Sportademics.com supports those who seek synergy in life. That may be a single mother balancing a career and kids or a young 20-something trying to establish himself in a difficult economic climate. We applaud you and we’ll do our best to provide you with the right tools and content to nourish your synergy. This inaugural post examines one of the most debated subjects in science: nutrition. Before we begin, Sportademics.com acknowledges that many people–including perhaps our readers–have invested a great amount of time, money and sweat into dieting. While these diets may have worked for you (and we invite you to share your story), this post will suggest that there is really only one, sustainable diet that has been shown to combat many diseases and cancers. That is, the whole foods, plant-based diet.The large majority of our claims can be found in a book authored by nutritional scientist, Dr. T. Colin Campbell PhD, entitled The China Study.

The whole foods, plant-based diet has had a remarkably difficult time gaining traction despite overwhelming scientific evidence in support of it. This is no coincidence, as Dr. Campbell notes:

The distinctions between government, industry, science and medicine have become blurred. The distinctions between making a profit and promoting health have become blurred. The problems with the system do not come in the form of Hollywood-style corruption. The problems are much more subtle, and yet much more dangerous.¹

Without going into the problems–which are soaked in political drama–Sportademics.com will instead focus on the solutions stemming from The China Study, perhaps the most comprehensive undertaking ever in nutritional science. Dr. Campbell and his team collected data over an 11-year period from 1973 to 1984 and found over “8000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet, and disease variables.”² In addition, we’ll include other studies provided by Dr. Campbell. For our purposes, we’ll focus on the associations that we find to be the most relevant.

Heart Disease

Preliminary data from the CDC shows that almost 616,000 Americans died from heart disease in 2008.³ That is roughly the entire population of Seattle, Washington. While it’s true that the incidence rate is about the same as it was in the early ‘70s, it seems remarkable that nothing has been done to reverse the rate at which our hearts become diseased. That is, until a colleague of Dr. Campbell named Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn M.D., organized a study that tested the effects of a whole foods, plant-based diet on 18 patients with established coronary disease.⁴ Leading up to the study, these 18 patients had experienced 49 coronary episodes including angina, bypass surgery, heart attacks, strokes and angioplasty. Their average cholesterol level was 246 mg/dL (the recommended amount according to Mayo Clinic is < 200 mg/dL). In the subsequent 11 years, there was only one coronary event among the 18 patients who followed the diet; the average cholesterol was 132 mg/dL; and 70 percent of his patients’ clogged arteries opened. In short, the disease not only stopped but was reversed as a result of a simple dietary change.

Obesity

More than one-third of American children and adults are obese according to the CDC.⁵ Aside from the obvious oversized appearance, obesity has been linked to heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer.⁶ Unlike heart disease, however, obesity rates are climbing fast. More than any other condition, obesity exposes the limitations of an approach to healthcare based on chemicals and machinery as opposed to diet and prevention. Indeed, Sportademics.com believes that this theme is 12crucial in understanding how to right a broken healthcare system in America. In a progressive study, the Pritikin Center asked 4,500 overweight patients to eat as much as they wanted of foods that were low-fat, whole-food and plant-based. In 3 weeks patients lost 5.5% of their body weight.⁷ Other intervention studies showed similar results: two to five pounds after 12 days,⁸ 10 pounds after 3 weeks,⁹ 16 pounds after 12 weeks¹⁰ and 24 pounds after 1 year.¹¹ Other studies have shown that vegetarians eat the same or even significantly more than meat-eaters and still weigh much less.¹² The China Study documented that rural Chinese consuming a plant-based diet actually consume more calories than Americans when adjusted for body weight.¹³ Therefore, under a whole foods, plant-based diet, it has been scientifically documented that one can eat more and weigh less.

Diabetes

The American Diabetes Association estimates that 25.8 million people have diabetes in the U.S. as of 2011.¹⁴ Like obesity, the risks associated with diabetes are numerous and well documented. The increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, blindness, kidney disease, nervous system disease, amputation, dental disease, pregnancy complications and death have all been linked to diabetes.¹⁵ Again, a remarkable study at the Pritikin Center prescribed a low fat, plant-based diet and exercise to a group of 40 diabetic patients.¹⁶ Of the 40, 34 were able to discontinue all medications after 26 days.

Cancers: Breast, Prostate, Colorectal

Cancer needs no introduction, as I’m sure many of our readers have been affected or at least know someone that has been affected with the horrible disease. According to breastcancer.org, 1 in 8 U.S. women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. That is, unless a paradigm shift about diet and prevention takes hold. Dr. Campbell’s research in China showed that women in rural China were exposed to 2.5–3.0 times less estrogen than their American counterparts.¹⁷ This is important because there is overwhelming evidence that estrogen levels are one of the best predictors of breast cancer risk. It has also been shown that Western diets high in fat and animal protein and low in dietary fiber result in increased estrogen levels.¹⁸

According to the CDC, about 1 in 6 men will develop prostate cancer in the U.S.¹⁹ While the association between diet and disease for this cancer are a bit elusive, one of the most consistent links has been dairy consumption. A 2001 Harvard review observed that 19 of 23 studies have observed a statistically significant positive association between dairy products and prostate cancer.²⁰

About 1 in 20 Americans will develop some form of colorectal cancer in their lifetime according to the American Cancer Society.²¹ A large study of 519,000 people (referred to as the EPIC Study) regarding relationships between cancer and nutrition observed that the 20% of people who consumed the most fiber in their diet had a 42% lower risk of colorectal cancer than the 20% who consumed the least.²² It’s important to note that the fiber was obtained from food and not from supplements. Perhaps even more convincing is a look at the geographical disparity between Western and non-Western nations and the rates of colorectal cancer. The Czech Republic, a nation with a highly Western diet has a death rate of 34.19 per 100,000 males due to colorectal cancer.20 Bangladesh, on the other hand, has a death rate of 0.63 per 100,000 males.²³

Autoimmune Diseases

It’s difficult to collect information on studies linking diets to all autoimmune diseases, but we did find a few worth noting. Type 1 diabetes–the less common of the two types–is a disease in which the immune system attacks the pancreas cells responsible for producing valuable insulin. In turn, the body cannot process glucose effectively, which can have devastating effects. Interestingly, there is a significant amount of data that links this disease to dairy products. In fact, the ability of cow’s milk protein to initiate Type 1 diabetes is well documented.²⁴ In a 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers took blood from children aged 4-12 with Type 1 diabetes.²⁵ Next, they measured the levels of antibodies that had formed to fight against an incompletely digested protein of cow’s milk called BSA. The same process was performed with non-diabetic children. What they discovered was nothing less than amazing. Of the 142 children with Type 1 diabetes, all of them had developed antibody levels higher than 3.55. That means that they all had consumed significant amounts of cow’s milk. Of the 79 children without Type 1 diabetes, all of them had antibody levels less than 3.55, which means that this group did not consume significant amounts of cow’s milk.

Dr. Roy Swank

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is another autoimmune disorder that currently afflicts over 400,000 people in the U.S.²⁶ Relatively little is known about the causes or cures of the disease. MS is over 100 times more prevalent in the far north than at the equator.²⁷ Most of the leading research relating diet to MS has been done by the late Dr. Roy Swank (former Neurologist and Professor Emeritus at the Oregon Health & Sciences University). Most scientists speculated that this was due to the magnetic fields, but Dr. Swank had a hunch that it was due to differences in diet. He conducted a trial on 144 MS patients from the Montreal Neurological Institute that lasted 34 years.²⁸ He advised that they consume a diet low in saturated fat (animal-based foods are high in saturated fat). At the end of the study, only 5% of the patients that consistently stuck to his diet died. Yet, 80% of the patients who did not abide by his dietary recommendations died.

Other: Osteoporosis, Kidney Stones, Blindness, Cognitive Dysfunction, and Alzheimer’s

Most of us were brought up to think that drinking excess amounts of cow’s milk would prevent osteoporosis. However, a study published in 2000 from the University of California at San Francisco compared the ratio of vegetable to animal protein consumption to the rate of bone fractures.²⁹ They found that a large ratio of vegetable to animal protein consumption was associated with a virtual vanishing of bone fractures. Even more convincing, this particular study is actually a summary of 87 separate surveys. Another study from the same university observed women’s diets by the proportions of animal and plant protein consumed for over seven years.³⁰ They found that the women with the highest ratio of animal to plant protein had 3.7 times more fractures than women with the lowest ratio. Dr. Campbell’s China Study showed the fracture rate in rural China was about one-fifth that of the U.S.³¹

Most kidney stones are made of calcium and oxalate. Again, these are relatively more common in developed nations than in developing countries. Dr. W.G. Robertson from the Medical Research Council in Leeds, England has researched the association between diet and the formation of kidney stones. In one study between 1958-1973, he showed that consuming animal protein at levels above twenty-one grams per person per day is closely associated with a high number of kidney stones.³²

Research in the past 50 years has shown that our eyes are significantly affected by diet, especially cataracts and macular degeneration. Indeed, over 1.6 million Americans suffer from macular degeneration, and many of them have become blind.³³ A study involving five ophthalmology medical centers compared 356 patients with advanced macular degeneration with 520 patients with other eye diseases.³⁴ They found that a higher intake of total carotenoids (antioxidants that give fruits and vegetables their color) was associated with a lower frequency of macular degeneration.

Cognitive functioning has recently been a “hot” topic for researchers. This involves everything from mild cognitive dysfunction to the more advanced states such as Alzheimer’s disease. A study of 260 elderly people (ages 65-90) concluded that, “a diet with less fat, saturated fat, and cholestero, and more carbohydrate, fiber, vitamins, and minerals may be advisable not only to improve the health of the elderly, but also to improve cognitive function”.³⁵ Again, yet another study advances plant-based foods and condemns animal-based foods for improved health. Other studies link improved cognitive function to high Vitamin E and Vitamin C consumption, which are almost exclusively found in plants.³⁶ Alzheimer’s disease has been associated with heart disease, which suggests that they share the same causes.³⁷

What to Eat

The beautiful thing about the whole foods, plant-based diet recommended by Dr. Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn, and many others is its simplicity: no animal products and all-you-can-eat fruits, vegetables, and 100% whole grains.Here are their recommendations, as written in Dr. Campbell’s book, The China Study.³⁸

The New Nutritional Paradigm

Sportademics.com is sensitive to those who may take issue with what we have shared. We are in no way advocating that you radically alter your diet without first consulting your physician. However, we do feel that it is important to share a new nutritional paradigm that is heavily supported by reputable scientific data. Please consider learning more about the whole foods, plant-based diet, and do not take our word for it. Ask a friend, colleague or relative who has started it and listen to what they have to say. There are a lot of forces from the food industry, government (yes), and romantic old-timers that are fighting hard to maintain the status quo, which is, unfortunately, an unhealthy diet for America. Please keep this in mind the next time you are at the market, a restaurant, or a backyard BBQ and to always #SeekSynergy.

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