say, “Drop that electron!”
You can check out the list to see where your favorite foods and beverages rank at this link: http://bit.ly/antioxidantfoods.
On average, plant foods contain sixty-four times more antioxidants than animal foods.
In my clinical practice, the one diagnosis I dreaded giving more than cancer was Alzheimer’s.
Despite the billions of dollars spent on research, there is still neither a cure nor an effective treatment for the disease, which invariably progresses to death.
In short, Alzheimer’s is reaching a state of crisis—emotionally, economically, and even scientifically.
