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

by Michael Greger

Phytonutrients exclusive to the tea plant appear so powerful that they can reverse disease even when merely applied to the skin. For example, the topical application of green

tea in

ointment form on genital warts results in an astounding 100 percent clearance in more tha...

woman whose skin cancers were apparently stopped with topical green tea application.

Drinking tea may protect against gynecological malignancies, such as ovarian cancer59 and endometrial cancer,60 as well

as lower your cholesterol,61 blood pressure,62 blood sugar,63 and body fat.64 It may protect the brain from both cognitive decline65 and stroke.66 Tea consumption is also associated with decreased risk of diabetes,67 tooth loss,68 and up to half the risk of dying from pneumonia.69 Those who suffer from seasonal allergies may also benefit from drinking tea. Randomized trials have shown that drinking about three cups of Japanese Benifuuki

green tea per day starting six70 to ten71 weeks before pollen season significantly reduce...

Scientists discovered that humans have four main mental states—two while sleeping and two while awake.

Delta waves, in which your brain is electrically pulsing slowly at about one wave per second, are typically only seen in deep sleep. Then there’s theta-wave sleep. At about five cycles per second, this mental state occurs when you’re dreaming. The two waking states are alpha and beta. The alpha state is relaxed, aware, and attentive, such as when you close your eyes and meditate. Beta, meanwhile, is the stimulated, hustle-and-bustle state in which most of us live our lives.

Alpha, however, is where you want to be—fully alert and ...

If you relax in a pleasant, peaceful place, after about ninety minutes, you can start to generate some significant alpha activity (though such practicing meditators as Buddhist monks can achieve this state much earlier and ma...

you could meditate every day for a few years—or you could just drink some tea. Within minutes of tea consumption, anyone may be able to attain that s...

If you drink your tea without lemon, green tea appears preferable to white tea. But if you add lemon, white tea jumps ahead.75 The reason is that while there are more phytonutrients in white tea, they may only be released at a certain pH level.76 In terms of cancer prevention potential, both green and white teas have been shown to

protect against DNA damage in vitro against PhIP, the cooked-meat carcinogen I described in chapter 11. White tea won out, though, blocking upward of 100 percent of DNA damage compared to green tea, which at the same concentration only blocked about half. The “potent antimutagenic

activity of white tea in comparison with green tea” was achieved at a brewing time of one minute. For most of the teas tested, steeping longer than a minute had no additional effect. In terms of antioxidant activity, though, it may be...

prepare tea in Taiwan, especially during the summer months. Cold-steeped tea is not like conventional iced tea, in which you brew your tea hot and then cool it down. Rather, cold-steeping involves tossing the tea in cold water and le...

two hours. This method has been found to reduce the caffeine content and is said to reduce bitte...

cold-steeped white tea was significantly better at slowing down oxidation.

(No significant effect of brewing temperature on the antioxidant activity of green tea was found.) The researchers surmised that traditional tea water is so hot that it manages to destroy some of the more sensitive antioxidants in white tea.

Based on a few cases of serious, life-threatening outcomes linked to kombucha tea, a type of fermented tea, the consumption of kombucha “should be discouraged,” according to one case report of a person who ended up in a coma after drinking the stuff.

tea consumption may help fight cavities,82 but too much fluoride can be toxic. A recent case reported in the New England Journal of Medicine described a woman who started experiencing

bone pain after seventeen years of habitually consuming a pitcher of tea made from 100 to 150 tea bags daily.

adults should probably not drink more than about twenty tea bags’ worth of black tea a day for twenty years straight, or thirty bags of green daily, or eighty bags of white tea a day.84 To prevent dental fluorosis, a harmless but unsightly mottled tooth discoloration, children should probably refrain from drinking more than about three bags of black tea a day (or around four bags of green or twelve

of white)85 while their teeth are still developing, up until around age nine.

The only two concentrated, green-light

light sweeteners may be blackstrap molasses and date sugar.

in the guts of rats, intestinal bacteria transformed steviosides into a toxic substance called steviol, which can cause a big spike in mutagenic DNA damage in vitro.

humans have the same bacterial activity in their guts.89 It’s the dose that makes the poison, though.

up to 1.8 mg of stevia compounds per pound of body weight to be a safe amount.

just drinking up to two stevia-sweetened beverages a day should be considered harmless.

erythritol, is absorbed and may have the harmlessness of xylitol without the laxative effect. Erythritol is found naturally in pears and grapes, but industrially, yeast is used to produce it.

erythritol may actually have some antioxidant properties.

the winner is … hibiscus tea! I documented its potent antihypertensive effects in chapter 7.

To eight cups of water, add a handful of bulk dried hibiscus or four bags of tea in which hibiscus is the first ingredient. Then add the juice of one lemon and three tablespoons of erythritol, and leave it in your fridge to cold-brew overnight. In the morning, strain out the hibiscus or take out the tea bags, shake well, and drink throughout the day.

Pour a cup of the tea into a blender with a bunch of fresh mint leaves, blend on high, and enjoy.

You end up with dark-green leafies blended into what may be the highest antioxidant beverage in the world, and it tastes like fruit punch. Your kids will love it!

make sure to rinse your mouth with water after consumption to prevent the natural acids from dissolving your enamel.100 Do not brush your teeth within an hour after eating or drinking something s...

further damaged by brushing.101 If you sip continuously throughout the day, I suggest using a st...

When you drink a can of diet soda, your brain thinks you just stumbled across a wild blueberry bush, and it sends urgent signals to eat large and eat fast before someone else gets wind of your bounty. At the same time, your body knows that if you eat too many calories, you might get too fat and not be able to outrun that saber-toothed tiger, so when your gut senses that you’ve absorbed enough calories, it sends signals up to your

brain to urge you to stop eating. When you ingest low-calorie sweeteners, however, you experience the familiar hunger-boosting effect due to the sensation of sweetness on your tongue, yet you may lack the hunger-suppressing effect of calories entering your gut. The result can be a revved-up appetite that can lead to eating more food than you otherwise would have.106 That’s the second way diet soda could counterintuitively

lead to weigh...

The third way involves maintaining cravings for, and dependency on, all things sweet. By continuing to consume any sweeteners—with or without calories—you are unable to train your f...

90 minutes of moderate-intensity activity 40 minutes of vigorous activity Daily Recommendation: 1 serving per day

exercise can also ward off and possibly reverse mild cognitive decline, boost your immune system, prevent and treat high blood pressure, and improve your mood and quality of sleep, among many other benefits.

every additional hour spent watching TV per day may be associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death.17 Screen time in general—including playing video games—appears to be a risk factor for premature death.

It’s not the electronics themselves but the sedentary behavior associated with enjoying them.

The problem appears to be sedentary sitting.

men who sit for six hours or more per day have a 20 percent higher overall death rate compared to men who sit for three hours or less, while women who sit for more than six hours have a 40 percent higher death rate.

Why is sitting around so bad for you? One reason may be endothelial dysfunction, the inability of the inner lining of your blood vessels to signal your arteries to relax normally in response to blood flow. Just

“use it or lose it” may apply to arterial function as well. Increased blood flow promotes a healthy endothelium.24