Read Online Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life by M. D. Neal Barnard - Free Book Online
Authors: M. D. Neal Barnard
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rapid growth and an early onset of atherosclerotic heart disease (“hardening of the arteries”).
But if we live years longer, what will we die of? Personally, I plan to die at age 120, while racing in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. People who maintain healthful life-styles do not just add years to their lives. They also often avoid disease and the protracted decline of function that accompany cancer, stroke, diabetes, or obesity. Chances are, they aren’t just trading their “golden years” for “Medicare years,” or wasting their time shuttling between the doctor’s office and the prescription counter.
If you thought living longer means a longer period of illness or disability in old age, think again. Dr. Robert Kohn, of Case Western Reserve University, examined the cause of death of people who died at a very old age, eighty-five and later. He found that many had no identifiable cause of death. So far as anyone could tell, they had no illness, no particular infirmity. They just eventually died “of old age.” 75 So adding years to life need not meanyears of infirmity. And when the end of life finally comes, it can be without the protracted misery that marks the last chapter of so many people’s lives.
There is little doubt that the best diet is based on grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans. “Now some people scoff at vegetarians,” says Dr. William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study, “but they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate. They outlive us. On the average they outlive other men by about six years now. And they outlive other women by about three years. The average age of death of a vegetarian woman is already up in the eighties, well ahead of where other women die.”
Most people are not aware that they have any control over the effects of time on their bodies. But the best scientific evidence shows that you don’t necessarily have to develop wrinkles at the corners of your eyes and across your forehead—or at least not so soon. You can keep strong bones and maybe keep your hairline a while longer, too. And as we will see in the next few chapters, you can also have a trim waistline, a teenager’s cholesterol level, and much more control over your own health, once you know how to go about it. Time will play some of its dirty tricks on us no matter what we do. But the new way of eating you are about to begin has tremendous power to shield you from damage that would otherwise age your body prematurely.
2
Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease
Fort Mason is a group of buildings next to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. I entered Building F at the appointed time, and was offered a seat in a circle of chairs. The other participants were heart patients, and they were palpably excited. The chest pain that had meted out increasing punishment to them over the years had given them a reprieve. Like prisoners freed from captivity, they were now doing all sorts of things they had thought they could never do again. These patients had all suffered from significant heart disease. And they got better, not with surgery but with an effective program of life-style changes.
In the not-so-distant past, doctors felt that little could be done to slow the progression of heart disease. That idea has been exploded by new scientific research. Not only do we have powerful new approaches to preventing heart disease, we also have ways to reverse it—to make even advanced disease go away without drugs or surgery, as Dr. Dean Ornish’s patients made very clear.
Cholesterol is as important a factor as we ever thought, but we know that there is a cholesterol threshold below which heart disease is very rare, and it is not the 200 value that is frequently quoted. Emerging research also shows that iron, long thought to be a purely healthful nutrient, can act as a co-conspirator with cholesterol in the poisoning of the heart.
On the other hand, we have better
But if we live years longer, what will we die of? Personally, I plan to die at age 120, while racing in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. People who maintain healthful life-styles do not just add years to their lives. They also often avoid disease and the protracted decline of function that accompany cancer, stroke, diabetes, or obesity. Chances are, they aren’t just trading their “golden years” for “Medicare years,” or wasting their time shuttling between the doctor’s office and the prescription counter.
If you thought living longer means a longer period of illness or disability in old age, think again. Dr. Robert Kohn, of Case Western Reserve University, examined the cause of death of people who died at a very old age, eighty-five and later. He found that many had no identifiable cause of death. So far as anyone could tell, they had no illness, no particular infirmity. They just eventually died “of old age.” 75 So adding years to life need not meanyears of infirmity. And when the end of life finally comes, it can be without the protracted misery that marks the last chapter of so many people’s lives.
There is little doubt that the best diet is based on grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans. “Now some people scoff at vegetarians,” says Dr. William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study, “but they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate. They outlive us. On the average they outlive other men by about six years now. And they outlive other women by about three years. The average age of death of a vegetarian woman is already up in the eighties, well ahead of where other women die.”
Most people are not aware that they have any control over the effects of time on their bodies. But the best scientific evidence shows that you don’t necessarily have to develop wrinkles at the corners of your eyes and across your forehead—or at least not so soon. You can keep strong bones and maybe keep your hairline a while longer, too. And as we will see in the next few chapters, you can also have a trim waistline, a teenager’s cholesterol level, and much more control over your own health, once you know how to go about it. Time will play some of its dirty tricks on us no matter what we do. But the new way of eating you are about to begin has tremendous power to shield you from damage that would otherwise age your body prematurely.
2
Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease
Fort Mason is a group of buildings next to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. I entered Building F at the appointed time, and was offered a seat in a circle of chairs. The other participants were heart patients, and they were palpably excited. The chest pain that had meted out increasing punishment to them over the years had given them a reprieve. Like prisoners freed from captivity, they were now doing all sorts of things they had thought they could never do again. These patients had all suffered from significant heart disease. And they got better, not with surgery but with an effective program of life-style changes.
In the not-so-distant past, doctors felt that little could be done to slow the progression of heart disease. That idea has been exploded by new scientific research. Not only do we have powerful new approaches to preventing heart disease, we also have ways to reverse it—to make even advanced disease go away without drugs or surgery, as Dr. Dean Ornish’s patients made very clear.
Cholesterol is as important a factor as we ever thought, but we know that there is a cholesterol threshold below which heart disease is very rare, and it is not the 200 value that is frequently quoted. Emerging research also shows that iron, long thought to be a purely healthful nutrient, can act as a co-conspirator with cholesterol in the poisoning of the heart.
On the other hand, we have better
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