Slashdot Mirror

"Your citations include a single internist who has no scientific research to back up his claims and is widely regarded as a quack and a website which stuck 'As seen on CNN' on it's home page, both of which are trying to sell weight loss solutions."

Considering how much of what many cardiologists do is essentially a scam, I guess the bar for medical practice is pretty low, whoever you call a "quack".
http://www.healthleadersmedia....
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...

And even some oncologists, too:
http://nation.time.com/2013/08...

That said, let us look as the site you dismiss based on it saying the related doctor (Dr. Esselsytn) has been on CNN:
http://www.heartattackproof.co...
"Former President Bill Clinton on CNN credits Dr. Esselstyn with helping him regain his health."

Another quack? Bill Clinton is an example of how improvement is possible by changing what we eat.

I think you've also missed my point that we try to regulate the wrong things. For example, if everyone has a basic income (social security from birth) people would have more time for home cooking. Or, if we subsidized fruits and vegetables instead of meat, dairy, and grains, again we might have a much healthier populace. See:
http://www.seriouseats.com/200...
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Also, if US Americans got European-length vacations, they might get more outdoor activity in the sunshine, which might improve their health by exercise and vitamin D. As well as being less stressed and have more time for learning about cooking and health and doing gardening.

Anyway, good luck in your own continuing researches into improving health. You make a good point on how surveys on happiness across the decades might be biased by social expectations; I can hope you are right in this case!

"The few weeks of discipline crap has been disproved, both scientifically and by human experience over and over again"

Citations needed... Examples where it can work:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/hea...
http://www.heartattackproof.co...
http://www.healthpromoting.com...

I would agree that it can be a difficult path to walk sometimes in our society -- especially when the entire family does not make the change at once, and so essentially keeps re-infecting each other with bad eating habits by bringing junk food into the house. The battle of the "bulge" is generally lost or won in the supermarket, since food brought in to the home is pretty much guaranteed to be eaten in reverse order of healthfulness. As Paul Graham said in his essay:
http://paulgraham.com/addictio...
"Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."

How can talking about better urban planning be a "fantasy"? Communities can improve themselves. See for example, Albert Lea, MN:
http://www.bluezones.com/progr...
"Our team of experts Dan Burden, Dr. Brian Wansink, and Dr. Leslie Lytle, empowered the community to make a few small lifestyle and environmental changes. Citizens improved in four areas: eating better, becoming more active, connecting with one another and finding a greater sense of purpose, and reaped the positive benefits of revitalizing their bodies, their spirits and their town. The community made a variety of changes including adding workplace wellness policies, revised restaurant menu and vending machine offerings, community gardens, walking clubs, walking school buses and new hiking trails.
Community Successes
* Life expectancy increased an average of 3.1 years
* Participants lost a collective 12,000 pounds
* An average 21% drop in absenteeism by key employers
* City employees showed a 40% decrease in health care costs"

Many cities in Europe have zoning policies that encourage walk-ability and discourage sprawl that leads to automobile dependency.

Also, for your other comments, it sounds to me like you're mostly just being pessimistic without really looking at alternatives such as I've outlined. We may lack the political will to improve ourselves, but for the most part, we collectively know how if we wanted to. Much of the stuff I've outlined is about moving forward. For example, with dish washing machines, high-powered blending machines, ceramic knives, improved heating devices and pots, home grocery delivery in many areas, YouTube example videos, and so on, home cooking is probably a lot easier than it has even been. And that is even before talking about the potential for home gardening robots and home cooking robots. Or even purchased prepared meals that are just prepared *better*.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

As for women specifically, compared to a basic income, how is it "freeing" an individual to for her to separate her from her young children she cares about and move her from a position of great autonomy in the household and part of a distributed network of peers to one where she is statistically a bottom-ranked person on a hierarchy who has a boss staring at her back all the time and is subject to other degrading regulations (like when she can go to the bathroom)? And for the most part ultimately for little economic gain after paying for child-care expenses, a business wardrobe, more purchased meals, and a second car?

There are disagreements on the effect of starch on health, one being between Dr. Joel Fuhmran (advocating more calories from leafy green vegetables, other non-starchy vegetables, and beans) and Dr. John McDougall (advocating calories more from starchy plants like sweet potato and whole grains, in part on pragmatic grounds). Even as they both agree that starch should be the basis of calories for humans. See:
http://www.lanimuelrath.com/diet-nutrition/mcdougall-vs-fuhrman-notes-for-you-from-the-great-plant-based-doctors-debate/

See my other posts here for other related links and also agreement that many vegetarians' diets are pretty bad for reasons like you mention, and also pros and cons on some degree of animal products (up to 10% or so of calories)

In general, the longest lived societies get moderate exercise in the sunshine (vitamin D) and eat a lot of legumes (lentils, beans, etc.) and only limited animal products. Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/12/Vendiagram.gif
http://www.bluezones.com/
"The people inhabiting Blue Zones share common lifestyle characteristics that contribute to their longevity. The Venn diagram at the right highlights the following six shared characteristics among the people of Okinawa, Sardinia, and Loma Linda Blue Zones:[8]
Family -- Family is put ahead of other concerns.
No smoking -- Smoking is not found in large quantities.
Plant-based diet -- Except for the Sardinian diet, the majority of food consumed is derived from plants.
Constant moderate physical activity -- Moderate physical activity is an inseparable part of life.
Social engagement -- People of all ages are socially active and integrated into their communities.
Legumes -- Legumes are commonly consumed."

However, for people who have serious heart disease, then things change. Meat may have a much worse effect then. If such a person wants to reverse their heart disease, they may have to go on a diet without probably any meat (or very very little) for a time:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/huffpost.htm
"Answer: In an intensive 5 hour counseling session for a group of heart patients my first priority is to eliminate the mystery of what causes their disease. It has not been stress, or genes. It is their western diet of processed oil, dairy, and meat. Hypertension, diabetes, and smoking must be controlled but food trumps all. I spend at least an hour defining the protective role of endothelial cells and nitric oxide functioning as the ultimate guardians of our blood vessels. They quickly understand that their lifetime of ingesting these harmful products has totally overwhelmed and destroyed their endothelium to an extent where it is unable to protect them. They fully grasp that they must forever eliminate ingesting foods that will further destroy their already compromised endothelium. They understand heart disease is a food borne illness. ...
They understand that they can halt their disease. They are presented with my scientific articles demonstrating reversal of disease. They learn that anginal chest pain may diminish or disappear within 10-14 days in some patients while others may take longer. We share our data confirming reversal of carotid artery disease to the brain, coronary artery disease of the heart, peripheral vascular disease in the extremities, and the reversal of erectile dysfunction. They are made to appreciate how rapidly and powerfully the endothelial

"Meat is often a cheaper source of your necessary nutrients than vegetables."

Ignoring how meat does not have essential phytonutrients in it (as you mention), consider the political reason of why that is the case as far as "calories":
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Also, consider how externalities of meat production such as destroying marine ecosystems from overfishing, manure runoff polluting fresh water supplies, and the destruction of so many forests and other land ecosystems to produce cattle feed:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm

On your other points, most vegetarians' diets probably aren't very good. They may have too many refined sugars and too few vegetables, too little variety, and too little of things like iodine. It takes a lot of learning and opportunity and time to eat well as a vegetarian. But what is important to acknowledge is that there are plant-based diet styles that will reverse heart disease. So that 32% figure might be some kind of average, but it does not reflect the best possible outcome for someone who is really trying to reverse or prevent heart disease. See my other post here for links, or see as one example, Dr. Esselstyn' work:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/

I'd agree though that some small amount of free-range organic grass-fed meat or other similar animal products can potentially be part of a reasonably healthy diet -- other ethical and financial and scalability and externality questions aside. Even Dr. Fuhrman agrees on that part as far as the research -- that if you get 10% or less of your calories from animal products, you are doing pretty well.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
https://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article5.aspx
"Therefore I encourage consumption of a carefully planned vegetarian diet or one that includes a small amount of animal products, perhaps 10% of total calories or less, rather than 40 -60 % that children eat today. An animal-product-rich omnivorous diet cannot be considered nutritious food or called healthful."

High fat diets of animal products laced with growth hormones and such are probably bad for children in general. And also, there are few to no purely vegan diets in history. Even gorillas get some small percentage of their calories from termites and other insects they eat incidentally. B12 is another nutrient than can be an issue, usually provided by animal products, and some say can be supplied from dirty vegetables. Our food supply is in that sense too "clean" to be a pure vegan in (without special effort and selected supplements, if that). Vegans who are also neat freaks may be setting themselves up for disaster in that sense; yet on the other hand, since much "organic" food is grown using animal manure from livestock operations, not washing your vegetables well is a health risk too from E.coli contamination.

It does not take much animal products though to provide some essentials. Related example:
http://drbass.com/generations.html
"This text is still extremely important, since similar mistakes are still being made today, typically by aspiring vegans and vegan raw-foodists. Deficiencies th

http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/HeartDisease.aspx
http://www.heartattackproof.com/

Don't let the naysayer comments get you down.

Also, if arteries in you heart are all clogged up, then what about arteries in you arms, legs, liver, and brain? Cardiovascular disease affects every system in the body -- it is just that heart problems tend to be more tragically obvious than other clogs. So, the best approach is not to unclog a little part of the hearth that will just clog back up soon, but to unclog everything by eating differently.

A story from:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/health-science/stars/stars-written/robert-cross/
-----
Robert Cross: Formerly Dying from Heart Disease ...

Further research led me to Dr. McDougall, and registered dietitian Jeff Novick. All these people gave hope for arresting, and perhaps reversing, my condition through diet and lifestyle modifications. In contrast, neither my internist, nor my cardiologist, was aware of these doctors or their programs or any significant benefit to lifestyle modification. They discouraged me from delaying the surgery, but accepted my decision to at least give diet and "medical management" a try.

My early results were promising. My first blood test on the diet showed my cholesterol was now down to 120 mg/dL and my LDL was 60 mg/dL. My internist was astounded. Medication had only lowered my numbers slightly. I was on Dr. Esselstyn's exact program, which is virtually identical to that of Dr. McDougall, and I hired the McDougall Program dietitian, Jeff Novick, RD, as my coach. I found that everything I needed was available immediately and for free through Dr. McDougall's website. I learned that my results would directly reflect my compliance with the program. I resolved that I would do this program 100 percent. If I could not be 100 percent on my own or failed to get my doctors' support, then I was going to go to the McDougall Live-in Program without delay. (I still plan on going.) I owed that to myself and my family.

Almost immediately, my chest pain went away. My internist asked how I had accomplished this and my dramatic cholesterol drop, and then became quite interested in my program. I needed his help because of the side effects of the medications that occurred once I changed my diet. I had to quickly get off my blood pressure medications because my readings were extremely low and I was feeling light headed. My blood sugars came way down and I had to terminate my diabetes medication. I eventually stopped all of my Lipitor, yet my total cholesterol stayed at 160 mg/dL (my LDL cholesterol remained at 60 mg/dL). I have lost over 60 pounds since beginning my new diet and exercise program in January of 2008, and I continue to lose as my energy increases. I have had no more kidney stones.

After following my progress for almost a year and a half, the cardiologist wanted to repeat the nuclear heart scan. My internist agreed. He was also sure that I was wrong when I had told him that many clinical trials have shown no important benefits other than pain relief for the surgery they had proposed for me more than a year and a half ago. Despite my many obvious improvements, the cardiologist still believed that coronary artery disease is always progressive, and told me not to get my hopes up about the new test. I repeated the exercise nuclear heart scan on May 5, 2009.

This time, I felt great running on the treadmill. I took my heart rate beyond the maximum expected for my age, and had no pain. The monitors I was connected to indicated no problems. Immediately after the test, I spoke with my cardiologist, who seemed somewhat perplexed. He chose his words very carefully. He wanted to know if I had felt chest pain on the first exam in 2008. I think he did not believe the prev

Are you suggesting Dr. Joel Fuhrman is lying (or self-deluding) about this patient? It only takes one anecdote to prove a possibility:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/HeartDisease.aspx
"John Pawlikoski is a typical patient I see everyday. I am reporting his case here because he has been my patient for 10 years now, so I can report on his long-term results. He first came to see me at the age of 65 with a history of steadily worsening angina. His chest pains interfered with his daily life, so he was unable to perform physical work. He had a stress thallium test which suggested multi-vessel coronary artery disease. He then underwent a cardiac catherization, which revealed a 95 percent stenosis of the left anterior descending artery and had diffuse blockages throughout the left circumflex. He had normal heart function. His cholesterol was 218, with an LDL of 144. He weighed 180 pounds. He was on two medications - one for high blood pressure and nitroglycerin to relieve chest pains.
Within a few weeks of following my dietary recommendations, his chest pains ceased, and he no longer required nitroglycerin. In two months, his weight dropped to 152, a loss of 28 pounds in eight weeks. He remains exactly at 152 pounds today, 10 years later. He has been entirely well these last ten years and is extremely physically active. He takes no medication, and his blood pressure is normal. His LDL cholesterol runs about 80, and his stress test has normalized too. He has no signs or symptoms of heart disease."

Or that Esselstyn is lying (or self-deluding) about these patients?
http://www.heartattackproof.com/patientprofiles.htm

More lies, including by a comment here which might be a paid shill?
"Caldwell Esselstyn MD - Reverse Heart Disease Study"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X31QKDhQUY
"yycman1 wrote: I'm 45, and it will be one year in Nov. since I switched to a vegan diet to address my high cholesterol and blood pressure. ï After just 5 months, I was off 5 different medications...2 for high cholesterol, 2 for high blood pressure and one for prostate. My doctor was so impressed, he told me I made him want to eat better. A vegan diet really does work to reverse cholesterol and blood pressure issues. I was inspired by Bill Clinton to try this. I also lost 18 lbs. without exercising. Amazing!"

Or that Ornish is lying or self-deluded here?
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/features/can-you-reverse-heart-disease
"In his 2007 book The Spectrum, Ornish describes patients waiting to undergo a heart transplant -- those with the worst possible damage -- who enrolled in his program while on the transplant list. Some of them, he says, improved so much that they no longer needed a transplant.
"Our studies show that, with significant lifestyle changes, blood flow to the heart and its ability to pump normally improve in less than a month, and the frequency of chest pains fell by 90% in that time," Ornish says. "Within a year on our program, even severely blocked arteries in the heart became less blocked, and there was even more reversal after five years. That's compared with the natural history in other patients in our study, in which the heart just got worse and worse.""

And T. Colin Campbell is full of it, too?
http://www.tcolincampbell.org/courses-resources/article/reversing-heart-disease-with-diet/category/cardiovascular

Still, as Upton Sinclair said:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not und

Esselstyn has many peer reviewed publications:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/publications.htm

Yes, I saw all those publications. I looked them up on Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed which everyone who understands the medical literature knows about. The latest one, which I discussed above, is from 1999, which is pretty old. In that paper, Esselstyn used diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs, as I said above. Cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor (atorvastatin) will lower a patient's cholesterol dramatically, and extend life in certain patients, with or without a low-cholesterol diet. If he wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his diet, he should have had one group on the diet, and one group on a normal diet. That study doesn't prove anything.

I have read the work of James Randi, Marcia Angell, John Ioannidis, and Ignaz Semmelweis. I've talked to some of them. I doubt that you've read the actual original articles that you're quoting. You're quoting out of context, you're using their work to prove your own beliefs that they don't agree with, and you're getting their ideas all wrong.

http://www.heartattackproof.com/
"A groundbreaking program backed by the irrefutable results from Dr. Esselstyn's 20-year study proving changes in diet and nutrition can actually cure heart disease ... The proof is in the results. The patients in Dr. Esselstyn's initial study came to him with advanced coronary artery disease. Despite the aggressive treatment they received, among them bypasses and angioplasties, 5 of the original group were told by their cardiologists they had less than a year to live. Within months on Dr. Esselstynâ(TM)s program, their cholesterol levels, angina symptoms, and blood flow improved dramatically. Twelve years later 17 compliant patients had no further cardiac events. Adherent patients survived beyond twenty years free of symptoms."

And:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/huffpost.htm
"Beginning in 1985 I initiated a study of seriously ill coronary artery disease patients. Their nutrition became plant based without oil. Their cholesterol levels plummeted. Their angina disappeared. Their weight dropped. I have reported this study at 5 years, 12 years, and 16 years, in the peer reviewed scientific literature and again beyond 20 years in my book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. In some of the patients we had follow up angiograms (x-rays) of previously blocked arteries demonstrating striking disease reversal, which is a testament to my often quoted statement âoeThe truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist and if it does exist It need never progress.""

So, it's actually those who won't pay attention who are "killing people" in the sense you mentioned. Those people who don't want to look at the evidence, or don't want to work to gather more.

But, it is indeed very profitable to kill people via misleading them that heart surgery will help much (as two of my family members suffered through and then died shortly afterwards for a personal anecdote). As Dr. Fuhrman points out, cardiac interventions are a major hospital profit center. Doctors made $100K or more (in insurance) from my family, but did not have to attend the funerals caused by their bad advice, and neither did they have to experience first-hand the physical or mental suffering their interventions caused.

Note that Fuhrman's, Orish's, Esselstyn's and McDougal's approaches are all better than the "Mediterranean diet" as much as that does indeed help:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/103/13/1823.full
"Diet is a cornerstone of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and treatment efforts. Step I and Step II diets are widely recommended as the first line of CVD intervention.1 At the core of this dietary guidance are the recommendations to decrease saturated fat and cholesterol and to consume more fruits, vegetables, and whole grain products. Information from an extensive database, especially regarding saturated fat, indicates that these diets significantly lower blood cholesterol levels, a major risk factor for CVD. Consequently, it is beyond debate that these diets reduce CVD risk. ..."

But what these MDs I mention go beyond is showing how you can not just prevent but *reverse* clogged arteries in the heart with diet.

So, if you had heart disease right now (which you probably do if you are like most older US Americans an eat a Standard American Diet), which would you rather have:
* a painful operation, months of recovery, and then six years of generally crappy quality of life eating the same old junk doing various restricted activities, or:
* making a major change to what you eat, which in six weeks tastes as good overall as what you ate before, and then, quite possibly, living twenty years in great health doing lots of physical activity?

See also:
"How to escape The Pleasure Trap!"

http://www.heartattackproof.com/
"A groundbreaking program backed by the irrefutable results from Dr. Esselstyn's 20-year study proving changes in diet and nutrition can actually cure heart disease ... The proof is in the results. The patients in Dr. Esselstyn's initial study came to him with advanced coronary artery disease. Despite the aggressive treatment they received, among them bypasses and angioplasties, 5 of the original group were told by their cardiologists they had less than a year to live. Within months on Dr. Esselstynâ(TM)s program, their cholesterol levels, angina symptoms, and blood flow improved dramatically. Twelve years later 17 compliant patients had no further cardiac events. Adherent patients survived beyond twenty years free of symptoms."

And:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/huffpost.htm
"Beginning in 1985 I initiated a study of seriously ill coronary artery disease patients. Their nutrition became plant based without oil. Their cholesterol levels plummeted. Their angina disappeared. Their weight dropped. I have reported this study at 5 years, 12 years, and 16 years, in the peer reviewed scientific literature and again beyond 20 years in my book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. In some of the patients we had follow up angiograms (x-rays) of previously blocked arteries demonstrating striking disease reversal, which is a testament to my often quoted statement âoeThe truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist and if it does exist It need never progress.""

So, it's actually those who won't pay attention who are "killing people" in the sense you mentioned. Those people who don't want to look at the evidence, or don't want to work to gather more.

But, it is indeed very profitable to kill people via misleading them that heart surgery will help much (as two of my family members suffered through and then died shortly afterwards for a personal anecdote). As Dr. Fuhrman points out, cardiac interventions are a major hospital profit center. Doctors made $100K or more (in insurance) from my family, but did not have to attend the funerals caused by their bad advice, and neither did they have to experience first-hand the physical or mental suffering their interventions caused.

Note that Fuhrman's, Orish's, Esselstyn's and McDougal's approaches are all better than the "Mediterranean diet" as much as that does indeed help:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/103/13/1823.full
"Diet is a cornerstone of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and treatment efforts. Step I and Step II diets are widely recommended as the first line of CVD intervention.1 At the core of this dietary guidance are the recommendations to decrease saturated fat and cholesterol and to consume more fruits, vegetables, and whole grain products. Information from an extensive database, especially regarding saturated fat, indicates that these diets significantly lower blood cholesterol levels, a major risk factor for CVD. Consequently, it is beyond debate that these diets reduce CVD risk. ..."

But what these MDs I mention go beyond is showing how you can not just prevent but *reverse* clogged arteries in the heart with diet.

So, if you had heart disease right now (which you probably do if you are like most older US Americans an eat a Standard American Diet), which would you rather have:
* a painful operation, months of recovery, and then six years of generally crappy quality of life eating the same old junk doing various restricted activities, or:
* making a major change to what you eat, which in six weeks tastes as good overall as what you ate before, and then, quite possibly, living twenty years in great health doing lots of physical activity?

See also:
"How to escape The Pleasure Trap!"