Diabetes

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“…TYPE 2 DIABETES, the most common form, often accompanies obesity.  As we, as a nation, continue to gain weight, our rate of diabetes spirals out of control.  The scariest figure?  1/3 of those people with diabetes don’t know yet that they have it.

You  know the situation is serious when our children, at the age of puberty, start falling prey to the form of diabetes usually reserved for adults over 40.  One newspaper illustrated the epidemic with the story of a girl who weighed 350 pounds at the age of 15, had the “adult-onset” form of diabetes and was injecting insulin into her body 3 times/day.

What is diabetes, why should we care about it and how do we stop it from happening to us?  Almost all cases of diabetes are either Type 1 or Type 2.  Type 1 develops in children and adolescents, and thus is sometimes referred to as juvenile-onset diabetes.  This form accounts for 5% -10% of all diabetes cases.  Type 2, which accounts for 90%-95% of all cases, used to occur primarily in adults age 40 and up, and thus was called adult-onset diabetes.  But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are Type 2 diabetes, the age-specific names are being dropped, and the 2 forms are simply referred to as Type 1 and Type 2…”

To Be Continued….

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Going in the Right Direction

Obesity is the most ominous harbinger of poor health that Western nations currently face.  Tens of millions of people will fall prey to disability, putting our health care systems under greater strain than has previously been seen.

There are many people and institutions working to reduce this problem, but their point of attack is often illogical and misinformed.  1st there are the many quick-fix promises and gimmicks.  Obesity is not a condition that can be fixed in a few weeks or even a few months, and you should be aware of diets, potions and pills that create rapid weight loss with no promise of good health in the future.  The diet that helps to reduce weight in the short run needs to be the same diet that creates and maintains health in the long run.

2nd, the tendency to focus on obesity as an independent, isolated disease is misplaced.  Considering obesity in this manner directs our attention to a search for specific cures while ignoring control of the other diseases to which obesity is strongly linked.  That is, we sacrifice context.

Also, I would urge that we ignore the suggestion that knowing its genetic basis might control obesity.  There was great publicity given to the discovery of the “obesity gene”.  Then there was the discovery of the 2nd, then the 3rd, the 4th and on and on.  The purpose behind the obesity gene search is to allow researchers to develop a drug capable of knocking out or inactivating the underlying cause of obesity.  This is extremely short-sighted, as well as unproductive.  Believing that specific identifiable genes are the basis of obesity (i.e., it’s all in the family) also allows us to fatalistically blame a cause that we cannot control.

We can control the cause.  It is right at the end of our fork.”

More China Study clips Here

 

Exercise

A clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“….The slimming effect of physical activity is obvious.  Scientific evidence concurs.  A recent review of all the credible studies compared the relationship between body weight and exercise and showed that people who were more physically active had less body weight.  Another set of studies showed that exercising on a regular basis helped to keep off weight originally lost through exercise programs.

No surprise here either.

Starting and stopping an exercise program is not a good idea.  It is better to build it into your lifestyle so that you will become and continue to be more fit over all, not just burn off calories.  How much exercise is needed to keep the pounds off?  A rough estimate derived from a good review suggested that exercising a mere 15-40 mins/day, every day, will maintain a body weight that is 11-18 lbs lighter than it would otherwise be.

The advantages of combining diet and exercise to control body weight were brought home to me by a very simple study involving our experimental animals.  Recall that our experimental animals were fed diets containing either the traditional 20% casein (cow’s milk protein) or the much lower 5% casein.  The rats consuming the 5% casein diets had strikingly less cancer, lower blood cholesterol levels and live longer lives.  They also consumed slightly more calories but burned them off as body heat.

Some of us had noticed over the course of these experiments that the 5% casein animals seemed to be more active than the 20% casein animals.  To test this idea, we housed rats fed either 5% or 20% casein diets in cages equipped with exercise wheels outfitted with meters to record the number of turns of the wheel.  Within the very 1st day, the 5% casein-fed animals voluntarily “exercised” in the wheel about twice as much as the 20% casein-fed animals.  Exercise remained considerably higher for the 5% casein animals throughout the 2 wks of the study.

Now we can combine some really interesting observations on body weight.  A plant-based diet operates on calorie balance to keep body weight under control in 2 ways.  1st it discharges calories as body heat instead of storing them as body fat, and it doesn’t take many calories to make a big difference over the course of a year.  2nd, a plant-based diet encourages more physical activity.  And, as body weight goes down, it becomes easier to be physically active….”

More China Study clips Here

 

Why This Will Work For You-Part II

A clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“…Those who follow a whole foods, low-fat, plant-based diet consume fewer calories.  It’s not because they’re starving themselves.  In fact, they will likely spend more time eating and eat a larger volume of food than their meat-eating counterparts.  That’s because these whole foods are much less energy-dense than animal foods and added fats.  There are fewer calories in each spoonful or cupful of these foods.  Fat has 9 calories/gram while carbohydrates and protein have only 4 calories/gram.  In addition whole foods have a lot of fiber, which makes you feel full, and yet contributes almost no calories to your meal.  So by eating a healthy meal, you may reduce the calories that you consume, digest and absorb, even if you eat significantly more food.

This idea on its own, however, is not yet a sufficient explanation for the benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet.  Other studies play a crucial part in explaining the health benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet, studies show that the weight-loss effect is due to more than simple calorie restriction…”

To Be Continued..

More China Study Clips Here

Why This Will Work For You

A clip from The China Study, T.Colin Campbell

“…So there is a solution to the weight-gain problem.  But how can you apply it in your own life?

First of all, throw away ideas of counting calories.  Generally speaking, you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight–as long as you eat the right type of food.

Secondly, stop expecting sacrifice, deprivation or blandness; there’s no need.  Feeling hungry is a sign that something is wrong, and prolonged hunger causes your body to slow the overall rate of metabolism in defense.  Moreover, there are mechanisms in our bodies that naturally allow the right kind of plant-based foods to nourish us, without our having to think about every morsel of food we put in our mouths.  It is a worry-free way to eat.  Give your body the right food and it will do the right thing….”

To Be Continued

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Obesity Continued – Part IV (& Final Part ;))

This is a bit of a lengthier post than normal,  I did not want to break up this information especially on a topic that is an ‘Achilles heel’ for a huge number of people.  Particularly addressing those that do not see weight come off, and why that is, so bare with and stick with me 😉

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“….Published results for still more intervention studies using a low-fat, whole-foods, mostly plant-based diet (10%, or less, of diet being non-plant-based)

• About 2-5 lbs lost after 12 days
• About 10 lbs lost in 3 weeks
• 16 lbs lost over 12 weeks
• 24 lbs lost after 1 year

All of these results show that consuming a whole foods, mostly plant-based diet will help you to lose weight and, furthermore, it can happen quickly.  The only question is how much weight can you lose.  In most of these studies, the people who shed the most pounds were those who started with the most excess weight.  After the initial weight loss, the weight can be kept off for the long-term by staying on a whole foods, primarily plant-based consumption, which most importantly losing weight this way is consistent with long-term optimum health.

Some people, of course, can be on a plant-based diet and still not lose weight.  There are a few very good reasons for this.  First and foremost, losing body weight on a plant-based diet is much less likely to occur if the diet includes too many refined carbohydrates.  Sweets, pastries, pastas and alcohol won’t do it.  These are high in readily digested sugars and starches and often times very high in fat as well.  These highly processed unnatural consumptions are not part of a plant-based diet that works to reduce body weight and promote health.

Notice that a strict vegetarian diet is not necessarily the same thing as a whole foods, plant-based diet.  Some people become vegetarian only to replace meat with dairy foods, added oils and refined carbohydrates, including pasta made with refined grains and sugars.  These are referred to as “junk-food vegetarians” because they are not consuming a nutritious diet.

The 2nd reason weight loss may be elusive is if a person never engages in consistent physical activity.  A reasonable amount of physical activity, sustained on a regular basis pays vital dividends.

Thirdly, certain people have a family predisposition for overweight bodies that make their challenge more difficult.  If you are one of these, I can only say that you need to be especially rigorous in your whole foods plant-based, “non-junk-foods”, diet and exercise.  In rural China, we noticed that obese people simply did not exist, even though Chinese immigrants in Western countries do succumb to obesity.  Now as the dietary and lifestyle practices of people in China are becoming more like ours, so too have their bodies become more like ours.  For those with genetic pre-dispositions, it doesn’t take much bad food before their change in diet starts to cause problems.

Keeping body weight off is a long-term lifestyle choice.  Gimmicks that produce impressively large, quick weight losses don’t work in the long-term.  Short-term gains should not come along with long-term pain, like kidney problems, heart disease, cancer, bone and joint ailments brought on with popular diet fads.  If the weight was gained slowly, over a period of months and years, why would you expect to take it off healthily in a matter of weeks?…”

More China Study clips Here

The Solution – Obesity Continued Part III

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“…The Solution to losing weight is a whole foods, plant-based diet, coupled with a reasonable amount of exercise.  It is a long-term lifestyle change, rather than a quick fix fad, and it can provide sustained weight loss while minimizing risk of chronic disease.

Have you ever known anyone who regularly consumes fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grain foods-and rarely, if ever, consumes meat or junk foods like chips, french fries and candy bars?  What is his or her weight like?  If you know many people like this, you have probably noticed that they tend to have a healthy weight.  Now think of traditional Asian cultures (Chinese, Japanese, Indian), where a couple of billion people have been eating a mostly plant-based diet for thousands of years.  It’s hard to imagine these people-at least until recently- as anything other than slender.

Now imagine a guy buying 2 hotdogs and ordering his 2nd beer at a baseball game, or a woman ordering a cheeseburger, fries and a beer.  The people in these images look different, don’t they?  Unfortunately the hotdog, cheeseburger, beer image is rapidly becoming the “all-American” image.  I have had visitors from other countries tell me that one of the first things they notice arriving in America is the exceptional number of fat people.

Solving this problem does not require magic tricks or complex equations involving blood types or carbohydrate counting or soul searching.  Simply trust your observations on who is slim, vigorous and healthy, and who is not.  Or trust the findings of some impressive research studies, large and small, showing time and time again that vegetarians and vegans are slimmer than their meat-eating counterparts.  People in these studies who are vegetarian or vegan are anywhere from 5-30lbs slimmer than their fellow citizens.

In a separate intervention study, overweight subjects were told to eat as much as they wanted of foods that were mostly low-fat, whole-food and plant-based.  In 3 weeks these people lost an average of 17 lbs.

At the Pritikin Center, 4500 people went thru their 3 week program got similar results.  By feeding a mostly plant based diet and promoting exercise, the Center found that its clients lost 5.5% of their body weight over 3 weeks.

To Be Continued

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Consequences for the Adult – Obesity Continued

A clip from ‘The China Study’ by T.Colin Campbell

“…If you are obese, you may not be able to do many things that could make your life more enjoyable.  You may find that you cannot play vigorously with your children or grandchildren, participate in sports, find a comfortable seat in a movie theatre or airplane, or have an active sex life.  In fact, even sitting still in a chair may be impossible without experiencing back or joint pain.  For many. standing is hard on the knees or hips.  Carrying around too much weight can dramatically affect physical mobility, work, mental health, self-perception and social life.  It isn’t completely about death, it’s also about missing many of the more enjoyable things in life.

No one desires to be overweight.  So why is it that 2 out of 3 adult Americans are overweight?  Why is 1/3 of the population obese?

Going on special weight-loss diet plans and popping pills to cut our appetites or rearrange our metabolism have become a national pastime.

This is an economic black hole that sucks our money away without offering anything in return.  Imagine paying $40 to a service man to fix your leaky kitchen sink, and then 2 weeks later, the sink pipes explode and flood the kitchen and it costs $500 to repair.  I bet you wouldn’t ask that guy to fix your sink again!  So then why do we endlessly try those weight-loss plans, books, drinks, energy bars and assorted gimmicks when they don’t deliver as promised.

I applaud people for trying to achieve healthy weight.  I don’t question the worthiness or dignity of overweight people anymore than I question cancer victims.  My criticism is of a societal system that allows and even encourages this problem.  I believe, for example, that we are drowning in an ocean of very bad information, too much of it intended to put money into someone else’s pockets.  What we really need, then, is a new solution comprised of good information for individual people to use at a price that they can afford….”

The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell – To Be Continued

This YouTube video (some of you have seen it before) goes through the top 16 killers of people and how 15 of the 16 are avoidable by eating plant based, an intelligent, comical, dry, factual delivery:

Uprooting The Leading Causes of Death 2012

More China Study Clips Here

Obesity

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“…Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse of the staggering statistics on obesity amongst Americans. Perhaps you’ve simply noticed that, compared to a few years ago, more people at the grocery store are overweight.
Perhaps you’ve been in classrooms, on playgrounds or at daycare centers and noticed how many children are already crippled with a weight problem and cannot run twenty feet without getting winded.
Our struggle with weight is hard to miss. Open a newspaper or a magazine, or turn on the radio or TV-you know that America has a weight problem. In fact, 2 out of 3 adult Americans are overweight, and one-third of the adult population are obese. Not only are these numbers high, but the rate at which they have been rising is ominous.
Perhaps the most depressing element of our super size mess is the growing number of overweight and obese children. Overweight children face a wide range of psychological and social problems. Overweight children find it more difficult to make friends and are often thought of as lazy and sloppy. They are more likely to have behavioral and learning difficulties, and the low self esteem likely to be formed during adolescence can last forever.
Young people who are overweight also are highly likely to face a host of medical problems. They often have elevated cholesterol levels, which can be a predictor for any number of deadly diseases. They are more likely to have problems with glucose intolerance, and, consequently, diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, formerly only seen in adults, is skyrocketing among adolescents. Elevated blood pressure is nine times more likely to occur among obese kids. Sleep apnea, which can cause neuro-cognitive problems, is found in 1 in 10 obese children. A wide variety of bone problems is more common in obese kids. Most importantly, an obese young person is much more likely to be an obese adult, greatly increasing the likelihood of lifelong health problems….”

To Be Continued

More China Study clips here

The Future

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

Just a personal note on this one, an amazing piece to me is how many times I hear that eating healthy is expensive….hmmmmm….

“…The future is filled with hope.  We now know enough to nearly eliminate heart disease.  We know not only how to prevent the disease but how to successfully treat it.  We do not need to crack open our breast plates to reroute our arteries, and we do not need a lifetime of powerful drugs in our blood.  By eating the right food, we can keep our hearts healthy.

The next step is to implement this dietary approach on a large scale, which is exactly what Dr. Dean Ornish is currently working on.  His research group has begun the Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project, which represents the future of heart disease health care.  Teams of health professionals at 8 diverse sites have been trained to treat heart disease patients with Dr Ornish’s lifestyle intervention program.  Patients eligible to participate are those who have documented heart disease severe enough to warrant surgery.

The results are phenomenal.  After 1 year of treatment, 65% of patients had eliminated their chest pain.  The effect was long lasting as well.  After 3 years, over 60% of the patients continued reporting no chest pain.

The health benefits are equaled by the economic benefits.  Over 1 million heart disease surgeries are under taken every year.  In 2002, physician services  and hospital care for heart disease patients cost $78.1 billion (that does not include drug costs, home health care or nursing home care).  At this time the angioplasty procedure alone cost $31,000 and by-pass surgery cost $46,000.  In marked contrast, the year-long lifestyle intervention program only cost $7000….”

To be continued

More China Study Clips Here