1. Lower risk of heart disease and stroke: Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States, and a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows women who eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of developing the disease. Doctors are not entirely sure why it is, but recent studies suggest nutrients and phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables, including fiber, potassium, and folate, could be independently or jointly responsible for the reduction in risk.
2. Lower cholesterol and blood pressure: Diet can play an important role in lowering your cholesterol. According to Harvard Health , different foods lower cholesterol in various ways by delivering soluble fiber, which binds cholesterol and its precursors in the digestive system and drags them out of the body before they get into circulation. By incorporating more plants in your diet, like oats, eggplant and okra, you can lower your ‘bad’ cholesterol.
3. Lower risk for cancer: The National Cancer Institute catalogs several studies showing how increased vegetable intake, specifically cruciferous vegetables like arugula, broccoli and kale decrease the risk of developing cancer. Studies in animals and experiments with cells grown in the laboratory have identified several potential ways in which these compounds may help prevent cancer, like protecting cells from DNA damage, and having anti-inflammatory properties.
4. Lower risk, prevent diabetes: More than 20 years ago, the first studies were done showing significantly lower risk of diabetes in vegetarians compared with nonvegetarians. Over the years, the study results haven’t changed. Consistently, studies show increasing daily intake of green leafy vegetables significantly reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. In a 2006 study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in Diabetes Care , Dr. Neal Barnard found a diet high in vegetable consumption proved to be three times more effective than the American Diabetes Association dietary guidelines at controlling blood sugar. You can access his program here .
5. Maintain healthy immune system: Every part of your body, including your immune system, functions better when protected from environmental assaults and bolstered by healthy-living strategies, according to Harvard Health . You’ve always heard the phrase “you are what you eat,” but in this case its true!
After the unanimous passage by both houses of congress on September 6, 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 380. The sole purpose of this directive is to remedy the widespread lack of basic knowledge of California physicians about human nutrition.
Simply put, medical doctors do not know what their patients should eat to prevent, treat, and often cure common diseases, including obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.
The fate of (1) more than 38 million men, women, and children living in California, (2) the economy of California, and (3) the reputations of California-licensed medical doctors all hang in the balance of effectively implementing SB 380. The ripple effect of doing so will be felt across the nation. The Medical Board’s first SB 380 Working Group Meeting will be held on July 17, 2013 in Sacramento, California.
Although “diet and lifestyle” are often discussed as being interconnected, these are separate issues in terms of SB 380. The importance of lifestyle matters, such as the need for tobacco cessation, and curtailing alcohol and substance abuse are well recognized and accepted by physicians, and the Medical Board of California, but are irrelevant to the current senate bill. SB 380 is about food. (Diet is referenced three times and nutrition is talked about nine separate times in this bill, whereas tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs are not specifically mentioned.)
Before SB 380 was passed in 2011, opponents, including members of the California Medical Association and several subspecialty groups representing the business interests of California physicians, told me and our congressional leaders that there is no need to have doctors’ practice behaviors regulated by the government of California. I was assured that medical doctors are responsible professionals actively involved in keeping their own houses in order. This is factually untrue.
Healthcare is a Big Business
It’s easy to lose sight of the obvious, that the practice of medicine is a business and physicians work for profit. After an average of seven years of rigorous schooling on the care of their customers (people), medical doctors (and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine) have learned almost exclusively about relieving the ailing minds and bodies of their patients by prescribing pills and performing surgeries (both valuable tools).
Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers rule when it comes to the education of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Even respected medical societies and non-profit disease awareness organizations in the United States receive much of their funding from industries.
The American Medical Association reported that 16 drug, device, and communications companies donated nearly $5 million in 2007 for continuing medical education (CME) programs and communications conferences. Various physician sub-specialty organizations, such as the North American Spine Society, the Heart Rhythm Society, and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology have been heavily funded by industries with special interests.
Efforts have recently been made to help make these relationships more transparent to the public. Even when conflicts of interest are completely open and honest, these declarations do not negate the biases inherent in a speaker’s talk or the research sponsored by industry.
Because of economic pressures common to all businesses, physicians’ practice behaviors can remain unchanged even after indisputable evidence of harm to patients is revealed. For example, angioplasty, with or without stents, performed for chronic coronary artery disease does not save lives. As a consequence, guidelines by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have been issued to curtail improper practices by cardiologists. Unfortunately, these robust national guidelines have been largely ignored; no change in the number of angioplasties has been seen.
Money has been identified as the reason for continued malpractice. Widespread publicity of physician misconduct, with the potential for lawsuits brought by patients and their families, has been suggested as a possible remedy. However, I believe SB 380 would be a less painful solution for physicians and their patients by providing the highly effective and competitive approach of diet therapy for coronary heart disease.
Physicians Know Little about the Diet of Human Beings
On April 24, 2011 I asked members of the California Senate committee who originally heard SB 380, if any of them or their families had been treated for diseases related to diet (obesity, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, blood pressure, arthritis, etc.) with a strong recommendation from their physicians to make serious changes in the foods they eat. None responded in the affirmative. That is because medical doctors are not trained on the effect of food on people’s health.
The brief nutrition education offered by medical schools has not been focused on the practical application of diet therapy for patients. “Nutrition education” means students memorize obscure facts about biochemical pathways and cellular metabolism. As a result most US medical schools and teaching hospitals are severely deficient in training students, postdoctoral residents, and practicing physicians in what a healthy diet really looks like and how to help their patients transition to one. More than half of students surveyed report that nutrition education is inadequate. The American Medical Association has recognized the need for improvement in this area.
Is Knowing about Diet Important?
Most deaths in the United States are preventable and related to nutrition. Seven out of 10 deaths among Americans each year are from chronic diseases, like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and common forms of cancer. It is estimated that health care costs for chronic disease treatments account for over 75% of the healthcare expenditures. The latest report from the World Health Organization concluded that diet was a major factor in the cause of chronic diseases.
In 2011, national health spending was estimated to have reached $2.7 trillion annually. These figures have been magnified to mean 17.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on medical care, which is among the highest of all industrialized countries. California spends $230.1 billion annually on healthcare.
Diet-therapy Is Proven Therapy
Diet therapy has been used for thousands of years to cure people of common illnesses. The best-known example from ancient history is the controlled experiment reported in the first chapter of Daniel in the Bible from more than 2500 years ago: Daniel 1:12-15: “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.”
Modern day examples of highly effective diet therapy used to treat thousands of patients include the classic works of Walter Kempner MD, the founder of the Rice Diet at Duke University; Nathan Pritikin, founder of the Pritikin Longevity Center; and Roy Swank, MD, at Oregon Health & Science University and Dean Ornish, MD of Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco.
By these treatments alone, using no medications or surgeries, diet therapy has been scientifically documented in our most respected medical journals to stop and/or reverse obesity, heart disease, type-2 diabetes,hypertension, kidney disease, arthritis, multiples sclerosis, and some common forms of cancer.
Diet also plays the key role in longevity. The longest living populations on planet Earth today live on starch-based (low-animal food) diets. These include people from Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California; all live in what are called the “Blue Zones.”
Unique to diet therapy is that it is cost-free and side effect-free. Patients treated with diet therapy, and often cured, are taken off of expensive medications with serious side effects, and they avoid costly and painful procedures. SB 380 Needs Teeth
Possible actions that can be taken during the Medical Board’s first SB 380 Working Group Meeting on July 17, 2013 include:
1) Requiring continuing medical education (CME) requirements for all newly licensed and re licensed physicians,
2) Requiring California’s eleven medical schools to teach diet therapy,
3) Requiring the 393 general acute care hospitals in California to dedicate significant time to diet therapy at ongoing educational meetings held for their doctors,
4) Auditing medical practices for the appropriate use of diet therapy (as opposed to drugs and surgery),
5) Sending nutritional education materials to physicians.
All of these measures need to be enacted; however CME requirements for physicians should be the first and foremost effort made by the Medical Board of California. Industry knows this approach is effective and that is why of the total $2.4 billion spent in the United States on CME in 2006, 60% came from the industry.
Requiring CME to remedy a deficit in physician education is commonplace throughout the US. An important precedent was set in California on October 4, 2001: AB 487 was signed into law, and requires most California-licensed physicians to take, as a one-time requirement, 12 units of continuing medical education on “pain management” and “the appropriate care and treatment of the terminally ill.”
The Medical Board of California has the opportunity, if not the responsibility, to require CME for physicians to improve their understanding of human nutrition, which will result in better care for their patients. As written, (SB) 380 begins with this statement: “Existing law, the Medical Practice Act, provides for the licensure and regulation of physicians and surgeons by the Medical Board of California. Under that act, the board is required to adopt and administer standards for the continuing education of physicians and surgeons.”
But change will not be easily won since profit rather than science is behind the vast majority of doctors office visits, hospitalizations, tests, pharmaceuticals, and procedures carried out in California. Because of serious threats to profits and their dominance over patients’ care, big industries have opposed, and will continue to oppose “anti-business legislation” of the kind brought by SB 380.
When the Medical Board’s first SB 380 Working Group Meeting is held on July 17, 2013 in Sacramento, California, much will be at stake. Effective implementation of this law will mean healthier and less medicated citizens of California, a more robust economy for our state, and a chance for medical doctors to more effectively fulfill their professional calling as “healers.”
Courtesy of John McDougall MD
(CNN) — One word could have a big impact on the way doctors treat obesity in the United States.
The American Medical Association has adopted a new policy that officially labels obesity as a disease “requiring a range of medical interventions to advance obesity treatment and prevention,” according to an AMA statement.
The physicians’ group voted to approve the obesity policy, among others, on Tuesday during its annual meeting in Chicago. The U.S. obesity rate increased almost 50% between 1997 and 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, nearly 30% of American adults are considered obese, and the problem is almost as prevalent in kids. Childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the CDC says.
Obesity for adults is defined as having a body mass index, or BMI, of 30 or higher. BMI is a way to measure body fat based on your weight and height. (Calculate your BMI here)
Being obese increases your risk factor for developing many serious conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, liver disease, sleep apnea and osteoarthritis. In fact, obesity has been linked to almost every chronic disease in some way or another.
“Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue,” AMA board member Dr. Patrice Harris said in a statement.
Obesity has long been recognized as a disease by other groups, but this move by the AMA sends a strong signal to the medical community, said CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Some experts worry suddenly declaring one-third of Americans “ill” or “sick” will increase the desire for quick interventions or medications and discourage people from making the lifestyle changes known to combat obesity.
On the other hand, AMA’s declaration could help increase funding for future obesity research. It could also lead to payment for doctors who want to simply talk to patients about nutrition or exercise — time that’s not currently reimbursed by insurance plans.
Identifying obesity as a disease may also help in reducing the stigma often associated with being overweight, said Joe Nadglowski, president and CEO of the Obesity Action Coalition.
“Obesity has been considered for a long time to be a failure of personal responsibility — a simple problem of eating too much and exercising too little,” he said. “But it’s a complex disease… we’re hoping attitudes will change.”
Nadglowski thinks the AMA’s support is also an important step in helping people gain access to obesity treatment. Most forms of insurance do not cover obesity alone. For instance, an obese patient cannot hire a nutritionist or a trainer and have it covered by his or her plan simply to lose weight.
“We do cover treatment connected with a co-morbidity,” says Don McLeod, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “For example, if you have diabetes and obesity is aggravating the diabetes, we might cover obesity treatment as a way of treating the diabetes.”
Obesity-related health care expenses cost Americans between $147 billion to $210 billion per year. Preventing and treating obesity before it leads to more serious diseases could help combat these costs, Nadglowski says.
AMA’s decision comes at an interesting time. The Obesity Action Coalition has been working to introduce the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act in Congress.
The bill was re-introduced in the House on Wednesday and will be re-introduced in the Senate on Wednesday afternoon, according to the office of Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, one of the measure’s sponsors. A similar bill last year stalled in committee.
The bill would increase obesity treatment options for Medicare patients, expand the types of providers who can offer obesity counseling and take away some obesity medication limits.
By: Jacque Wilson
Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be eating less meat, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine. (While I’d happily nudge the world toward a vegetarian diet, the report authors are more measured and simply suggest diets containing less meat.)
“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote in an April 18 blog post on the report.
A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.
Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”
The pair describe several areas related to anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases that have been overlooked or underestimated. For example, livestock breathing. They explain:
[L]ivestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover, while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today, tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO2 than in preindustrial days, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to the air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the carbon-absorption system.)
The human population is expected to grow by 35% between 2006 and 2050, while livestock numbers are expected to double during the same period.
“This would make the amount of livestock-related emissions even more unacceptable than today’s perilous levels,” states the report. “It also means that an effective strategy must involved replacing livestock products with better alternatives, rather than substituting one meat product with another that has a somewhat lower carbon footprint.”
Food companies, Goodland and Anhang believe, have at least three incentives to respond to current risks in their industry. The first is that companies already suffer from disruptive climate events — floods, hurricanes, etc. — and so it’s in their best interests to not worsen the situation.
Second, they expect the demand for oil to rise to point of collapsing “many parts of today’s economy.” One way in which this will be particularly troublesome for livestock producers will be that crops grown for feed will be refocused on biofuel sources.
A third incentive is to offer “alternatives to livestock products that taste similar but are easier to cook, less expensive and healthier, and so are better than livestock products.”
Sales of just soy “analogs,” or alternatives to livestock products — such as ice cream, milk and cheese — totaled $1.9 billion in 2007. That same year, sales of U.S. meat and poultry products totaled $100 billion — which they optimistically suggest means there’s much room for growth.
“Worldwide, the market for meat and dairy analogs is potentially almost as big as the market for livestock products,” they write.
Still further motivation, they note: “Meat and dairy analog projects will not only slow climate change but also help ease the global food crisis, as it takes a much smaller quantity of crops to produce any given number of calories in the form of an analog than a livestock product.”
Plus, meat alternatives would help to alleviate the global water crisis, since livestock production uses a tremendous amount of water; it could have health and nutritional benefits; and, given that meat alternatives are more labor intensive, they would create both more jobs and more skilled jobs — while workers in the livestock industry could be retrained for jobs in meat-alternative industries.
“The case for change is no longer only a public policy or an ethical case, but is now also a business case,” write Goodland and Anhang. “We believe it is the best available business case among all industries to reverse climate change quickly.”
By: Michelle Maisto
