Super Immunity (6 page)

Unfortunately, most of the food that the majority of Americans consume weakens rather than strengthens their normal resistance to simple viral infections. Despite advances in science that have revealed the critical importance of thousands of protective micronutrients in the natural plant kingdom, much of the modern world consumes a diet rich in processed grains, oils, sweets, and animal products. In the United States, for example, less than 5 percent of total calories consumed come from fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts. And yet these are the foods that are richest in micronutrients!

Those who eat the standard American diet, with an overabundance of calories but a very low nutrient-per-calorie intake, are in a chronically malnourished condition. This combination of being overweight yet malnourished is the true life-threatening epidemic in the modern world, resulting in a medical care crisis and avoidable medical tragedies. With the ubiquitous consumption of low-nutrient processed foods, nutritional deficiency has become the norm.

The global demographic impact of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic continues to fascinate researchers and scholars. When we look into the effects of this outbreak on society, through a comprehensive investigation of the modes of transmission and propagation, mortality rates, and distinctive features of various regions, we see the importance of taking a country's unique stresses and nutritional habits into account. For example, Iran was one of the regions hit hardest by the pandemic, with mortality rates significantly higher than in most regions of the world. The research suggests that famine, opium, malaria, and anemia were fundamentally responsible for the high flu mortality in that country. Those with compromised immunity suffered the most damage.
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As it is today, the diet in western Europe in those days was largely meat, bread, potato, lard, butter, and cheese, with minimal fresh produce. However, this occurred during World War I and almost 2 percent of those infected died from a secondary infection: bacterial pneumonia. It affected many young soldiers because the close troop quarters, the stresses of combat and war, and their malnourished state all contributed to their depressed immune system function, increasing their susceptibility.

In the past, scientists focused on the effects of nutritional deficiencies on the people themselves, never on the invading microbes. Now we know that increasingly dangerous microbes are created inside a nutrient-deficient host—and the diets of yore were grossly deficient. Without the knowledge of the need for vitamin C, a multitude of micronutrients in fresh greens, and vitamin D from the sun—all of these difficult to procure in the past during the winter, when produce and sunshine were scarce—viral epidemics were common.

The association between famine and epidemics has been noted throughout human history. And yet, despite the fact that we have new science pointing to impressive nutritional disease protection against heart disease, strokes, dementia, cancer, and yes, serious infections, we still consume a diet assuring nutritional compromise and resulting in tragic medical outcomes.

It's time for us to get off our chicken and pasta low-fat diets or our cheeseburgers and Cokes. We need to get our heads out of the french fries and begin to change the way we think about what we eat and its impact on our health. The link between superior nutrition and Super Immunity is an opportunity—a privilege to apply and share. Science shows us the protection offered by immune-strengthening compounds found in cruciferous vegetables, raw vegetables, beans, fruits, nuts, and seeds. We
all
have the amazing potential to live a long, healthy life with Super Immunity. The epidemiological studies, the controlled research studies, and the clinical experience have put forth a preponderance of evidence that is now overwhelming and should be impossible to ignore. This is not
alternative
medicine; it is
progressive
medicine, it is
good
medicine.

My husband and I have three children, all of whom have been following Dr. Fuhrman's nutritional guidance since birth. None of them has had any major illness. On the rare occasion that they have a fever (my six-year-old has had about three fevers in his life, my four-year-old has had only one, and my sixteen-month-old has never had one), it lasts for the afternoon and is gone by the time they wake up from their nap or by the time they get up in the morning. We don't use fever-reducing medication. We do not vaccinate against the flu. None of my children has ever had the flu. When friends and cousins around them are sick and coughing, our children do not succumb. Illness that can linger in other children for weeks at a time (both my husband's sister's children and my sister's children are often sick for days or weeks at a time) passes over our children completely.

—Diana Ricci

V
ery high mortality rates prevailed in Europe throughout medieval times. This was a result of both deficiencies in sanitation and insufficient food for a population that had expanded faster than agriculture. Mortality rates were further complicated by frequent warfare and exploitation of civilians by brutal rulers. Life for the average person at that time was stressful and often short.

However, there have been areas around the world and throughout history where relatively healthy diets and peaceful environments encouraged long and healthy lives. For example, the Hunzas in the Himalayas, Peruvian natives living in the Andes, and the Okinawans of northern Japan all had average lifespans well exceeding modern averages.

The main reasons for premature deaths in earlier centuries were violence and infection. Infectious diseases decreased markedly in the last few hundred years, mostly as the result of the availability of clean water and, in the last century, flush toilets to eliminate waste. A dramatic decline in most infections occurred as our sanitation practices were improved in cities and standardized across the modern world.
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This decline in infectious disease due to plumbing (not medical advances!) is the main factor accounting for the overall increases in lifespan that is claimed in modern times.

However, it remains unclear whether adults are actually living longer than they did in prior centuries. Certainly the
average
lifespan of adults has increased, mostly because fewer infants and toddlers are now dying of infections, and fewer women are dying in childbirth. That said, life-span advances in adult males (that is, non–childbirth related) have not improved significantly, because reductions in later-life, infectious-disease related deaths were more than compensated for by increases in chronic diseases of nutritional ignorance and dietary excess. As processed foods, fast foods, and commercially mass-produced animal products became the dietary norm, heart disease, strokes, and cancer increased to fill the void left by the decreased impact of infectious diseases.

In fact, to counter the common argument that we are living longer compared to earlier times, consider that we have good records on the lifespan achieved by over 150 male Renaissance artists living in the fourteenth century, whose average age of death was considerably higher than that of the average male in America today.
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Advancements in medicine and pharmacology are largely credited for major advances in health and in saving lives. But the reality is this: medical care has little effect on the overall health quality or even the average age of death in modern societies worldwide.

If fact, exposure to medical care and resources spent on health care are linked to
decreases
in healthy life expectancy, not increases.
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Emergency medical care is valuable, but in the modern world emergencies linked to injury, accidents, and infection are no longer the leading causes of death. Heart disease, strokes, and cancer are now the big three.

Treating bad nutritional choices with drugs—choices that lead to morbidity in later life, after years and years of self-abuse—will never be an efficacious solution.

Most of what doctors do to treat today's diseases does little to extend human lifespan; in the majority of cases, it is almost worthless. Why so? Because the drugs prescribed by doctors encourage patients' risky lifestyle behaviors and self-destructive eating choices to continue; they give patients “permission” to continue poor behaviors because they mask the symptoms of disease. The symptoms are not the actual pathology (or damage); they are just markers that the pathology has developed. Treating the symptoms does not halt the advancing pathology, which in all likelihood will continue to worsen. That “solution” is akin to your mechanic's “fixing” the flashing oil light on your car's dashboard by simply snipping the wire to the light. If today's symptom-suppressing medications were not available, more effective lifestyle modifications could be insisted on by physicians and advisors in authority and thus would more likely be implemented by their patients and the general population.

When considering the risks of any medication or medical intervention, we have to also consider the benefits of lifestyle interventions, such as salt avoidance, exercise, dietary modifications, and weight reduction—interventions that have no side effects and whose focus is on removing the cause, not just treating the symptoms.

Medications in Candyland

John Abramson, M.D., clinical professor at Harvard and author of
Overdosed America,
explains that we have to consider the context when reviewing any medical intervention, because the information doctors receive about medical interventions is heavily biased toward intervention and treatment. The studies are funded and the results interpreted by the pharmaceutical companies, or at least influenced by their funding sponsors. What is published in the most prestigious medical journals is no longer careful science, but essentially drug advertisements. The information brought to and taught to the medical profession is shaped by its commercial value to the drug companies, and the fundamental purpose is to improve corporate profits.

Modern medical care evolved as a drug-distribution arm of the pharmaceutical industry, not a profession concerned primarily with improving people's health. A true health care system focused on maximizing patients' well-being would center around removing impediments to better health, promotion of healthy habits (such as smoking cessation, exercise, and dietary improvement), and protection against exposure to chemicals, toxins, and other known causes of disease. Instead, prescription drugs, which all have toxicities and dangers, have become the primary intervention for every dietary-induced health issue.

For example, consider the effectiveness of a handful of the most popular drugs prescribed for the lowering of blood pressure or blood sugar in diabetics. A recent study of over 90,000 type 2 diabetics compared the cardiovascular effects in individuals treated with either metformin or a sulfonylurea-class drug—two of the most popular drugs. Similar to the outcomes of earlier studies, researchers found an increased likelihood of death, averaging about 40 percent in the patients treated with sulfonylureas, and also about a 25 percent increased risk of congestive heart failure.
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Simply put, lowering blood glucose with medications does not remove the causes of type 2 diabetes—physical inactivity and excess weight from a calorie-rich, nutrient-poor diet. Excess body fat blocks insulin function and forces the pancreas to overproduce insulin. Over time, the overworked pancreas “poops out.” Giving drugs to force the already overworked and failing pancreas to work even harder only makes the insulin-producing cells die off faster. If you are still eating the same disease-causing diet, you will likely gain
more
weight, develop
more
cardiovascular disease, and eventually become insulin-dependent.

Medication has become the accepted treatment for diabetes—even though the medications themselves often promote weight gain and increased appetite and can make the individual more diabetic. These medications also significantly increase the incidence of cancer at multiple sites.
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In addition to all these side effects, controlling blood glucose with drugs has
not
been shown to decrease the risk of death—in fact, it increases risk. The ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) study was conducted to determine whether lowering glucose to near-normal levels with drugs would decrease cardiovascular risk; however, the study was halted when the results showed that more medications to better control blood sugar actually increased the risk of death from all causes and from cardiovascular disease.
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If you don't address the primary cause—a disease-causing diet—just adding more and more medications is futile.

Contrary to public perception, attempts to lower blood pressure with drugs have similar negative consequences. Consider, for example, angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), which are used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure, and are actually one of the safer drug categories available for lowering blood pressure. They work by blocking a hormone system that regulates vascular tone and water and salt balance to control blood pressure. The hormone angiotensin can affect cell survival and angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels), two important factors in tumor growth. The issue here is the concern that these medications may promote the growth of blood vessels that could enable the growth of tumors and cancers.

To determine whether taking ARBs affects cancer risk, scientists performed a meta-analysis of several studies. They determined that ARBs carry a significantly increased risk of a new diagnosis of any cancer (8 percent) and a seriously higher risk of lung cancer (25 percent).
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The study also revealed increased rates of sudden cardiac death, death from heart attack, and death from stroke in the subjects taking an ARB compared to those taking placebos in two studies; this data is still being reviewed by the FDA.
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