Tuesday 8 August 2017

The three most important decisions of our lives may be what to eat—for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

One of the reasons for doing the Ironman 70.3 this year was because I wanted to put more focus on my health as I turned 40. Of course, there’s more to health than exercise and I have also had several health issues that cannot be resolved through exercise alone. For the last ten years or so, I have been suffering from chronic gut inflammation after meals, with no clear pattern, and no diagnosis despite having had multiple medical consultations and endoscopes, resulting in a recommendation to do my own experimentation with food to establish the causal factors.  I’ve also had psoriasis (an auto-immune disease resulting in inflammation of the skin), for just about my whole life, again, without any clear treatment path from the doctors I attended, aside from another recommendation to experiment with food.  And of course, more recently, I had Morton’s Neuroma in my foot, which is yet another case of inflammation (in this case a nerve), which I had resolved through surgery.

With all of this inflammation getting increasingly worse, all signs pointed to nutrition as an treatment avenue. However, while I’ve always been very interested in food and its ability to fuel my body, beyond knowing that fruit, vegetables and water are generally good for us, and that tumeric has anti-inflammatory properties, I really had no idea what each food did for my health. Nor did my doctors, it seemed. So during a period of injury when I had more time to read, I got stuck into researching nutrition and began experimenting with my food.

The Research
My approach to research is to search out the evidence - i.e. the current peer-reviewed medical literature (not a Times Magazine article), and even then, it really needs to be a body of evidence rather than a single article before I take any heed. So I have spent the last 6 months or so reading reams of eye-opening information, that came flooding towards me in quite a short timeframe, spanning much more than inflammation, and forcing me to make some big decisions on what to do about it. I’ve read about the blue zones a lot in recently years - those small populations across the world renowned for health and longevity, attributed to a plant-based diet among other things, such as exercise/activity and community. However, I never planned to adopt a plant-based diet myself…I loved my food and figured that a plant-based diet would be the most boring way to eat ever. But the more evidence I read, the more ready I was to explore this as a lifestyle. And I happily found out that eating plant-based can be a much more flavoursome and interesting way of eating and exploring with new foods than the standard meat and two veg!

So here’s the short summary of what I learned…I'll follow up with more posts on specific foods and their impacts.

Note: For any other skeptics out there, I have included references at the end of the post. You’ll also see links throughout the text to a not-for-profit organisation, nutritionfacts.org run by Dr. Michael Greger MD - each link brings you to a presentation of the science on the topic in short, easy to watch videos, without any of the commercially-driven views you might see in the media. Dr. Greger also shows the medical references in the videos and lists them in the transcripts for each of his videos. They're well worth a watch.

Why should I care about Nutrition? Does it really matter what we eat?
As it turns out, we have tremendous power over our health destiny and longevity. The majority of premature death and disability is preventable, with a healthy enough diet. According to the most rigorous analysis of risk factors ever published—the Global Burden of Disease Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—the number one cause of death in the United States, and the number one cause of disability, is diet, ahead of tobacco smoking which is no. 2.

Taking responsibility for our health
If what we eat is the number one determinant of how long we live, whether we’ll die prematurely, whether or not we become disabled, you would expect nutrition to be the number one thing taught in medical school, and the number one thing GPs talk to patients about at every visit.  But most doctors are not taught about the impact healthy nutrition can have on the course of illness, and so, it doesn’t become a part of how they treat patients. It’s also not time-efficient for GPs to spend time counselling patients on how to eat, nor does it benefit the pharmaceutical companies who invest a lot of time and money into ensuring their drugs are prescribed.

It is likely that this system will change, just as it changed from saying tobacco was healthy to warning of its risks to health. However, that took over 30 years to happen and so, I feel that we should take personal responsibility for our own health, for our family’s health. We can’t wait until society catches up to the science, because it’s literally a matter of life and death.

A few years ago, Dr. Kim Williams became President of the American College of Cardiology. He was asked, in an interview, why he follows his own advice to eat a plant-based diet. “I don’t mind dying,” Dr. Williams replied, “I just don’t want it to be my [own] fault.”

So, the three most important decisions of our lives may be what to eat—for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So what is the optimum nutrition?
There’s only one diet that’s ever been proven to reverse heart disease in the majority of patients—a diet centered around whole plant foods. In fact, if that’s all a plant-based diet could do—reverse the number one killer of men and women, that would be enough to convince me to adopt it. But there’s more…

A plant-based diet may also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and Parkinson’s disease, age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, Crohn’s disease, gallstones, kidney stones, diverticulosis, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and vaginal infections.

Additionally, plant-based eating may have a beneficial effect on abdominal fat, acne, aging, allergies, asthma, body odor, cellulite, childhood IQ, cognition, dysmenorrhea, eczema, gut flora, fibromyalgia, kidney stones, metabolic syndrome, menstrual breast pain, mood, multiple sclerosis, oral health, rheumatoid arthritis, waist circumference and weight control. Even just small steps toward eating more fruit and vegetables may lengthen lifespan.

Eating meat and other animal products (e.g. dairy and eggs) has be associated with a shortened lifespans. Potential mechanisms for the relationship between certain animal products and disease include the saturated fat, trans fats, arachidonic acid, and heme iron. Meat, fish, dairy and eggs may also increase our exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, industrial pollutants including mercury and other toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, advanced glycation end-products (AGE), xenoestrogens in fish and estrogenic carcinogens that are formed when meat is cooked at high temperatures.

But what about nutrient deficiencies?
Contrary to popular myth, most vegans get more than enough protein. In one study, within a matter of weeks, participants placed on a plant-based diet experienced improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin levels, insulin resistance and C-reactive protein levels (a measure of inflammation).

Ironically, vegans may consume more nutrients than average omnivores while maintaining a lower body weight. Those eating plant-based diets appear to experience enhanced athletic recovery without affecting the benefits of exercise. The arteries of vegans appear healthier than even long-distance endurance athletes and those on low-carb diets.

There are two vitamins, however, that are not made by plants: vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin created by animals—such as ourselves when we are exposed to adequate sun exposure, and vitamin B12, which is made by microbes and can be consumed via supplement or yeast flakes. 

The Food
It wasn't an overnight switch. I started by crowding out the meat on my plate with veg and increasing the amount of fruit and veg juices I consumed, rather than cutting anything out. I noticed a massive and immediate increase in energy and mental clarity - I meant literally within a few days.

Eventually, I did cut out the meat, and realised that it really hadn't agreed with me at all, I always felt tired after eating a big meat dish, and would invariably be first to bed after a meaty meal with friends/family. My system was struggling to digest it.

However, even without the meat in my diet, I still had significant episodes of gut infammation after eating, so much so that I would be doubled over in pain. I then cut out dairy and have not had one episode since.

Later, I went on to cut out eggs and fish, not because they made me feel bad but because of the research that points to them being a causal factor of the most common chronic diseases.

When we talk about a plant-based or vegan diet we tend to focus on what we cut out, but the fun part for me was really more about what I introduced - we now have the most colourful, spicy, tasty dishes in our house at mealtimes, and we still have lots of treats but they're home-made free of refined sugar and dairy and are just delicious. I could never go back to boring old meat and two veg. I will post some recipes and photos later. Meanwhile, you can quickly find some great dishes in the Happy Pear books, or on the Deliciously Ella website, or other sites listed below.
 
All in all, I've never felt stronger, more energised or fitter in my life. I need all the energy I can get to maange the fulltime job, travel, two kids, a healthy relationship with my husband, keep up with family & friends and training....

Long may it last and I appreciate every day of it :-).



References

Not-for-Profit Organizations, Medical Experts on Nutrition, Nutritional Scientists, Epidemiologists
Books:

Documentaries:
Podcasts:

Articles:

Courses:
Plant-based Nutrition Certification

Recipes: 
The Happy Pear
The Plant-Powered Way
Lighter
Deliciously Ella

 






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