Read Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World Online
Authors: Kathy Freston
Tags: #food.cookbooks
The Atkins fad unfortunately left many people imagining that carbohydrate (that is, starch) is somehow risky. That notion is as unscientific as suggesting that water or oxygen is dangerous. The body needs all these things for good health.
A similarly persistent but misguided idea is the blood-type diet approach. A popular book on this subject said that people with type A blood should follow a vegetarian diet but that people with type O blood should not. Unfortunately many readers with type O blood followed this advice, which turned out to be quite wrong. The fact is, people with type O blood do as well as everyone else on a plant-based diet. A vegan diet is helpful and effective, regardless of blood type.
KF:
Let me diverge for just a moment and ask you about soy, since it seems to be a hot-button issue. The word on the street is that soy products can have hormonal effects. If a woman is at high risk for breast cancer, is soy a bad idea?
NB:
Many studies have looked at this question, and the results are consistent. Women who include soy products in their routine are less likely than other women to develop breast cancer. In January 2008, researchers at the University of Southern California quantified the benefit on the basis of the most rigorously controlled studies to date: Women averaging one cup of soy milk or about one-half cup of tofu daily have about a 30 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer, compared with women who have little or no soy products in their diets.
KF:
But what about the hormones? I’ve heard it said that soy acts like estrogen in the body and adds to problems like girls starting their periods too soon and the development of certain types of cancers?
NB:
It is true that there are hormones in soy products. The phytoestrogens found in soybeans (
phyto
means “plant”) are much weaker than the estrogens (female sex hormones) in a woman’s bloodstream. One common explanation for soy’s beneficial effects is that phytoestrogens reduce the effects of a woman’s natural estrogens. Think of the estrogens in a woman’s body as a fleet of jumbo jets. They land at an airport and pull up to the jetways where they will discharge their passengers and baggage. But what if the jetways were already occupied by small private planes? The jumbo jets would be unable to dock, and would be left sitting idle on the tarmac.
When phytoestrogens attach to the estrogen receptors on cells, they are like little private planes. They partially block a woman’s natural estrogens from attaching. From a health standpoint, that’s good. Many women have too much estrogen in their blood. And since estrogens tend to fuel the growth of cancer cells, anything that reduces estrogen effects helps cut cancer risk.
But recent research has shown that this explanation is almost certainly inadequate; soy’s effects are much more complicated, but it illustrates how foods can temper the negative effects of hormones.
KF:
Does soy increase your risk of fibroids?
NB:
It might even reduce the risk. Fibroids are knots of muscle tissue that form within the thin muscle layer that lies beneath the uterine lining. Estrogens can encourage these muscle cells to overgrow. Fibroids are not cancerous, but sometimes they become large and painful.
A study of Japanese women found that the more soy women ate, the less likely they were to need a hysterectomy, suggesting that fibroids were less frequent. In a study of women in Washington State, soy did not seem to help or hurt, perhaps because American women eat very little soy, compared with their Japanese counterparts. What did have a big effect in this study were lignans, a group of phytoestrogens found in flaxseed and whole grains. The women consuming the highest amounts of these foods had less than half the risk of fibroids, compared with the women who generally skipped these foods. So, again, phytoestrogens seem beneficial, countering the effects of a woman’s natural estrogens, although in this case the benefit comes from foods other than soy.
KF:
What if you have hypothyroidism?
NB:
Some studies have suggested that soy isoflavones take up some of the iodine that would normally be used to make thyroid hormone. The same is true of fiber supplements and some medications. In theory, then, people who consume soy might need slightly more iodine in their diets (iodine is found in many plant foods, and especially in seaweed and iodized salt). However, clinical studies show that soy products do not cause hypothyroidism.
Soy products do seem to reduce the absorption of medicines used to treat hypothyroidism. If you take these medicines, your health-care provider can easily check to see if your dose needs to be adjusted.
KF:
Okay; back to diabetes; can it be reversed?
NB:
Yes. When people begin a healthful diet, most see big improvements in weight, cholesterol, and their blood sugar. Their need for medications diminishes, and some may not need medications at all. In some cases, you would never know they had had diabetes. However, I caution people not to simply throw their medications away. They need to speak with their doctors so they can alter their medication regimens only when and if it is appropriate.
Let me describe a case: A man named Vance joined our study. His father was dead by age thirty, and Vance was thirty-one when he was diagnosed with diabetes. As our study began, he started a low-fat, vegan diet and gradually lost about 60 pounds over a year’s time. His blood sugar control returned to normal, and his doctor discontinued his medications. Imagine what it feels like to see family members assaulted by this disease, but then to realize that you have effectively tackled it by making healthful adjustments to your diet.
Vance also encouraged me to mention that it is not only blood sugar that gets better; his erectile dysfunction also improved dramatically, too—in case anyone needs an extra motivator.
Ha! I love that last comment! And that was a result, by the way, of Vance’s circulation being improved (more on that in the next chapter). My takeaway here is that diabetes is deeply connected to having too much fat in the body, and that fat is largely a result of eating meat and dairy. What is so exciting is that you can really reverse this disease, and you can do it in a fairly short amount of time.
As informative as this talk with the doctor has been, there is nothing so compelling as a personal story, so here is Natala Constantine’s.
Natala Constantine’s Story:
Her Diabetes Cure
I was diagnosed with diabetes two weeks after my husband and I got married. I was twenty-five years old. I sat in a doctor’s office, trying to remain calm as the doctors and nurses spoke to me, telling me that my blood sugar was dangerously high. My husband and I sat in an emergency room listening to a doctor explain how my blood had turned acidic, how I was fortunate to be alive, how they were not sure if I would make it. I survived that night, only to spend many nights wishing that I hadn’t.
I spent five years of my life trying everything to control my diabetes. I went to doctor after doctor, all of whom put me on different cocktails of drugs. Some would work for a time, but in the end, I was constantly adjusting the medications, constantly battling high blood sugar, and still battling high cholesterol, being morbidly obese, hormonal problems, blood pressure issues, nerve damage, early arthritis, and other physical problems, mostly caused from diabetes.
My story is like millions of others. I tried everything—every diet, every workout regimen, and every drug. I was on what doctors would prescribe as a “healthy diet,” which always meant lots of animal protein and almost no carbohydrates, including vegetables. I was told that a high–animal protein diet was the only way to control my diabetes. My blood sugar would improve at times, but I could never decrease my medicines, and my health overall was deteriorating.
When I turned thirty, my diabetes remained out of control. I was still on the doctor-prescribed diet, high in animal proteins. My weight tipped the scale at the time at over 360 pounds. I was in the gym two to three hours a day and I was losing only a couple of pounds a month. Then I developed an infection in my lower right calf.
For a diabetic, an infection anywhere in the foot area or lower leg is dangerous. I already had significant nerve damage to my lower legs due to poor circulation. I already had severe pain in my feet, caused by early arthritis in the bones in the tops of my feet. And now I was facing an infection in my leg.
The doctor looked at my leg and expressed grave concern that the infection wasn’t healing. She told me that if things didn’t improve, I might be facing partial amputation.
I was devastated. I was only thirty. I didn’t think things like this happened until later in life. I thought about my husband and how this seemed so unfair to him. Our life together was completely focused on my illness. I sat in the doctor’s office and sobbed. I was on nine different medications, I had no energy to work, I was trying everything that I was told to do, and nothing helped.
I got to the point where I questioned if I had the strength to go on. I would cry myself to sleep at night. I didn’t want to continue living life as a morbidly obese, out-of-control diabetic. But I realized that I did want to live.
On one of the darkest days, a good friend suggested that I look at a natural approach to my diabetes. She told me that I needed to look at food as medicine.
I was angry with her at first. How dare she suggest something so simple? Didn’t she know that I had been to the best doctors? That I was on the best medications? That I was injecting myself with insulin, that I was on the best diet, that I was working out?
But I did take her advice to heart. I started searching for new answers and came across a few books that talked about healing diabetes naturally. I had always been completely against the idea of doing anything “natural.” I thought the approach was absurd. As I read, though, I couldn’t ignore the facts or the science. So many of the books described my situation exactly.
I decided to stop doing what was not working and to try something completely different.
My reading led me to a 100 percent healthy plant-based diet. After years of eating all that meat, I decided to make the leap.
For the first three weeks I felt as though I was ridding myself of much more than animal products. I realized that I had many powerful addictions to food. Food had a hold on me that I could not even conceptualize prior to those three weeks. I would sit in my car and cry outside of sub shops, just wanting a tuna melt.
Before that first three weeks I was on over 100 units of insulin per day, and in three weeks I was taking no insulin.
In about a month, I was once again in my doctor’s office, watching as they looked at my numbers in utter amazement. When they asked me what I did, I told them I had adopted a completely plant-based diet. They didn’t seem surprised at all and told me that plant-based diets were helping to reverse diabetes. When I asked why they had not suggested it, they told me “because it is not practical.”
There I was, morbidly obese, taking nine drugs, shooting insulin into myself multiple times per day, suffering nerve damage and severe pain, and yet they thought that changing my diet in a fairly easy way would be less practical?
It was at that moment that I took my health into my own hands. I found out everything I possibly could about plant-based nutrition. I learned everything I could about how my body works and which foods were meant to go into my body and which foods never were.
Everything changed from that moment. I slowly decreased all the other diabetes medicines I was on. I lowered my cholesterol without drugs, I lowered my blood pressure without drugs, I corrected my hormonal problems without drugs. And that infection on my leg? It completely healed. The arthritis in my feet? It went away.
After years of battling with the scale, the weight finally started to come off. I’ve lost a total of 160 pounds. While still obese, with over 100 pounds left to lose, for the first time in my life, I can see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Today, I am medicine free. I have been on a complete plant-based diet for a little more than a year. This journey took me to places I would have never imagined. It took me to a place beyond myself. When I became aware of my body and what I was feeding it, my life changed. For years, I consumed death, and for that I almost lost my life. The way I lived my life, the way I looked at foods, was such that I was not an active participant in my life. I was not living, I was barely surviving. I was not experiencing life, I was going through motions, hoping that someday someone would find a magical cure.
It wasn’t until I discovered that I was the key to my health that my life completely changed. Today I live with hope. I live with knowing that I am in complete control of my health and preventable disease. I live with knowing that I cannot rely on anyone except myself to make conscious choices every single day that either give life or take life away. Once I let go and made the decision to live, my life changed completely.
Today, both my husband and I live and thrive on a complete plant-based diet. Our lives have become filled with hope. We thrive, and we continue to learn.
There is an answer to type 2 diabetes, an answer that is found not in a doctor’s office or pharmaceutical lab, but in our gardens. Today, I am living a life free of pain, free of harsh drugs, and free of out-of-
control diabetes.
Cancer, heart disease, diabetes: If changing to a plant-based diet can halt or reverse the course of these “killer” diseases, imagine what it can do for you if you are not even ill. It can put you on a course that is life changing. I have heard it said that adopting a plant-based diet is “too extreme.” I like Dr. Ornish’s retort, which is something like this: So changing your diet is extreme, but triple bypass surgery and a lifetime on cholesterol-lowering drugs, that’s conservative? Amazingly, in the eyes of the mainstream medical community, the answer is yes.