The China Study, Part IV, Breast Cancer.

Does anyone reading this NOT know someone who has dealt with breast cancer? Sure, this is an odd topic for a male to pick, but there's a lot of women in my life I'd like to keep around for a good long time. Don't you have some too?

"[Quote] There are at least four important breast cancer risk factors that are affected by nutrition, as shown in Chart 8.1. Many of these relationships were confirmed in the China Study after being well established in other research."[End quote]

Obviously, you can't see the chart, but I can write down the risk factors, they are:
1. early age of menarche (look it up)
2. late age of menopause
3. high levels of female hormones in blood
4. high blood cholesterol

"[Quote] With the exception of blood cholesterol, these risk factors are variations on the same theme: exposure to excess amounts of female hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, leads to an increased risk of breast cancer. Women who consume a diet rich in animal-based foods, with a reduced amount of whole, plant-based food, reach puberty earlier and menopause later, thus extending their reproductive lives. They also have higher levels of female hormones throughout their lifespan, as shown in chart 8.2.

According to our China Study data, lifetime exposure to estrogen is at least 2.5-3.0 times higher among Western women when compared with rural Chinese women. This is a huge difference for such a critically important hormone. To use the words of one of the leading breast cancer research groups in the world, "there is overwhelming evidence that estrogen levels are a critical determinant of breast cancer risk." Estrogen directly participates in the cancer process. It also tends to indicate the presence of other female hormones that play a role in breast cancer risk. Increased levels of estrogen and related hormones are a result of the consumption of typical Western diets, high in fats and animal protein and low in dietary fiber.

The difference in estrogen levels between rural Chinese women and Western women is all the more remarkable because a previous report found that a mere 17% decrease in estrogen levels could account for a huge difference in breast cancer rates when comparing different countries. Imagine, then, what 26-63% lower blood estrogen levels and eight to nine fewer reproductive years of blood estrogen exposure could mean, as we found in the China Study.

This idea that breast cancer is centered on estrogen exposure is profound because diet plays a major role in establishing estrogen exposure. This suggests that the risk of breast cancer is preventable if we eat foods that will keep estrogen levels under control. The sad truth is that most women simply are not aware of this evidence. If this information were properly reported by responsible and credible public health agencies, I suspect that many more young women might be taking very real, very effective steps to avoid this awful disease."[End quote]

If you want more on this topic from the book, and there's plenty more, please grab it from somewhere. Much of the book hits home after reading the whole thing, not just bits here and there. I'm just trying to get people interested.

Brain Teaser, #5.

Suppose we have a sequence:
(1), (2, 3), (4,5,6), (7,8,9,10), (11,12,13,14,15),...
where (1) is the first part of the sequence, (2,3) the second part, etc.

What is the first number of the 100th part of the sequence?

Discuss, Poll #37, Winter Blues.

As I sit here in the beginning of Autumn and continue my string of blog polls, I look outside to a sunless, dark, and rainy day. It's only a short time before the days are quite short and the darkness & cold of winter takes hold. [did I just depress you a little?]

If anyone has good tips for staving off cabin fever and S.A.D., I'd like to hear them.

Results, Poll #36, BMI.

I want to thank everyone from the outset this time for filling out the poll. I can only assume that everyone found their correct BMI figure and chose appropriately. Of course, this is one case where a little "fudging" could come into play... but I trust not much, if any, occured here.

The results were pretty interesting for me - it appears that not only are readers of this blog very well-read and fans of live sports, but are also pretty darn healthy, at least when using the BMI as a gauge.

> 2 people (13%) chose "13-18" (Underweight) - Wow, I often get remarks from people about me not eating enough or looking thin... but you two take the cake, or perhaps leave the cake in this instance. I don't know what you're doing, but maybe some more plant-based protein would be a good thing.
> 10 people (66%) chose "19-24" (Healthy Weight) - Again, wow. This is a large majority of readers in the "healthy" section. I'm a bit surprised, but very happy that most of my readers are keeping an eye on their waist and portion sizes. Or just eating once a week, like a snake.
> 2 people (13%) chose "25-29" (Overweight) - I'm sure with some new healthy steps and increased activity, you can get this into the "healthy" area - if you so choose.
> 1 person (6%) chose "30-60" (Obese) - I poked fun at the underweight twins, but I don't know what to say here. I'm sure nothing I say will be funny.

These are interesting results to me because one-third of the US is considered "overweight" and many of those folks are in the "obese" category. I guess reading my blog keeps you fit?

The China Study, Part III, Heart Disease.

Who wants to read about heart disease!?! Ok, ok, you can all put your hands down, everyone will get a turn -

"[Quote]... If you were to guess the location of the best cardiac care center in the country, maybe the world, what city would you name? New York? Los Angeles? Chicago? A city in Florida, perhaps, near elderly people? As it turns out, the best medical center for cardiac care is located in Cleveland, Ohio, according to US News and World Report. Patients fly in to the Cleveland Clinic from all over the world for the most advanced heart treatment available, administered by prestigious doctors.

One of the doctors at the Clinic, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. has quite a resume. As a student at Yale University, Dr. Esselstyn rowed in the 1956 Olympics, winning a gold medal. After being trained at the Cleveland Clinic, he went to earn the Bronze Star as an army surgeon in the Vietnam War. He then became a highly successful doctor at one of the top medical institutions in the world, the Cleveland Clinic, where he was president of the staff, member of the Board of Governors, chairman of the Breast Cancer Task Force and head of the Section of Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery. Having published over 100 scientific papers, Dr. Esselstyn was named one of the best doctors in America in 1994-1995. From knowing this man personally, I get the feeling that he has excelled at virtually everything he has done in his life. He reached the pinnacle of success in his professional and personal life, and did it with grace and humility.

The quality I find most appealing about Dr. Esselstyn, however, is not his resume or awards; it is his principled search for the truth. Dr Esselstyn has had the courage to take on the establishment. For the Second National Conference on Lipids in the Elimination and Prevention of Coronary Artery Disease (which he organized and in which he kindly asked me to participate) Dr Esselstyn wrote:

Eleven years into my career as a surgeon, I became disillusioned with the treatment paradigm of U.S. medicine in cancer and heart disease. Little has changed in the 100 years in the management of cancer, and in neither heart disease nor cancer was there a serious effort at prevention. I found the epidemiology of these diseases provocative, however: Three-quarters of the humans on this plant had no heart disease, a fact strongly associated with diet.

Dr. Esselstyn started to reexamine the standard medical practice, "Aware that medical, angiographic and surgical interventions were treating only the symptoms of heart disease and believing that a fundamentally different approach to treatment was necessary." Dr. Esselstyn decided to test the effects of a whole foods, plant-based diet on people with established coronary disease. By using a minimal amount of cholesterol-lowering medication and a very low-fat, plant-based diet, he has gotten the most spectacular results ever recorded in the treatment of heart disease.

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 together a few times a year to talk about the program, socialize and exchange helpful information. In other words, Dr. Esselstyn was diligent, involved, supportive and compassionately stern on a personal level with his patients.

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, meats, fish, fowl, and dairy products, except for skim milk and nonfat yogurt." About five 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 withing the first two years; that left eighteen. These eighteen patients originally had come to Dr. Esselstyn with severe disease. Within the eight years leading up to the study, these eighteen people had suffered through forty-nine 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.

These eighteen patients achieved remarkable success. At the start of the study, the patients' average cholesterol 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" LDL cholesterol dropped just as dramatically. In the end, though, the most impressive result was not the blood 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 eighteen patients who followed the diet. That one event was from a patient who strayed from the diet for two years. After straying, the patient consequently experienced clinical chest pain (angina) and then resumed a healthy plant-based diet. The patient eliminated his angina, and has not experienced any further events.

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..." [End quote]

Again, this is all from the book, The China Study [Google Books link], and if you want to read more of it, check out the link or go to the library like I did and check the book out.

The China Study, Part II, Obesity.

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!!!"
Man, isn't that the best yelling-phrase you could use as a kid?
Well, maybe not.

"[Quote] ...Our struggle with weight is hard to miss these days. Open a newspaper or a magazine, or turn on the radio or TV - you know that America has a weight problem. In fact, two out of three adult Americans are overweight, and one-third of the adult population is obese. Not only are these numbers high, but the rate at which they have been rising is ominous (Chart 1.2, page 13).

But what do the terms "overweight" and "obese" mean? The standard expression of body size is the body mass index (BMI). It represents body weight (in kilograms, kg) [in the book's chart] relative to body height (in meters squared, m2). By most official standards, being overweight is having a BMI above twenty-five, and being obese is having a BMI over thirty. The same scale is used for both men and women...

...THE CHILDREN
Perhaps the most depressing element of our supersize mess is the growing number of overweight and obese children. About 15% of America's youth (ages six to nineteen) are overweight. Another 15% are at risk of becoming overweight.

Overweight children face a wide range of psychological and social challenges. As you know, children have a knack for being open and blunt; sometimes the playground can be a merciless place. Overweight children find it more difficult to make friends and are often thought of as lazy and sloppy. They are more likely to have behavioral and learning difficulties, and the low self-esteem likely to be formed during adolescence can last forever.

Young people who are overweight also are highly likely to face a host of medical problems. They often have elevated cholesterol levels, which can be a predictor for any number of deadly diseases. They are more likely to have problems with glucose intolerance, and, consequently, diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, formerly seen only in adults, is skyrocketing among adolescents. (See chapters seven and nine for a more thorough discussion of childhood diabetes.) Elevated blood pressure is nine times more likely to occur among obese kids. Sleep apnea, which can cause neuro-cognitive problems, is found in one in ten obese children. A wide variety of bone problems is more common in obese kids. Most importantly, an obese young person is much more likely to be an obese adult., greatly increasing the likelihood of lifelong health problems.

CONSEQUENCES FOR THE ADULT
If you are obese, you may not be able to do many things that could make your life more enjoyable. You may find that you cannot play vigorously with your grandchildren (or your children), walk long distances, participate in sports, find a comfortable seat in a movie theatre or airplane or have an active sex life. In fact, even sitting still in a chair may be impossible without experiencing back or joint pain. For many, standing is hard on the knees. Carrying around too much weight can dramatically affect physical mobility, work, mental health, self-perception and social life. So you see, this isn't about death; it really is about missing many of the more enjoyable things in life.

Clearly no one desires to be overweight. So why is it that two out of three adult Americans are overweight? Why is one-third of the population obese?

The problem is not lack of money. In 1990, medical care costs relating to obesity alone were estimated to be $70 billion. In 2002, a mere three years later, the American Obesity Association listed these costs at $100 billion. This is not all. Add another $3-040 billion out-of-pocket money that we spend trying to keep off the weight in the first place. Going on special weight-loss diet plans and popping pills to cut our appetites or rearrange our metabolism have become a national pastime.

This is an economic black hole that sucks our money away without offering anything in return. Imagine paying $40 to a service man to fix your leaky kitchen sink, and then two weeks later, the sink pipes explode and flood the kitchen and it costs $500 to repair. I bet you wouldn't ask that guy to fix your sink again! So then why do we endlessly try those weight-loss plans, books, drinks, energy bars and assorted gimmicks when they don't deliver as promised?

I applaud people for trying to achieve a healthy weight. I don't question the worthiness or dignity of overweight people any more than I question cancer victims. My criticism is of a societal system that allows and even encourages this problem. I believe, for example, that we are drowning in an ocean of very bad information, too much of it intended to put money into someone else's pockets. What we really need, then, is a new solution compromised of good information for individual people to use at a price that they can afford.

THE SOLUTION
The solution to losing weight is a whole foods, plant-based diet, coupled with a reasonable amount of exercise... "[End quote]

FYI - I couldn't do a pull- up in high school gym class during my sophomore year and I got worked over by a guy in the same weight class during the wrestling sessions (to be fair, he was the starting point guard on the JV team and already had six-pack abs) - fun times.

Brain Teaser, #4.

Suppose there are two water buckets: one that contains a gallon of water and another that contains a gallon of alcohol. A cup of alcohol from the second bucket is poured into the bucket of water. A cup of the resulting mixture is then poured back into the bucket of alcohol. Which is now true?
A) There is more water in the alcohol than alcohol in the water.
B) There is more alcohol in the water than water in the alcohol.
C) There is the same amount of water in the alcohol as alcohol in the water.