HEALTHY at 100 & China Study

CHINA STUDY:

In the early 1970s, the premier of China, Chou En-lai, was dying of cancer. In the grip of this terminal disease, Premier Chou initiated a nationwide survey to collect information about the extent and location of cancer in China. The result was the most ambitious biomedical research project ever undertaken, involving more than 650,000 workers. The cancer survey was truly monumental. It catalogued the death rates for 12 different kinds of cancers in more than 2,400 Chinese counties - 96 percent of China's population. The survey found that cancers were vastly more common in some parts of China than in others.

As a result of the vast amount of information gathered in the China Study, Dr. Campbell came to believe that the scientific evidence indicates a diet based on plant foods with a minimum of foods derived from animals as the ideal diet for human beings. In fact, his book "The China Study" is one of the strongest scientific arguments ever amassed for such a way of eating.

Pages 129-130)  Dr. Campbell wrote: "One of the most dramatic findings of the China Project was the strong association between foods of animal origin and cancer . . .  We found that one of the strongest predictors of Western diseases was blood cholesterol . . . Lower blood cholesterol levels were linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer and other Western diseases . . . As blood cholesterol levels decreased from 170mg/dl. to 90 mg/dl., cancers of the liver, rectum, colon, lung, breast, stomach, esophagus, brain, and leukemia decreased . . . It's not enough simply to make a few small dietary changes to prevent cancer. A major shift towards plant-based foods and away from animal foods is likely to produce much greater benefits.

Page 131)  Dr. Campbell says, "The vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular disease, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented simply by adopting a plant-based diet."

Page 132)  If the correlation between cancer and animal food consumption is indeed as powerful as the China Study found, you would expect other studies to find the same thing. It turns out that is the case. A study of 122,000 female nurses, for example, found that those women who ate meat daily were 2 1/2 times more likely to get colon cancer than those women who ate meat less than once a month.

In 2001, a comprehensive Harvard review of the research on dairy products and prostate cancer found that those who had over the course of their lives consumed the most dairy products had double the rate of advanced prostate cancer and 4 times the rate of metastatic prostate cancer. A high intake of fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, was associated with a lower risk of advanced prostate cancer.

Page 130)  Other studies, including the famous Physician’s Health Study have also confirmed a link between dairy product consumption and prostate cancer. And a study of more than 12,000 Seventh-Day Adventists men found that those who drank soy milk regularly had a whopping 70 percent reduction in their risk of prostate cancer.

Page 131)  Just how important it is to eat a plant-based diet to prevent cancer was confirmed in 1997, when the American Institute for Cancer Research issued a major international report, Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. The report analyzed more than 4,500 research studies dealing with diet and cancer, and its production involved the participants of more than 120 contributors and peer reviews, including participants from the World Health Organization of the United Nations, the International Agency on Research in Cancer, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Included in the report was a study by a panel of fifteen of the world’s leading researchers in diet and cancer who reviewed more than 200 case-controlled studies on the link between fruits and vegetables and cancer. An astounding 78 percent of these studies found fruits and vegetables to have a statistically protective effect in regard to one or more kinds of cancer. Only 22 percent showed no significant link. None showed an increase of cancer with consumption of these foods.

The overall report’s number one dietary recommendation?

Choose predominantly plant-based diets rich in a variety of vegetables and fruits, legumes, and minimally processed starchy staple foods.

Pages 130-131) Today, men in China who are still eating their traditional whole - foods, plant - based diets without any dairy products have one of the lowest rates of advanced prostate cancer in the world. And no one can say these low rates are due to a genetic advantage, because Chinese American men living in the United States and eating the standard American diet have been shown to have rates 10 times as high as their genetic counterparts still eating in the traditional way in China.

China has traditionally been a vegetarian culture, while hamburgers have long been a defining feature of the U.S. lifestyle. As recently as 1974, the United States consumed close to 50 times more meat than China. But by 2005, the Chinese diet was becoming increasingly similar to the standard U.S. diet, and China was consuming nearly twice as much meat as the United States. In the 30 years between 1974 and 2004, meat consumption in China increased an astonishing 12,700 percent.

In 1989, Kentucky Fried Chicken became the first foreign fast - food franchise to set up shop in China. McDonald's and others soon followed. By 2004 there were more than 1,200 KFC outlets in China - the company was opening nearly one a day.

The dietary changes are enormous. While TV commercials starring pop heartthrobs are persuading millions of Chinese teens to drink Pepsi, China's children are now weaned on cheeseburgers from McDonald's, pizza from Pizza Hut, and fried chicken from KFC.

Page 134) Recent studies are also finding a sharp rise in levels of blood cholesterol throughout China in the last decade, and in the incidence of high blood pressure and diabetes in both children and adults. Urban areas in particular are already seeing a dramatic increase in heart disease and cancer. - from "Healthy at 100" by John Robbins
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DR. DEAN ORNISH PROGRAM GREATLY IMPROVES HEART DISEASE

Dr. Dean Ornish’s best-known research is the Lifestyle Heart Trial, in which he treated patients with advanced heart disease not with drugs, but with lifestyle changes alone.

He put a group of patients on a very low fat plant-based diet for a year, and asked them to stop smoking, to get regular moderate exercise, to spend ½ hour every day stretching, meditating, relaxing, or doing some other form of stress reduction, and to participate in weekly psychological and social support groups.

Meanwhile, a control group was treated with the standard American Heart Association heart disease program and utilizes cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The results revolutionized the treatment of heart disease worldwide. Those patients who completed Dr. Ornish’s experimental program achieved medically unprecedented improvements in health and vitality. On average, their total cholesterol dropped from 227 mg/dL to 172 mg/dL, and their LDL (“bad”) cholesterol dropped even more dramatically – from 152 mg/dL to 95 mg/dL.

Furthermore, the frequency, duration, and severity of their chest pain plummeted. The more closely the patients adhered to the Lifestyle recommendations, the more their hearts healed.

Nearly all the patients in Ornish’s program not only arrested the development of their heart disease but they actually experienced marked improvement. Things not only stopped getting worse; they got dramatically better – something that had never been seen before in the history of heart treatment.

What about the control group who followed the American Heart Association program? They did not fare nearly as well. Their chest pain became worse in frequency, duration, and severity. While Ornish’s group experienced a 91 percent reduction in the frequency of chest pain, the control group had a 165 percent rise. Further, their bad-cholesterol levels were significantly higher than in Ornish’s experimental group, while the blockages in their arteries also increased. 

HOW to be HEART - DISEASE PROOF

Page 140) Less well known than Dr. Ornish, but equally convinced of the health advantages of a plant - based diet, is Cleveland Clinic general surgeon and researcher Dr. Caldwel B. Esselstyn, Jr. writing in "The Journal of Cardiology," Dr. Esselstyn describes his 12 - year study in which, as he puts it, "patients became virtually heart - disease proof" while eating a diet with almost no animal products.

All of the patients in Esselstyn's study had severe heart disease at the outset, yet after 12 years on his program, 95 percent of them were alive and well. How sick were they to begin with? The 18 patients in Esselstyn's study had experienced 48 serious cardiac events between them in the eight years before they joined the study. But in the 12 years of the study, the 17 patients who stayed with the program experienced a grand total of zero cardiac events.

Is a diet with very few animal products too extreme for most people to follow? Esselstyn doesn't think so. He writes:

Some criticize the plant  - based diet as extreme or draconian. Webster's dictionary defines draconian as "inhumanly cruel." A closer look reveals that "extreme" or "inhumanly cruel" describes not plant - based nutrition, but the consequences of our present Western diet. Having a sternum divided for bypass surgery or a stroke that renders one an aphasic invalid can be construed as extreme; and having a breast, prostate, colon or rectum removed to treat cancer may seem inhumanly cruel. These diseases are rarely seen in populations consuming a plant - based diet.

Similarly, Dr. Dean Ornish reflects,

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well - balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol - lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.

In November 2005, National Geographic published a cover story that echoed its influencial articles of the 1970s. Titled "The Secrets of Living Longer," the lead article featured 3 contemporary groups of long - living people, those from Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, and Loma Linda, California, all of whom eat a plant - based diet. At the conclusion of the issue, National Geographic summarized the "secrets of long Life" in 2 words: "Go vegetarian."

THE OKINAWA DIET

Page 79)  According to the researchers who conducted the Okinawa Centenarian Study, the elders' diet has indeed played a profound role in the health they have attained. Thanks to these researchers' meticulous investigations, we have an extraordinarily detailed picture of the foods the elders have eaten. And we can see that the diets of the world's exceptionally healthy and long - lived peoples have a great deal in common:

1.) They are all low (by Western standards) in overall calories.

2.) They are all high in good carbohydrates, including plenty of whole grains, vegetables, and fruits.

3.) They are all "whole - foods," diets with very little (if any) processed or refined foods, sugar, corn syrup, preservatives, artificial flavors, or other chemicals.

4.) They all depend on fresh foods, eating primarily what is in season and locally grown rather than relying on canned foods or foods shipped long distances.

5.) They are all low (although not super - low) in fat, and the fats come from natural sources, including seeds, nuts, and in some cases fish, rather than from bottled oils, margarines, or saturated animal fats.

6.) They all derive their protein primarily from plant sources, including beans, peas, grains, seeds, and nuts.

- from "Healthy at 100" by John Robbins
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THE CHINA STUDY - by T. Colin Campbell PhD

Page 126) In 1985, Dr. Esselstyn began his study with the primary goal of reducing his patients' blood cholesterol to below 150 mg/dL. He asked each patient to record everything he or she ate in a food diary. Every two weeks, for the next five years, Dr. Esselstyn met with his patients to discuss the process, administer blood tests and record blood pressure and weight. He followed up this daytime meeting with an evening telephone call to report the results of the blood tests and further discuss how the diet was working. In addition, all of his patients met regularly a few times a year to talk about the program, socialize and exchange helpful information.

The diet they, including Dr. Esselstyn and his wife Ann, followed was free of all added fat and almost all animal products. DR. Esselstyn and his colleagues report, "Participants were to avoid oils, meat, fish, fowl and dairy products, except for skim milk and nonfat yogurt." About 5 years into the program, Dr. Esselstyn recommended to his patients that they stop consuming any skim milk and yogurt as well.

Five of his patients dropped out of the study within the first two years; that left eighteen. These 18 patients originally had come to Esselstyn with severe disease. Within the 8 years leading up to the study, these 18 people had suffered through 49 coronary events, including angina, bypass surgery, heart attacks, strokes and angioplasty. These were not healthy hearts. One might imagine that they were motivated to join the study by the panic created when premature death is near.

The 18 patients achieved remarkable success. At the start of the study, the patients' average cholesterol level was 246 mg/dL. During the course of the study, the average cholesterol was 132 mg/dL., well below the 150 mg/dL target! Their levels of "bad" cholesterol dropped just as dramatically. In the end, though, the most impressive result was not the cholesterol levels, but how many coronary events occurred since the start of the study.

In the following eleven years, there was exactly ONE coronary event among the 18 patients who followed the diet. That one event was from a patient who strayed from the diet for two years.

Not only has the disease in these patients been stopped, it has even been reversed. Seventy percent of his patients have seen an opening of their clogged arteries.
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THE OKINAWA PROGRAM – by Bradley J. Willcox, M.D. & D. Craig Willcox, PhD
& Makoto Suzuki, M.D.

Okinawa happens to be the home of the longest – lived people in the world. People there seem to have beaten the aging process and the debilitating diseases that accompany the “golden years” in the West. Heart disease is minimal, breast cancer so rare that screening mammography is not needed, and most aging men have never heard of prostate cancer. In fact, as a group, the 3 leading killers in the West - coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cancer – occur in Okinawa with the lowest frequency in the world.

To understand the magnitude of this health phenomenon, imagine a typical town of 100,000 inhabitants. If the town were located in Okinawa, only 18 people would die from coronary heart disease in a typical year. If the town were in the United States, 100 people would die. Simply put, if Americans lived more like the Okinawans we would have to close down 80 percent of the coronary care units and 1/3 of the cancer wards in the United States, and a lot of nursing homes would be out of business.

Page 69) Okinawan elders eat an average of 7 servings of vegetables and fruit a day, 7 servings of grains per day, 2 servings of flavonoid – rich soy products per day; omega – 3 rich fish several times a week; and minimal dairy products and meat. This is EXACTLY the type of diet that affords protection against most diseases associated with premature aging, including heart disease, cancer, and stroke, and gives the best shot at remaining slim, healthy, and attractive for life.

Page 49) The Okinawans stay lean by eating a low – calorie, unrefined complex carbohydrate diet, practicing hara hachi bu (only eating till they are 80 percent full), and keeping active the natural way – no Atkins Diet, no Zone, no Protein Power for them. Note that we say unrefined complex carbohydrates. These are very different from the high – calorie refined carbohydrates that push the pancreas into overdrive with insulin production. Unrefined complex carbohydrates are “whole carbs” and include fruit, vegetables, and whole grains with their natural fiber intact.

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ABOUT SUCCESS of DIFFERENT HEALING METHODS - by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Excerpts from Andrew Weil's Book " Health& Healing":
No system of treatment has a monopoly on cures. Every system I have examined cures some of the patients some of the time. Every system I have examined - including allopathic medicine - fails to work some of the time, regardless of how logical and scientifically sound its theory, how careful its application, and how strong its indication for a particular problem or patient.

Again, the frequency of failures is not known, but in my experience it is considerable for all systems, allopathy included. - from "Health & Healing" by Andrew Weil
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VEGAN CLAIMS: HEALTH BENEFITS are ACCURATE

Increasingly, meat eaters are claiming that vegans are exaggerating the health benefits of plant-based diets.

Perhaps these meat eaters believe that doing nothing is better than adopting a curative vegan diet. Maybe we should ignore the plethora of data showing the benefits of proper vegan diets. Why not hope for a magic pill to deliver us from gluttony and its deadly consequences?

When reading about these nutritional studies, it is worth noting this: beef, chicken, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and steak and eggs CANNOT cure or improve ANY disease. Consider too, that if meat improved or cured cancer, studies would indicate this: cancer patients should eat more hot dogs! Dairy products have not reversed any diseases, either.

People on the so-called Paleo diet or Atkins diet should have their blood tested every 3 to 6 months and also have their blood pressure checked. These dieters may be very surprised at the high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood!

If meat and dairy shrank tumors, or stopped the spread of cancer cells, then newspapers would be publishing articles like this: “Meat & Milk Improves Cancer.”

The basic recipe for disease is this:

too much animal protein = more disease
too much sugar = more disease
too much salt = more disease

Interestingly, mega corporations such as McDonald's have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting their high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar junk food.

Also, controlling weight is a matter of controlling calories. Controlling calories demands enough willpower to eat only when you are genuinely hungry. There is nothing magical about eating large quantities of meat and dairy.

The Standard American Diet is NOT preventing diseases, and it does NOT improve or cure ANY disease. Telling cancer patients to continue eating what they've been eating is very bad advice.

We already know from the Okinawa Study and many other studies what the optimal diet is for humans. Yet, some people tout the so-called Paleo diet or the Atkins diet as beneficial for humans, when the evidence shows that Paleo diets and Atkins diets are NOT producing the world's longest - lived and healthiest people.

- by Scott Palczak

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FOODS & ARTHRITIS -  PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE for RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/foods-and-arthritis

VEGAN DIETS FIGHT ARTHRITIS & CANCER
http://scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-diet-alleviates-arthritis.html

PETA PRIME: Can a Plant-Based Diet Cure Cancer?
http://prime.peta.org/2009/12/can-a-plant-based-diet-cure-cancer

VEGAN DIETS FIGHT CANCER! - from the Huffington Post with Kathy Freston
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html

VEGAN DIETS REVERSE DISEASES - from Scott's Buddhism & Vegetarian Blog
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/vegan-diets-reverse-diseases.html

ANTI - CANCER DIET - by Dr. Richard Beliveau
http://www.richardbeliveau.org/en/cancer-prevention.html?showall=1
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