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September 5 - September 14, 2021
The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity
If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease.
Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5
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 levels.
Medical anthropologists have identified several major eras of human disease, starting with the Age of Pestilence and Famine, which largely ended with the Industrial Revolution, or the stage we’re in now, the Age of Degenerative and Man-Made Diseases.
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.
Even vegetarians can suffer high rates of chronic disease, though, if they eat a lot of processed foods.
smoking cigarettes is associated with triple the rate of telomere loss,
Dr. Dean Ornish teamed up with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of telomerase.
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.
Epigenetics
eat at least nine servings of fruits and vegetables daily,
advanced glycation end products, or AGEs.
AGEs are formed primarily when fat- and protein-rich foods are exposed to high temperatures.
engage in aerobic exercise for forty-five to sixty minutes a day, four days a week, for six months.
three-quarters of salt comes from processed foods rather than a saltshaker.
in the standard American diet
ideal blood pressure, defined as the level at which lowering it further yields no additional benefit, is probably around 110/70.
study, a cup of hibiscus tea with each meal managed to lower subjects’ systolic blood pressure by six points over the control group.
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.
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
purple cabbage.
studies have shown that the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the happier, calmer, and more energetic you may feel that day—and this positivity can spill over into the next day. For your diet to have a meaningful psychological impact, though, you may need to consume approximately seven servings of fruits or eight servings of vegetables each day.
What happens in a petri dish, though, doesn’t necessarily happen in people. Nevertheless, a compilation of case-control studies did conclude that cow’s milk consumption is a risk factor for prostate cancer,
A 2015 meta-analysis found that high intakes of dairy products—milk, low-fat milk, and cheese, but not nondairy sources of calcium—appear to increase total prostate cancer risk.
Every day, about fifty billion of your cells die, and about fifty billion new cells are born to keep you in balance.
An adult may have around forty trillion cells in his or her body, four times more than a child.
These are fiber; the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium; and vitamins A, C, D, E, and K.7 But you don’t eat food “components.” You eat food.
Part of the USDA’s mission is “expanding markets for agricultural products.”
When the Guidelines tell you to eat less added sugar, calories, cholesterol, saturated fat, sodium, and trans fat, that’s code for eat less junk food, less meat, less dairy, fewer eggs, and fewer processed foods.
minimum for greens or beans (three servings a week for adults),
minimum for orange vegetables (two servings a week),
Coca-Cola’s profit margin, for example, is about one quarter of the soda’s retail price, making soft-drink production, alongside tobacco, among the most profitable industries.
Save the Children used to be a leader in the push for taxes on soda to offset some of the costs of childhood obesity. Then the organization did an abrupt 180-degree turn, withdrawing its support, saying that such campaigns no longer “fit with the way that Save the Children works.” Perhaps it is only a coincidence that it was seeking a grant from Coca-Cola and had already accepted a $5 million grant from Pepsi.
eating habits are now killing more Americans than our smoking habits,
“If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.”
tomato juice appears to be the one common juice that may actually be healthier than the whole fruit. The processing of tomato products boosts the availability of the antioxidant red pigment lycopene by as much as fivefold.
think of “unprocessed” as nothing bad added, nothing good taken away.
tomato juice could be thought of as relatively unprocessed because even much of the fiber is retained—unless salt is added, which would make it a processed food in my book and bump it right out of the green zone.
Eating almonds is healthier than drinking almond milk.
The problem with all-or-nothing thinking is that it keeps people from even taking the first steps.
We cannot let the “perfect” be the enemy of the good.
What you eat on special occasions is insignificant compared to what you eat day in and day out.
“If you find you cannot do a plant-based diet 100 percent of the time, then aim for 80 percent. Any movement toward more plants and fewer animal products can improve your health!
vegans who appeared to be living off french fries and beer. Vegan, technically, but not exactly health promoting.
whole-food, plant-based nutrition.
“A-B-A” study design. Participants’ health is assessed at baseline on their regular diets, and then they’re switched to a therapeutic diet. In an effort to make sure any health changes participants experience on the new diet aren’t merely a coincidence, they are then switched back to their regular diet to see if the changes disappear.
baba ganoush (a Middle Eastern roasted-eggplant spread),
the more you eat healthfully, the better healthy foods taste.
