Can diet and lifestyle help to minimize the risk of developing chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer? Are we not destined to develop a disease that runs in the family? The fear that developing chronic illness is beyond our control has been engraved in our society for years.
Genes are not your destiny
This view is changing! Being pre-disposed to a chronic disease doesn’t mean that you will necessarily develop the disease. By controlling what you put in your body, you can significantly lower your risk of developing a chronic disease. If you are already diagnosed with a condition, you can still manage or even reverse it with the right nutrition and the right lifestyle choices.
Studies have shown that there is more to developing a chronic illness than just genes. It is estimated that 70-90 percent of disease risks are attributed to poor nutrition, environmental and lifestyle factors as the most important contributors to developing a chronic disease (1).
Let’s find out what to eat to minimize the risk of developing chronic illness.
The power of super-nutrition
Your body has a very powerful immune system that has the ability to self-repair and self-defend against microbes and prevent chronic illnesses. To do this, your immune system receives important nutrition from food you eat and utilizes them for its optimal function. If your diet is not optimal, the immune system weakens over time and sooner or later some type of a chronic disease may develop.
Plant Foods
Fruit, vegetables, herbs and grains contain micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals and fibre with many benefits for human body. But the real gold is the special type of micronutrients called phytonutrients which are bioactive plant-derived chemical compounds (phytochemicals).
Phytochemicals
Phytochemicals include unique medicinal benefits for improving your overall health and preventing chronic diseases. Plant foods are the only natural source of phytochemicals. There are many thousand different phytochemicals in plants that work in harmony to protect your body against disease. For example, phytochemicals help to:
- repair body’s DNA damage and protect cell structure from damage by toxins
- improve immune cells power to kill microbes and cancer cells
- improves body’s detoxification processes to remove toxins and other cancer-causing agents
- fight free radicals to remove oxidative damage and inflammation
Different perspective on meal times
If you eat a typical Western diet, you may not be getting enough plant nutrients to avoid chronic illnesses. This is because the Western Diet is very rich in processed foods and animal foods. When we eat meat, dairy and eggs with every meal, we miss out on the opportunity to consume more plant foods that contain beneficial phytochemicals that have the power to fight disease.
When consuming the Western Diet, we live in a paradox where our bodies are over-fed but undernourished, starved from important phytonutrients that are essential for a strong immune system, optimal health and disease prevention.
To improve your health, you need to adopt a different perspective on your meal times: maximizing calories from plant foods that contain phytochemicals and minimizing calories from processed foods and animal products. Plant foods become the focal point of your diet, rather than a side dish.
The answer is simple – We just need to feed our bodies with supercharged fuel, and that means food that are richest in micronutrients.
Joel FUHRMAN, M.D.
Nutritarian Food Pyramid
A good example of this different perspective is Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutritarian Food Pyramid where
meals are centred around unprocessed fruits, vegetables, beans, seeds, nuts and grains, leaving only a little room for animal protein such as meat, dairy, eggs, oils and processed foods and sweets. In this concept, every meal is your opportunity to nourish your body, strengthen your immune system and fight disease in your body (2).
Whole Food Plant-Based Diet
Even more healing concept adopts the Whole Food Plant-Based Diet (WFPB) which eliminates processed foods and animal products as much as possible. This plant-based concept with some variations is part of integrated natural therapies for patients fighting cancer, heart disease and diabetes in many holistic clinics across the world (4,5,6). You can read more about this eating style from Doctors for Nutrition website.
Bottom line
No matter what eating trend you follow, centring your diet around unrefined whole plant foods can greatly improve your overall health, prevent and even reverse chronic diseases. Your
body has an enormous capacity to heal – it just needs your help to make that possible.
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References
- Michael Greger MD, 2015, How not to die, London UK.
- Joel Fuhrman MD, 2012, Super Imunity, The Essential Nutrition Guide for Boosting Your Body’s Defenses to Live Longer, Stronger, and Disease Free, New York.
- T. Colin Campbell, Thomas M, Campbell, The China Study, 2016, Dallas, Texas.
- Dr’s Esselstyn Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Program, 2016, http://www.dresselstyn.com/
- Undoit with Ornish, 2021, https://www.ornish.com/undo-it/
- NutritionFact.org, Michael Greger, Treating Advanced Prostate Cancer with Diet, 2021, https://nutritionfacts.org/2021/02/04/treating-advanced-prostate-cancer-with-diet/
