The Best Way to Stay Healthy
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The Best Way to Stay Healthy Stay As Far Away From Doctors As You Can! The New Combined Edition Updated and Unabridged Volume I: The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Diet Volume II: Healing Body, Mind and Spirit George Steele MD 1 First Edition March 2007 NOTICE This book is a source of information for improving your health but, for more serious conditions, it cannot serve as replacement for the services of a licensed health care professional. If you suspect you have a medical problem, you should not only seek competent medical advice, you should educate yourself about the nature of your illness and treatments. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the reader’s discretion and sole responsibility. 2 To Ed Lowe, my mentor in life Mom and Dad, thanks! Jack, the 6th grader, who was and is an inspiration to us all About the Author: George Steele MD is an Internal Medicine physician. His interests include exploring the impact of nutrition and our emotional state on health and wellbeing. He spends most of his time taking care of his patients and creating educational handouts for his patients. His goal is for his patients to heal themselves. He will assist by pointing them in the right direction and encouraging them to continue the course. Healing must come from within each of us, and we do this best in community. He has written this book to share these ideas with the community beyond those with whom he can participate directly. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Steele has also been on the faculty at the University of North Carolina, Brown University, Duke University, the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is married to Katherine High MD and they have three (wonderful) children. 3 A Note from the Author: Thank you for purchasing this book. My hope is you will find some helpful tools for living life. This is the combined Volumes 1 and 2, which are directed at healing; healing our body, mind and spirit. My suggestion is to try to implement many or most of the changes presented in Volume 1: the Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer diet (summarized in the Staying Healthy Handout in Appendix 1). If you are eating well and continue to feel less-than-terrific, then it may be time to look at Volume 2. It is important to seek the help of your physician if you are not improving as you may have already developed a significant health problem. But my hope for all of us is that we will continue to be healthy in body, mind and spirit for as long as we desire. If you would like to purchase additional copies of The Best Way to Stay Healthy , visit http://www.lulu.com/GeorgeSteeleMD George Steele MD 4 VOLUME 1 THE MEDITERRANEAN HUNTER-GATHERER DIET 1 Staying Healthy 25 2 Aging: Postponing the Inevitable 37 3 The Circumference of Your Waist 49 4 Sugar and Starch 65 5 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Diet 73 6 Getting Ready for the First Week 83 7 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Seven-Day Plan 91 (The Sexy Long-Life Eating Plan) 8 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Cookbook 137 9 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Diet 177 Versus Ornish, Atkins and Protein Power 10 Nutritional Supplements 191 11 Ultimate Sports Nutrition 207 12 Reasons to Avoid Cow’s Milk 215 13 What Is Wrong With Wheat? 221 14 Moderate Drinking of Alcohol 231 Epilogue 237 Appendix One: Nutritional Content of Foods 239 Index 245 5 vi VOLUME 2 HEALING BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT Part 1: Healing 1 Healing Comes from Within 9 2 Tools for Healing 29 3 Sex and Spirituality 47 4 Further Thoughts 61 5 Poetry (Even Further Thoughts) 67 6 The Enneagram System: Ancient Tool for Self-Healing 77 Part 2: When You Need to See Your Doctor 7 Disease Prevention and Early Detection 101 8 Make Your Diabetes Go Away 111 9 Heart Disease: What Causes Your Heart to Break? 121 10 Common Disorders: From Acne to Osteoporosis 136 11 Exercise and Stretching 166 Index 168 vii viii Never visit a doctor until you are one hundred years old An old Russian proverb ix x PREFACE TO VOLUME 1 Staying healthy requires us to do each of the following: First, understand our bodies. Then, understand what causes our aging. We need to change some of the foods we are eating (avoiding the foods of famine) and understand why we must do this to be and stay healthy. We also need to examine our attitudes and learn to accept ourselves as we are so we may live a positive life with power rather than a negative destructive life. And finally, we will explore interventions to alleviate problems we have already developed. 1 Understand Your Body The foundation of our health is our genetic inheritance, but nutrition, toxins, infections, accidents, and finally, our attitude have a significant effect on how our genetic predisposition is manifest. During my nineteen years as an Internal Medicine physician and educator, it has become clear to me that modifying our environment and the foods we eat is the best way to stay healthy. Your Lifestyle Accounts for 75% of Your Risk of Disease and Death Environment and nutrition are much more important in determining our health than our genetic inheritance, appearing to account for 75 percent of disease occurrence while genetics accounts for 25 percent.1 This book will try to optimize the 75 percent of this risk that is modifiable. While we may not be masters of our fate, we can at least give ourselves the best odds and feel great while we are doing it! This is the best way to stay healthy. 2 Understand Your Aging (Chapter 2) This book approaches aging as postponing the inevitable (and staying healthy in the meantime). The question is asked, what causes us to age? And then again, aging starts in our twenties, followed by more questions and answers (see glossary on page 21): Why do our joints ache? Why do we wrinkle? How does insulin promote disease and early death? 1 Verkasalo PK, Kaprio J, Koskenvuo M, Pukkala E. Int J Cancer 1999 Dec 10;83(6):743-749 Genetic predisposition, environment and cancer incidence: a nationwide twin study in Finland, 1976-1995. 11 What are superoxide radicals and how do they cause disease? What is apoptosis? What is glycation? We will answer each of these questions, and more, in terms of the inevitability of aging and how to best stay healthy in the meantime. 3 Avoid the Food of Famine (Chapters 3 through 6) As you understand the significant adverse effects caused by consuming sugars, starches and certain fats, your motivation for eating changes. Instead of eating to meet our cravings, we choose foods that make us feel strong, clear-headed and positive. Most people who reach that point will never sink back to eating the foods of famine (better known as junk food or better yet, dog food filler). The Seven-Day Plan of Nutrition for Women (Men, you will eat 50% more; as if that is fair!) is designed to keep our bodies running smoothly for most of the potential 130 years of life. It is also grain-free and avoids the proteins and sugars from dairy, which can be associated with adverse reactions in many people. If we truly understand that how we feel today (and the rate of our aging) is directly related to the food we eat – we find it easier to just say no to the morning bagel (this book calls it Bagel Death). If we also understand that if we feel terrific right now, we are much more likely to feel terrific in five to ten years. If we feel lousy now, imagine how we might feel in five to ten years. Now is the time to feel great. Now is the time to slow aging, so let’s do it! 4 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer Diet (Chapters 7 & 8) This book explains which foods are in, which are out and why. The specifics of the Mediterranean diet are explored, beginning with a Seven-Day Plan of Nutrition for Women. This plan presents a strategy for implementing changes in your eating habits to reduce insulin resistance and thereby reduce your risks for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, and early death (with numerous options-including slow-suicide options for days you get up on the wrong side of the bed). You will find recipes to get you started for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snacks. There are complete weekly menus and recipes accompanied by nutritional breakdowns (fat, protein, carbohydrates, fiber, omega-3 oils and cholesterol) for each dish, and shopping guides. Men can carry out this same plan by simply eating 50% more of the same foods (this may not seem fair but who said life was meant to be fair?) 12 5 The Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer diet versus the Atkins’, Ornish and Protein Power (Chapter 9) The Atkins’ diet has been shown to reduce all heart disease risk factors but the saturated fat may promote shrinking of your brain (small vessel disease in the brain). But the ketosis in the very-low-carbohydrate diets (Atkins’, Mediterranean Hunter-Gatherer, and Neanderthin) may actually reduce aging. The other low carbohydrate diets (as opposed to very-low-carbohydrate diet) including Protein Power, South Beach, Sugar Busters, The Zone, etc. do not allow ketosis and therefore may not be as helpful in reducing aging. 6 Nutritional Supplements can be Helpful or Harmful (Chapter 10) A few supplements can actually reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and arthritis (chromium, fish oils, and MSM-methylsulfonylmethane).