Plant-Based Diets Work Because They Address The Root Causes of Chronic Diseases

so why the vegetarian advantage what is it that gives plant-based diet an advantage over omnivorous diets and and the reason is simple plant-based diets work because they address the root causes of the diseases so how do they do this

well they do this by reducing our risk of overconsumption but also by essentially disabling the drivers of chronic disease inflammation oxidative stress lipo toxicity and dysbiosis and so we’re going to look at each one of those very briefly

first inflammation chronic low-grade inflammation is associated with pretty much every chronic disease you can think of it increases our risk of cardiovascular disease by weakening fibrous caps increasing risk of rupture increasing plaque formation they do all inflammation does all kinds of things that increases risk of cardiovascular disease for diabetes inflammation interferes with insulin signaling so insulin can’t do its job essentially and that increases insulin resistance and for cancer it increases a tumor growth it triggers the loss of proteins involved with DNA repair so it’s bad news all around so we want to reduce this low-grade inflammation and if we look at the levels of inflammation in people eating plant-based diets versus those eating animal centered diets we see a huge difference there was a systematic review and meta-analysis done in 2017 that showed vegetarian diets had a favorable effect on a marker of inflammation called HS CRP which is C reactive protein if a person had been vegetarian at least two years of eight studies six found lower levels and vegetarians one found no difference and one actually found slightly higher levels we have only two studies that I know of on vegans and the first is from Brazil they showed vegans had about half the levels of CRP that omnivores do and the second was a study from the United States showing about the same except people eating a Western diet had levels of 2.61 milligrams per liter compared to vegans at about 0.5 and vegans were about 0.5 in both of these studies which is highly protective against chronic disease

oxidative stress is another one of the drivers of chronic disease and it induces damage to proteins to DNA to cell membranes and it increases the development progression and complications that are associated with chronic diseases and we have multiple studies showing that vegetarians including vegans have more favourable antioxidant status because they eat more antioxidants it’s really that simple and they eat fewer Pro oxidants and we’ll talk about those a little bit later

lipo toxicity this is something that a lot of people have never even heard of but what lipo toxicity is is the accumulation of fat in places where fact shouldn’t accumulate okay so for example where do we store most of our fact in our adipose tissue right we have this special tissue that has an unlimited capacity to store fat when we we get over when our bodies get overwhelmed trying to store fat we sometimes start to store it in places it shouldn’t be like our liver our heart our pancreas and when these organs don’t store fat they don’t function very well and that is lipo toxicity we also start in our muscle tissue as well and this causes cell damage and cell death that causes inflammation it causes mitochondrial dysfunction it causes insulin resistance it causes elevated track and elevated blood glucose

and so what causes lipo toxicity well overconsumption leading to overweight and obesity are the biggest drivers of lipo toxicity but diets that are high in fat high in saturated fat high in trans fatty acids also increase lipo toxicity also diets high in refined carbohydrates particularly sugars with fructose being more problematic than other sugars but fructose is a bit of a story and of itself because of course fruit has a lot of natural fructose but our bodies can handle the amount of fructose in fruit fruit comes packaged with fiber and phytochemicals on all of these wonderful protective components and the amount of fructose that comes in our system is slow enough for the enzymes are in in our intestines to be able to convert it to glucose and to lactate into other things before it enters the body it’s when we’re drinking the stuff down in sodas that we we our bodies our intestinal tract gets overwhelmed and we get more fructose leaking into this into the bloodstream and it gets shuttled to the liver very rapidly and the liver gets overwhelmed and it gets turned into lipids quite quickly in that case to be stored and it’s more glycol toxic than glucose

now there’s a plant-based advantage here again vegans have the lowest rates of overweight and obesity of all dietary categories that the lowest intake of saturated fat and they have lower levels of something called intra Myo cellular lipids and intra Myo cellular lipids are a marker of lipo toxicity

and finally dysbiosis dysbiosis is really just when sort of bad gut bacteria start to overrun the good gut bacteria so you have an imbalance and you end up with an unhealthy gut microbiota and the integrity of the gut microbiota is really important because when it’s out of whack you get a decrease in your supply of essential nutrients you get reduced immune function increased inflammation and oxidative stress and an elevated risk of obesity and chronic disease

there is an advantage again for people eating plant-based there was a study out of Brazil in 2017 that found vegans had the most favorable microbiota of any dietary category followed by lacto-ovo vegetarians and the author conclusions was exposure to animal foods may favor an intestinal environment which could trigger systemic inflammation and insulin resistance and in Italy another study in 2017 found lacto-ovo vegetarians had the most favorable microbiota followed by the vegans and both plant-based diets reduced genotoxicity which is that that they were less toxic to our genes

so and then the most effective dietary patterns are really simply patterns that minimize pathogenic or harmful components and maximize protective components and so when you think about that you think about all the things in foods that are protective automatically we think of things like fiber and phytochemicals and plant enzymes and antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds and plant sterols and sterols and stanols and pre and probiotics and macronutrients from healthy sources and micronutrients from healthy sources

and when you look at this list the thing that kind of just stands out is that first of all fiber where does it come from fiber comes from plants and only plants fight ok phytochemicals plants and only plants antioxidants mostly plants and inflammatory compounds mostly plants and then the plant sterols and stanols are only plants and and pre and probiotics are really mostly plants prebiotics are certainly only plants probiotics can be in in in any fermented food but you get the picture the things that protect us most are the things that are concentrated in plant foods and we’re going to talk I think it’s tomorrow about low carb diets and one of the big concerns I have about low carb diets is they’re removing so many of the foods that are so intensely protective to human health they’re minimizing fiber in the diet not maximizing it there’s no way you can construct a diet that is you know super low in carbohydrates which is the predominant macronutrient of plants and and get optimal longevity and and disease risk reduction it’s impossible

if you look at the pathogenic factors in foods trans fatty acids excessive saturated fat refined carbohydrates excessive sodium neu5gc chemical contaminants products of high-temperature cooking Pro oxidants TMAO you look at these things will trans where where did they come from remember that what the World Health Organization said two categories of foods processed foods and animal products rich in saturated fats he looked down this list trans fatty acids processed foods excessive saturated fat mainly animal products refined carbohydrates processed foods sodium processed foods neu5gc is a pro-inflammatory molecule in meat especially red meat meat chemical contaminants tend to move up the food chain products of high-temperature cooking well whatever we’re cooking at very high temperatures we’ll talk about those a little bit later Pro oxidants things like heme iron animal products TMAO is trimethylamine and oxide which is formed from carnitine in meat so it goes into the you know into the digestive tract and the bacteria there will convert it to TMA and then it’s to the liver and it gets converted to tmao and this stuff is highly atherogenic it increases plaque formation it increases risk of kidney disease and so on not a good thing vegans don’t even have the bacteria and they’re got to make tea ma so we don’t produce this stuff at all it’s just another protection and then endotoxins endotoxins are are sort of the the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria a harmful bacteria and and you can when your bad gut bacteria breaks down it can produce endotoxins that can leak into the bloodstream increasing inflammation but you can also eat it in things like hamburger there’s a lot of these dead bacteria in those products

and so now if you look at the the actual what we actually eat in the United States 39% of the calories come from added fats oils and sugars 30% comes from animal foods 22 percent comes from grains 90 plus percent of which are refined so refined white start to white sugar products 9% come from vegetables fruits and legumes probably half of which are orange juice and ketchup so you know we’ve got a problem so it’s not rocket science why people are getting these chronic diseases most of what we eat is a threat to health so this is a problem

fortunately we have a choice and when people make the right choice miracles happen it’s just incredible how powerful when you think about when a diet is is is lifestyle induced the only thing that will ever dramatically change that is extreme lifestyle changes you know every single cell of the human body is a product of what we put in our mouths it would make no sense to think that it doesn’t impact us it has to and so I’m you know when I first started working in the Marshall Islands I was absolutely awestruck by the rate at which this change happens we had people that that you know were barely able to walk across a room when we first saw them that had painful legs for twenty years and within a week it was gone it was just shocking

so so I wanted to share a story with you because this is I’ve shared this story before but it really is my favorite story about dramatic change and it’s my favorite story because of the way it happened this is andreas and he received a very rare cancer diagnosis when he was about 36 years old he made a huge shift from being a food and wine aficionado to a whole food plant-based diet devotee and his cancer went into remission now andreas when I say he was a funa food and wine aficionado I mean that it’s it’s an understatement really he his favorite pastime was eating in the best restaurants buying the biggest steak and the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu I remember him telling me that he and his wife flew to Paris for the weekend to eat in one of the ten best restaurants in the world and they paid $3,000 for their meal so he really was food was very important to him so you can imagine going from that to eating a hundred percent whole food plant-based no oil no sugar no nothing processed at all this was a big change for andreas

but what I love about this story is his whole foodie family his parents his brothers brothers family they all said ondrea’s whatever diet you’re doing we’re doing with you because we always want to be able to eat as a family and we want to support you so they were all to give up all of these foods they love to support andreas and and it was unbelievable what happened to the whole family and I’m not going to tell you what happened to the whole family I’m just going to tell you what happened to his father Carlos say Carlos had type 2 diabetes he was diagnosed with it in 93 he had just had a serious heart attack the year before his son was diagnosed with cancer he had hypertension he had high cholesterol he had peripheral artery disease he was in early stage renal failure and he had recurring gout he had cataracts and and the doctor said he would need surgery within a year or so his prognosis he was told by his doctors that all of his diseases were progressive and irreversible and that he could expect to live about two years he was being treated with 17 pills a day and 30 to 40 units of insulin

after less than one year on a whole food plant-based diet Carlos was taking zero insulin and zero pills here it’s it’s really quite quite amazing considering his doctors told him he’d be dead in a couple of years so his fasting glucose went down to 80 to 87 milligrams per deciliter his a1c was 5.1 blood pressure 115 over 70 they couldn’t get it to that on two medications his arteries opened up without any surgery they did a PET scan I’ll show you one of his reports he his peripheral artery disease disappeared his kidney function normalized went right back to normal he didn’t have one single further recurrence of gout after becoming plant-based his cataracts stopped growing and the doctor said he didn’t need surgery anymore and seven seven years later Carlos is still medication still free of all of these diseases and the medications he was on for them

and so here’s his coronary artery disease reports 2005 he had very severe coronary artery disease with a with an inferior wall in fact he had Kaipo Kinesis he had in ejection fraction of about 50% this is all you know Greek to many people but it’s just very severe coronary artery disease in 2017 this is 12 years later no evidence of abnormal cardiac activity no evidence for reversible perfusion defects no evidence of ischemia normal chamber size normal ejection fraction it’s really quite amazing

and and you know before I even go into this I want to tell you that he went back to his doctor and he said why didn’t you tell me that all I had to do was changed my diet and I could cure myself and his doctor looked at him and he said I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know he said I do now he said to be honest with you if somebody would have told me this was possible I would have laughed at them he said but I’ve seen it with my own eyes now and I know it’s possible

so not everyone is willing to make the kind of changes that Carlos made but I believe that everyone has a right to know that lifestyle changes are a safe and highly effective treatment option at the very least when the physician lays the options out on the table it should be among them and people have a right to choose