How Plant-Based Diets Transform Health – Real-Life Success Stories with Brenda Davis, R.D.

Transition to Personal Experiences

So why are healthy plant-based diets so protective well plant-based dietary patterns actually maximize protective dietary components such as fiber and phytochemicals and antioxidants and plant steril and pre and probiotics well minimizing potentially pathogenic dietary components like saturated fat and trans fatty acids refined carbohydrates new 5gc tmao and its precursors chemical contaminants prooxidants and endotox which are found mainly in animal products and or highly processed foods so not only do plant-based diets protect against many chronic diseases but they actually also provide a very safe and Powerful.

Treatment option in.

Personal Experience in the Marshall Islands

Some cases driving these diseases into remission and here's where I'd like to share just a couple of my own personal experiences in putting lifestyle medicine into practice to show you what is uh possible and I'll just share a little bit about U my work in the Marshall Islands and uh the work that I did in Lithuania and I want to tell you that I'm actually returning to the Marshall Islands in a few days uh to do um an inservice for the staff there and a um.

A talk on lifestyle medicine for the president and staff and so we'll be uh we'll be really excited my son is coming with me uh to be back in the Marshall Islands the last time I was there was 2017 so this will be an exciting trip so for those of you that AR familiar with the Marshall Islands they are uh somewhere between Hawaii and Australia very very remote in the middle of the Pacific Ocean just above the equator directly north of New Zealand by about 3,500.

Miles and uh the Marshall Islands has declared a state of emergency where type two diabetes is concerned they have among the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes and the highest death rates from diabetes globally in 2021 the prevalence was 25.1% in people ages 20 to 79 and that was actually down from over 30% previously about half of all the surgeries on the islands are due to uh are amputation due to diabetes so you might wonder if diabetes was a problem in the past and in fact.

A century ago diabetes was pretty much unheard of in the Marshall Islands people were slim they were physically active and they lived off the land so what did they eat well traditionally they they ate whatever they could gather on the islands which um was coconut and a few green leaves bread fruit bananas pandanas whatever plant they could grow and or naturally grew there and of course whatever they could collect from the ocean so fish and seafood were a big part of their traditional diet and of.

Course they had to work very hard to get these Foods so so they were getting a lot of physical activity so what do people eat today well today there are more people uh on the main island so Mao for example um you know the island might sustain 500 to a, people well 30,000 people live there um they're they're quite poor there's.

Traditional Diet in the Marshall Islands

Not a lot of employment and so Foods must be uh transported into them so a lot of these foods are non- perishable foods and highly processed foods so just to to run through some of these pictures on the left upper left this little girl uh has a can of Pepsi and a a popsicle in her hand this is 6:30 in the morning so essentially she's eating breakfast um the the the school girl in the middle picture is eating rice and and chicken and this is a.

Very typical School Meal the favorite snack you can see the ramen noodles here of children is is dry ramen noodles they crack open the package eat them sometimes I've seen kids sprinkling um Kool-Aid powder on top uh before eating them for flavoring and sometimes even sprinkling asamoto on top which is pure MSG uh the the meal on the right is a a meal uh that was handed out at a funeral you.

Water and ESS Sy flavors

Can see a white rice and meat a white bread ham sandwich some white soda biscuits and a dut uh the the picture in the bottom left is as of a first uh birthday party you can just see the big bins of meat Mo mostly processed meat there's chicken there's some sort of lunch meat and wieners and and then of course a lot of white rice the main beverage that people drink is called luau and it's a you can see this is a.

Diet and Intervention Group

Concentrate that's mixed with water but it's essentially number one ingredient is high fructose corn syrup uh and then colors and flavors and so on spam is a fairly um major uh Staple in the diet as well so in several years ago this was back in 2007 actually I I was part of a randomized uh a team that did a randomized control trial in the Marshall Islands we had five overlapping cohorts with a intervention versus control groups and we did three months of very intensive uh lifestyle.

Medicine and we used all six pillars of Lifestyle medicine a healthy Whole Food plant-based diet and exercise daily exercise walking after meals and and and.

Results of the Study

An exercise class every day and and we did a lot lot of uh education about sleep and Stress Management and support and addiction control and so forth and the diet was very high in fiber about 40 plus grams a day it was a whole food plant-based diet it was high in phytochemicals and antioxidants it had minimal highly processed foods if any uh and it was very low in fat about 20 I shouldn't say very low in fat was low in fat about 20% of calories most.

Of the fat coming from nuts and seeds and so our results uh our results paper actually is is slated to be out this year uh which you may find funny but it it is it was a long process we had some challenges uh but essentially in the first two weeks we saw a drop of fasting blood sugar of about 70 uh one milligrams per deciliter and and by 12 Weeks it was about 48 milligrams per deciliter it wasn't quite as good as the first two weeks.

Just because at the at the 12 point mark people were preparing their own food whereas in the first two weeks all the food that they consumed came from us oh and and before I continue I want to tell you that uh um the the uh investigator in this uh project you can see the the the red circle is myself and Dr John Kelly and Dr John Kelly was actually the founding president of the American College of Lifestyle medicine uh and then you can see a drop.

Of close to two points in A1 C at at 12 weeks and and and hscrp which is our measure of inflammation dropped by 1.2 points so pretty pretty stellar results and and a remission was achieved probably in in in about 30% of of participants and the participants told us uh over and over again they had less pain less disability they could think more clearly they have better sleep and as you can imagine they had much less constipation they probably went from about seven or eight grams.

Of fiber a day to 40 gram of fiber a day so it it was really quite quite a change [Music].