The Role of Diet in Preventing and Treating the Leading Causes of Disability
What do angina, low back pain, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, bowel and breast cancer have in common?
Answer # 1: They’re all among the top 20 causes of disability in the world, according to a study published in The Lancet in 2012 which used disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) – the sum of years of life lost (YLLs) and years lived with disability (YLDs) – to measure the burden of disease from 291 causes of DALYs, in 20 age groups, and both sexes, in 187 countries.
Answer # 2: They’re all PREVENTABLE, and some are REVERSIBLE, through adoption of a wholefood, plant-based diet.
Dr Michael Greger, whose website Nutrition Facts is a veritable treasure trove of user-friendly videos on a vast variety of nutrition related topics, got the conference off to a flying start with his presentation ‘The Role of Diet in Preventing and Treating the Leading Causes of Disability’. You can watch this entire presentation for free on his website.
Some highlights of Dr Greger’s presentation for me (aside from his inimitable delivery style :)) were:
Angina (chest pain on exertion, due to narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart by cholesterol-laden plaque) was reduced by 91% in people following Dr Dean Ornish’s program of low-fat, plant-based diet; moderate exercise; relaxation/meditation; and social support. In the Multisite Cardiac Lifestyle Intervention Program, 74% of angina patients became completely free of symptoms in just 12 weeks, while another 9% moved from the ‘limiting’ to the ‘mild’ category of angina. In stark contrast, the new angina drug ranolazine (Ranexa) much-vaunted is being trumpeted as a success because it allows angina patients to exercise a whopping 33.5 seconds longer. And it costs $2000 per year to take!
Chronic non-specific low back pain (i.e. pain that is NOT caused by an infection, tumour, inflammatory disorder, osteoporosis, fracture, structural deformity or other obvious cause) affects about 23% of the population, with 11-12% being disabled by it. This type of pain is caused by atherosclerosis of the arteries that feed the lumbar spine. In fact, chronic low back pain is a powerful predictor of the risk of dying from a heart attack, because if the vertebral arteries are clogged with plaque, you can bet the coronary arteries will be as well. So the same diet that reverses angina also helps cure chronic low back pain!
Stroke risk is substantially lowered by increasing daily fibre intake… not by taking Metamucil, but by eating more fibre-rich fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. Eating just 7 g more dietary fibre per day reduces the risk of stroke by 7%.
Not only does a wholefood, plant-based diet help to prevent type 2 diabetes – and far more effectively than the drug metformin – it can effectively reverse some of the most difficult-to-treat complications of diabetes, including neuropathy (nerve pain) and retinopathy (eye disease, potentially leading to blindness). In one study, a low-fat, high-fibre, completely vegan diet gave complete relief from sharp, burning nerve pain in 17 out of 21 diabetic patients… in just 4 to 16 days. Bear in mind that no medication has ever been found to effectively treat diabetic neuropathy! The diet also allowed 5 of the 21 patients to cease taking all diabetes medications after only 2 weeks, while half of those who required insulin dropped their dose. After 3 weeks on the program, the need for high blood pressure medications had also decreased by 80%.
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most feared conditions these days, since virtually all of us know someone who has succumbed to its ravages. This condition is not a normal consequence of aging; it is a brain disease caused by atherosclerosis of the arteries that feed the brain, which in turn is driven by a high intake of saturated fat and cholesterol. Even those who carry the APOE*4 allele, which is associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, can protect themselves against this dreaded disease by eating a plant-based diet: Nigerian blacks, who have the highest reported frequency in the world of the APOE*4 allele, have one of the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease rates, largely attributable to their low average cholesterol level which is a direct consequence of their diet. They eat mostly tubers, grains and roots, and hardly any animal fat. Studies of white populations have shown that those who eat meat (including poultry and fish) are more than twice as likely to develop dementia as those who avoid it.
Bowel cancer has long been known to be strongly linked with the consumption of meat. Processed meat such as ham, mortadella, hot dog and salami carries the strongest risk, as the nitrates used to cure these meats are transformed into nitrosamines, which cause mutations in the cells lining the wall of the bowel. Processed white meats including chicken loaf are also associated with a higher risk of bowel cancer.
There’s a fascinating linkage between breast cancer and constipation: women who have a bowel movement 3 or more times per day have a 46% lower risk of breast cancer than those who open their bowels less than once per day. Why so? Constipation causes a proliferation of toxic bile acids in the colon, which are absorbed into the bloodstream and taken up by breast cyst fluid – the fluid that bathes the cells of the breast. These toxic bile acids can reach concentrations 100 times higher in breast fluid than in the bloodstream, triggering mutations in the DNA of breast cells that can lead to cancer. Vegans have dramatically lower levels of toxic bile acids in their colons and faeces than either lactovegetarians or meat-eaters.
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