nutrition

For more than 100 years, Hygienists have advocated the avoidance of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, and dairy products, as well as added oil, salt and sugar, and most processed foods. We have encouraged people to eat a diet based on fresh fruits and vegetables with a minimum of spices and other stimulants.

By sharp contrast, the medical establishment has only recently, and reluctantly, begun to acknowledge the inseparable relationship between our diet and our health. Medicine has long recognized that deficiencies can cause disease, but only recently has dietary excess been acknowledged as a significant factor in the evolution of numerous degenerative diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and kidney disease.

The diet science supports

The bulk of the scientific literature overwhelmingly supports the contention that human beings function best on a diet derived from whole natural foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes-a diet that excludes animal products. Vegetarian diets provide us with the nutrients we need: protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and sufficient calories.

More and more people are becoming interested in adopting this health promoting diet, but simply understanding the scientific support for it is not always enough to overcome the emotional and social roadblocks to healthful eating.

The most frequently asked questions by people making a transition to healthful eating are these four. What should I eat to insure that I will meet my body's nutritional needs? What foods and other substances should I avoid? Will I enjoy my new diet and feel good physically and emotionally about it? And can I do it?

Good news

The answers to the first two questions have been briefly stated above-eat a plant-based diet derived exclusively from whole natural foods, and avoid meat, fish, fowl, eggs, and dairy products, as well as added oil, salt and sugar, and most processed foods. Of course, there is considerable variation in how different individuals approach the specifics of diet, but the guiding principles remain the same. The basic challenges we face are these. How do I get enough to eat to meet my individual needs? How do I avoid excess consumption? And how do I avoid the consumption of health compromising foods and other detrimental substances?

Individual needs

People come in all shapes and sizes. We have different metabolisms, different activity levels, different heights and weights, and different ages, each with individual capacities for digestion. And since each of these factors can change during our lifetime, we always need to fashion a diet that meets our individual needs.

With this in mind, I want to give two examples of daily menus, one for a healthy, active 25-50 year-old female, the other for a healthy, active 25-50 year-old male.

Sample menu for a woman

An example of a health-promoting diet pattern for a healthy, active 25-50 year-old female might be:

Breakfast: fresh raw fruit salad including a banana, apple, and strawberries along with celery and one ounce each of almonds and raw pumpkin seeds.

Lunch: large raw vegetable salad (lettuce, carrot, beets, tomato, alfalfa sprouts, peas, and cucumber) with avocado-tomato dressing and a huge plate of steamed vegetables and a baked potato.

Dinner: raw vegetable plate (carrot, jicama, celery, cucumber) with steamed vegetables and brown rice/lentil stew.

Sample menu for a man

An example of a health-promoting diet pattern for a healthy, active 25-50 year-old male might be:

Breakfast: orange juice smoothie (orange juice, banana, kiwi) and oatmeal with raisins.

Lunch: vegetable plate with avocado dip, steamed vegetables, and potato/vegetable soup.

Dinner: large raw vegetable salad (lettuce, carrot, beets, tomato, alfalfa sprouts, peas, cucumber) with avocado-tomato dressing and a huge plate of steamed vegetables and a bowl of split pea/yam soup over brown rice. If additional calories are required, fresh mixed vegetable juice or fresh fruit could be consumed in the afternoon.

Healthful eating strategies

The quantity and quality of needed nutrients, including vitamins and minerals, are clearly provided in abundance by a vegetarian diet. This type of diet also ensures that the percentage of calories derived from fat and protein can be kept within healthful ranges. Another plus is that this type of diet is less stimulating, which dramatically reduces the tendency to overeat. Some individuals find that following the Hygienic food combining suggestions helps them simplify their meals and helps them avoid the tendency to overeat.

Since raw fruits and vegetables are such nutrition powerhouses, one might wonder if the entire diet should be derived from raw foods only. In practice, the attempt to live exclusively on raw foods can present some challenges. Raw vegetables contain only about 100 calories per pound, and much of the available energy (calories) in the food is used up in the process of mastication and digestion, as well as eliminating the high fiber content of these foods. If one were to subsist on raw vegetables only, it would clearly be a full-time job. You would literally have to eat all day long (much like most other grazing animals do).

Problems with all-fruit diets

Fruit is more concentrated, providing about 300 calories per pound. Large quantities of fruit could provide adequate calories, but such a diet would be very high in sugar and low in minerals, which would eventually lead to health problems for many, if not most, people. The patients I have seen who have eaten predominantly raw fruit diets for any length of time often develop multiple health problems including difficulties with teeth, gums, skin, immune system, and nervous system. Increased emotional volatility, fatigue, recurrent fungal, yeast, bacterial, and viral infections are also common.

Introducing raw nuts to the raw fruit diet adds a rich source of nutrition. But the resulting high-fat, high-sugar diet does not appear to work as well as a diet that utilizes abundant quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables with the addition of significant quantities of cooked starches such as vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

Cooked starches are rich sources of nutrients, including minerals. Conservative cooking such as steaming and baking causes minimal degradation of nutrients, and cooked starches contain significantly more available energy per volume than raw foods. The cooking process breaks down the starch and fiber, making the consumption of appropriate quantities of health-promoting food both feasible and practical.

Enjoying your diet

The question of whether or not you will enjoy your new diet is somewhat difficult to answer. When making a swift and dramatic dietary change-from a typical western diet to a Hygienic diet-people sometimes temporarily feel physically worse and emotionally deprived. For a very determined person this method can be an excellent choice, and almost everyone can make at least limited positive changes in this direction.

At the Center for Conservative Therapy, we often see people who want or need to make a change rapidly. For these people, a period of therapeutic water fasting followed by a carefully controlled refeeding period speeds the transition. Fasting affects the body in many profound ways. The taste buds are dramatically rejuvenated and the taste of simple food can be truly appreciated. A fast also can enable a person to more quickly get through the sometimes unpleasant physical symptoms associated with detoxification.

 Living in the real world

We all live in the real world, with its temptations and seductions. Unfortunately, many things that taste good do not promote health. They have been designed to appeal to our inborn preferences for sweet, salt, and fat. In a natural setting, these substances are scarce, but in our industrial society we have access to virtually unlimited rich, stimulating foods.

To be successful in dietary transition, you must create your own natural environment as much as possible. The most important place to start is your home. Don't bring fats, oils, salt, and sugar, processed foods or animal products into your home-not even "just for company." If you have these temptations around you, you will either succumb to them or spend so much energy trying to resist them that you will become exhausted.

It is important for each person to develop his or her own set of strategies to support a healthful lifestyle. It is also important to review these strategies as well as your reasons for wanting to live healthfully. Re-read the books, listen to the tapes, and watch the videos that helped you make your decision. Attend lectures or seminars periodically both to learn and reinforce your health promoting habits. Cultivate friends who value their health and happiness. Pursue activities and interests that give you a feeling of productivity and emotional nourishment rather than looking solely to food to make you feel good.

Remember, food is fuel. Eat to live; don't live to eat.     

Bastyr University & TrueNorth Health

“Fasting and Alternatives to Standard Therapeutics (FAST): Determining the Molecular and
Physiological Mechanisms Responsible for Adult Hypertension and Obesity”

Please Help Us Learn About

Fasting and Vegan Diet

Is medically supervised water-only fasting an effective treatment for High Blood Pressure?

Vegan, Low Salt and Low Fat Diets, are shown to be an effective lifestyle therapy to reduce blood pressure and promote weight loss. Another potentially effective therapy to reduce blood pressure and promote weight loss is Short-Term, Medically Supervised, Water Only Fasting.  Safe and effective alternatives for the treatment of high blood pressure and obesity are increasingly needed.  This study aims to find out whether short-term fasting, combined with dietary modification, is more effective at reducing blood pressure and increasing weight loss than dietary modification alone.

If you have High Blood Pressure and are Obese and between the ages of 21 and 65, you may be eligible to participate in a research study about fasting and diet.

Study participants will be asked to get a baseline screening and get periodic blood work in addition to your normal health care.  Participants with a normal physical exam and blood work who also have greater than 140/90 mmHg and are Obese at the initial screening will be eligible to participate in the study.

If a screening visit and blood work results show you are eligible, you will be able to undergo the vegan diet and the fasting treatment as a part of this research study. At the end of the 6-week study, you will also be asked to attend one more study visit after 6 months to obtain additional blood work and physical measures.

This past Sunday, Sanjay Gupta of CNN interviewed former President Bill Clinton about his switch to a vegan diet.
Read more about Mr. Clinton's transformation here.

Dr. Alan Goldhamer talks about the basics of health in this interview with the cool vegetarian.

This article originally appeared in Health Science Magazine.

In the world of our ancient ancestors, fasting occurred primarily by force, not by choice.  Humans would fast when resources became scarce, such as when Spring came late. The ability of humans to fast was a biological necessity born from the disproportionate use of glucose by the brain. Were it not for the biological adaptation we call fasting, our species would never have survived. During fasting, the body preferentially utilizes fat for energy and breaks down other tissues in inverse order to their importance to the body.
 
Today, the environment of scarcity has largely been eliminated in the industrialized countries and has been replaced by an environment of excess. Surprisingly, the physiological process of fasting, which once kept us from dying of starvation, can now help us overcome the effects of dietary excess from the consumption of “pleasure trap” chemicals including oil, sugar, and salt as well as highly processed flour products and factory farmed animal foods that have resulted in an epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders and cancer.  We can use the natural process of fasting to counteract the effects of poor diet choices and to help make the transition to a health promoting diet.

Would fasting help?

In the past 30 years, I have witnessed the effect of medically supervised, water-only fasting in over 10,000 patients.  There is nothing that is more effective than fasting when it comes to treating the consequences of dietary excess.  Not every condition will respond to fasting. Genetic disorders and certain types of kidney disease, for example, may not respond. But many of the most common causes of premature death and disability respond, and often spectacularly.
 
Who benefits from fasting? The following are six of the most common conditions that respond well.
 
1. Obesity is primarily the result of addiction to the artificial stimulation of dopamine in the brain by the consumption of chemicals added to our foods, including oil, sugar, salt and dairy products. The answer to obesity is to adopt a health-promoting diet derived exclusively from whole natural foods including fruits and vegetables, raw nuts and seeds and the variable addition of minimally processed, non-glutinous grains and beans. When fully implemented, in conjunction with adequate sleep and activity, predictable, consistent weight loss will occur that averages 1.5-2 pounds per week for women and 2-3 pounds per week for men.
 
If your goal is to lose excess fat and you have trouble adopting a health-promoting program, a period of fasting may be of benefit. The protected environment of a fasting center provides a focused opportunity for intense education and the social support needed to escape the addictive forces of the dietary pleasure trap. The fasting experience functions like rebooting a corrupted computer. After fasting, whole natural food is once again appealing, making adopting a health-promoting diet more achievable. 
 
If your goal is to lose weight and escape the pleasure trap of processed foods, a period of fasting from a few days to a few weeks may be beneficial.
 
2. The dietary pleasure trap is insidious, and the con-sequences of poor dietary choices go beyond obesity.  Overstimulation by artificially concentrated calories can confuse normal satiety signals resulting in persistent overeating. Over time, this results in the degenerative diseases of dietary excess including high blood pressure and the resulting cardiovascular disease.
 
For people who have fallen into the dietary pleasure trap and developed high blood pressure, medically supervised water-only fasting has been shown to be a safe and effective means of normalizing blood pressure and reversing cardiovascular disease. In a study conducted at the TrueNorth Health Center in conjunction with Cornell University Professor T.Colin Campbell, the use of fasting for 2-4 weeks in patients with stage 3 hypertension resulted in reductions of systolic blood pressure of over 60 mm/Hg. This is the largest effect size of any study published to date.  At the TrueNorth Health Center we routinely see patients normalize their blood pressure and eliminate the need for medications.
 
If your goal is to normalize elevated blood pressure and reverse cardiovascular disease, a period of medically supervised fasting may be beneficial.
 
3. Diabetes is a condition that is increasing in epidemic proportions. Largely the consequence of dietary excess,  the resulting alteration of physiological functions such as high blood sugar levels and insulin resistance results in a cascade of consequences including blindness from retinal damage, heart attacks and stroke, reduced healing capacity, nerve damage, impotence, gangrene, etc. Fasting, along with a health-promoting diet and exercise program, can dramatically increase insulin sensitivity and bring blood sugar levels under control.
 
If your goal is to normalize blood sugar levels and avoid or eliminate the need for medications and their consequences, a period of fasting may prove beneficial. Most patients with Type 2 diabetes are capable of achieving normal blood sugar levels without the need for medications.
 
4. Drug addiction has become the norm. Nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and a plethora of prescription and recreational drugs dominate the lives of the majority of people living in industrialized society.  The supportive environment of a fasting center can be helpful in getting safely through withdrawal symptoms and more effectively establishing healthy habits while eliminating the perceived need for addictive substances.
 
If your goal is to escape addiction and live a life free of dependence on health-compromising chemicals, a period of fasting may prove to be beneficial.
 
5. Autoimmune disorders including Arthritis, Lupus, Colitis, Cohn’s disease, Asthma, Eczema, Psoriasis, and environmental allergies are becoming more common and more debilitating. One possible contributing factor to the aggravation of autoimmune disease involves gut leakage. The absorption of antigenic substances into the blood stream as a result of increased gut permeability appears to be a factor in the aggravation of these conditions.  Fasting can help to normalize gut permeability and ease the transition to a health promoting, low inflammatory diet.  Many of our patients are able to effectively manage the symptoms of autoimmune disorders, thus eliminating the need for medication.
 
If your goal is to eliminate the problems associated with autoimmune disorders, a period of medically supervised fasting may be an important component in a comprehensive program designed to save the quality and quantity of your life.
 
6. Exhaustion, both physical and emotional, has become increasingly common in our fast-paced lives. Feelings of fatigue and depression can compromise the quality of your life. Reliance on artificial stimulants compounds the problem. The lack of adequate sleep and exercise and poor dietary and lifestyle choices work together to interfere with  the ability of many people to enjoy their life or fulfill their potential. Fasting can give your body and your mind a complete rest.
 
If your goal is to “recharge” your system, fasting may help you accomplish your goals.
 
When properly utilized, fasting can be a powerful tool in helping your body do what it does best…heal itself. It is the answer to a surprising number of questions.
 
 

Type 2 Diabetes Associated with Increased Intake of Animal Foods.

The effects of diet and lifestyle on health are notoriously difficult to ascertain. In order to begin to tease out patterns, researchers measure many variables in order to account for confounding variables (ie, factors that also correlate to the thing being studied).

To further make research more difficult, huge numbers of people must be tracked in order to get enough data to make meaningful analyses.  The Health Professionals Follow-Up Study has followed 51,529 middle-aged (age 40–75 y at baseline) male health professionals. That’s more people than live in my hometown! Using data from the Health Professionals study, the researchers from Harvard University found a strong, positive association between a low carbohydrate diet high in animal protein and fat and incidence of type 2 diabetes.¹

The study used data from 40,475 participants who were free of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or cancer at the time they entered the study. Every four years, the biannual questionnaire mailed to the participants included a section that assessed dietary habits. Based on the responses in the questionnaires over 20 years, the participant’s diets were scored on their carbohydrate, fat and protein content.  The study also measured differences in protein and fat sources - whether they were of vegetable or animal origin.

After accounting for variables such as smoking status, family history, and body mass index that might also be associated with incidence of type 2 diabetes, the scientists found an increased risk of type 2 diabetes with a low carbohydrate diet high in animal protein and fat. However, a low carbohydrate diet high in vegetable protein and fat was not associated with onset of type 2 diabetes.

¹Am J Clin Nutr 2011 93: 4 844-850

This week, I was planning to write about recent research that found a strong, positive correlation between a diet including animal proteins and type 2 diabetes.  The study "Low-carbohydrate diet scores and risk of type 2 diabetes in men" was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. As I was reading through the articles, though, I found a number of articles in the current volume of the journal that support (albeit indirectly) a whole-food, plant-based diet. Here''s a few of the articles I found:

• A high-fat diet impairs cardiac high-energy phosphate metabolism and cognitive function in healthy human subjects. The American journal of clinical nutrition Vol: 93 Issue: 4 ISSN: 0002-9165 Date: 04/2011 Pages: 844 - 850.
• This was a small study (n=16) of young males that compared a high fat diet (75 +/- 1% of calories) to a standard diet (23 +/- 1%). The researchers measured cardiac functions and cognitive functions. They found that the high fat diet decreased a major biomarker for cardiac function. They also found reduced cognitive abilities from the high fat diet. The real question to me is how did anyone manage to consume a diet with 75% of calories from fat...I can see why they had to use young males in the study.
• High-protein, reduced-carbohydrate weight-loss diets promote metabolite profiles likely to be detrimental to colonic health: The American journal of clinical nutrition Vol: 93 Issue: 5 ISSN: 0002-9165 Date: 05/2011 Pages: 1062 - 1072
• This study followed 17 obese men and put them on both a high protein, moderate carbohydrate diet and a high protein, low carbohydrate for 4 weeks at a time. The researchers concluded: "After 4 wk, weight-loss diets that were high in protein but reduced in total carbohydrates and fiber resulted in a significant decrease in fecal cancer-protective metabolites and increased concentrations of hazardous metabolites."
• Diet, vegetarianism, and cataract risk: The American journal of clinical nutrition Vol: 93 Issue: 5 ISSN: 0002-9165 Date: 05/2011 Pages: 1128 - 1135
• I found this study one of the more interesting because they had a large sample size (n=27,670). The results they published: "There was a strong relation between cataract risk and diet group, with a progressive decrease in risk of cataract in high meat eaters to low meat eaters, fish eaters (participants who ate fish but not meat), vegetarians, and vegans."

The last study in the list is just part of the growing body of large-scale evidence supporting the hypothesis that a whole-food, plant-based diet will lead to better health outcomes that a diet rich with animal foods and processed products. Hopefully I''ll get around to a more in-depth analysis of the type 2 diabetes study next week.

Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors associated with stroke, diabetes, coronary heart disease. One of the primary indicators of metabolic syndrome is extra weight around the waist. The indications of metabolic syndrome are any three of the following: blood presssure greater than 130/85 mmHG, fasting glucose greater than 100 mg/dL, large waist circumference (40+ in for men, 35+ in for women), HDL cholesterol under 40 mg/dL for men or 50 mg/dL for women, or triglyercides greater than 150 mg/dL. A diagnosis of MetS indicates that you are at much greater risk of stroke, diabetes, and coronary heart disease.

Researchers at Loma Linda University found that a vegetarian diet was associated with a lower risk of metabolic syndrome.  The study, published in March issue of DiabetesCare, analyzed 773 subjects in the Adventist Health Study 2. Subjects self reported their dietary habits via a food questionnaire (vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, or non-vegetarian).  This data was used to determine association between diet and risk factors (HDL, triglyercides, glucose, blood pressure, and waist circumference).

When compared to the non-vegetarians, vegetarians had lower means of the risk factors, except for HDL, and they had lower risk of Metabolic Syndrome.

Forks Over Knives is a new feature length film that will change your mind about what you eat.  The film follows Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn as they expose how what we eat affects our health. The work of these two researchers has been truly groundbreaking in the field of diet and health.

In the late 1800s, a young Scottish physician was experiencing difficulty in establishing his medical practice. With extra time on his hands, the young man turned his remarkable mind to the telling of mysteries and their solutions. In contrast to his struggling practice, his writing would be an immediate and astounding success. The young doctor's name was Arthur Conan Doyle and his literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, would become synonymous with deductive genius for generations to come.

Though a fine storyteller with a flair for both humor and drama, perhaps Doyle's greatest talent was his penetrating vision into the nature of human problem solving. In particular, Doyle had an uncanny sense for spotting human problem-solving blind spots and mental biases to which he made sure that the great Holmes was immune. Indeed, a crucial component of Holmes's timeless appeal is his ability to make sense out of what less gifted observers might view as insufficient or contradictory evidence.

Holmes's special talent is his ability to appreciate the importance of clues that others fail to notice, although their importance is obvious once seen from the proper perspective. Often, this perspective requires Holmes to look at the evidence from a viewpoint that is precisely opposite from one that seems naturally right. In one classic Holmes mystery, a murder had apparently taken place at a remote country estate, with the evidence indicating that the culprit was an intruder. Holmes determined otherwise, with his characteristic flair.

The case of Silver Blaze

In the Sherlock Holmes mystery entitled Silver Blaze, the victim, a resident of the estate, was found one morning on the grounds, having been felled by a blow to the head on the previous evening. The evidence strongly suggested that the culprit was a peculiar stranger who had been observed on the estate's grounds earlier that day. The police had already apprehended the suspect, and they were intending to charge him with the crime. Holmes intervened, insisting to the police that they had made a mistake.

The estate housed many people, horses, and an alert stable dog. The case turned on an obscure, but key point: After questioning witnesses, Holmes recognized a critical fact that others had missed. Ultimately this discovery exonerated the chief suspect. The great Holmes explained to his astounded listeners that the key to the case was the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.  Before he could continue, a listener objected, insisting that the dog did nothing in the nighttime.

That was the curious incident, replied Holmes. He later explained that the absence of barking suggested to him that the culprit was well known to the manor's hound. This indicated a need to re-examine the evidence from a fresh perspective. With this new viewpoint, Holmes solved the mystery, because of his brilliant awareness that the absence of something is often just as important as its presence. Though clearly true, this point is often difficult for most of us to grasp.

This difficulty is the result of a natural human problem-solving blind spot, an innate limitation of our psychology. It is precisely this type of human limitation that Holmes was so adept at noticing. And it is this type of limitation that results in the majority of our society remaining blind to the key facts regarding their health, although the facts are overwhelming once seen from the proper perspective.

Health mysteries

Millions of people in our country are suffering and dying from a handful of devastating conditions, including heart attack, stroke, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and cancer. These conditions alone account for more than 75 percent of our nation's premature deaths and the majority of our collective chronic disability. Yet, the culprits in these tragedies have been difficult for most people to accurately identify.

The evidence, to many, appears to be contradictory and confusing. Like a Sherlock Holmes mystery, people are puzzled about finding the causes of their health problems and what to do about them. They look to experts in books, television, and the Internet, and to their doctors. More than 10 million people search the Internet each week seeking health-related information, making health information-seeking one of our population's primary intellectual pursuits. This is quite appropriate, as our health problems are of epidemic proportions.

Unfortunately, most of the "expert" information dispensed is erroneous and misleading. For example, patients often are led to believe that the real culprits in their health problems are their genes. This misconception can lead them to assume that any solution to their problems will require medical intervention, because their particular body simply doesn't work properly, that it is "defective" by nature. If they have high cholesterol, they are told to ingest cholesterol-lowering drugs. If they have high blood pressure, they are encouraged to ingest blood pressure-lowering medications. And, if they have Type II diabetes (about 95 percent of all diabetes cases), they are told that their health requires that they ingest or inject insulin.

In the alternative health arena, the "expert" suggestions are somewhat different. Herbal remedies, concentrated foodstuffs in the form of pills, vitamin supplements, and other treatments are the standard fare. Similar to conventional thought, such alternative approaches seem to confirm the same unspoken conclusion: The body of a person with a health problem cannot be expected to achieve and sustain a healthy state without adding something! Either by virtue of genetic flaw or because of dietary deficiency, the notion once again is that something is missing. The recommendation to "take something for it" makes intuitive sense to the majority of people, often encouraging them to continue down a path of self-destruction. Meanwhile, the real culprits are ignored and continue to do their damage, unchecked.

The real culprits

The real culprits in most modern-day health problems are excesses, not deficiencies. It is the subtraction (i.e., reduction or elimination) of these excesses that will solve most health problems, not the addition of medications or supplements. Although it may come as a surprise to most people, the subtraction of excess is nearly always far more effective at causing the restoration of health than is the addition of anything.

In atherosclerosis, for example, excess dietary cholesterol, fat, and protein (mostly in the form of animal products) leads to deposits of fatty substances within the cardiovascular system. These deposits clog up the system and often result in heart attack, stroke, or congestive heart failure, events that are responsible for about 50 percent of the deaths in our country each day. Exquisite research has shown that the subtraction of these dietary excesses is the most effective way to manage the problem. In the ground breaking Lifestyle Health Trial, Dean Ornish and his colleagues at the University of California have conclusively demonstrated that by dramatically reducing the amount of animal products in the diet, and by reducing fat intake from about 40 percent to about 10 percent of calories consumed, the body will soon begin to reverse the atherosclerosis. Neither medication nor nutritional supplement additive has shown equivalent success.

Not elementary

Sherlock Holmes was fond of explaining to his sidekick, Dr. Watson, that the connections he made were "elementary." Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. Although obvious once viewed from the proper perspective, the achievement of mental clarity in a Sherlock Holmes mystery is an exciting moment for the reader, as Holmes brilliantly maneuvers those present into seeing the facts in a clear and accurate new light. Not uncommonly, this mental reorganization begins with a startling conceptual leap.

Grasping that the major key to health is mostly about subtraction, and not addition, is itself a major conceptual leap. Although seemingly simple, this connection is perhaps the most profound and most difficult principle in modern health science. Once seen from the proper perspective, it is simple. But achieving this perspective is a remarkably challenging mental task. After many years of experience at patient education, we have come to believe that there is a powerful and fundamental force that is responsible for this difficulty.

There must be a compelling reason why humans continue to be so gullible about believing that adding things, such as vitamin pills, medication, aspirin, and even wine, is useful for the pursuit of health. There must be a reason why such solutions seem much more plausible than the truth. The truth is that we need to subtract meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, and tobacco. Although we might speculate that the human pleasure-seeking drive might be motivating patient resistance to the truth, we don't think that this is the core of the problem. And, although massive misinformation campaigns by commercial interests do help to lead the unwary down a false trail, our experience suggests that a more fundamental factor is at work.

We strongly suspect that the human brain is literally biased against grasping the concept that dietary excesses are the roots of most health problems, in spite of the enormous magnitude of the supportive scientific evidence. Conversely, the idea that some sort of deficiency may be responsible continues to be popular. This is probably because such a concept has tremendous natural intuitive appeal.

Brains and biases

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unwittingly anticipated one of the great discoveries of modern psychology. As he clearly suspected, human brains are not impartial judges of the facts. Brains come into being with hard-wired biases, with tendencies to see some connections much more readily than others. Brains of humans (and other animals) are much more likely to see connections that they expect to see. The connections they expect to see are often those that were important to notice throughout the development of the species.

In the natural world, human beings rarely, if ever, faced problems resulting from dietary excesses, because the natural landscape was simply not replete with excessive animal proteins and fats in the form of cheese, ice cream, and butter. The natural world contained no processed oils, refined sugar and flours, or excessive sodium. And, since problems of dietary excess were not a factor in our evolutionary history, modern-day humans are not well equipped to discern that health problems might be the result of these excesses.

Dietary deficiencies, on the other hand, were often a very serious problem for our ancestors. Getting enough to eat has always been one of the major problems of human life. People walking the Earth today, then, must all be the descendants of those who maintained heightened vigilance about the problem of getting enough, and not descendants of those who spent much time worrying about getting too much. As such, the neurological circuits that make up the current human mind are much more likely to be naturally concerned with deficiency than with excess! This bias makes it difficult to grasp the concept that dietary excesses are the roots of our modern health problems. Difficulty in grasping this principle persists despite the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting this interpretation of the facts.

Pecking the right key

Neurological biases now are being discovered throughout the animal kingdom, but until the concept of biased brains was itself recognized, many important facts were ignored. For example, psychologists such as B.F. Skinner, who were attempting to uncover the laws of learning, performed a great many experiments attempting to train pigeons. In attempting to teach pigeons to do new things, these psychologists would routinely reward the birds by lighting a key for them to peck, which when pecked would then result in a food reward. This method was used for decades without question. One day, a psychologist wondered if the pigeons could be trained equally effectively by having a continuously lighted key go dark in order to signal the pigeons to peck. He decided to put this question to the test.

To the surprise of animal psychologists worldwide, his results showed that pigeons couldn't be trained to seek reward by pecking a lighted key that suddenly goes dark! In principle such an event is precisely as informative as having a darkened key suddenly become lighted, but it is a connection that a pigeon simply cannot make. And while we might think that the pigeon is just "stupid," such a judgment would miss the key point: That, similarly, people will not normally grasp the importance of a dog not barking in the night.

Subtraction for health

In the last two decades, a great deal of psychological research has shown that people have many biases, problem-solving "blind spots." People appear to have a natural bias against seeing dietary excess as a problem. But when viewed from an enlightened perspective, the problems resulting from dietary excess can become obvious. Once we grasp what the scientific evidence is telling us, no matter how counterintuitive these findings may seem, we can begin to see the evidence everywhere. Wherever we look, we cannot help but see people struggling with obesity, the ultimate evidence of dietary excess. Once we begin to carefully observe what people in our society actually eat, the connection between dietary excess and health compromise begins to achieve clarity.

If we then follow the evidence and the logic, it begins to become reasonable to assume that the solution is to subtract foods of excess from our daily fare. And as we subtract the majority of meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, oil, salt, sugar, and refined carbohydrates from our diet, what remains are foods that are health-promoting. Fresh fruits and vegetables, tubers, whole grains, legumes, and nuts and seeds fill the void after the necessary subtraction has taken place. In response, the previously overburdened body begins to experience a restoration of health.

Doyle would approve

We have argued that one of the most potent methods for the restoration of health involves doing precisely the opposite of what most people, and most health "experts," would ever suspect. If most health problems are indeed caused by dietary excesses (and research strongly suggests they are), then it makes sense that the subtraction of such excesses is likely to be a very effective treatment strategy. Landmark investigations by Drs. Ornish, McDougall, Esselstyn, and others have confirmed that this is the case. But if we follow our new perspective toward its natural conclusion, we can see that the ultimate act of dietary subtraction might be more than just dietary improvement. The most powerful treatment strategy, in some cases, might be to eat absolutely nothing for a period of time—a voluntary period of supervised water-only fasting.

Although such an experience might be seen as dangerous or bizarre, from the proper perspective it makes good sense. The results of a recent scientific investigation conducted at our facility indicate that a period of supervised water-only fasting is the most effective known treatment for high blood pressure, the leading associated cause of death and disability within industrialized societies. [See "Telling the Truth About High Blood Pressure," Health Science, July/August 2000.] Our results have, not surprisingly, astonished many of our colleagues, most of whom have not yet discovered an enlightened perspective.

The health-promoting results achieved by our patients after the removal of dietary excesses through dietary modification and fasting are often spectacular, by conventional standards. The power of the body's ability to recover its health is remarkable, once the true culprits have been identified and effectively eliminated. And although most modern "experts" of both conventional and alternative persuasions are resistant to considering this perspective, we are confident that the evidence will eventually make the truth appear obvious.

In the meantime, we also are confident that at least one 19th-century Scottish physician would have had no trouble grasping this critical, and highly counterintuitive, principle of health. As Sherlock Holmes would have elegantly revealed, once seen from the proper perspective, the crucial importance of eliminating dietary excesses is, in fact, "Elementary, my dear Watson...."