A month or so ago, the indefatigable Greg McFarlane, who has been involved with the animal rights and vegan movements for the last 10 years and is currently a director of Vegan Australia, approached me for help. The Australian Department of Health was calling for submissions on its draft National Strategic Framework for Chronic Conditions, which is intended to serve as a blueprint for the prevention and management of conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
While Greg has written many submissions on various topics such as the greyhound industry, fisheries and regulation of agriculture, health is somewhat out of his ambit. On the other hand, I had never before written a submission to government on any topic, but I know the literature on nutritional prevention and reversal of chronic disease like the back of my hand, having been immersed in it for over 21 years.
Chronic diseases have been the leading cause of illness, disability and death in Australia for decades, and treating them gobbles up the lion’s share of the ever-growing health budget. Since I’m a taxpayer – which means an obscene proportion of my taxes is disappearing into the vortex of expensive and ineffective treatments for these chronic diseases while powerful but inexpensive nutritional treatments languish unutilised – and this is an election year, when pollies might actually listen for a change, I figured it was time to get on my soapbox and tell the government how to do its job better ;-). I told Greg to count me in.
Writing the submission gave me the chance to showcase the diverse array of studies that have been conducted on chronic disease prevention, treatment and even reversal, using a wholefood plant-based diet. I won’t regurgitate all of that here, since Greg has done a marvellous job of turning my rather dry submission into a highly readable article – A way forward for chronic disease – which I strongly recommend that you read and share with friends, family and anyone you care about.
What really struck me though was how amazed Greg was, when he read my submission and followed up on all the references I’d cited, that so much high-quality research has been done on the health benefits of a vegan diet. Since Greg is a long-time vegan, I just figured he would have known about all the benefits to his own health that he was accruing, as a happy side-effect of having spared the lives of thousands of animals over the course of his 20 years of veganism.
Then the thought occurred to me: How many other people are unaware of the profound effect that what they eat has on their health, both now and in later life? That was closely followed by another thought, one which has occurred to me many times, and which prompted me to develop my health education program EmpowerEd, but which struck me with renewed force – we health professionals who work in this area have a moral obligation to ensure that the findings of all these studies actually make it out of the medical and scientific journals, and into the public arena so that people who need this life-changing knowledge can access it.
Let’s be clear what’s at stake here:
- 90% of deaths in Australia in 2011 were caused by chronic disease;
- 35% of the population, or 7 million people, have at least 1 chronic condition;
- Roughly half of people aged 65-74 suffer 5 or more chronic diseases;
- 70% of those aged 85 and over suffer 5 or more chronic diseases;
- Up to 80% of these diseases are caused by lifestyle behaviours, with diet and nutrition being a primary factor;
- The 4 most expensive-to-treat disease groups in Australia – cardiovascular diseases, oral health, mental disorders, and musculoskeletal conditions – incurred direct health-care costs of $27 billion in 2008–09. This equates to 36% of all allocated health expenditure. This figure is an underestimate of the true cost, because not all health-care expenditure can be allocated by disease, and it excludes non-health sector costs, such as residential care (1).
It is nothing short of criminal that life-changing – and even life-saving – information on how to prevent and reverse chronic conditions is withheld from the general public, and that so little of the research dollars that our taxes fund are allocated to investigating diet and lifestyle treatments.
I have lost count of the number of times that a client with a chronic condition has told me, “My doctor said that diet has nothing to do with my high blood pressure/type 2 diabetes/rheumatoid arthritis/coronary artery disease/prostate cancer.” The fact that medical and professionals are unaware of the body of research that exists on all of these conditions, showing that they and many other chronic conditions can be more effectively managed with a wholefood plant-based diet than with medications and procedures; without negative side-effects; and at a fraction of the cost of medical care; and that furthermore, many types of chronic conditions can actually be reversed with the same wholefood plant-based diet, is both a tragedy and a crime.
It’s even more shocking when those same doctors show precisely zero interest when one of my clients walks back into their consulting rooms, and announces that they have gotten rid of their chronic condition – and all the medications they were taking in order to ‘manage’ it – simply by changing the way they eat.
I’m at a loss to explain this pig-headed refusal to examine any form of treatment that lies outside the bounds of their medical education, even when the evidence that it works is before their very eyes. Thankfully, many health and medical professionals throughout the world are switching on to the notion that food really is our best medicine; I’ll be joining several hundred of them at the 4th International Plant-Based Nutrition Conference this September.
As hopeful as I am that someone, somewhere in government reads the submission, looks into the research that it cites and considers its suggestions, no one can afford to wait for government to take the lead. If you want to maintain or regain your health, you simply have to take responsibility for your own dietary and lifestyle choices.
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