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

by Michael Greger

That’s why whole-food, plant-based diets are great for people who like to eat, since you can basically eat as much as you want without worrying about counting calories.

Two dozen pesticides were detected in the salmon fillets.70 Farmed salmon may be the worst, containing ten times more of a class of toxic chemicals called PCBs than wild-caught salmon.71

Instead of changing the quantity of food you eat, it’s possible to reverse diabetes by changing the quality of that food.

Men and women eating even a single ounce of chicken a day (think two chicken nuggets)

thirteen diabetic men and women were told to eat at least one big salad every day, as well as veggie-bean soup, a handful of nuts and seeds, fruit at every meal, a pound of cooked greens, and some whole grains;

We’ve known diabetes can be reversed with an extremely low-calorie diet.97 Now we know that it can also be reversed with an extremely healthy diet,

What’s the worst kind? Abdominal fat—the kind that builds up around your internal organs. Having a potbelly may be a strong predictor of premature death.

the 1920s, researchers measured the blood pressure of a thousand native Kenyans who ate a low-sodium diet centered around whole plant foods—whole grains, beans, fruits, and dark, leafy greens, and other vegetables.

Dozens of similar studies demonstrate that if you reduce your salt intake, you reduce your blood pressure. And the greater the reduction, the greater the benefit. But if you don’t cut down, chronic high salt intake can lead to a gradual increase in blood pressure throughout life.

maybe we just have to feed someone a bag of potato chips and take his or her pulse.

How did the numbers come out? Not surprisingly, the endurance runners on a standard American diet had a better blood pressure average than their sedentary, meat-eating counterparts: 122/72 compared with 132/79, which fits the definition of prehypertensive. But the sedentary vegans? They averaged an extraordinary 104/62.115 Apparently, eating standard American fare even when running two thousand miles a year may not bring

Ground flaxseeds alone “induced one of the most potent blood-pressure-lowering effects ever achieved by a dietary intervention.”

Red wine may help, but only nonalcoholic brands. Only wine that has had the alcohol removed appears to lower blood pressure.

In addition to their anticancer properties, flaxseeds have been demonstrated in clinical studies to help control cholesterol, triglyceride, and blood sugar levels; reduce inflammation, and successfully treat constipation.127

In a comparison of the antioxidant content of 280 common beverages, hibiscus ranked number-one, beating out other heavyweights, including the oft-lauded green tea.128

but the evidence shows that adding hibiscus tea to your daily routine may offer an additional benefit, comparable even to that provided by antihypertensive drugs.

No side effects were reported for hibiscus tea, though it isn’t called sour tea for nothing. If you drink it, make sure to rinse your mouth with water afterward to keep the natural acids in the tea from softening the enamel on your teeth.

So you need to flood your body with antioxidant-rich plant foods throughout the day to extinguish the free radicals and let NO synthase get back to its job of keeping your arteries fully functional.

But put people on a high-antioxidant diet by, among many other things, switching their bananas for berries and their white chocolate for dark, and within just two weeks, they experience a significant boost in their arteries’ ability to relax and dilate normally.143

In addition to eating antioxidant-rich foods that can boost your body’s ability to produce NO, you can also eat certain vegetables, such as beets and greens, that are rich in natural nitrates, which your body can convert into nitric oxide.

TOP-TEN FOOD SOURCES OF NITRATES 10. Beets 9. Swiss chard 8. Oak leaf lettuce 7. Beet greens 6. Basil 5. Mesclun greens 4. Butter leaf lettuce 3. Cilantro 2. Rhubarb 1. Arugula

“veggie Viagra” effect. You read that right. There’s a link between vegetable consumption and improved sexual function,154

To maximize athletic performance, the ideal dose and timing appears to be a half cup of beet juice (or three three-inch beets, or a cup of cooked spinach159) two to three hours before a competition.160 It

The CDC defines excessive drinking as the regular consumption of more than one drink a day for women and more than two a day for men. A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces (a “shot”) of hard liquor.7 Progression of the disease can usually be halted by stopping drinking, but sometimes it’s too late.8

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

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,

The news is good. A 2013 review of the best studies to date found that people who drank the most coffee had half the risk of liver cancer compared to those who drank the least.

but during that time, the researchers were able to demonstrate that coffee consumption may reduce DNA damage, increase the clearance of virus-infected cells, and slow the scarring process.

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.

The bronze for best bargain, though, goes to cloves, the silver to cinnamon, and the gold for most antioxidants per dollar—according to a USDA database of common foods—goes to purple cabbage.24

This result suggests that a simple spice found in the grocery store might have the ability to slow or stop this horrific cancer in a certain percentage of patients, though we won’t know more until longer studies are performed to see if these hopeful changes in blood-work biomarkers translate into changes in actual patient outcomes. In the meantime, it couldn’t hurt to spice up your diet.

Elevated blood cancer rates can even be traced back to the farm. An analysis of more than one hundred thousand death certificates found that those who grew up on a farm raising animals appeared significantly more likely to develop a blood cancer later in life, whereas growing up on a farm growing only crops was not. Worst was growing up on a poultry farm, which was associated with nearly three times the odds of developing blood cancer.

The researchers suspect the reason is connected to the fact that having pets may have beneficial effects on the immune system.58

A pair of Harvard University studies suggested that diet soda consumption may increase the risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma,

Greens may be particularly useful for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and turmeric for multiple myeloma.

If the kidneys are leaking protein into urine, it’s a sign that they may be starting to fail.

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 their reserves continuously.

The reason those who eat a plant-based diet appear to have better kidney function was originally thought to be due to their lower overall protein intake.19 However, we now know that it’s more likely due to the fact that the kidneys appear to handle plant protein very differently from animal protein.

If people are unwilling to reduce their meat consumption, they should be encouraged to eat more fruits and vegetables to balance out that acid load.

much acid? Here’s some base to neutralize it.

Eggs are actually more acid producing than beef, but people tend to eat fewer of them at one sitting.

So what’s the best way to determine how acid forming your diet really is? Perhaps the easiest (and most boring) method is to order some pH paper strips to pee on. Alternatively, why not use what you (should) have right now in your refrigerator’s crisper: purple cabbage. Purple, or red, cabbage provides one of the single best nutritional bangs for your buck, and you can even use it to perform kitchen chemistry experiments, or in this case, bathroom chemistry.

It’s easy to avoid added phosphorus in processed foods—just don’t buy anything containing ingredients with the word “phosphate” in their names, including pyrophosphate and sodium triphosphate.

Added phosphate may be labeled as “flavorings” or “broth” or not labeled at all.88

But I’ve been eating much healthier for the last twenty-five years. My hope is that even if I did initiate a cancerous growth, if I don’t promote it, I may be able to slow down its growth.

The researchers had found a small but statistically significant increase in breast cancer risk even among women who had at most one drink per day (except, perhaps, for red wine—see box below).

They estimated that, every year around the world, nearly five thousand breast cancer deaths may be attributable to light drinking.20

A compound in red wine appears to suppress the activity of an enzyme called estrogen synthase, which breast tumors can use to create estrogen to fuel their own growth.24 This compound is found in the skin of the dark-purple grapes used to make red wine, which explains why white wine appears to provide no such benefit,25 since it’s produced without the skin.