The Starch Solution (9 page)

I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s when meat was cheap. In the late 1960s, steak was so cheap that my mom would serve it two or three times a week. I was able to maintain some semblance of slimness until I was about 19 years old. I never was one to be really athletic, and after age 19 I began to put on the pounds. My trim 190 on a 6-foot-4 frame became 220, then, in college, 240. I panicked and turned to Dr. Atkins. Within a few months of eating a pound of bacon for breakfast and “bunless” hamburgers for lunch and dinner I was able to drop about 35 pounds. It was a miracle. Only the miracle came at a price. My skin was greasy all the time. I had trouble sleeping. I felt nervous all day long. And at about the 3-month mark I started to get pains in my lower back. It was a while before I realized that the pain was probably my overworked kidneys. What a miracle. So I abandoned Atkins and within about 6 months gained back the weight I had lost and about 10 more pounds to boot. After several more of my failed attempts at dieting, my mother sent me some information about the McDougall Diet.

It’s that time of year again, my birthday—time to take stock. Tomorrow I turn 57, meaning that it was 10 years ago that I took the McDougall plunge. You said you never tire of hearing thanks, so I’m writing to say so again. Thanks to you I have lost 120 pounds from my high of 305 pounds. I’m now below my youthful trim weight of 190. Thanks to you, my cholesterol has plummeted from 271 to 127 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). (What a difference the order of those numbers makes!) Thanks to you, my favorite jeans fit better than ever. Thanks to you, I am finally at home in my body. My arthritis is gone. My sleep apnea is a past memory. I no longer experience lactose intolerance. My hiatal hernia has cleared up. No more atrial fibrillation. Even my ornery toenail fungus has cleared—is that a new one for you?

My friends and colleagues remain certain I am depriving myself, but I am not. I am perfectly happy with my simple regime of rice, beans, corn, greens, potatoes, and other veggies, mostly repeating the same combos over and over again. I walk 4 or 5 miles every day with my dogs, and I look forward to a workout at the health club three or four times a week. My doctor tells me that of all his patients he has seen only three or four accomplish what I have. But you and I know it is possible for anyone.

When my wife finally saw the light and jumped into the McDougall life with me she lost 40 pounds and now feels so much better. Her cholesterol is down 80 points and she is now a regular 5 days a week at the health club. She’s been up to Santa Rosa for your 10-day program and back for tune-ups. In fact, we are constantly faced with so much nutritional misinformation that we’ve decided to come up for at least one McDougall Weekend a year, just to keep current and recharge our batteries.

T
hree-quarters of the illnesses suffered by people living in industrialized countries are long-standing, chronic conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and cancers. What do people in these regions have in common? A diet dominated by meat, dairy, fat, and processed foods. Understanding the problem points to a simple solution: By replacing these body-burdening foods with healthful starches, vegetables, and fruits, we can reduce or eradicate the enormous personal, social, and economic burden of chronic disease.

Starches support your body’s intrinsic ability to heal by providing a perfect balance of carbohydrate, protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, and minerals, along with a balance of antioxidants and other plant-synthesized phytochemicals. Unlike the foods that are making you sick, starches contain no significant amounts of dangerous cholesterol, saturated or trans fats, animal proteins, dietary acids, chemical toxins, or disease-causing microbes.

If your health is deteriorating, do not assume that your body is failing you. Its efforts to heal never stop, not even for a second. However, by the
time I meet most of my patients they will have endured tens of thousands of repeated injuries to their arteries, joints, and tissues, simply because of what they eat. For disease to progress, injury must outpace healing.

For healing to occur, the opposite must happen: Healing must outpace injury. It’s a simple matter of allowing your body to take two (or more) steps forward for every step back. Or better yet, to stop all regressions by very clean living.

Understand, however, that if you continue injuring your body for too long, the disease-causing forces will eventually do irreversible damage. Your body will no longer be able to work its healing magic completely. Fortunately, most of us are not in that much trouble. There is still hope, and the solution is in our own hands. If you want to reverse your body’s disease processes, all you need do is stop the damage. In almost all cases this means changing to a health-supporting starch-based diet. In this manner the five dietary poisons—protein, fat, cholesterol, sulfur-containing amino acids, and dietary acids—that were identified in the previous chapter are removed. With the same shift in food choices, essential nutrients that support healing are provided by a perfect design found in plant foods.

There are plenty of examples of the body’s ability to heal from repeated injuries we inflict on ourselves by our bad habits. A cigarette smoker inhales toxic fumes many times each day, inflaming the lungs with every puff. The lungs fight back by making the smoker cough and produce mucus in an effort to expel the poisons. Because the nicotine in tobacco is addictive, we assault our lungs over and over again, hour after hour and year after year. Eventually, parts of the lung die and are replaced by scar tissue. The result is diminished lung capacity from emphysema. Chronic injury can also lay the foundation for lung cancer. But serious lung disease is not inevitable. Many smokers find the strength to quit before the damage becomes irreversible. The lungs heal
to the best of their capacity and the former smoker once again breathes in full, deep, restorative breaths of air.

Toxic liver damage from alcohol and skin damage from overexposure to the sun are other examples of harm resulting from our habits and behaviors. In these cases, too, the first sign of the body’s spontaneous attempt to mend is inflammation, an essential step in recovering from injury or infection. Our tissues become hot, swollen, and painful as plasma and white blood cells move from the blood into the injured areas to do their healing work. The immune system takes over with a cascade of biochemical events that eventually lead to improved health. The sooner you stop the hurtful behavior, the more quickly and completely you can recover.

As a medical doctor I have had the opportunity to observe self-generated, spontaneous healing thousands of times. Yet nothing makes a greater impression than the miraculous recovery that follows massive trauma. During my early years of medical training at The Queen’s Medical Center in Hawaii, a young man mangled by a motorcycle accident was pushed through the emergency room doors one evening. A splintered bone poked out through his left thigh. A 12-inch gash across his left forearm streamed bright red blood. The skin on his left cheek and forehead were scraped off from his slide across the pavement. X-rays showed a skull fracture and many broken ribs. I feared he would not survive.

The young man’s bones were straightened and his wounds cleaned and sewn right there in the ER. But it was his body’s ability to repair this massive damage that ultimately allowed him to heal.

The healing processes began almost immediately after the accident. Platelets and blood-clotting proteins coagulated his blood and plugged thousands of leaking vessels. During the hours that followed, his white blood cells migrated into his open wounds to defend them against infection. Fluids collected in his torn flesh and around his broken bones. Swelling in his thigh, shoulder, and face lasted for weeks, helping to hold his bones in place. Pain kept him still, preventing movements that could cause further injury.

Soon, the damaged tissues began to restore themselves. Cells called fibroblasts laid down new structural material in the soft tissue, with osteoblasts doing the same for his broken bones. Over the coming months, replicator cells produced new muscle, skin, bone, and scars, remodeling his wounds so that his body would look and function nearly as it had before the accident.

Within a week of his near-death incident, this brave young man was up and walking on crutches. After 10 days, the stitches came out of his thigh and arm. In about 6 weeks, the scabs fell off his face, revealing delicate pink skin with new hair follicles filling in his beard. His broken ribs were stable and painless after 7 weeks, and after 3 months he was walking on his own without a limp. The pain had mostly passed, but the memories were still raw; he sold the motorcycle to avoid risking a repeat of his massive injury.

The patient’s 3-month journey—from broken, bleeding, and near death to nearly completely restored—was nothing short of miraculous. His injuries were due to a single collision of immense force. With the chronic diseases I treat, the damage is the result of thousands of micro-pinprick-size injuries to the arteries, joints, and other tissues over prolonged periods. However, although acute and chronic conditions differ with regard to the force, frequency, and means of impact, the mechanisms of repair are largely the same.

I reasoned at that time, and I understand now, that if a body can heal from an enormous assault on its systems as I witnessed with this motorcycle rider’s recovery, given the chance, it can heal from most anything—even serious, chronic diseases like heart disease, arthritis, and sometimes even cancer. I’ve seen it over and over again with my patients. Watching the body spontaneously recuperate from these conditions seems like a miracle each and every time.

I was nervous as the day approached for my follow-up radioactive heart scan. The previous year’s test showed a large area where too little blood was flowing into my heart. I had chest pain while taking the treadmill test at that time, and I could barely get my heart rate up to 85 percent of the predicted maximum for my age of 62. My doctor recommended medication, an angiogram, and a type of heart surgery called angioplasty. Hoping to avoid the surgery and additional harm, I put myself on Dr. McDougall’s low-fat, starch-based diet after reading about it on the Internet.