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November 2, 2022 - January 19, 2023
On average, plant foods contain sixty-four times more antioxidants than animal foods.
A]ntioxidant rich foods originate from the plant kingdom while meat, fish and other foods from the animal kingdom are low in antioxidants.”
The food category that averages the most antioxidants is herbs and spices.
Antioxidant-rich diets appear to protect against stroke by preventing the circulation of oxidized fats in the bloodstream that can damage the sensitive walls of small blood vessels in the brain.
my clinical practice, the one diagnosis I dreaded giving more than cancer was Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t just because of the psychological toll to come for the patient but because of the emotional toll that would be placed on loved ones.
named Auguste was taken to an insane asylum in Frankfurt, Germany, by her husband. She was described as a delusional, forgetful, disoriented woman who “could not carry out her homemaking duties.”66 She was seen by a Dr. Alzheimer and was to become the subject of the case that made Alzheimer a household name.
Autopsies have revealed that Alzheimer’s brains have significantly more cholesterol buildup than normal brains.
Under an electron microscope, we can see the clustering of amyloid fibers on and around tiny crystals of cholesterol.85 And indeed, advanced brain imaging techniques, such as PET scans, have shown a direct correlation between the amount of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol in the blood and amyloid buildup in the brain.86 Drug companies have hoped to capitalize on this connection to sell cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to prevent Alzheimer’s, but statins themselves can cause cognitive impairment, including short- and long-term memory loss.87 For people unwilling to change their diets, the benefits of
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Constipation is the most common gastrointestinal complaint in the United States, leading to millions of doctor visits each year.
yet in some parts of the world, it’s practically unheard of. The highest rates have been recorded in Connecticut, and the lowest in Kampala, Uganda.
What other protective compounds might explain the low cancer rates among plant-based populations? Well, fiber isn’t the only thing found in whole plant foods that’s missing from processed and animal-based foods. The answer might lie in natural compounds called phytates, which are found in the seeds of plants—in other words, in all whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. Phytates have been shown to detoxify excess iron in the body, which otherwise can generate a particularly harmful kind of free radical called hydroxyl radicals.
Phytates target cancer cells through a combination of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-enhancing activities. Besides affecting the cancer cells directly, phytates have been found to boost the activity of natural killer cells, which are white blood cells that form your first line of defense by hunting down and disposing of cancer cells.
There are many ways the healthfulness of different fruits and vegetables can be compared, such as by nutrient content or antioxidant activity. Ideally, we would use a measure involving actual biological activity. One way to do this is by measuring the suppression of cancer cell growth. Eleven common fruits were tested by dripping their extracts on cancer cells growing in a petri dish. The result? Berries
Organically grown berries in particular may suppress cancer cell growth better than those grown conventionally.
These findings are only applicable if the active components of the food are absorbed into your system and manage to find their way to budding tumors. Colorectal cancer, however, grows out of the inner lining of your intestines, so what you eat may have a direct effect regardless. So researchers decided to give berries a try. Familial adenomatous polyposis is an inherited form of colorectal cancer caused by a mutation in your tumor-suppression genes. People who are affected develop hundreds of polyps in their colons, some of which inevitably turn cancerous. Treatment can involve prophylactic
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In 2012, the results from two major Harvard University studies were published. The first, known as the Nurses’ Health Study, began following the diets of about 120,000 women aged thirty to fifty-five starting back in 1976; the second, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, followed about 50,000 men aged forty to seventy-five. Every four years, researchers checked in with the study participants to keep track of their diets. By 2008, a total of about 24,000 subjects had died, including approximately 6,000 from heart disease and 9,000 from cancer.
What does meat contain that may raise the risk of premature death? One of the possibilities is heme iron, the form of iron found predominantly in blood and muscle. Because iron can generate cancer-causing free radicals by acting as a pro-oxidant,
If we remove iron from people’s bodies, can we decrease cancer rates? Studies have found that people randomized to give regular blood donations to reduce their iron stores appear to cut their risk of getting and dying from new gut cancers by about half over a five-year period.
Compared with people who eat meat, vegetarians tend to consume more iron (as well as more of most nutrients),
My grandfather died of pancreatic cancer. By the time the first symptom arose—a dull ache in his gut—it was too late. That’s why we need to prevent it in the first place. Pancreatic cancer is among the most lethal forms of cancer, with just 6 percent of patients surviving five years after diagnosis. Thankfully, it’s relatively rare, killing only about forty thousand Americans each year.
Starting in the early 1970s, a series of laws have restricted the use of asbestos, yet thousands of Americans continue to die every year from exposure to it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Environmental Protection Agency have estimated that over a period of thirty years, approximately one thousand cases of cancer will occur among people exposed to asbestos in school buildings as children.
There has been long-standing concern about the possibility that wart-causing chicken cancer viruses are being transmitted to the general population through the handling of fresh or frozen chicken.
What about people who eat chicken? The largest study to ever address that question is the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which followed 477,000 people for about a decade. The researchers found a 72 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer for every fifty grams of chicken consumed daily.
But because the pancreatic cancer one might get from eating chicken is the same pancreatic cancer one might get from smoking cigarettes, it’s more difficult to tease out a cause-and-effect relationship. There are diseases unique to the meat industry, such as the newly described “salami brusher’s disease” that only affects people whose full-time job is to wire-brush off the white mold that naturally grows on salami.
So why not try using curcumin to treat patients with pancreatic cancer? In a study funded by the National Cancer Institute and performed at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, patients with advanced pancreatic cancer were given large doses of curcumin. Of the twenty-one patients the researchers were able to evaluate, two responded positively to the treatment. One had a 73 percent reduction in his tumor size, though eventually a curcumin-resistant tumor developed in its place.
Acid reflux is one of the most common disorders of the digestive tract. The usual symptoms include heartburn as well as the regurgitation of stomach contents back up toward the throat, which can leave a sour taste in the mouth. GERD causes millions of doctor visits and hospitalizations each year and represents the highest annual cost of all digestive diseases in the United States.
Even without the cancer risk, GERD itself can cause pain, bleeding, and scar-tissue narrowing of the esophagus that can interfere with swallowing. Billions of dollars are spent on medications to alleviate heartburn and acid reflux by reducing the amount of stomach acid produced, but these drugs can contribute to nutrient deficiencies and increase the risk of pneumonia, intestinal infections, and bone fractures.
Esophageal cancer joins pancreatic cancer as one of the gravest diagnoses imaginable. The five-year survival rate is less than 20 percent,
Ideally, you should sanitize your hands after every bathroom visit and handshake, before all food preparation, and before touching your eyes, nose, or mouth after coming in contact with public surfaces.
The term “immune system” is derived from the Latin word immunis, meaning untaxed or untouched, which is fitting, given that the immune system protects the body from foreign invaders. Composed of various organs, white blood cells, and proteins called antibodies that form alliances against trespassing pathogens threatening the body, the immune system, apart from the nervous system, is the most complex organ system humans possess.
Let’s suppose one day you’re walking along and suddenly get attacked by a platypus (they have poisonous spurs on their heels, you know). For your whole life up until that point, the B cell in your body that produces antibodies against duck-billed platypus venom was just hanging around, twiddling its thumbs, until that very moment. As soon as the venom is detected, this specific B cell begins dividing like crazy, and soon you have a whole swarm of clones each producing millions of antibodies against platypus poison. You fend off the toxin and live happily ever after. That is how the immune
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This is where the immune system comes in, specifically a special type of white blood cell called intraepithelial lymphocytes. These cells serve two functions: They condition and repair the thin intestinal lining, and they also serve as its first line of gut defense against pathogens.28 These lymphocytes are covered with “Ah receptors” that activate the cells.29 For years, scientists couldn’t find the key that fit into the Ah receptor lock. If we could figure out how to activate these cells, we might be able to boost our immunity.
They may sound sinister, but natural killer cells are a type of white blood cell that’s a vital member of the immune system’s rapid-response team against virus-infected and cancerous cells. They’re called natural killers because they don’t require prior exposure to a disease to be activated, unlike some other parts of the immune system that can only respond effectively after a history of exposure, as in the case of, say, chicken pox.41 After all, you don’t want to wait until your second tumor appears before your immune system starts fighting.
Yes, it seems an aromatic spice called cardamom may be one. Researchers put some lymphoma cells in a petri dish and added natural killer cells, which were able to wipe out about 5 percent of the cancer cells.
If the industry had to pay to make it safer, the price would go up. “The fact,” he said, “is that it’s too expensive not to sell salmonella-positive chicken.”
As the Mayo Clinic rather indelicately put it, “Most people are infected with Salmonella by eating foods that have been contaminated by feces.”
A landmark study, published as “The Effectiveness of Hygiene Procedures for Prevention of Cross-Contamination from Chicken Carcasses in the Domestic Kitchen,” put this question to the test. Researchers visited five dozen homes, gave each family a raw chicken, and asked them to cook it. After the bird was cooked, researchers returned to find bacteria from chicken feces—Salmonella and Campylobacter, both serious human pathogens—all over the families’ kitchens: on the cutting board, utensils, cupboard, the refrigerator handle, the oven handle, the doorknob, and so on.
Yet the researchers still found pathogenic fecal bacteria all over.
The extent of the kitchen contamination was much less, but still, it appears that unless you treat your kitchen like a biohazard laboratory, the only way to guarantee you’re not going to leave fecal pathogens around the kitchen is to not bring them into your house in the first place.
the study in which volunteers became infected after just handling the meat, the chicken bacteria that tried to take over their gut only seemed to last about ten days.122 The good bacteria in their guts seemed able to muscle the bad guys out of the way. The problem, unfortunately, is that people tend to eat chicken more than once every ten days, so they may be constantly reintroducing these chicken bugs into their systems.
Healthy living may help protect you against both airborne and foodborne illnesses. Eating more fruits and vegetables and exercising more frequently can boost your immune system to help you fight off respiratory infections like the common cold. And sticking to mostly plant foods can help prevent you from becoming another food poisoning statistic by reducing your exposure to some of the deadliest fecal pathogens.
Your digestive system breaks down the carbohydrates you eat into a simple sugar called glucose, which is the primary fuel powering all the cells in your body.
Think of insulin as the key that unlocks the doors to your cells to allow glucose to enter.
That’s why diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, and stroke.
Prediabetics may already have sugar damage to their kidneys, eyes, blood vessels, and nerves even before diabetes is diagnosed.
Why the dramatic rise in childhood diabetes? It’s likely due to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity.
To prevent childhood diabetes, we need to prevent childhood obesity.
The largest study ever to compare the obesity rates of those eating plant-based diets was published in North America.
People who eat a plant-based diet, on the other hand, have just a small fraction of the rate of diabetes seen in those who regularly eat meat.
Those who cut out all meat except fish appear to cut their rates in half.
