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

by Michael Greger

for instance, were found to be four times more likely to develop the disease years later.102

the longer feces stay in the bowel, the more neurotoxic chemicals in the diet may be absorbed.

The use of common household pesticides like bug sprays is also associated with significantly increased risk.

they may cause DNA mutations that increase your susceptibility109 or affect the way certain proteins fold in your brain.

Misfolded beta amyloid proteins, for example, are implicated in

Alzheimer’s disease (see chapter 3); misfolded prion proteins cause mad cow disease, a different malformed protein causes Huntington’s; and misfolded alpha synuclein proteins can lead to Parkinson’s disease.

certain phytonutrients called flavonoids—which are found in fruits and vegetables—may have protective effects.

not only did a variety of flavonoids inhibit these proteins from accumulating but they could also break up existing deposits.114

by eating healthfully, you can reduce your exposure to pollutants while countering their effects at the same time.

berries may be particular...

Apples did appear protective against Parkinson’s, but only for men. Everyone, however, appeared to benefit from the consumption of blueberries and strawberries,

When we eat these farmed animals, it’s almost as if we’re also eating every animal they ate.

The use of slaughterhouse by-products in animal feed can recycle both toxic heavy metals and industrial chemicals back into the food supply. Lead accumulates in animal bones and mercury in animal protein123 (which is why egg whites contain up to twenty times more mercury than do yolks).124

milk and egg products. Farm animals that have been fed contaminated animal products produce contaminated milk and egg products.”126

the role coffee may play in Parkinson’s, and overall, coffee consumption is associated with about one-third lower risk.127 The key ingredient appears to be the caffeine, since tea also seems protective

caffeine has been shown to protect human nerve cells in a petri dish from being killed by a pesticide and other neurotoxins.130

giving Parkinson’s patients the caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee a day (or approximately four cups of black tea or eight cups of green tea) significantly improved movement symptoms within three weeks.

You can wear seat belts and bicycle helmets to avoid getting hit in the head, you can exercise regularly,133 avoid becoming overweight,134 consume peppers, berries, and green tea, and minimize your exposure to pesticides, heavy metals, and dairy and other animal products. It’s

side effects from medications given in hospitals kill an estimated 106,000 Americans every year.

That statistic alone effectively makes medical care the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.

this number reflects only the number of deaths from taking the drugs as prescribed.

An additional 7,000 people die every year from receiving the wrong medication by mistake, and 20,000 others die from other hospital errors.3 Hospitals are dangerous places, and that’s not even counting the estimated 9...

We’ve known since the 1840s that hand washing is the best way to prevent hospital-acquired infections, yet compliance among health care workers rarely exceeds 50 percent. And doctors are the worst offenders.5 One study found that even in a medical intensive care unit, slapping up a “contact precautions” sign (signaling particularly high risk of infection) leads less than a quarter of doctors to properly wash their hands or use a hand sanitizer when treating patients.6 That’s right. Not even one doctor out of four washed his or her hands before laying them on the ill.

Every year, 12,000 Americans die from complications due to surgeries that weren’t even necessary in the first place. For those keeping score, that’s more than 200,000 people dead from so-called iatrogenic causes (from the Ancient Greek iatrós, meaning “doctor”). And that figure is based only on the data on hospitalized patients.

In outpatient settings—for instance, at your doctor’s office—prescription drug side effects alone may result in 199,000 additional deaths.

medical errors may kill even more Americans, up to 98,000,9 bringing the total annual death count closer to 300,000.

Even using more conservative estimates of deaths due to medical errors, health care comes in as the real third-leading cause of death in America.

The first such report, which appeared in 1978, suggested that about 120,000 deaths occurring in hospitals could be prevented.12 Then, sixteen years later, another scathing reminder was published

in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggesting the iatrogenic death toll may be “the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every 2 days.”13

In the years between these two reports, as many as nearly two million Americans may have died due to medical errors, yet the medical community refused to comment on this trag...

number of de...

most visits to doctors are for diseases that can be prevented with a healthy diet and lifestyle.

avoid getting sick in the first place.

doctors may be causing tens of thousands of cancers every year. Patients undergoing these scans are rarely informed of these risks.

getting a chest CT scan is estimated to inflict the same cancer risk as smoking seven hundred cigarettes?

one-fifth to one-half of all CT scans aren’t necessary at all and could be replaced with a safer type of imaging or simply not performed at all.

Because you’re exposed to more cosmic rays from outer space at higher altitudes, just one round-trip, cross-country flight may subject you to about the same level of radiation as a chest x-ray.31

pilots who consumed the most dietary antioxidants suffered the least amount of DNA damage to their bodies.

Taking antioxidant supplements may be more than just a waste of money. People given 500 mg of vitamin C a day were found to end up with more oxidative DNA damage.33

natural antioxidants in food work synergistically; it’s the combination of many different compounds working together that tends to protect you, not high doses of single antioxidants found in supplements.

those pilots eating a mix of phytonutrients, concentrated in a variety of such plant foods as citrus, nuts, seeds, pumpkins, and peppers, had the lowest levels of...

were bombarded with every day fro...

green, leafy vegetables like spinach and kale appear to have an edge over other vegetables and fruits

when it comes to radiation protection.35

white blood cells blasted with gamma rays suffered less DNA damage when the cells had been pretreated with

phytonutrients from ginger root.

Other common foods that may be protective against radiation damage include garlic, turmeric, goji berries, and mint leaves,43 but none of these has been tested in clinical studies.

the lemon balm tea appeared able to boost the level of antioxidant enzymes in the subjects’ bloodstreams while also reducing the amount of

DNA damage they suffered.

How ineffectual are some of the most common drugs in America? When it comes to cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood-thinning drugs, the chance of even high-risk patients benefiting from them is typically less than 5 percent over a period of five years.52 When asked, most patients say they want to be told the truth.53 However, as doctors,