How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

by Michael Greger

Only a quarter of medical schools appear to offer a single dedicated course on nutrition.

Our diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability.

the science shows that our genes often account for only 10–20 percent of risk at most.

Primordial prevention was conceived as a strategy to prevent whole societies from experiencing epidemics of chronic-disease risk factors.

heart disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease.

People who once ate vegetarian diets but then started to eat meat at least once a week experienced a 146 percent increase in odds of heart disease, a 152 percent increase in stroke, a 166 percent increase in diabetes, and a 231 percent increase in odds for weight gain.

In general, the dividing line between health-promoting and disease-promoting foods may be less plant- versus animal-sourced foods and more whole plant foods versus most everything else.

researchers concluded that scoring higher on the whole plant food diet index (greater than about thirty compared to less than about eighteen) may reduce the odds of breast cancer more than 90 percent.46

The truth is that adhering to just four simple healthy lifestyle factors can have a strong impact on the prevention of chronic diseases: not smoking, not being obese, getting a half hour of exercise a day, and

eating healthier—defined as consuming more fruits, veggies, and whole grains and less meat. Those four factors alone were found to account for 78 percent of chronic disease risk.

It’s like turning back the clock fourteen years—not with a drug or a DeLorean but just by eating and living healthier.

In a study funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense, they found that three months of whole-food, plant-based nutrition and other healthy changes could significantly boost telomerase activity, the only intervention

ever shown to do so.

But for the healthy-living group, not only did their telomeres shrink less, they grew.

healthy lifestyle can boost telomerase enzyme activity and reverse cellular aging.71

group was exercising more or losing weight. Weight loss through calorie restriction and an even more vigorous exercise program failed to improve telomere length, so it appears that the active ingredient is the quality, not quantity, of the food eaten.

That one unifying diet found to best prevent and treat many of these chronic diseases is a whole-food, plant-based diet, defined as an eating pattern that encourages the consumption of unrefined plant

foods and discourages meats, dairy products, eggs, and processed foods.92 In

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.

To become virtually heart-attack proof, you need to get your LDL cholesterol at least under 70 mg/dL. Dr. Roberts noted that there are only two ways to achieve this for our population: to put more than a hundred million Americans on a lifetime of medications or to recommend they all eat a diet centered around whole plant foods.

This suggests their bodies wanted to heal all along but were just never given the chance.40 Let me share with you what has been called the “best kept secret in medicine”:41 Given the right conditions, the body heals itself.

We’ve known for nearly two decades that a single fast-food meal—Sausage and Egg McMuffins were used in the original study—can stiffen your arteries within hours, cutting in half their ability to relax normally.

Unhealthy meals don’t just cause internal damage decades down the road but right here and now, within hours of going into your mouth.

“endotoxins.”

When your smoking habit erases the antioxidant-boosting effects of eight hundred cups of kale, you know it’s time to quit.

antioxidant supplements have no beneficial effects on respiratory or allergic diseases, underscoring the importance of eating whole foods rather than trying to take isolated components or extracts in pill form.

Excess cholesterol in the blood can lead to excess cholesterol in the brain, which may then help trigger the clumping of amyloid seen in Alzheimer’s

so our bodies may have evolved to equate vegetables with mealtime. Vegetables’ presence in the gut works as a signal to upkeep our immune systems.32 So if we don’t eat plants with each meal, we may be undermining our bodies’ strategy to protect us.

A report by the Institute of Medicine on medical training concluded that the fundamental approach to medical education has not changed since 1910.127

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).

sometimes it’s too late.8 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.

The good news is that no matter what your mom ate or how you lived as a child, by eating and living healthfully, you may be able to slow the growth rate of any hidden cancers. In short, you can die with your tumors rather than from them. This is how dietary cancer prevention and treatment can end up being the same thing.

Breast cancer screening, by definition, does not prevent breast cancer. It can just pick up existing breast cancer. Based on autopsy studies, as many as 39 percent of women in their forties already have breast cancers growing within their bodies that may be simply too small to be detected by mammograms.11 That’s why you can’t just wait until diagnosis to start eating and living healthier. You should start tonight.

“Diets that revolve around whole plant foods—vegetables, whole grains, fruits and beans—cut the risk of many cancers, and other diseases as well.”13

formally upgraded its classification of alcohol to a definitive human breast carcinogen.18 In 2014, it clarified its position by stating that, regarding breast cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe.

Experiments show that even holding a single teaspoon of hard liquor in your mouth for five seconds before spitting it out results in the production of potentially carcinogenic levels of acetaldehyde that lingers for more than ten minutes.21 If even a single sip of alcohol might produce cancer-causing levels of acetaldehyde in the mouth, what about using mouthwash that contains alcohol?

In philosophy, there’s a flawed argument called the appeal-to-nature fallacy, in which someone proposes that something is good merely because it’s natural. In biology, however, this may hold some truth.

melatonin is thought to play another role—suppressing cancer growth. Think of melatonin as helping to put cancer cells to sleep at night.

Cooking meat thoroughly reduces the risk of contracting foodborne infections (see chapter 5), but cooking meat too thoroughly may increase the risk of foodborne carcinogens.

One of the reasons? Cholesterol may play a role in the development and progression of breast cancer.75 Cancer appears to feed on cholesterol.

Research has shown that if you feed people broccoli and brussels sprouts, they clear caffeine more quickly—meaning that if you eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables, you’d have to drink more coffee to get the same buzz because your liver (the body’s purifier) has become so revved up.

There are data suggesting that people with higher levels of arachidonic acid in their blood may end up at significantly higher risk of suicide and episodes of major depression.16 The top-five sources of arachidonic acid in the American diet are chicken, eggs, beef, pork, and fish, although chicken and eggs alone contribute more than the other top sources combined.17 Just a single egg’s worth of arachidonic acid a day may significantly raise arachidonic acid levels in the blood.

Higher consumption of vegetables may cut the odds of developing depression by as much as 62 percent.26 A review in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience concluded that, in general, eating lots of fruits and veggies may present “a non-invasive, natural, and inexpensive therapeutic means to support a healthy brain.”27

Well, it turns out that many plant foods, including apples, berries, grapes, onions, and green tea, contain phytonutrients that appear to naturally inhibit the MAO, as do such spices as cloves, oregano, cinnamon, and nutmeg.30 This may help explain why those eating plant-rich diets have lower rates of depression.31

consistent with studies finding better moods and less anxiety among populations eating diets higher in carbohydrates and lower in fats and protein.39

of more than two hundred thousand American men and women. They found that people who drank two or more cups of coffee daily appeared to have about only half the suicide risk compared to non-coffee drinkers.47

People who drank more than six cups a day were 80 percent less likely to commit suicide,48 though drinking eight or more cups a day has been associated with increased suicide risk.49

So on a cost-per-nutrition basis, vegetables offer six times more nutrition per dollar compared to highly processed foods.

vegetables net you forty-eight times more nutrition per dollar than meat.

Spending just fifty cents more per day on fruits and vegetables may buy you a 10 percent drop in mortality.5 Now that’s a bargain!