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

by Michael Greger

Blood flow is what maintains the stability and integrity of the inner lining of your arteries. Without that constant tugging flow with e...

up a sitting duck for arterial dysfunc...

regular interruptions in sitting time can be beneficial. And they don’t have to be long. Breaks could be as short as one minute and not necessarily entail strenuous exercise—just walking up and down stairs may be enough.

Diet-wise, drinking green tea every two hours can help keep your endothelium functional,29 as can eating meals with greens and other nitrate-rich vegetables. (See chapter 7.) Turmeric may also help.

the combination of curcumin and exercise appears to work even better than either option alone.31

If you’re suffering from an inflammatory reaction, might anti-inflammatory phytonutrients help? The bioflavonoids in citrus can help with the lactic acid buildup,33 but you may need to ramp up to the anthocyanin flavonoids in berries

to deal with the inflammation.

eating blueberries, for example, can significantly reduce exercise-induced inflammation.34 Studies using cherries show that this anti-inflammatory effect can t...

the strength loss from excessive bicep curling from 22 percent down to only 4 percent in male college student...

Eating two cups of watermelon prior to intense physical activity was also found to significantly reduce muscle soreness.

After just five minutes of moderate or intense cycling, you can get an uptick in DNA damage.

subjects who loaded up on watercress two hours before exercising actually ended up with fewer free radicals after the treadmill test than when they started. After two months of eating a daily serving of watercress, no DNA damage resulted, no matter how much it seemed the subjects were

punished on the treadmill.

those who eat plant-based diets may naturally “have an enhanced antioxidant defence system to counter exercise-induced oxidative stress.”

Following the current recommendations for 150 minutes appears to reduce your overall mortality rate by 7 percent compared to being sedentary. Walking for only 60 minutes a week only drops your mortality rate about 3 percent. But walking 300 minutes a week drops overall mortality by

14 percent.49 So walking twice as long—40 minutes a day compared to the recommended 20—yields twice the benefit. And an hour-long walk each day may

reduce mortality by 24 ...

hour a day of brisk (4 mph) walking was good, but 90 minutes was even better.

The more the individual being studied weighed, the less responsive to dopamine he or she appeared to be.

We see the same reduction in sensitivity in cocaine addicts and alcoholics.6 The brain gets so overstimulated that it ends up trying to turn down the volume.

The brain responds similarly to fat. Within thirty minutes of being fed yogurt packed with butterfat, research subjects exhibited similar brain activity8 to those who drank straight sugar water.9 People who regularly eat

ice cream (sugar and fat) have a deadened dopamine response in their brains when drinking a milkshake.

It’s comparable to the way drug abusers have to use more and more drugs t...

Once you’ve so dulled your dopamine response, you may subsequently overeat in an effort to achieve the degree of gratification experienced previously,

contributing to unhealthy weight gain.10

It may be less about the number of calories than their concentration.

It’s like the difference between cocaine and crack: It’s the same stuff chemically, but by smoking crack cocaine, a user can deliver a higher dose more quickly to his or her brain. Given our new understanding of the biological

basis of food addiction, there have been calls to include obesity as an official mental disorder.12 After all, both obesity and addiction share the inability to restrain behavior in spite of an awareness of detrimental health consequences, one of the defining criteria of substance abuse (a phenomenon referred to as the “pleasure trap”).13 Of course, redefining obesity as an addiction would be a boon to the pharmaceutical companies that are already working

on a whole array of drugs to muck with your br...

you can prevent the numbing of your pleasure center in the first place by sticking to green-light foods. This can help return your dopamine sensitivity to normal levels so that you can again derive the same pleasure from the simplest of foods.

When you regularly eat calorie-dense animal products and junk foods like ice cream, it’s not just your taste buds that change but your brain chemistry.

an overly rich diet could cause you to experience less enjoyment from other activities as well.

B12 is to take at least one 2,000 mcg supplement each week. If you take too much, you merely get expensive pee.

the once-a-day dosing is 50 mcg.

cyanocobalamin,

The only green-light source I’m aware of is B12-fortified nutritional yeast, for which two teaspoons three times a day would suffice.

take one 2,000 IU vitamin D3 supplement each day,18 ideally with the largest meal of the day.

Farther north, at 40° latitude (Portland, Chicago, or New York City), the sun’s rays are at such an angle during the months of November through February that vitamin D may not be produced. No matter how long you might sunbathe naked in Times Square on

New Year’s Day, you won’t make any vitamin D.22

There are two yellow-light sources of iodine: seafood and dairy milk. (Iodine

The most concentrated

green-light source is seaweed, which has the iodine of seafood without the fat-soluble pollutants that build up in the aquatic food chain. Sea vegetables are the underwater dark-green leafies.

The recommended daily intake of iodine is 150 mcg, which is what is in about two sheets of nori,31 the seaweed that’s used to make sushi. There are all sorts of seaweed snacks ...

seem to have added red-light ingredients. So I buy plain nori and season the sheets myself by brushing them with jarred pickled ginger juice and lightly sprinkling on wasabi powder befo...

Sprinkling just a half teaspoon of the seaweeds arame or dulse onto dishes you’re preparing may also get you your iodine for the day. Dulse is sold as pretty purple flakes you can just shake onto your food. I do caution against hijiki32 (also spelled hiziki), because i...

kelp, which may have too much iodine; just a half teaspoon of kelp could exceed the daily upper limit. For the same reason, you shouldn’t get into a regular habit of eating more than fifteen sheets of nori or more than a tab...

excessive thyroid gland activity.34 For those who don’t like seaweed, Eden brand’s canned beans have a tiny amount of kelp added such that iodine levels average between 36.3 mcg per half-cup serving (great northern beans) to 71.2 mcg (navy beans).35 Not only are those levels safe—you’d have to eat about twenty cans a day to get t...

your daily iodine req...

Consider Taking 250 mg of Pollutant-Free (Yeast- or Algae-Derived) Long-Chain Omega-3s Daily According to two of the most credible nutrition authorities, the World Health Organization and the European Food Safety Authority, you should get at least a half a percent of your calories from the short-chain omega-3 ALA.40 That’s easy—the one Daily Dozen tablespoon of ground flaxseeds takes care of that. Your body can then take the short-chain omega-3 from flaxseeds (or chia seeds or walnuts) and elongate it into the long-chain omega-3s EPA and DHA found in fish fat. The question, however, is whether the body

can make enough for optimal brain health.41,42 Until we know more, I recommend taking 250 mg of pollutant-free long-chain omega-3s directly.