The China Study

Just finished this book and loved loved loved it. It's a great study on how a healthy, plant-based diet can help either prevent or help and heal cases of cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and many other diseases.
Some of the dozens and dozens of quotes I liked:

Why are Americans succumbing to heart disease in the 60s and 70s when much of the world is relatively unaffected? Quite simply, it was a case of death by food. The cultures that have lower heart disease rates eat less saturated fat and animal protein and more whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Average calorie intake was 30% higher among the least active Chinese than among average American's, yet body weight was 20% lower. What is their secret?

One of the strongest predictors of  Western diseases was blood cholesterol. Professor Denis Burkitt said: "Even though fiber is not digested, it is vital for good health. It pulls water from the body into the intestines to keep things moving along. Undigested fibers, also gather up nasty chemicals that find their way into our intestines and that might be carcinogenic. If we don't consume enough fiber, we are susceptible to constipation-based diseases. These include large bowel cancer, diverticulitis, hemorrhoids, and varicose veins."

To understand diabetes: Normal metabolism goes like this:
1. We eat food
2. The food is digested and the carbohydrate part is broken down into simple sugars, much of which is glucose.
3. Glucose (blood sugar) enters the blood, and insulin is produced by the pancreas, manages its transport and distribution around the body.
4. Insulin, acting like an usher, opens doors for glucose into different cells for a variety of purposes. Some of the glucose is converted to short-term energy for immediate cell use, and some is stored as long-term energy (fat) for later use.

As a person develops diabetes, this metabolic process collapses. Type 1 cannot produce adequate insulin because the insulin-producing cells of their pancreas have been destroyed. Type 2 can produce insulin, but the insulin doesn't do its job. This is called insulin resistance, which means that once the insulin starts 'giving orders' to dispatch the blood sugar, the body doesn't pay attention. The insulin is rendered ineffective,and the blood sugar is not metabolized properly.

While it's true that a family history of breast cancer can increase your risk of getting it, studies show that about 3% of all cases are due to your genes. High levels of estrogen are the cause of much of it, so why don't we look at the reasons for these high levels? Animal-based diets are shown to increase the levels of estrogen.
For prostate cancer, there is a positive association for some measure of dairy products and prostate cancer. Our diet can determine how much of "supercharged D" is produced and how it works. Animal protein that we consume has the tendency to block the production of S.charged D. leaving the body with low levels of this vitamin in the blood. If these low levels persist, prostate cancer can result. Persistently high intakes of calcium create an environment where supercharged D declines, thus adding to the problem.

Multiple Sclerosis: 95% of patients on low-saturated fat diets in the earlier stages of the disease remained only mildly disabled for approximately 30 years. 5% of the patients died. In contrast, 80% of the patients with early stage MS who consume the higher saturated fat diet died of MS. Animal protein diets increase the acid load in the body, which means that our blood and tissues become more acidic. The body does not like this acidic environment and begins to fight it. In order to neutralize the acid, the body uses calcium which acts as a very effective base. This calcium, however, must come from somewhere. It ends up being pulled from the bones, and the calcium loss weakens them, putting them at greater risk for fracture and osteoporosis.
After 7 years of observations, women with the highest ratio of animal protein to plant protein had 3.7 times more bone fractures than the women with the lowest ration. During this time, the women with the high ration lost bone almost four times as fast the the women with the lowest ratio.

Eight principles of food and health:
1. Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.
3. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.
4. Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
5. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
6. The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis.)
7. Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.
8. Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected.

As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself.
--Adelle Davis

 

We do not have to wait to develop cancer or other diseases in order to get the message that we need to change our energy system and begin creating health.
None of us is completely free from the fear, anger, and stress that come and go as part of normal life. When these emotions become intense enough to affect our psychological and emotional well-being on a regular basis, we are heading for physical illness unless we resolve them in a healthy way.
When our daily unresolved pain, anger, and frustration rob our bodies of vital health-producing energy, it is essential to bring healing and understanding into our daily thoughts, emotions, and actions. --Christiane Northrup, MD

Healthy choices

“When we are vibrant people, we bring far more to our relationships than when we are languishing. The keys to being vibrant are common sense even if they are not common practice. We enjoy and appreciate the simple things in life. We cherish the best of our experiences. We look forward to the future. We use our strengths regularly. And we find ways to serve.” --H. Wallace Goddard and James P. Marshall

"I've learned how to recognize the poisoning effects of righteous indignation in my own body. Getting stuck in this energy for a long time becomes self-destructive. The longer we stay in this mode, searching for a perpetrator to blame for what happened to us--be it men, our mothers, the government, or doctors--the more our bodies are energetically depleted." --Christiane Northrup, MD

Our emotions and thoughts have such profound effects on us because they are physically linked to our bodies via our immune, endocrine, and central nervous systems. All emotions, even those that are suppressed and unexpressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to 'stay' in the body like small ticking time bombs-they are illness in incubation. --Christiane Northrup, MD

Your emotions may very well be the single most important factor in your health. --Dr. Stan Gardner

We seem to only value our health when we lose it. It is so much easier to preserve it than to restore it. Make the decision today to do one thing to keep your health; one thing that you know you should do. --Dr. Stan Gardner

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.
--Charles Caleb Colton, English writer and eccentric

Another prolific cause of disease is unhappy marriage. This may be a mental or a physical difficulty, or a combined one, but there can be no question but that disease is often the result of improper or unhappy marital conditions. No man, no woman, can live continually in a state of irritation, discontent, unhappiness, regret, or anger without suffering, and this soon begets disease of mind or body. Nervous disorders, brain diseases, dyspepsia, sexual diseases all may spring from an unhappy marriage. --Bernarr Macfadden

To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life. -- William Londen

No intelligent person

can question the wonderful influence the mind has over the body in the cause of disease. Many people are perpetually sick because they perpetually worry. Violent frights have caused convulsions, paralysis, insanity and even death.

Especially upon the young would I impress the importance of preserving the right mental influences. Fear is a constant predisposer to disease. Because we reproduce in our bodies the conditions that the mind constantly pictures and dwells upon, otherwise healthy persons develop the disease.
--Bernarr Macfadden, Macfadden's Encyclopedia of Physical Culture (1868-1955)

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. --Deepak Chopra

One way to energetically help soothe someone's upset stomach is to compliment them.
What you are giving them is self esteem. That is one of the most healing treasures to give. --Caroline Myss

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
--Ray Kroc

Disease is functional disturbance. In some cases you might say it is lowered vitality or lessened vital resistance. There is something wrong with the functional organism. Disease has not come upon you because you have been attacked by a germ of some kind, it has not come because you have breathed some extraordinary microbe, it has appeared because you are ready for it, in most cases because you have deserved it as a penalty for violating Nature's health laws. --Bernarr Mcfadden

Sugar causes the immune system to drop. Diet has a direct effect on the immune system, more than exposure to someone who has a cold or other illness. --Dr. Stan Gardner

The foundation of success in life is good health; that is the substratum of fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick. He has no ambition; no incentive; no force. Of course, there are those who have bad health and cannot help it; you cannot expect that such persons can accumulate wealth; but there are a great many in poor health who need not be so. --P.T. Barnum

To lose one's heath renders science null, art inglorious, strength unavailing, wealth useless, and eloquence powerless. --Herophilus

Dissipation--Literally, the word has reference to all means of dissipating or wasting human energy, and in this sense it should be considered here. For instance, a man who thinks himself a model of righteousness and good conduct because he frowns upon alcoholic indulgence and the use of tobacco, may yet be guilty of even greater dissipation through the abuse of his stomach, in persistent over-eating and in the use of unwholesome foods which consume or waste vitality. --Macfadden's Encyclopedia of Physical Culture

Now that I have taken responsibility for my health, I am not a victim of the twentieth-century lifestyle. I eat well, in spite of all the processed foods on supermarket shelves. I don't allow stress to become distress. I treat my body well. I am in control of my life and health. With a few simple, basic lifestyle changes, control can be yours also. --Nancy Appleton, PhD

A noted doctor once said that the diaphragm, thorax, abdomen, heart, lungs--and even the liver--are given a massage during a hearty laugh. --Dr. Don Colbert