Eat Real Food for Health and
Longevity
December 13, 2015
Story at-a-glance
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The vast majority of chronic disease and premature
deaths can be prevented through simple changes in
diet and lifestyle. A healthy diet is based on real
food, as processed foods are part of the problem
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There are many simple cost-effective ways to make
any meal healthier, from adding dark green leafy
vegetables, to adding your tea leaves to a smoothie
rather than tossing them after making a cup of tea
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About 70 percent of emerging or reemerging
infectious diseases originate in the animal kingdom.
Selecting pigs and chickens for mass production may
be a major mistake, as these are influenza-bearing
animals
By Dr. Mercola
Dr. Michael Greger is a nutrition expert, physician, and
founder of NutritionFacts.org, is the author of an excellent new
book, "How
Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent
and Reverse Disease."
In it, he examines the 15 top causes of premature death in
the U.S., including heart disease, cancer,
diabetes, high blood pressure, and more, and reveals how to
eat and live for a long healthy life.
The title of the book does not imply that you can achieve
immortality, but rather it refers to how to avoid dying
prematurely, in pain, after long, chronic, disabling illness.
What motivated him to focus on nutritional medicine was
watching his grandmother get well after being diagnosed with
end-stage heart disease. After multiple bypasses, she was sent
home to die, with only weeks to live.
As fate would have it, she heard about Nathan Pritikin on 60
Minutes, an early lifestyle and alternative medicine pioneer.
Pritikin has since passed on but she made it to his clinic,
which offered a live-in program, and a few weeks later, she was
walking 10 miles a day, and went on to live another 31 years
until the age of 96.
How could that be?
"They put them on a plant-based diet, graded exercise
programs; started getting them walking in 10-minute
intervals, and just gradually ramped that up.
This shows that a healthy diet and exercise cannot
just change the structure of the arteries and clean up some
of those plaque over the years, but actually change their
function," Dr. Greger says.
"You can get almost immediate improvements within
days in terms of angina and some of these other problems ...
And then, of course, Dr. Dean Ornish in 1990
published his Lifestyle Heart Trial, a randomized controlled
trial that proved ... you can reverse heart disease, the
No.1 killer – without drugs, without surgery – with a
healthy diet and other lifestyle changes. That's what did it
for me."
The Creation of NutritionFacts.org
While initially convinced that this information would
revolutionize medicine and abolish heart disease, he quickly
came to realize how naïve such a notion was. As the decades wore
on, people were still dying from heart disease in ever growing
numbers, and diet still didn't make it into the doctors'
offices.
"People continue to die and people continue to get
useless or worthless therapies for the chronic diseases from
the mainstream medical profession," he says.
"When I realized that, I said, 'Wait a second, if you
can effectively bury the cure to the No.1 killer, what else
is out there in the medical literature that has been buried
because there's no corporate budget to drive its promotion?'
I made it my life's mission to unearth all the stuff
that has been buried in the dusty stacks of medical
libraries and bring it to light. I actually gave up my
private practice and started going around the country,
speaking at all the medical schools trying to give these
lifestyle tools to future physicians.
Then I decided to circumvent the physicians, and go
straight to the public. We're talking about low-cost,
simple, safe, and side effect-free solutions. You don't have
to wait for your doctor to tell you to stop smoking – just
stop smoking!
So I started this website,
NutritionFacts.org. I just put all my work
up online for free. I've been doing that for a couple of
years now."
He now has 10 researchers working on the site, and more are
still needed to sift through the 24,000 articles published in
the nutrition literature in the English language every year.
That amounts to about 70 papers per day — far more than any
one human could possibly absorb.
If you were to assume that a physician knew everything there
was to know by the time he graduated medical school, and
committed to reading three papers from the medical literature
each night, by the end of one year, he'd already be 150 years
behind on the science.
Many assume that doctors are more or less all-knowing when it
comes to medicine, but the fact is that by the time they finish
medical school, everything they learned is already obsolete.
This is why it's so important to do your own homework, and
NutritionFacts.org is a great resource.
My guess is that in the not too distant future we will be
able to deploy deep learning strategies like IBM Watson to do
this task and provide us with magnificent revelations about the
nutritional literature.
For Optimal Health and Longevity, Exercise 90 Minutes Per Day
Dr. Greger is definitely a man who walks his talk — in fact,
he did this interview while walking on a treadmill — and the
reason for that is because he recognizes the critical importance
of staying in motion.
Before talking to Dr. Greger, I was pretty proud of the fact
that I walk about 17,000 steps a day (about 9 miles), which is
still within the upper 1/10th of 1 percent of people walking
with trackers. But Dr. Greger puts even me to shame. He walks 17
miles a day!
“But I go really slow. I’m going about 2 miles an
hour now; my heart rate doesn’t even really go up. It’s
basically just keeping my arteries happy,” he says.
“The current recommendation for moderate aerobic physical
activity is 150 minutes a week. That’s like 22 minutes a
day.
But if you look at the research, it's very clear —
yes, any amount of exercise is better than no exercise, but
if you go from 20 minutes a day to 40 minutes a day, [you
see] significant improvement.
Go from 40 to 60, significant improvement; 60 to 90
minutes a day, significant improvement, like doubling your
mortality benefit ...
That's why in the book I recommend 90 minutes a day
because that's what the science shows. You don't necessarily
have to do it for optimal health, but people deserve to know
what the best available evidence shows."
The science is equally clear when it comes to inactivity.
Chronic sitting actively promotes dozens of chronic
diseases, including obesity and type 2 diabetes, even if you're
very fit and exercise regularly, so simply standing up more is a
step in the right direction.
One recent study showed that
standing for at least six hours a day may reduce your risk
of obesity by 32 to 35 percent depending on your gender. Men can
reduce their risk of obesity by as much as 59 percent by
standing 12 hours a day.
In fact, standing up as much as possible appears to be a
crucial component of a healthy lifestyle that promotes
longevity. It's not only that exercise has benefits, but that
inactivity has significant dangers. Thirty years ago,
research from Cooper's clinic in Dallas showed that exercise was
associated with a dramatic reduction in the rate of cancer. This
is a well-accepted, non-controversial scientific fact, and it
goes beyond its effects on obesity.
Today, I believe I finally understand the mechanisms
responsible for these results, and it's because exercise
upregulates dysfunctional mitochondria. I now firmly believe
mitochondrial health is the core of most cancers. Mitochondrial
dysfunction is what causes the genetic problems. It's not the
genetic problems that cause the cancer.
And mitochondrial dysfunction is what you prevent with
exercise. I'd never recognized that before, but now it seems
quite clear that this is how it works. I recently interviewed
Rhonda Patrick, PhD, a biomedical scientist, on this topic. That
interview will be published shortly, so for more in-depth
information about the role of mitochondria in your health, keep
an eye out for that interview.
The Link Between Infectious Disease and Domestication of Animals
Dr. Greger's book contains a load of interesting facts I've
not previously encountered. For example, the connection between
infectious diseases and the domestication of animals. This stems
from his work with the Humane Society, which he is the public
health director of. His post-graduate medical training also
focused on infectious disease and public health. He worked the
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) wards before the
advent of protease inhibitors.
"When I was growing up, there was no such thing as
AIDS. I wondered 'Where did this come from?' It was just
such a devastating illness. When you look back ... it was a
so-called zoonosis — an animal to human disease tied to the
bushmeat trade and eating primates in Africa, which spread
[the disease] around the world," he explains.
When he investigated further, he realized that about 70
percent of all emerging or reemerging infectious diseases
actually originate in the animal kingdom. Going back to animal
domestication about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, that's when the
first infectious diseases emerged.
Prior to domesticated ducks and water fowl, influenza didn't
exist. The common cold appears to have originated in horses;
measles came from rinderpest, a bovine disease; and smallpox
likely came from camelpox in camels.
That really raises questions about how the treatment of
animals today impact future pandemic risks. He believes
selecting pigs and chickens for mass production may be a major
mistake, as these are influenza-bearing animals. Modern
livestock practices compound the problem by feeding the animals
antibiotics, which has led to the emergence of
antibiotic-resistant infections.
What Is a Healthy Diet?
The short answer to this question is: real food. It
couldn't get much simpler than that really. That means food in
its natural state, as it grew on the vine, tree, bush, or in the
ground. And when it comes to animal foods, two key factors are:
living conditions and diet. Real food is raised in accordance
with nature, and the animals are allowed to eat their natural
diet, without added drugs and fillers.
"It's almost too easy. People want some kind of trick
or magic bullet or something. There has to be some tricks,
some tips. But when people actually take those three words —
Eat Real Food — to heart, they can revolutionize their
health. What I hope is the take-home message from the book
is optimism. We have tremendous control over our health
destiny, our longevity, and our level of disability."
"The power is in our hands and on our plates,"
Dr Greger says. "That's the message you don't hear.
Because the message you hear is, 'We have a pill for your
disease ... We can treat your diabetes. Don't worry. Look,
later on, we can do surgery. Eat however you want; live
however you want.' That's the message that's coming across
enriching the drug companies at the expense of Americans'
health."
Whole Food and Your Microbiome
Ideally, you want to get lots of fresh vegetables, which are
best eaten as close to their raw state as possible. Moreover,
your veggies should be grown in healthy soil. The microbial
diversity in healthy soil is very similar to your gut, and if
you eat fresh vegetables from healthy soil, a significant number
of those microbes will be on the veggies you eat, and will
contribute to your own microbial diversity, which is important
for optimal health.
It's not only the vegetable fiber and the phytonutrients that
feed your
microbiome but also these other microbes from the soil in
which they were grown. According to Dr. Greger, higher
consumption of vegetables may cut your odds of depression by as
much as 62 percent, and I suspect this has a lot to do with the
fact that they improve the balance of beneficial bacteria in
your gut.
As noted by Dr. Greger:
"I was surprised to learn that to make sauerkraut you
don't add a microbial starter. You don't have to buy the
bacteria, like the yogurt starter. No. You simply take
cabbage leaves, and you put them in salt water, so the bad
bugs don't grow, and the Lactobacillus, the lactic
acid-producing bacteria that are naturally present out in
the field and on the leaves, are the ones that will
multiply, sour up, and pickle the cabbage.
People think they need to go to the pharmacy to get
probiotics. The probiotics are there [in the food]. The same
kind of acidophilus, the same kind of lactobacillus, the
same kind of probiotics that are sold in the supermarket are
present naturally on raw fruits and vegetables...
Raw fruits and vegetables, also offer prebiotics, the
fiber, they actually feed the good bacteria you have and can
replenish good bacteria if you suffer some gut microbial
insult by having antibiotics or something.”
Drink, and Eat, Your Tea
Dr. Greger's book also contains a Daily Dozen checklist of
foods he believes everyone should eat more of — foods that can
make any meal healthier. For example, you can make any meal
healthier by adding dark green leafy vegetables to it. But his
book also includes a variety of novel yet simple tips you may
never have thought of, such as adding your tea leaves to your
smoothie rather than tossing them after making a cup of tea.
One caveat though: be careful with where you source your tea.
For example, China just stopped using leaded fuel in 2000, so
Chinese tea may still contain elevated levels of lead. Tea
originating in Japan tends to have much lower lead levels. Like
me, Dr. Greger recommends matcha tea leaves, which is powdered
green tea leaves.
"It might not be a good idea for pregnant women and
small children," he says. "And if you're doing it a
lot, you really want to know the source of your tea. That's
the only caveat. Definitely drink and eat your tea."
Death Row Nutrition — Curious Conclusions of Last Meals
Another chapter in Dr. Greger's book that really fascinated
me was "Your Last Meal: Death Row Nutrition." This intriguing
title came from a study that did a nutritional analysis of the
last meals ordered by death row inmates. They essentially wanted
to find out what kinds of food people would choose if future
health risks were not part of the equation.
"People are like, 'If I'm going to get heart disease
20 to 30 years from now, I don't even want to think about
it. The French fries are right in front of me.' It's easy to
say, 'Oh, I'll just eat the doughnut and not think forward
of the future.' But what if you know you're going to die
tomorrow because you're going to be executed tomorrow?
There's no concern about the future at all. What would
people actually eat?"
The conclusion they came to is that people who know they're
going to die tomorrow opt for the standard American diet. There
was no major difference between what the inmates ate as their
last meal, and the "garbage" the average American eats, who has
an entire lifetime ahead of them.
"That suggests that people really are not taking
their health into account when they're sitting down to
meals," Dr. Greger says. "That was a big wakeup
call and really speaks more to how bad the standard American
diet is at this point, thanks to the corporate culture that
have shoved this down our throats. That was what these
inmates are eating. That was pretty scary."
Important Considerations for Vegans
Dr. Greger is vegan — a choice he made both for health and
philosophical reasons. As the public health director of the
Humane Society, he also doesn't want to be a hypocrite by eating
meat. But there are some downsides to avoiding animal foods. He
addresses these issues on his website, and in his book. Two
nutrients of great concern are B12 and carnitine.
"B12 is a critical issue for anyone eating a
plant-based diet even ovo-lacto vegetarian or flexitarian
diets," he says.
“You need a regular reliable source of vitamin B12.
It’s absolutely critical. I have these horrific videos
showing people going blind, people with spinal cord
degeneration, people getting paralyzed, and people dying
from not having enough vitamin B12. It’s one of the two
vitamins not made by plants. One is vitamin D...the other is
vitamin B12... I recommend at least 2,500 micrograms once a
week.”
One of the problems with B12 is that it's a very large
molecule, and unless you have an intrinsic factor to enhance the
absorption in your intestine, it's not going to be absorbed
well. So oral B12 typically doesn't work well.
Sublingual drops and intramuscular injection have better
absorption rates. The 2,000 micrograms per week is the oral
supplement dose Dr. Greger recommends, which is about 2,000
times the amount you actually need every day. Only 1 percent
gets through the intestine, which is why you need such a high
dose. Fortunately, you cannot overdose on B12, so you're better
off erring on the high side.
And then the carnitine, an animal protein essential for the
transport of fatty acids into the mitochondria. The enzyme
carnitine palmitoyltransferase is upregulated by about 20
percent in people who eat plant-based diets, but the reason is
still unknown. It could be due to the fiber content, or perhaps
the microbiome effect.
"The reason carnitine is in muscles, is in meat, is
because animals make it. We are animals and we make it, too
... There are enzyme systems that actually create carnitine
in our body ... About one in 20,000 to 30,000 births has a
deficiency in creating carnitine, but would never even know
it if they ate meat.
If they're eating meat their whole lives, they're
getting carnitine this way instead of their own body making
it. Should they go vegetarian, they're going to end up in
the hospital ... So what do they do? They take carnitine
supplements and they're fine."
Can You Be an Unhealthy Vegan?
Most people who start eating a plant-based diet will feel
very energized and will note a variety of health improvements.
However, some people fail to thrive on a plant-based diet, and
many times either
B12 deficiency, carnitine deficiency, or both, are to blame.
Dr. Greger notes that vitamin D deficiency is also rampant among
vegans who fail to thrive.
Many of the problems associated with veganism can be avoided
by eating a wide variety of real food. It may not have
occurred to you, but you can actually be a very unhealthy vegan
these days. The devil is in the details, as they say, and many
vegans are essentially just eating a vegan junk food diet.
Dr. Greger expounds on this issue, noting:
"It used to be that if you are a vegetarian, you had
to by default eat healthy. What was there to eat? Now we
have vegan doughnuts. We have vegan lard, vegan ice cream,
vegan everything. It's like the gluten-free thing. Celiac
patients used to be really healthy. What could you eat? You
couldn't eat any junk food, right? You just had to eat real
food.
Now we got gluten-free Oreos or whatever you want to
stuff in your face. Now you can eat just as unhealthy
gluten-free as a non-gluten-free. The same thing with vegan.
It has become so popular that you can get every disgusting
processed food in vegan form. I see that a lot among college
vegans. They're not doing well because they're not eating
real food. That's important.
If you look into some of the longest living
countries, like Okinawa for example; they were eating animal
products, but they were eating 95 percent whole plant foods.
That's a much healthier diet than your strictest of the
strict, 100 percent vegan here in the U.S. living on vegan
Doritos."
More Information
To learn more about how to eat yourself well and avoid dying
riddled with disease, I highly recommend picking up a copy of
Dr. Greger's fascinating and highly useful book, "How
Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent
and Reverse Disease." Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart
disease, and cancer — these are health problems you CAN avoid,
if you're willing. You can eat like you want to live into your
90s, or you can eat like you're on Death Row. The choice is
yours.
The book comes with a free app for iPhone and Android,
scheduled to be ready in January, which helps you track your
daily food intake. It can serve as a reminder to get the
recommended daily servings of Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen list. For
example, he recommends eating a quarter teaspoon of
turmeric every day, or half an inch of fresh turmeric root.
Fresh turmeric is preferable, and it's fairly inexpensive at
$20 per pound. If you buy in bulk, you can freeze it for up to a
year. Flaxseed is another item on the Daily Dozen list. I've
known for three decades the importance of flaxseeds but for some
reason I simply forgot to include them in my diet until I read
"How Not to Die."
The lignans in flax seeds are powerful soluble fibers and
they digest short-chained fatty acids, which is tremendous
metabolic fuel for gut bacteria and the cells in your colon.
Considering how inexpensive flaxseeds are, it's crazy not to use
them.
"Look, my diet changes very much as everybody else's.
I'll come home from the library and my family's like, 'What
can't we eat now,' or 'Why does everything have parsley in
it all of a sudden?' I'm learning as much as everybody else.
In fact, I'd probably be doing this work even if nobody
looked at it," he says.
© Copyright 1997-2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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