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April 23 - November 14, 2023
Only 3 percent of Americans may even reach the recommended minimum daily intake of fiber, making it one of the most widespread nutrient deficiencies in the United States.
As a dark-green, leafy vegetable, kale is not only one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet—it may also help fight off infection.
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.
For instance, the researchers found that having phytonutrient levels in the bloodstream achieved by eating three apples a day or a tablespoon of red onion appeared to cut dioxin toxicity in half. The only catch was that these phytonutrient effects lasted only a few hours, meaning you may have to keep eating healthy foods, meal after meal, if you want to maintain your defenses against pathogens as well as pollutants.35
But the athletes consuming blueberries actually doubled their killer cell counts,
researchers effectively sprinkled on some cardamom, the natural killer cells became supercharged and eradicated even more cancer cells—up to about ten times more than without cardamom.43 No clinical trials have yet been done to try this out in cancer patients.
Considered the gold standard of research, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is a trial in which neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving an experimental treatment and who is receiving a placebo until the end of the study.)
When you eat fresh produce, you can get both pre- and probiotics into your gut.
Studies find that if you let kids run around for just six minutes, the levels of immune cells circulating in their blood increases by nearly 50 percent.
In the weeks following marathons or ultramarathons, runners report a two- to sixfold increase in upper-respiratory-tract infections.
Given the scandalously ill-regulated supplement market, it’s hard to know what you’re getting when you try to buy “food” in supplement bottles.
A 2013 study reported that you may more effectively maintain your levels of white blood cells after exercise by consuming a special type of fiber found in baker’s, brewer’s, and nutritional yeast.67 Brewer’s yeast is bitter, but nutritional yeast has a pleasant, cheese-like flavor. It tastes particularly good on popcorn.
In vitro studies have shown that a variety of mushrooms, including plain white button mushrooms, appear to blunt the inflammatory response, potentially offering a boost in immune and anticancer function without aggravating diseases of inflammation.
You’ve probably seen advertisements for those alcohol-based hand sanitizers that advertise they kill 99.99 percent of all germs. Well, C. diff falls into that 0.01 percent. They don’t call it a superbug for nothing. Residual spores of the pathogen have been shown to be readily transmitted with a handshake even after using hand sanitizer.144
The insulin-deficiency disease is called type 1 diabetes, and the insulin-resistance disease is called type 2 diabetes.
That’s why diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, and stroke. High blood sugar can also damage your nerves, creating a condition known as neuropathy that can cause numbness, tingling, and pain.
diabetics may also suffer from poor circulation and lack of feeling in the legs and feet, which can lead to poorly healing injuries that can, in turn, end as amputations.
Research has clearly shown that as the amount of fat in your diet becomes increasingly lower, insulin works increasingly better.
Carrying excess body fat is the number-one risk factor for type 2 diabetes;
Though calorie cutting has been the cornerstone of most weight-loss strategies, evidence suggests that the majority of individuals who lose weight by portion control eventually regain it. Starving ourselves almost never works long term.
Eating legumes was shown to be just as effective at slimming waistlines and improving blood sugar control as calorie cutting.
Fruits and vegetables, on average, contain about 80–90 percent water. Just as fiber can bulk up the volume of foods without adding calories, so can water.
Overweight individuals may be effectively carrying around a personal toxic waste dump on their hips.
Undergoing surgery may be easier than starving yourself, but major surgery carries major risks, both during the operation and afterward.
The EPIC-PANACEA study, which found that meat consumption is associated with weight gain even independent of calories, identified poultry as potentially the most fattening meat,89 a finding that has since been confirmed in another study.
As the beef industry is proud of pointing out, even skinless chicken can have more fat, and more artery-clogging saturated fat, than a dozen different cuts of steak.
Neuropathy can be very painful, and that pain is frequently resistant to conventional treatments. No medical treatment is considered effective for the condition.103 We doctors are left with only steroids, opiates, and antidepressants to try to ease our patients’ suffering.
Think about it. Patients walk in with one of the most painful, frustrating, and hard-to-treat conditions in all of medicine, and three-quarters of them were cured in a handful of days using a natural, nontoxic treatment—namely, a diet composed of whole plant foods.
The most interesting speculation was that trans fats naturally found in meat and dairy could be causing an inflammatory response in the patients’ bodies. The researchers found that a significant percentage of the fat under the skin of those who ate meat, or even just dairy and eggs, was composed of trans fats, whereas those who had been on a strictly whole-food, plant-based diet had no detectable trans fat in their tissues.
So why didn’t I learn about any of this in medical school? There’s little money to be made from prescribing plants instead of pills.
The circumference of your belly (halfway between the top of your hip bones and the bottom of your rib cage) should be half your height—ideally, less.
Weight to height ratio WHtR
The first number (“systolic”) represents the pressure in your arteries as your blood pumps from the heart; the second number (“diastolic”) is the pressure in your arteries while the heart is resting between beats.
under 120 and a diastolic pressure under 80—or 120/80. Anything above 140/90 is considered hypertensive. Values in between are considered prehypertensive.
The two most prominent dietary risks for death and disability in the world may be not eating enough fruit and eating too much salt.
out-of-control high blood pressure (known as malignant hypertension), a condition from which you go blind from bleeding into your eyes, your kidneys shut down, and your heart eventually fails.
Dr. Kempner is now recognized as the person who established, beyond any shadow of doubt, that high blood pressure can often be lowered by a low-sodium diet.
As we discussed earlier, the ideal blood pressure, defined as the level at which lowering it further yields no additional benefit, is probably around 110/70.96
in the Western world, the only group able to routinely achieve these blood pressure readings is vegetarians.99
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.
To lower blood pressure, you should still lose weight, reduce your salt intake, get more exercise, and eat healthier, 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. Tested head-to-head against a leading blood pressure drug, two cups of strong hibiscus tea every morning (using a total of five tea bags) was as effective in lowering subjects’ blood pressure as a starting dose of the drug Captopril taken twice a day.138
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.
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,
Sweden took it seriously enough to formally replicate Spurlock’s one-man experiment. In their study, a group of men and women agreed to eat two fast-food meals a day. At the start, their liver enzyme levels were normal, but after just one week of this diet, more than 75 percent of the volunteers’ liver function test results became pathological.
Liver damage was recorded in just 7 days with replication of an unhealthy diet leading researchers to determine NAFLD to be present in 100% of severely obese individuals
So do more people die of liver disease in countries where pork is more popular? It appears so. The relationship between national per capita pork consumption and deaths from liver disease correlates as tightly as per capita alcohol consumption and liver fatalities.
Until the multibillion-dollar herbal supplement industry is better regulated, you’re better off saving your money—and your health—by sticking to real food.
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.
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 for liver damage, such as those with fatty liver disease.
Blood cancers can be categorized into three types: leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma.
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.
