Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (26 page)

For most people, illness means putting their fate in the hands of doctors and complying with their recommendations—recommendations that typically involve taking drugs for the rest of their lives while they watch their health gradually deteriorate. People are completely unaware that most illnesses are self-induced and can be reversed with aggressive nutritional methods.

Both patients and physicians act as though everyone’s medical problems are genetic or assumed to be the normal consequence of aging. They believe that chronic illness is just what we all must expect. Unfortunately, the medical-pharmaceutical business has encouraged people to believe that health problems are hereditary and that we need to swallow poisons to defeat our genes. This is almost always untrue. We all have genetic weaknesses, but those weaknesses never get a chance to express themselves until we abuse our body with many, many years of mistreatment. Never forget, 99 percent of your genes are programmed to keep you healthy. The problem is that we never let them do their job.

My clinical experience over the past twenty years has shown me that almost all the major illnesses that plague Americans are reversible with aggressive nutritional changes designed to undo the damage caused by years of eating a disease-causing diet. The so-called balanced diet that most Americans eat causes the diseases Americans get.

These conditions, and many others, can be effectively prevented or treated through superior nutrition. As their medical problems gradually melt away, patients can be slowly weaned off the medications they have been prescribed.

Patients are told that food has nothing to do with the diseases they develop. Dermatologists insist that food has nothing to do with acne, rheumatologists insist that food has nothing to do with rheumatoid arthritis, and gastroenterologists insist that food has nothing to do with irritable and inflammatory bowel disease. Even cardiologists have been resistant to accept the accumulating evidence that atherosclerosis is entirely avoidable. Most of them still believe that coronary artery disease and angina require the invasive treatment of surgery and are not reversible with nutritional intervention. Most physicians have no experience in treating disease naturally with nutritional excellence, and some uninformed physicians are convinced it is not possible.

Not only are common disorders such as asthma associated with increased body weight and our disease-causing diet, but in
my experience these diseases are also curable with superior nutrition in the majority of cases.
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Asthma is an example of a disease considered irreversible that I regularly watch resolve with better nutrition.

My patients routinely make a complete and
predictable
recovery from these illnesses, predominantly through aggressive dietary changes. I am always delighted to meet new patients who are ready to take responsibility for their own health and well-being.

You can watch a new you being made by the wisdom of your body, and this new you will result in all your systems and organs, including your brain, functioning better. Depression, fatigue, anxiety, and allergies are also related to our improper diet. The brain and immune system are able to withstand stress better when our body is properly nourished.

I am neither a research scientist nor a writer by profession. I am a practicing physician who sees at least five thousand patients a year. I work with these patients, educating them and motivating them to do more than others have asked them to do. The results I see with my patients are
thrilling
. Diseases that are considered irreversible I see reversed on a daily basis.

The overwhelming majority of my patients with high blood pressure are able to normalize their readings and eventually go off their medication. The majority of my patients with angina can end their symptoms of coronary artery disease in the first few months on the diet I prescribe. Most of the rest make a recovery, but it takes longer. The point is, they do recover.

More than 90 percent of my Type II diabetics are able to discontinue their insulin within the first month. More than 80 percent of my chronic headache and migraine sufferers recover without medication, after years of looking for relief with various physicians, including headache specialists.

Some people, especially other physicians, may be skeptical. There are so many exaggerated and false claims made in the health field, especially by those selling so-called natural remedies. Nevertheless, it is wrong to underestimate the results obtainable through appropriate but rigorous nutritional intervention. Even many of my patients with autoimmune illnesses (such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and hyperthyroidism) are able to recover and throw away their medications. The results are so spectacular that I am subjected to skepticism and even periodic expressions of anger from other physicians.

When one of my patients who had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis went back to her previous physician, a rheumatologist, and told him she was now well and did not require any medication, he replied, “It must just be that you are resting more.” She said, “I’m not resting more. In fact, I am more active than ever because my pain is gone, and I stopped the drugs.” He replied, “It’s just a temporary remission; you’ll be back soon with another crisis.” She never went back.

On the positive side, more and more physicians are becoming interested in nutritional intervention. Such care is clearly more cost-effective than traditional interventions, reduces health-care expenditures, and saves lives. Nothing is more emotionally rewarding for a physician than to watch patients actually get better. How can this not catch on?

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, accounting for more than 40 percent of all deaths. Each year approximately 1.25 million Americans suffer a heart attack or myocardial infarction (MI); more than 400,000 of them die as a result.
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Most of these deaths occur soon after the onset of symptoms and well before victims are admitted to a hospital.

Every single one of those heart attacks is a terrible tragedy, as it could have been avoided. So many people die needlessly because of
wrong, weak, and practically worthless information from the government, physicians, dietitians, and even health authorities such as the American Heart Association. Conventional guidelines are simply insufficient to offer real protection against heart disease.

If you are an American over the age of forty, your chance of having atherosclerosis (hardening) of your blood vessels is over 95 percent. You may think, “Heart disease won’t happen to me!” But I have news for you: it has already happened, and your chance of dying from a heart attack because of your atherosclerosis is about 40 percent. Your exercise program and your Americanized low-fat diet won’t help you much, either. You need to do more.

The typical dietary advice, represented by the American Heart Association’s guidelines, is still a dangerous diet. It is not likely to protect you from having a heart attack and does not allow heart disease to reverse itself. Moderation kills. The fact is that such dietary advice still allows heart disease to advance in the overwhelming majority of patients.

Just to highlight a small difference between the American Heart Association guidelines and my recommendations: my diets have less than 300 mg of cholesterol
per week!
More than a dozen studies have demonstrated that the majority of patients with coronary artery disease who follow an American Heart Association Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet have their condition worsen.
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No study has ever shown that the patients who follow an American Heart Association diet can reverse or stop the worsening of coronary artery disease.

In contrast, numerous studies have documented that heart disease is reversible for the majority of patients following a vegetarian diet.
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Most often these diets, such as the Ornish program, are not even optimal diets, as they do not sufficiently limit processed grains, salt, and other low-nutrient-density processed foods. Nevertheless, they are still effective for most patients.

The medical literature continues to refer to the diet recommended by the National Cholesterol Education Program as “low-fat.”
By worldwide standards it should be called a high-fat diet, but more important, it should be called a low-nutrient-density diet—one with a dangerously low level of plant-derived nutrients. As a result of following this almost worthless advice, heart disease patients usually eat a diet that derives over 80 percent of its calories from processed foods and animal products.

No matter how poorly they eat most patients claim that they are already on a healthful diet. They believe that eating a chicken-and-pasta-based diet is in some way healthy merely because they eat less red meat. Yet chicken is almost as dangerous for the heart as red meat; switching from red meat to white meat does not lower cholesterol.
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Such conventional diets simply do not lower cholesterol sufficiently and do not contain adequate heart-protective factors such as fiber, antioxidants, folate, bioflavonoids, and other phytochemicals.

Another real problem with these so-called low-fat diets is that they are often low in fiber and phytochemical-rich vegetation and may not be carefully designed to include enough of the cardioprotective fats. For example, multiple studies have shown the protective effects of consuming walnuts, which are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. A study of 34,192 California Seventh-Day Adventists showed a 31 percent reduction in the lifetime risk of ischemic heart disease in those who consumed raw nuts frequently.
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Numerous further studies have confirmed the significant role that walnuts, and nuts overall, play in protection against heart disease.
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The ideal diet for heart disease reversal, then, is almost free of saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol; rich in nutrients and fiber; and low in calories, to achieve thinness. However, it should contain sufficient essential fatty acids, so it is important to add a small amount of nuts and seeds, such as walnuts and flaxseeds.
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