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

by Michael Greger

one to two ounces of freeze-dried strawberries every day for six months—that’s the daily equivalent of about a pound of fresh strawberries.

the progression of the disease was reversed in about 80 percent of the patients in the high-dose strawberry group.

Half of those on the high-dose strawberry treatment walked away disease-free.

if you aren’t constantly filling your bowels with plant foods, the only natural source of fiber, unwanted waste products can get reabsorbed and undermine your body’s attempts at detoxifying itself.

Nearly three-quarters of all emerging and reemerging human diseases arise from the animal kingdom.

tuberculosis appears to have been originally acquired through the domestication of goats7 but now infects nearly one-third of humanity.8 Meanwhile, measles9 and smallpox10 may have arisen from mutant cattle viruses.

We

domesticated pigs and got whooping cough, we domesticated chickens and got typhoid fever, and we domesticated ducks and got influenza.11 Leprosy may have come from w...

Once pathogens jump the species barrier, they can then transmit person-to-person. HIV, a virus thought to have originated from the butchering of primates in Africa for the bush-meat trade,13 causes AIDS by weakening the immune system.

The opportunistic fungal, viral, and bacterial infections AIDS patients contract—but to which healthy people are resistant—demonstrate the importance of baseline immune function.

Your immune system is not just active when you’re lying in bed sick spiking a fever—it’s involved in a daily life-or-death struggle to save your life from the ...

you have to keep your immune system healthy.

The control group ate fewer than three daily servings of fruits and vegetables, while the experimental group consumed at least five servings a day.

They were all then vaccinated against pneumonia,

Compared with the control group, people eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables had an 82 percent greater protective antibody response to the vaccine—and this was after only a few months of eating just a few extra servings of fruits and vegetables a day.22

kale is not only one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet—it may also help fight off infection.

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.30 It turns out that key is contained in broccoli.

this family of vegetables contains compounds necessary for the maintenance of the body’s intestinal defenses. In short, broccoli is able to rally your immune system foot soldiers.

if we don’t eat plants with each meal, we may be undermining our bodies’ strategy to protect us.

the immune boost provided by cruciferous vegetables like broccoli not only protects us against the pathogens found in food but also against pollutants in the environment.

phytonutrients in such plant foods as fruits, vegetables, tea leaves, and beans can block the effects of dioxins in vitro.

having phytonutrient levels in the bloodstream achieved by eating three apples a day or a tablespoon of red onion appeared to cut dioxin toxicity in half.

these phytonutrient effects lasted only a few hours, meaning you may have to keep eating healthy foods, meal after meal, if you want to maintain your defense...

garlic

may help clear bacteria on its way out of the lungs.38

For disease prevention, berries of all colors have “emerged as champions,”

their apparent ability to counteract, reduce, and repair damage resulting from oxidative stress and inflammation.40

berries may also boost your levels of natural killer cells.

Blueberries can boost the number of natural killer cells, but are there any foods that can boost killer cell activity—that is, how effectively they fight cancer cells? Yes, it seems an aromatic spice called cardamom may be one.

cardamom-infused blueberry muffins may increase the number of circulating natural killer cells in the body, as well as boost their cancer-killing instincts.

people who take probiotic supplements may indeed have significantly fewer colds, fewer sick days, and fewer overall symptoms.

Unless you’ve suffered a major disruption in gut flora due to a course of antibiotics or an intestinal infection, it may be best to focus on feeding the good bacteria already living in your gut.49 What do your friendly flora eat? Fiber and a certain type of starch concentrated in beans.

prebiotics.

Probiotics are the good bacteria themselves, whereas prebiotics are what you...

the best way to keep your good bacteria happy and well fed is to eat lots...

When you eat fresh produce, you can get both pre- and probio...

Including raw fruits and vegetables in your daily diet may therefore offer the best of both worlds.

But there is already something that can boost your immune system for free and by so much that you can achieve a 25–50 percent reduction in sick days. And it has only good side effects. What is it? Exercise.51

Moderate exercise may be all it takes to boost IgA levels and significantly reduce the chance of coming down with flu-like symptoms.

aerobic exercises for thirty minutes three times a week

chlorella,

whole algae may be effective.

seven weeks later, she was still on the drug and had restarted taking chlorella—and she became psychotic again.

The chlorella was stopped, and her psychosis resolved again.

nutritional yeast.

those who were given the equivalent of about three-quarters of a teaspoon of nutritional yeast before they exercised ended up with even higher levels of monocytes than when they started working out.68

Runners who were given the daily equivalent

of about a spoonful of nutritional yeast in the four weeks after the race appeared to have just half the rates of upper-respiratory infection compared to runners consuming a placebo. Remarkably, the runners on yeast

reported feeling be...

little