After my customers have been on The Pauling Therapy for some time, the often call me and say, “I feel great!”
Inevitably what comes next is, “Can I stop taking my prescription medicine now?”
I respond with, “I can’t tell you to stop taking your medicine. You have to discuss that with your doctor.”
I have to say this, of course, to protect myself and my business from the powers that be. But I am also a fan of THE TRUTH.
Here are some of the latest versions of THE TRUTH:
Type 2 Diabetes
A review of the literature published in the Annals of Internal Medicine analyzed the effect of lifestyle changes among those who are at high risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. The studies indicated that changing diet, daily exercise, quitting smoking, and learning how to manage stress were enough to lower glucose and prevent people from being diagnosed with the disease.
The landmark Diabetes Prevention Program, a multicenter trial involving 3,234 people with prediabetes, showed that people who used weight management, proper diet and exercise, had a much lower rate of developing diabetes than those who took the glucose-controlling medication metformin.
Cancer
The journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention reported that brisk walking cut postmenopausal women’s breast-cancer risk by 14% compared with those who didn’t walk. Women who exercised more vigorously enjoyed a 25% drop in risk of developing the disease.
Another report in the journal Lancet Oncology found that a plant-based diet, stress management and other lifestyle changes contributed to longer-lived cells among men with prostate cancer. Those results echoed previous work that documented that the same lifestyle-based changes contributed to fewer recurrent tumors among men who had been treated for prostate cancer.
All Diseases
Dr. David Katz is the director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and author of the new book Disease Proof: The Remarkable Truth About What Makes Us Well. Here are a few excepts from the book:
“If you think about the dis-eases that prevail today, they are related to eating too much of all the wrong foods, getting far too little physical activity, toxins we’ve invented like tobacco, inadequate sleep and strained social bonds.”
“With America’s growing obesity epidemic showing no signs of turning around, understanding how to prevent weight-related chronic disease, such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, is even more critical, especially among children. Treating these ailments with prescription medications can address the symptoms but does nothing to change the forces that drive these diseases. And in some cases, the drugs may cause even more problems, in the form of side effects.”
Dr. Dean Ornish (director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco) led a study to determine what may be driving unhealthy eating. The conclusion? Stress! “Finding a way to address and relieve stress can be an important part of preventing many chronic diseases,” says Ornish.
Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports-medicine physician at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery and author of the The Exercise Cure, says that, “Exercise could be one effective way of coping with stress. And it doesn’t hurt that physical activity also controls symptoms related to heart disease and other metabolic and psychological conditions. There are studies on exercise and cancer prevention, fatigue, and new neuron formation in the hippocampus. There is a nugget for every part of the body from erectile dysfunction, to cancer, to dementia. I think we are seeing a movement toward connecting the dots.”
At Lincoln Medical Center and Harlem Hospital in New York City, doctors are starting to focus more on prevention by making diet changes a priority for patients before they find themselves diagnosed with a disease like diabetes or heart trouble. The hospitals have launched the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription, a four-month pilot program, which allows patients with prescriptions, written by their doctors, to get coupons for fresh produce at farmers’ markets and the city’s green carts.
So is all this TRUTH going to change what I tell my customers? Maybe. I could, for instance, say, “If your doctor put you on a statin drug because your cholesterols is too high, and your cholesterols is now down to normal levels, you could ask your doctor to monitor you as you slowly reduce the dose of the statin to nothing. If your numbers start to go up, you could always go back on the drug.” I suppose I could say that. And, I guess, I just did!
Posted in Ray Ellis