FOOD TO HELP YOU LIVE LONGER
GORGEOUS 12-PAGE RECIPE PULLOUT IN THE MAGAZINE
What if I told you there was a miracle pill that could drastically improve your health and the length of your life? What’s more, this lifesaver is cheap, readily available and comes with no debilitating side-effects. It’s been rigorously tested (including by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist) and almost every doctor in the world should be ready to attest to just how extraordinarily effective it is.
It could slash your risk of developing diabetes by 90%, reduce the likelihood of a heart attack by 80%, halve your chance of having a stroke — and reduce your cancer risk by more than a third.
If I told you all this, you would, of course, be hounding me for a prescription. Well, today, I’m offering it to you on a plate. Quite literally.
I have dedicated my career as a doctor at some of America’s top medical institutions to the study of evidence-based links between disease and nutrition — and now I have come up with a diet plan that is truly a ‘miracle pill’ for illness.
A team of researchers and volunteers last year helped me dig through 24,000 papers published on the subject. And the results have been quite astounding.
It’s now clear, for example, that the vast majority of premature deaths could be prevented.
Many people assume the diseases that kill us are
‘I’ve dedicated my career to study of links between disease and nutrition... I’ve got a plan’
pre-programmed into our genes, but in fact, for most of us, our genes usually account for only 10% to 20% of risk. And the other 80% to 90%? It comes from our lifestyles.
According to the Global Burden of Disease Study — the most comprehensive study of disease risk factors to date — the No.1 cause of death and disability is our diet.
In an analysis of the lifestyles of 35,000 adults, their diets were scored from zero to five to see if they met a bare minimum of healthy-eating targets — which included fruit, vegetables and whole grains. How many people do you think scored even four out of five? About 1%. But you can change this — if you know how. I have worked for years to identify the perfect combination of foods and nutrients to maximise our protection against disease, and have created a simple dietary prescription — my Daily Dozen — which anyone can take to dramatically reduce their risk of dying.
It has been expertly refined and calibrated to take into account the very latest scientific findings, and to maximise the benefits of the most important health-giving plant nutrients.
Tick off the 12 items on my list (opposite) every day and you can be confident you are doing the utmost to protect yourself against the ravages of disease.
A plant-based diet may help prevent, treat, or even reverse each of the three leading causes of death today: heart disease, dementia and Alzheimer’s, and stroke.
Today, I will explain this vital revelation and introduce the concept of my Daily Dozen.
Turn to the mouthwatering recipes in the centre of today’s Magazine to get started on your new, life-lengthening plan immediately.
And every day next week in the Irish Daily Mail, a special fourpage pullout will be dedicated to the powerful foods and nutrients known to protect against specific conditions. On Monday it’s heart disease; Tuesday dementia; Wednesday cancer; Thursday diabetes; and Friday lung disease.
Packed with delicious meal ideas and food swaps, they are magazines that anyone who cares about their health can’t afford to miss.
A PLANT-BASED DIET THAT REALLY WORKS
LET’S talk a little about ageing — and the Nobel Prize-winning research on which my diet is based. In each of your body’s cells you have tiny strands of DNA coiled into chromosomes.
At the tip of each chromosome there’s a small cap called a telomere, which stops your DNA from unravelling and fraying — like the plastic tip on the end of your shoelaces.
As you age, however, the telomere starts to flake away — when it’s completely gone, your cells can die.
Some people like to think of telomeres as life ‘fuses’: they can start shortening as soon as you’re born — and when they’re gone, you’re gone.
So what would you have to do if you wanted to prevent this telomere cap from burning away?
Well, smoking cigarettes is associated with tripling the rate of telomere loss, so the first step is obvious. But the food you eat every day may also have an impact on how fast you lose them. Consuming fruits, vegetables and other antioxidant-rich foods has been associated with longer, protective telomeres.
By contrast, consuming refined grains, fizzy drinks, meat (including fish) and dairy has been linked to shortened telomeres.
What if you ate a diet composed solely of plant foods and avoided processed and animal foods — could cellular ageing be slowed?
The answer was discovered by pioneering researcher Dr Dean Ornish and Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of telomerase — an enzyme that helps repair telomeres.
Dr Ornish and Dr Blackburn established that just three months on a whole-food, plant-based diet, coupled with exercise, could significantly boost telomerase — the only intervention that had been shown to do so. What’s more, a fiveyear follow-up study found that while the telomeres of those in a control group who did not change their lifestyles predictably shrank with age, the telomeres of those who changed their lifestyles had actually grown.
Five years later, their telomeres were even longer — suggesting that not only can a healthy life boost telomerase enzyme activity but can also reverse cellular ageing.
MY DAILY DOZEN PRESCRIPTION
MY Daily Dozen prescription is the culmination of a medical career dedicated to the ongoing study of the disease-fighting power of plants. I have been inspired throughout my research by my grandmother, who
was told, at 65, that her life was over.
Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she’d already had so many bypass operations that the surgeons had run out of options. Her doctors told her there was nothing else they could do, and she was sent home to die.
But as she sat slumped in front of the TV, she spotted a programme about nutritionist Nathan Pritikin, who was an early pioneer in reversing heart disease through eating a plant-based diet.
She contacted him, became one of his first patients and, within weeks, was not only out of her wheelchair, but walking 10 miles a day. My grandmother went on to live 31 happy, healthy years beyond that first death sentence. It was her miraculous recovery that inspired me to go to medical school. The one unifying ‘magic bullet’ which has been shown time and again to help prevent, arrest or even reverse each of the major killers is a plant-based diet.
I’m sure you’ll notice the recipes in today’s Magazine, and packed into the pullouts next week, are vegetarian but you might be relieved to hear you can enjoy the benefits of a plant-based diet without having to adopt a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.
Be reassured that on my plan, nothing is banned and it really doesn’t matter what you eat on birthdays, holidays or special occasions. If you stick to my Daily Dozen most of the time, the protective health benefits will accumulate nicely.