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

by Michael Greger

In public health school, students learn that there are three levels of preventive medicine. The first is primary prevention, as in trying to prevent people at risk for heart disease from suffering their first heart attack. An example of this level of preventive medicine would be your doctor prescribing you a statin drug for high cholesterol. Secondary prevention takes

place when you already have the disease and are trying to prevent it from becoming worse, like having a second heart attack. To do this, your doctor may add an aspirin or other drugs to your regimen. At the third level of preventive medicine, the focus is on helping people manage long-term health problems, so your doctor, for example, might prescribe a cardiac rehabilitation program that aims to prevent further physical deterioration and pain.23 In 2000, a fourth level was proposed.

Primordial prevention was conceived as a strategy to prevent whole societies from experiencing epidemics of chronic-disease risk factors. This means not just preventing chronic disease but preventing the risk factors that lead to chronic disease.26 For example, instead of trying to prevent someone with high cholesterol from suffering a heart attack, why not help prevent him or her from getting high

cholesterol (which leads to the heart attack) in the first place?

With this in mind, the American Heart Association came up with “The Simple 7” factors that can lead to a healthier life: not smoking, not being overweight, being “very active” (defined as the equivalent of walking at least twenty-two minutes a day), eating healthier (for example, lots of fruits and vegetables), having below-average cholesterol, having normal blood pressure, and having normal blood sugar ...

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.

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.

People can substantially reduce their risk for early death by not smoking, consuming a healthier diet, and engaging in sufficient physical activity.

Let’s talk a little more about aging. In each of your cells, you have forty-six strands of DNA coiled into chromosomes. At the tip of each chromosome, there’s a tiny cap called a telomere, which keeps your DNA from unraveling and fraying. Think of it as the plastic tips on the end of your shoelaces. Every time your cells divide, however, a bit of that cap is lost. And when the telomere is completely gone, your cells can die.56 Though this is an oversimplification,57 telomeres have been thought of as your life “fuse”: They can start shortening as soon as you’re born, and when they’re gone, you’re gone.

In fact, forensic scientists can take DNA from a bloodstain and roughly

estimate how old the person was based on how long thei...