Introduce yourselves:
Not everyone has introduced themselves yet. If you haven’t please do so we can all get to know each other. J
Chapter one:
It has been a year or more since I read this book and I tried to look at it from a fresh perspective today. I remember being blown away by the statistics the first time I read the book. The statistics on cancer were particularly alarming to me, for obvious reasons.
I thought it might be useful to share a few things about each chapter. First I wanted to highlight a few of the salient points in each chapter. I suspect that we all will have slightly different view of what is important. Also as I was reading the chapter I kept track of the other health information that came to mind for me so that I could mention that as well. Finally I wanted to end each chapter with a few questions for you. With that brief outline of where I will be going let’s get started!
Salient points:
· Bacteria help the alfalfa convert nitrogen from the air into protein (this is because nitrogen is required to make protein which I will talk about in more detail either on this blog or on the other blog)
· American Cancer Society: American males have a 47% chance of getting cancer, and American females have a 38% lifetime cancer
· Overweight Americans significantly outnumber those with a healthy weight (1/3 of US adults are obese)
· 1 out of 13 Americans now has diabetes (34% of them don’t know it)
· Heart disease will kill 1 out of 3 Americans
· Over 100,000 people will die every year from the unintended reactions to taking the prescribed dose of medications
· Americans pay more for health care than any other country yet they are not healthier
· Science creates confusion about nutrition by focusing on details and avoiding the big picture
· Evidence now exists that shows that proper nutrition can reverse: advanced heart disease, some advanced cancers, and diabetes
· Genetic tendencies to certain diseases can be held at bay by nutrition
· Cancer growth in lab animals can be turned off and on by nutrition
Diseases of Affluence:
In the Cornell plant-based nutrition certification program there was a lot of time spent discussing the diseases of affluence. To explain this differently our own economic fortune is causing the health problems we are now experiencing. When you look at the diseases of affluent cultures they are similar to across countries. However the diseases of less affluent cultures are not the same as the affluent cultures. What are the major differences between the two diets? The amount of animal products and processed foods consumed are the biggest differences.
All you have to do is go to the grocery store to see that meat and animal products are relatively cheap compared to what it takes to produce them. When you realize that it takes 16 pounds of vegetable product to produce 1 pound of animal product it makes you wonder why animal products don’t cost 16 times what plant products doesn’t it? Sadly our own government subsidies make animal foods and processed foods cheaper when compared to whole plant foods. We are subsidizing our own poor health. Doesn’t make much sense does it?
Health Care Spending:
How can we be spending more on health care and not be the healthiest country on the planet? Again this is easy to understand when you dig into the details. The majority of our health care dollars are spent on two things.
The first is prescription medication which generally treats symptoms rather than the cause of the problem. When people go to the doctor and get a medication for say high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar that is in essence permission not to change their lifestyle. The problem is that their lifestyle is what caused the problem to begin with. While some medications are lifesaving, most are simply masking the cause which could be corrected if we were more open to dietary change.
Medications for diabetes management are very expensive and are generally given for the remainder of the person’s life since they are rarely counseled about meaningful lifestyle changes to reverse their condition. Can you believe the annual cost of diabetes was $98 billion in 1997? Who knows how much more it is now!
My own mother is diabetic and refuses to do anything to change her lifestyle. I have tried to talk to her but since her endocrinologist doesn’t focus on lifestyle (nutrition and exercise) she doesn’t listen to me. It is like I always say people don’t really want to hear about the problem with their bad habits. It is easier to take a pill than it is to change.
Cancer medications are frighteningly expensive with some of the new targeted therapies costing $9,000 a month for a single medication. These medications help to shrink the tumors so they can be surgically removed but they don’t eliminate the disease. Oncologists also don’t preach the benefits of dietary change which is sad to me. When you run the numbers on this the annual medication cost can be over $100,000 and that doesn’t include the doctor appointments, radiology and surgery. Yikes!
The second problem with our health care spending is that a lot of it happens at the end of life when people have a host of chronic conditions. Hospital stays are extremely expensive, and I know since I spent decades as a hospital controller. It is common for a simple hospital stay to cost $25,000, and $100,000 bills don’t cause anyone in healthcare to blink.
Being overweight also causes other problems in addition to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Think of the number of people you know who have knee or hip problems brought on by years of carrying around too much weight. I used to work in a rehab hospital and most knee replacement patients are overweight. One person, whom I knew outside the hospital, actually complained to me one day because the surgeon insisted that she lose weight before the surgery and she was furious. While I felt sorry for her because she was in pain, knee replacement when your weight is over 300 pounds is definitely just putting a bandage on the real problem though she didn’t want to see it that way.
Why do we need so many medications and surgeries now? Easy, we have become a nation of people who seem to think we can eat whatever we want, be relatively inactive and yet remain healthy. When you are on the outside looking in this seems ridiculous but most people want to believe poor health won’t happen to them so they don’t change their habits.
Predilection for disease:
Why are we such a sick nation? I think this is both a simple and complex issue. We all know people who don’t exercise and while that is big problem but I don’t think it is the main cause. If we aren’t going to burn calories by moving we need to eat a lot less food to maintain a healthy weight. When you eat processed food and animal products it is very easy to eat too much and pack on the pounds. Studies have shown a BMI over 22.5 elevates all cause mortality. Additionally how many people do you know why have a BMI that low? I can't think of that many. Scary to think about isn't it?
Additionally the consumption of animal protein (and soy protein isolates–processed not whole soy) elevates the hormone IGF-1. What is IGF-1? The acronym IGF-1 stands for insulin-like growth factor one and it sends signals to your body to grow. Obviously this is very important when you are young and need to grow. However adults are finished growing so you can see how this could be an issue. Additionally IGF-1 has been shown to fuel cancer growth which no one wants.
Chapter one questions:
Now I am curious, what fact or facts were the most thought provoking for you? Where you blown away by the cancer statistics, the adverse drug reactions per year or something else in the first chapter?
What changes do you foresee making to your diet based on what was in chapter one?
Were there any questions you had after reading chapter one? If so please either post them here or keep them in mind so we can address them before we finish discussing this book.
I'm still in process on this chapter, so I've really just skipped the post here until I've finished for myself later today, I hope. But I have a point of curiosity--what about footnote 15, a study attributing a huge number of deaths to medication, BEYOND the "possible side effects" of these meds? Any thoughts on that? Wouldn't deaths from meds automatically bump the causes of those deaths up to "possible side effects" of the meds?
ReplyDeleteCindy,
ReplyDeleteI quickly scanned that study this morning and there are some "issues" with the conculsion. The population in the sample (those in the hospital or hospitalized as a consequence of ADR) was different from the US population (older and sicker in essence). Therefore applying those percentages would yield greater than actual deaths due to medications.
That being said meds should be a concern to everyone. They may look like benign substances but they are anything but natural. Personally I avoid medications whenever I can. However I also believe that some meds are necessary but not to the extent that most people in this country take them.
Ali
Here is the URL to the article Cindy mentioned above for anyone who wants to read it.
ReplyDeletehttp://jama.ama-assn.org/content/279/15/1200.long
See, Ali, I was counting on you to do the heavy lifting of looking up this kind of thing so I could just muse and speculate from the sidelines. :-) I see that the "possible" was the word that was getting me. The language in the book seemed to suggest (to me, anyway) that they were talking about ADRs that would not be expected as possible side effects of the drug. Here's another question: for chemo, for example, we know that the whole idea is to kill off the cancer without killing the patient, and it's known that the treatment will cause serious problems. Would those problems be considered ADR's, or perhaps ADR's only when they became crippling/fatal/etc.? Thanks for helping me with the terminology!
ReplyDeleteThis is my second reading of the book. My most “marked up”/highlighted pages of Chapter One are the pages discussing what I like to call “Death by Doctor or Drug”. Chart 1.4 shows that the #3 cause of death (in America) is Medical Care, with nearly a quarter of a million deaths reported (and those statistics are a decade old, curious how bad it is now!) While that is frightening by itself, what bothers me more is the blind, unquestioning faith patients place in Doctors and Pharmaceutical Companies.
ReplyDeleteMy goal with re-reading this book this time is to help me identify ACTIONABLE things I can do to facilitate change. I really want to make a one-page flyer of the statistics related to the failures of America’s healthcare system so I can give it to loved ones when they tell me that they are getting the best possible care.
And I definitely concur that government subsidies should be eliminated for foods that are harming our health. Now how can we effect THAT change? I don't hear anyone (even PCRM or AICR) trying to tackle that problem.
Cindy,
ReplyDeleteThe way I think of drugs/meds is that they are unnatural substances. I read once (in a book written by either an MD or a PharmD) that medications are all toxic and that is just a matter of degree. Once I started to look at them that way there was no question that I wanted to minimize them in our home as much as possible. We don’t even try to minimize things like NSAIDs.
There are two types of med issues: ADR and ADE.
ADR stands for adverse drug reaction and means any noxious, unintended, and undesired effect of a drug, which occurs at doses used in humans for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy. This definition excludes therapeutic failures, intentional and accidental poisoning (ie, overdose), and drug abuse. Also, this does not include adverse events due to errors in drug administration or noncompliance (taking more or less of a drug than the prescribed amount). Using this conservative definition avoids overestimating the ADR incidence.
ADE stands for adverse drug event and means any injury resulting from administration of a drug including errors which are eliminated in ADRs. Obviously this number would be much larger than what would be computed using ADR.
When you read the literature that comes with most medications it is frightening the number of potential side effects from seemingly “harmless” medications. It is my understanding that any noxious, unintended or undesired effect from the administration of chemo would also be included in ADR statistics.
Ali
Kit,
ReplyDeleteWorking in hospitals as long as I did was definitely an eye opening experience for me. While the vast majority of clinicians are caring people and would never intentionally cause harm they can only use the tools they have been taught and that usually doesn't include nutrition. What frustrates me is the lack of belief that nutrition and lifestyle are viable options to improve health. From talking to many clinicians the overall feeling seems to be that lifestyle changes will work but most people won’t make the necessary changes. I can’t tell you how my doctors I know who eat an unhealthy diet and don’t exercise.
Not to make you more uneasy but every hospital that I ever worked in had “medication error committees”. These were for the avoidable med errors, not the ADR that Cindy asked about. When anyone I know is in the hospital I tell them to ask what medication they are being given and why and not to just blindly take what is handed to them.
The farm subsidies are one of the things that really annoy me. I don’t understand why we spend our tax dollars making unhealthy food cheaper and then have to spend even more money on health care. The lack of logic in that situation is beyond absurd.
I seem to think I have heard Dr. Barnard speak about farm subsidies in the past. However it may be that he realizes this is unlikely to change in his lifetime so he focuses on what he is more likely to make happen. Dr. Barnard does a great job bringing the idea of healthy eating to the mainstream. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak live I would say do it.
Ali
Between the introduction and chapter one I was blown away by everything when I read this book in May —from the idea that animal protein was not healthful to the findings the studies. I picked up this book because I am obese and wanted to find a long-term solution. For those who are overweight or obese, it is not so easy as just eating less and exercising more. Many of us have emotional issues to work on (our crutch is food, which is difficult to hide) or we are weary from so much failure (or many other reasons for other people who are overweight/obese).
ReplyDeleteThe stats in the first chapter made me very fearful for my future. My mother is diabetic and on blood pressure medication. My father was on blood pressure meds when he was alive and died of lung cancer. My grandmothers died of cancer and heart disease. I have known that I need to lose weight and eat better, but the constant struggle has worn me down. This chapter made me realize that what I thought about nutrition was wrong and also gave me hope that there was a way to make a change that would allow me success.
I read this book in late May and knew I needed to make a change. I imagined the transition to be slow, so I didn’t make any major changes. In the first week of July I started to get headaches and thought my blood pressure was causing it after a trip to a doctor. I went to the doctor a few times and while it ended up the headaches were tension headaches and/or a sinus infection and my blood pressure is fine, the fear those few days instilled in me made me want to change very quickly. Since then I have been going to the gym at least 6 times a week (usually 7) and doing yoga once or twice a week. I used to hate going to the gym, but I started to just think of it as something that was necessary, like eating breakfast. I have dramatically cut down the meat I eat. I have nearly given up milk and eggs completely, and I am eating cheese a lot less than I used to. I still imagine the transition to take a few more months, but I plan to be nearly completely vegan by the end of the year (I plan to continue eating honey if sweetening is needed in food).
This chapter made me eager to keep reading and also afraid of what information I would find. My one question is answered later in the book: why don’t people know this information?
As I mentioned in my intro. one of the docs I work with recommended this book about a year ago to me. When I was reading it back then I was mildly surprised, but working in the ER I believe what one doctor often says, "If people would stop smoking, stop drinking and loose weight we would be out of business." Way back in my hippie days the big book was "Diet for a Small Planet". Older but similar statistics. We continue to anesthetize ourselves as a nation, and now as a world. I may be jaded because I am mostly exposed to sick people on a daily basis... I rarely get to see the healthy 90 yr. old... but often see the 600 pound (no not kidding) woman who comes in fairly often for diabetes, heart/resp issues. She is on disability, has a custom made electric w/c, a full time housekeeper all at the expense of the govt. I think of how miserable she must feel, what she must have eaten to get where she is and in truth it saddens me. What a different life she would have had, had she been raised in a culture that values a vegan lifestyle... Who knows who she would have been.
ReplyDeleteCindy,
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that most people don’t want to change their diet as dramatically as Dr. Campbell is suggesting. But for those that are at least open to a one or two month trial the results are often enough to convince them to continue.
If it makes you feel any better my health has improved dramatically since eating this way. My blood pressure used to be 130/85 (10+ years ago) and is now routinely 90/55. The other thing that is most notable for me is that my seasonal allergies disappeared and I never thought that would happen.
Did you know that most disease is not genetic it is more the result of shared family habits? I would bet that your habits now are very different from what they were and those changes will start to show up in your health soon if they haven’t already.
Good for you adding daily exercise into your life! *woo hoo* That is hard to do when we didn’t grow up doing it daily, but like you said once you think of it like brushing your teeth you just do it.
Why people don't know this information is a difficult question to answer. I think there are many reasons why they don’t and some if has to do with they don’t want this to be true because it means a huge lifestyle change. People think of the food they eat as being as set and their religion or political affiliation. I am always shocked by the people I know (who are very intelligent) and yet they refuse to believe what is contained in the book. It is very sad, but what can we do other than be a good example?
Ali
Cindy, check this link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/08/new-staging-system-reveals-new-truths.html
Some new studies just came out today that might make you feel better--they sure make sense to me, since I'm about 70 pounds overweight (down from 125 pounds overweight!) but have really good numbers. My pulse is 60-64 at rest, my bp was 120/70 or so when it was last taken several months ago, my fasting blood sugar is 89-91, my cholesterol good (though HDL is lower than optimal), and as of two weeks ago I was jogging 25 minutes at a time (and have been exercising regularly for four years). I have always eaten on the healthy side (but too much, or junk added to the good stuff) but have been more ETL-based for the last ten months or so (and took off 25 pounds that I've kept off). At a higher weight I was beginning to be in Stage 2 (according to EOS above), and now I'm at 0 or 1. That gives me a lot of confidence, though I still want to improve things!
Ali, I get uncomfortable about the labels of "food" and "medicine" and "supplement," because the dose is crucial. I could have killed myself with cyanide (precursor) by eating the kernels from the dozens of peaches I sliced and froze or dehydrated last week. Many medicines/drugs are made from natural substances. And many foods are processed at least as much as drugs. Of course we're not here to push processed foods, but I don't like the sweeping assertion that "medicine" is killing us. Isn't a lot of the idea of this book that FOODS are killing us?
ReplyDeleteI don't want to get too far off on that topic, and I'm not a great fan of doctors and avoid most meds, but I'm thankful for a judicious use of them.
Now I should be quiet and go finish reading the chapter! :-)
Marky,
ReplyDeleteI agree with the doctor you mentioned. If more people took care of themselves hospitals would a much lower daily census. We have two doctor friends who also agree with us about health who have read “The China Study” and “Eat to Live” and those docs are rare indeed. However it is very encouraging when you find them isn’t it?
I remember the book “Diet for a Small Planet” though I haven’t read it in years. In fact I am not even sure I have a copy of it any longer. If it has been updated that would be a great selection for the book club. Thanks for mentioning it! :-)
That is a very sad tale about the 600 pound woman. When I worked for the rehab hospital we had some extremely large patients like that as well. It is sad that they have gotten themselves to a place where they can no longer function on their own. Clearly that is no way to live.
My father is 82 and still exercises (either cardio or weights) everyday and he looks 20 years younger in spite of his standard American diet. While I don’t advocate his approach he was in fairly good health until he was in mid-70’s when he developed colon cancer, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. None of those conditions have slowed him down though he still works out daily. His father (my grandfather) died of a heart attack in his mid-50’s and I am convinced my fathers exercise habits were his saving grace. He is my inspiration to continue to work out daily. After all if my 82 year old father can do it, what is my excuse for not exercising?
Ali
Cindy,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on dropping 55 pounds that is a tremendous accomplishment! I am sure Cindy was comforted to read how much success you have had and the resulting drop in your other markers of health. Clearly you are on the right path. Keep up the great work! :-)
In my opinion medicine is necessary when/if you have let your health get out of control but we shouldn’t see that as the only solution. Working in health care as long as I did I can tell you that medicine saves lives. However I can also say if people took care of themselves they wouldn’t have needed the treatments to begin with. Additionally it is important to remember that medicine can be dangerous. People die as a complication of surgery, drug interactions, etc. The more we can do to help ourselves, with lifestyle changes, the less we will need the medical establishment. When I took the Cornell course that was the basically what they were getting to when we discussed the medical system.
Ali
I have been thinking about purchasing this book for a few weeks now and didn't know if I would be that interested. This book study is a nice motivator. :) Downloading now! Be back later.
ReplyDeleteCindy - thanks for the link. In the past I have read some articles about being "healthy" and "fat" and thought they made a lot of sense, but I haven't seen anything like this EOSS scale. I will definitely read more about that. It is very comforting actually, because I have had concerns about how it is effecting my health if I am working on these changes but the "payoff" in some areas is slow.
ReplyDeleteBrandy,
ReplyDeleteGlad you could join us. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I have. :-)
Ali
Cindy,
ReplyDeleteIf you have concerns about how your weight is affecting your health that seems like a great time to make serious changes for yourself. Do you have any blood work before numbers for comparison? My husband had a dramatic decrease in his total cholesterol from the upper 200's (265-280) to 165 and now it is 140. Things will start to improve for you too, it just time. Please don't be discouraged.
Ali
Other Cindy, I have found that certain weight levels signal for me different levels of well-being. And because I've lost and gained past those both ways over the years, I've been able to observe this phenomenon. At my highest weights I was in Obesity Class 3, and when I crossed down into Class 2, I had a definite sense of being in a healthier realm, where I could exercise moderately. Even at the upper end of that level I had good blood work. Now I am just a few pounds over crossing down into Class 1, and that's a real goal for me, but a frustrating one I haven't been able to reach (many reasons) for the last six months or more. It's interesting that that threshhold also takes me out of the women's and into the larger misses' sizes in the stores (in some clothing). You may find your milestones are different--because I carry my weight more predominantly in my rear and legs, it's the "healthier" kind. I hope you can find different ways to measure your progress and feel good about yourself! :-)
ReplyDeleteNow to get back to the book discussion, in my next post.
Cindy M.
Ali, I like your summary and commentary. I think your bullet points help highlight the big picture--that so many of our ideas come from the media: advertising, which includes drug advertising, as well as useless PSA's like "eat less, move more" or "take your medication," not to mention "nutritional messages" on questionable processed food packaging. The poor orange in the produce section can't manipulate our thinking, and it doesn't need to persuade us it's healthy. It just is.
ReplyDeleteI know that poor nutrition contributes to lots of our diseases and health care costs, but what is it the optimally healthy expect to die of? I once read someone jokingly saying that the ultimate life-extension possibilities of maintaining a very low weight on low calories didn't seem worth it to him--do we really WANT to be a leathery old bright-eyed 103 at the end? And if we are, what WILL take us out? This is a serious question? What do the optimally-healthy die of, in the end? A long, slow-growing cancer (31% - 83% of men have prostate cancer by their 70s, e.g. http://prostatecancer.about.com/od/riskfactors/a/ratebyage.htm)? A stroke? (My fil has optimal blood work at age 89 but had a stroke three years ago because he got an infection--pericarditis--that threw off a clot.) The heart just wearing out?
I have read that lots of folks are daunted by this book because of the volume of detailed information from the studies, but in this early chapter I found myself stopping to question statements that didn't have enough surrounding information for me to get the context. (See my earlier question about the ADRs.) I realize this is just an opener, and a lot of this material is familiar to me from other sources, so I'm right with it for now.
I really like the anecdotal connection to Campbell's farm upbringing. He's not a crank who was raised without leather baby shoes and drank wheat grass for his childhood birthday celebrations. ;-) He comes across as a normal guy who means well and wants to help folks, and his credentials don't hurt, despite the fact that most folks receptive to his message are skeptical of the credential world, I think.
And that makes me wonder--is *The China Study* more attractive to the more scientifically-minded, or to the more alternative-health-practices-minded? I'm definitely in the first camp, as the wife of a scientist. I don't have awe of physicians. (In fact, we've spent considerable research time helping our physicians know what is best for us! I have a benign blood disorder and saved myself a number of interventions in pregnancy by doing careful research and finding the right physician who concurred--and he happened to be a world expert in blood disorders of pregnancy!) But I don't have awe of the local health food store and its cure-all of the month, either!
So what kind of schedule will we have with this book? I'm rarin' to go on the next chapter but will be on the road for several days beginning Saturday.
That's my disjointed contribution for the day. :-)
Cindy M,
ReplyDeleteFrom everything I have read the optimally healthy person will just wear out, most likely the heart. Personally going to sleep one day and not waking up sounds fine to me.
Prostate cancer is so prevalent in this country because we eat such an unhealthy diet. Of all the cancers this is one there is the most data linking incidence and progression to nutrition. Dr. Ornish did a study on it if you are intereted. Even with a poor diet prostate cancer is typically slow growing and doesn't normally kill.
One of things that happens as we age is that our immune system is not as vibrant and that leads to health problems we would shake off when we were younger. However we can have an impact on the immune system by exercising and eating a micronutrient packed diet.
I think "The China Study" appeals more to scientifically minded people more, though I am not certain since I am also in that camp I know I have a built in bias.
I can get the chapter post up later today if want to get going on the book. I reread chapter two yesterday and starting drafting that post which I could finish in about an hour or so. Let me know what you were thinking please. :-)
have a great Tuesday,
Ali
Ali, I'm not necessarily in a hurry, except that when the school year clamps down in a couple of weeks I won't be as free as I am now. But if you'd rather wait for others to catch up and comment on Chapter 1 first, that is fine with me. I'll just look for your decision so I can have Chapter 2 finished whenever you're ready to start with it.
ReplyDeleteCindy,
ReplyDeleteSince I don't think everyone who is following will also be commenting I put the question out on the blog this evening. Let's go with what the majority of people want to do. I assume you would like to start chapter 2 tomorrow. Is that correct?
Ali
I don't have any comments yet and don't mind going on to the next chapter...so far, so good!
ReplyDeleteWhatever you like!
ReplyDeleteSince I am a "why" person, I love reading all the reasons behind Dr. Campbell's philosophy. I'm especially surprised that he was raised on a dairy farm!
ReplyDeleteGreat information, some that I've read from other resources, but even those tidbits were good for a refresher.