Michael Greger MD's Blog

Plant-Based Diets for Multiple Sclerosis

2013-05-21T12:00:00Z

The distinguished neurologist Roy Swank‘s low saturated fat diet remains the “most effective treatment of multiple sclerosis ever reported in the peer review literature.” In patients with early stage MS, 95% were without progression of their disease 34 years after adopting his meat and dairy-restricted diet. Even patients with initially advanced disease showed significant benefit. To date, no medication or invasive procedure has ever come close to demonstrating such success.

To understand one reason why a plant-based diet may be so successful in treating the disabling auto-immune disease, one has to first understand how the immune system works. This was one of the greatest mysteries in all of biology—solved by a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel in 1960 for figuring it out.

As I illustrate in my 3-min. video Clonal Selection Theory of Immunity, each one of our antibody-producing immune cells, called B-cells, produces only one type of antibody. Antibodies are one of the main weapons our immune system uses to attack foreign invaders. And they’re specific. It’s not just like we have one B-cell that covers grass pollen and another that covers bacteria, we have a B-cell in our body whose only job is to make antibodies against the pollen of purple Siberian oniongrass! (whether or not we ever come in contact with it). Another whose only job is to make antibodies against the tail proteins of bacteria that live only in the thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean…

Wait a second. There must be a billion different things in the world. If each of our B cells produces only one type of antibody, then we’d need to have a billion different types of B cells. And we do!

So, let’s suppose one day you’re walking along and get attacked by a platypus (they have poison spurs on their heels you know). And so for your whole life up until that point the B-cell in your body that produces antibodies against duck-billed platypus venom was just hanging around, twiddling its thumbs, until that very moment. As soon as the venom is detected that specific B-cell starts dividing like crazy, making copies of itself, and soon you have a whole swarm of clones specialized for platypus poison protection. Fending off the toxin, you live happily ever after. That is how the immune system works. Aren’t our bodies spectacular?

If we have a billion different types of antibody-producing B cells, each capable of recognizing a different molecular signature, why then do we tend not to attack ourselves? And how can what we eat sometimes undermine this inherent protection from autoimmune disease?

As I describe in my 3-min video Clonal Deletion Theory of Immunity, the reason that we don't often fall prey to friendly fire is because before we’re even born we kill off each and every B cell that recognizes us. That’s what our thymus gland is for. When we’re still a fetus, our body lines up all our immune cells, holds up a picture of our self and asks them one by one: "do you recognize this person?" And if any of our immune cells says yes, they’re killed on the spot, death by apopotosis (programmed cell death) and good riddance.

Turns out this process of ridding our bodies of self-recognizing immune cells happens throughout our lives, mostly in our bone marrow. If you remember, though, in my video series on IGF-1 (starting with The Answer to the Pritikin Puzzle) animal protein consumption increases the level of a cancer-promoting growth hormone that prevents apoptosis, prevents our body’s killing of cells it wants to get rid—that’s why IGF-1 levels are linked to cancer. So IGF-1 might contribute to the inappropriate survival of self-reactive white blood cells in autoimmune or inflammatory conditions. Maybe that’s why people who eat plant-based diets appear protected from autoimmune diseases, explaining, for example, the extraordinary rarity of most autoimmune diseases among sub-Saharan rural blacks following a traditional plant-based diet. Before they changed their diets, evidently not a single case of MS had been diagnosed among a population of 15 million.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: GerryShaw / Wikimedia Commons

Plant-Based Diets for Rheumatoid Arthritis

2013-05-16T12:00:00Z

Plant-based diets may help rheumatoid arthritis by decreasing exposure to an inflammatory “Trojan horse” compound found in animal products called Neu5Gc. On Tuesday in my post How Tumors Use Meat to Grow I talked about the role Neu5Gc may play in stimulating breast cancer growth, but what about inflammation in our joints?

For those of you who have been following my work since the beginning, you’ll remember back in 2003 I covered a landmark paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Human intake and incorporation of an immunogenic nonhuman dietary sialic acid.” They took autopsy samples and discovered proof of Neu5Gc in human tumors. In my video The Inflammatory Meat Molecule Neu5Gc you can see it stained brown in human breast cancer, melanoma, brain tumors, and ovarian cancer.

The presence of Neu5Gc in human tumors mystified researchers, because human beings are genetically unable to produce this substance. But other animals can. Maybe, the researchers proposed, human beings absorbed it from eating these other animals? So they put it to the test.

Because Neu5Gc is found in animals and animal products, the researchers had to first eat vegan for a few days to clear their system (including no animal-derived ingredients in foods or drugs or shampoo), and then they basically drank a glass of diluted pig mucous. Within days this invading meat molecule could be found oozing from their bodies, in their saliva, urine—even their hair clippings. They concluded: “Because NeuGc-type compounds are not found in plants, and Neu5Gc is not synthesized by microbes, the dietary source of Neu5Gc must be foods of animal origin.” They proposed that the metabolic incorporation of this molecular “Trojan horse” from animal products may be contributing to the higher rates of cancer and heart disease in those that eat meat and dairy.

Why heart disease too? If you check out my 3-min video Nonhuman Molecules Lining Our Arteries, you’ll see that this foreign meat molecule tends to accumulate not only in the lining of hollow organs (where carcinomas like breast cancer develop inside your glands), but also in the lining of blood vessels. This may be contributing to the hardening of our arteries, the #1 killer of men and women in the United States.

Inflammation is one of the three steps en route to fatal heart disease. See Arterial Acne, Blocking the First Step of Heart Disease, and Making Our Arteries Less Sticky. Antioxidants found predominantly in plants may also decrease inflammation within the body. Nuts may be particularly useful in this regard.

The absorption of the inflammatory molecule Neu5Gc from animal foods may explain why vegetarian diets seem to improve rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe that’s why rheumatoid arthritis is not present in most other great apes. Maybe the incorporation of this reactive alien molecule into inflamed tissue such as arthritic joints could be aggravating arthritis. What we do know is that if you take animal products away, rheumatoid sufferers can feel better within weeks–see Diet & Rheumatoid Arthritis and Preventing Arthritis.

Bacterial endotoxins are another reason animal products may trigger an inflammatory immune reaction. See The Leaky Gut Theory of Why Animal Products Cause Inflammation, The Exogenous Endotoxin Theory, and Dead Meat Bacteria Endotoxemia.

Beyond the putative role of nonhuman Neu5GC as a potential molecular link between diet, autoreactive antibodies, and the progression of human cancer and heart disease, I close out the Neu5Gc story with a 3-min. video entitled Meat May Exceed Daily Allowance of Irony. It turns out that consuming Neu5GC may set children up for life-threatening reactions to E. coli toxins originating in the same animal products. The researchers ask if this is “poetic justice” for meat eaters. Not when it’s a major cause of acute life-threatening kidney failure in children. For more on E. coli, see Fecal Bacteria Survey and Chicken Out of UTIs.

My exploration into Neu5GC spanned a seven video series (starting with Cancer as an Autoimmune Disease). If you’d rather these more extensive probes than my one-off videos, I’ve done similar in-depth series on reversing cancer cell growth, why animal products cause inflammation, changing vitamin D recommendations, arugula athleticism, why nuts don’t appear to cause expected weight gain, as well as the latest dietary guidelines.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

How Tumors Use Meat to Grow

2013-05-14T12:00:00Z

Certain cancers—like breast cancer—can be thought of in part as an autoimmune disease.

When people get heart or kidney transplants, they must be given immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the new organ. What do you suppose happens to cancer rates in those individuals who have their immune systems suppressed? Well, for some types of cancer, like skin cancer, the risk goes up. This supports the so-called immune surveillance theory—the idea that our immune system acts as a natural defense system for keeping cancer under control (see a cool video of immune cells taking on a cancer cell here). This could explain why, as we age and our immune function declines, our risk of cancer goes up.

The problem with the immune surveillance concept is that for some cancers, suppressing immune function decreases risk. After a kidney transplant, though your skin cancer risk may go up, your breast cancer and rectal cancer risk goes down. Why would people with depressed immune systems have less cancer? This led to a new theory of cancer I explore in my 4-min. video Cancer as an Autoimmune Disease.

The only reason the immune system is even able to pick out cancerous cells from noncancerous cells is because tumors express foreign looking molecules that stimulate our immune system. Why would tumors do that? Why would cancer cells go out of their way to wave a red flag around saying, “Hey, come get me!”? We think it’s because cancer tends to thrive in a setting of low level inflammation. In the video I show a number of examples of chronic inflammation leading to cancer–ulcerative colitis to colon cancer, chronic pancreatitis to pancreatic cancer, chronic hepatitis to liver cancer, and stomach inflammation to stomach cancer. Oftentimes the body’s inflammatory immune response can further cancer’s agenda.

By inciting an immune response, cancer creates its own inflammation, which may stimulate angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels to bring blood to the tumor and help it grow. This may explain the mystery surrounding Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer affecting those with AIDS. When you start treating AIDS and the immune system starts to recover you can actually see a flare in the cancer.

So what are the dietary implications of this new autoimmune theory of cancer? See my 3-min. video How Tumors Use Meat to Grow: Xeno-Autoantibodies. In short, there’s a molecule called Neu5Gc found in nonhuman animals but not made by the human species. Cancerous breast tumors appear to incorporate this molecule that women consume in meat and dairy to trick their immune systems into creating the environment of low-grade inflammation that breast cancer thrives in. Our own cancer may use what we feed on to get what it feeds on.

For more on Neu5Gc, one of the most fascinating topics of modern day nutrition, see my 4-min. video The Inflammatory Meat Molecule Neu5Gc.

Why else might those eating plant-based diets have lower risk of all cancers combined? Kathy Freston wrote a good summary. It could be due to diminished exposure to IGF-1, heme iron, inflammation, viruses, antibiotics, saturated fat, nitrosamines, and arachidonic acid associated with animal product consumption. Or it could be the DNA repair,cellular stress defenses, anti-inflammatory properties, soy, lignans, phytonutrients, and fiber associated with healthy plant food consumption. It’s probably both, so it may not be enough to just eat vegan—we need to eat our veggies too.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Pulmonary Pathology / Flickr

How to Gain Weight on Diet Soda

2013-05-09T12:00:00Z

Erythritol, the too-good-to-be-true nontoxic, low-calorie, tooth friendly sweetener that I profiled in my last blog post “Is There a Safe, Low-Calorie Sweetener?” may even act as an antioxidant. So what’s the catch?

Well, there are three ways that all low-caloric sweeteners could theoretically be harmful independent of their specific chemistry. As I report in my 2-min. video How Diet Soda Could Make Us Gain Weight, several large studies have found an association between artificial sweetener use and weight gain, meaning the people that drank the most diet soda, for example, gained the most weight. The most common explanation for this counterintuitive finding is what’s called reverse causation. People aren’t fat because they drink diet soda; they drink diet soda because they’re fat!

But there are at least three less benign alternative explanations. The first is called “overcompensation for expected caloric reduction.” If you covertly switch someone’s soda for diet soda without him or her knowing it, his or her caloric intake drops. Obviously, right? They’re not drinking all that sugar anymore. But what if you tell them what you did? People who knowingly are consuming artificial sweeteners may actually end up eating more calories. Why? Because they’re like hey, I’m drinking diet soda, so I can have two pieces of cake.

One of the studies I profile involved giving people an artificially sweetened cereal for breakfast, but only half were told. When it came to lunchtime, the group that knew they had eaten an artificially sweetened cereal ate significantly more than those that didn’t know any different. Basically, it’s the diet-soda-with-a-fast-food-meal syndrome. One may only lose weight on diet soda if you don’t realize it’s calorie-free.

The second reason even the most harmless noncaloric sweetener could still be harmful if we’re not careful has to do with how our brain is wired. Watch my 2-min. video Neurobiology of Artificial Sweeteners to learn how the disconnect between sweetness sensations coming from our tongue and the lack of a caloric feedback loop in the gut may result in overeating.

Finally, all sweeteners–natural and artificial, caloric and non-caloric—help maintain cravings for intensely sweet foods. As I explain in my 2-min. video Unsweetening the Diet, if you go on a low salt diet, for the first few weeks everything tastes like cardboard until your taste buds have a chance to adapt to the new norm. After that, natural low sodium foods taste perfectly fine and adding table salt tastes gross because it’s way too salty. Same thing with the sweeteners.

At home maybe you use a harmless sweetener like erythritol—that’s great, but then what if you go on vacation and forget it at home? You still take your preference for severely sweet food with you and that may end up translating into the increased consumption of less than healthy foods.

So those are the caveats for even nontoxic sweeteners. They are only safe if you don’t use them as an excuse to eat more junk food.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: (vincent desjardins) / Flickr

Is There a Safe, Low-Calorie Sweetener?

2013-05-07T12:00:00Z

The natural sweetener erythritol does not appear to carry the adverse effects associated with other low and non-caloric natural and artificial sweeteners and may actually have antioxidant potential. For a while it was only available in Japan but now it’s becoming more accessible. It’s found naturally in pears and grapes, but industrially we have yeast make it for us. It doesn’t cause cavities and hasn’t been implicated in some of the disorders tied to other sweeteners such as fibromyalgia (see my video Aspartame-Induced Fibromyalgia), preterm birth (Diet Soda and Preterm Birth), headaches, hypertension, brain disorders, and platelet disorders (see A Harmless Artificial Sweetener).

What about stevia? The jury is finally in. The reason it’s been such a long time coming is that research out of Japan in the ’90s found that steviosides, the active ingredient in stevia, appeared totally harmless, but in the guts of rats intestinal bacteria transformed steviosides into something called steviol, which is toxic, causing a big spike in mutagenic DNA damage (see the graph in Is Stevia Good For You?). So the question was do we have those same rat bacteria in our guts, and it turns out we do. So we now know that when we eat stevia, mutagenic compounds are produced in our colons and absorbed into our bloodstream. The only remaining question was how much.

In the World Health Organization’s evaluation of food additives, they consider up to 4 mg/kg of body weight safe. So that’s 1.8 mg per pound. If you multiply your ideal weight in pounds by 1.8, that’s about how many milligrams of stevia compounds you should stay under on an average daily basis. As long as one consumes less than, say, two stevia-sweetened beverages a day, stevia can be considered harmless. Erythritol may be even better than harmless, though, as you can see in my 2-min. video Erythritol May Be a Sweet Antioxidant.

There are two caloric sweeteners that are health-promoting—can you guess which ones? Check out The Healthiest Sweetener for a comparison of agave nectar, blackstrap molasses, brown rice syrup, corn syrup, brown sugar, date sugar, honey, maple syrup, raw cane sugar, and turbinado sugar.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Lisa Brewster / Flickr

Are Microgreens Healthier?

2013-05-02T12:00:00Z

USDA researchers recently published a study assessing the nutrition content of 25 commercially available microgreens, seedlings of vegetables and herbs that have gained popularity in upscale markets and restaurants. Just a few inches tall, they boast intense flavors and vivid colors, but what about their nutritional content? No one knew until now.

We’ve known that baby spinach leaves, for example, have higher levels of phytonutrients than mature spinach leaves, but what about really baby spinach–just a week or two old?

Microgreens won hands down (leaves down?), possessing significantly higher nutrient densities than mature leaves. For example, red cabbage microgreens have a 6-fold higher vitamin C concentration than mature red cabbage and 69 times the vitamin K.

Microgreens are definitively more nutrient dense, but are often eaten in small quantities. Even the healthiest garnish isn’t going to make much of a difference to one’s health, and microgreens may go for $30 a pound! But BYOM—birth your own! You can have rotating trays of salad that you can snip off with scissors. It’s like gardening for the impatient—fully-grown in just 7 to 14 days! If that’s too long, what about sprouting? See my 1-min. video Antioxidants Sprouting Up to see what happens to the antioxidant content of seeds, grains, and beans when you sprout them.

Homemade sprouts are probably the most nutrition-per-unit-cost we can get for our money. See Biggest Nutrition Bang for Your Buck, where they beat out the previous champ, purple cabbage (Superfood Bargains). Broccoli sprouts are probably the best—see for example The Best Detox and Sulforaphane From Broccoli to Breast. I would recommend against alfalfa sprouts (even when home sprouted) as fecal bacteria from manure can hide in the seed’s nooks and crannies and cause illness: Don’t Eat Raw Alfalfa Sprouts.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: cogdogblog / Flickr

Aspartame: Fibromyalgia & Preterm Birth

2013-04-30T12:00:00Z

When we learned how bad butter was, the food industry responded by giving us margarine, which turned out to be even worse. When dietary guidelines told us to lower our fat intake in hopes that we’d pick up an apple, the food industry gave us fudge drizzled Snackwell cookies. Similar reasoning led to the billion-dollar diet soda industry.

A recent study profiled in my 2-min.video Diet Soda and Preterm Birth entitled “Intake of Artificially Sweetened Soft Drinks and Risk of Preterm Delivery: A Prospective Cohort Study in 59,334 Pregnant Danes” concluded that the daily intake of diet soda may increase the risk of preterm delivery. It probably wasn’t the caffeine or preservatives, since sweetened versions of the same sodas didn’t result in the same problem. So what is it?

They think it’s the toxic aspartame (Nutrasweet) breakdown products either affecting the mother’s uterus or directly affecting the baby’s developing nervous system. These are the same toxins (wood alcohol and formaldehyde) blamed for headaches associated with aspartame. If you watch my 2-min. video Aspartame-Induced Fibromyalgia, I profile case reports of fibromyalgia chronic pain sufferers cured by removing the artificial sweetener from their diets.

As far as I’m concerned, nontoxic treatments should always get precedence, and you can’t get much more nontoxic than removing processed foods from your diet! Alternately, many folks suffering with fibromyalgia symptoms may have been misdiagnosed and are actually suffering from an easily treated vitamin D deficiency. What’s the best way to treat that? See Vitamin D Pills vs. Tanning Beds, one of my dozen videos on vitamin D. I’ve got a bunch of previous videos on sweeteners including Is Nutrasweet Bad For You?

Erythritol is probably A Harmless Artificial Sweetener.

Of course regular soda isn’t good for us either. High fructose corn syrup may contain mercury and have adverse effect on our children (Diet & Hyperactivity). See Food Industry Funding Effect for a discussion of how studies funded by soft drink (and dairy) corporations may be biased.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Steve Snodgrass / Flickr

Bugs & Drugs in Pork: Yersinia and Ractopamine

2013-04-25T12:00:00Z

Consumer Reports recently released a study in which they analyzed U.S. retail pork and found trace levels of an adrenaline-like drug called ractopamine in about 20 percent of the samples and a foodborne bacteria that sickens nearly 100,000 Americans every year called Yersina in two-thirds of pork samples.

Ractopamine safety analysis

The National Pork Producers Council tried to address concerns about ractopamine by noting that the levels in meat of this muscle growth promoter, which is fed to pigs in the form of Paylean™ and turkeys in the form of Topmax™, were below the limit set by the UN Codex Commission last summer. What they didn’t mention was that due to outstanding safety concerns, the Commission’s drug residue limit only passed by a single vote out of 143 ballots cast.

The Codex Commission based this drug residue limit in meat on the only human data available, a study of just six people that wasn’t designed to establish safety. At higher doses, the study subjects reported their hearts racing and pounding—so much so that one subject had to be withdrawn from the study. At a lower dose, though, no cardiac changes were noted. So that’s the dose the Codex Commission used to calculate the maximum allowable meat residue and acceptable human daily intake levels.

Just because a certain dose doesn’t cause a problem in six people is no certainty that the dose is safe for everyone. The European Food Safety Authority—Europe’s equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—calculated that a study of six people wouldn’t even have the statistical power to pick up a 40 percent change in cardiac output, a key measured endpoint. To detect as statistically significant a clinically relevant change, the study would have required at least 60 people.

Also, the study only looked at the cardiovascular effects of ractopamine. Given its adrenaline-like effects, the drug could also cause metabolic effects in people such as an increase in blood sugar levels or behavioral effects such as restlessness or anxiety.

Finally, all six study subjects were healthy young men. What about particularly vulnerable populations such as children or people with heart disease? The European Food Safety Authority panel concluded that the Codex limit did not sufficiently take these higher risk populations into account. They concluded that the single small human study “can not be taken as a basis to derive an acceptable daily intake…and consequently no proposal for maximum [meat] residue levels could be made.” In other words, we simply don’t have enough data to determine a safe level of drug exposure from meat.

Ractopamine – animal health and welfare

The Council of the European Union recently joined China in reaffirming the ban on ractopamine, citing both human health and animal welfare concerns. Studies over the last decade have shown that pigs on ractopamine may have chronically elevated heart rates, increased stress reactions, and difficulty walking. In fact the warning label reads: ‘‘Caution: Pigs fed PAYLEAN are at an increased risk for exhibiting the downer pig syndrome,” a condition in which pigs are too sick, injured, or exhausted to stand and may be dragged to slaughter.

The pork industry uses an ironic pretext to defend its use of gestation crates – restrictive cages that virtually immobilize breeding pigs for nearly their entire lives. The industry claims this is to keep them from fighting, but at the same time pork producers feed millions of fattening pigs a drug shown to increases aggressiveness and attacks.

Given the human and animal welfare concerns, why does the U.S. pork industry continue to feed this drug to their animals every year?

A meta-analysis was recently published in the Journal of Animal Science. Based on all the studies done to date, pigs fed ractopamine “had an overall carcass cutability advantage of 1.01 percentage units when compared to control pigs.” All this for a 1 percent greater yield.

For more on this drug in the meat supply, see my 6-min. video Ractopamine in Pork.

For more on the drug use by the livestock industry see:

Meat Mythcrushers
Drug Residues in Meat
U.S. Meat Supply Flying at Half Staph
MRSA in U.S. Retail Meat

Yersinia – the gift that can keep on giving

The discovery of Yersinia in pork is no surprise. Pigs are considered to be to be the main reservoir for Yersinia enterocolitica and pork products the main source of human infection. While most foodborne pathogens come from a variety of sources, 100 percent of the attributable Yersinia outbreaks reported in the United States from 1999 through 2008 were caused by pork. What was a surprise is the level of contamination of the U.S. pork supply—69 percent of samples tested positive—and the level of antibiotic resistance. Ninety percent of the Yersinia bacteria found contaminating the pork was resistant to one or more antibiotics.

In most cases, Yersinia food poisoning causes an acute “stomach flu” characterized by fever, abdominal pain, and often bloody diarrhea. Severe cases are frequently confused with appendicitis, leading to unnecessary emergency surgery. Long-term complications of infection include chronic inflammation of the eyes, kidneys, heart, and joints. Within a year of a bout of Yersinia food poisoning, victims appear to have a 47-fold higher risk of coming down with autoimmune arthritis. The bacteria may also play a role in triggering an autoimmune thyroid condition known as Graves’ disease.

Yersinia – the role of factory farming

The new findings, published in the January 2013 issue of Consumer Reports, are not surprising given how widespread the infection is in the national herd. The increasing emergence of human infections over the last century has been blamed on the industrialization of the pork industry and higher stocking densities. Inside swine confinement buildings, researchers have been able to culture Yersinia bacteria right out of the air.

The pork industry acknowledges overcrowding pigs is associated with increased health risks, but the trade journal National Hog Farmer cites research showing that when “space was dropped to 6 sq. ft./pig, the building produced 26% more pounds of pork at the same fixed cost.” That entails cramming a 200-pound pig in a space equivalent to about 2 feet by 3 feet. Sometimes, the article concludes, “crowding grow-finish pigs a little tighter will make you more money.”

With so many Americans falling ill from contaminated pork, why are there no industry-wide Yersinia monitoring and control programs in the United States? Perhaps this is because Yersinia enterocolitica doesn’t cause clinical disease in pigs and therefore doesn’t directly affect the industry’s bottom-line. The costs of crowded confinement may instead be passed on to the tens of thousands of Americans who continue to be sickened every year at an annual estimated cost of a quarter billion dollars.

Research from Europe suggests pigs raised using organic methods – which in Europe means more than just what animals are fed – may have 50 times lower odds of harboring Yersinia enterocolitica infection compared to pigs raised on conventional factory farms. After studying a variety of factors, the researchers ended up attributing the low rates of Yersinia infection on organic farms to lower levels of stress among the animals.

If stress is indeed a contributing factor, things may be looking up in Europe. On Jan. 1, 2013 gestation crates for pregnant pigs were banned across all 27 nations of the European Union. Crated sows have been shown to have impaired immunity, thought to be a result of elevated stress hormone levels related to being virtually immobilized for years on end.

Pregnant sows in the U.S., where the majority are still crated, have been shown to have among the highest rates of Yersinia enterocolitica infection. Since infected piglets have been shown to carry the infection through to slaughter, the impact of stress levels on disease resistance of breeding pigs can have human health consequences. Thankfully, major U.S. retailers, restaurant chains, and leaders in the pork industry have started phasing out gestation crates, which may end up benefiting both animal welfare and the safety of the meat supply.

For more on this pork-borne bacteria check out my 7-min. video Yersinia in Pork.

For more videos on fecal matter contamination of the meat supply, see:

Food Poisoning Bacteria Cross-Contamination
Chicken Out of UTIs
Fecal Bacteria Survey

The Campylobacter in chicken that I end the Yersinia video on is the Poultry and Paralysis bacteria.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: joyosity / Flickr

Increasing Muscle Strength with Fenugreek

2013-04-23T12:00:00Z

The spice fenugreek appears to significantly improve muscle strength and weight lifting power output while possessing anti-cancer properties in vitro. In my 2-min video Benefits of Fenugreek Seeds I profile a study entitled “The effects of a commercially available botanical supplement on strength, body composition, power output, and hormonal profiles in resistance-trained males.” Something had a “significant impact on both upper- and lower-body strength and body composition in comparison to placebo in a double blind controlled trial. These changes were obtained with no clinical side effects.” Something allowed these men to leg press an extra hundred pounds compared to placebo. And the magical substance? Powdered fenugreek–a spice that may even double as an anti-cancer agent.

In the video I show human prostate cancer cells in a petri dish before and after being exposed to various concentrations of fenugreek compared to the effect of the spice on normal prostate cells. The effect was striking. The study concluded: “In summary, fenugreek seeds may possess potent anti-cancer properties.”

So what’s the downside? Well, there is a side effect of fenugreek seed consumption—it makes your armpits smell like maple syrup! See my 2-min. video Side-Effect of Fenugreek Seed Consumption for more.

What happens to the armpit odor of those embracing entire diets full of plants? See Body Odor Diet. Then check out Asparagus Pee for another funky odor video.

Fenugreek may be to strength training what beets and arugula are to cardio. My ten video series on improving athletic performance with vegetables starts with Doping With Beet Juice and ends with So Should We Drink Beet Juice or Not?.

Other plants with apparently remarkable benefits include amla (see, for example, Amla Versus Diabetes), saffron (Saffron for the Treatment of Alzheimers), the tea plant (Dietary Brain Wave Alteration), and humble broccoli (Broccoli Versus Breast Cancer Stem Cells). More on the power of plants in general in Power Plants and spices like fenugreek in particular in Antioxidants in a Pinch. See what a whole diet of plants can do to prostate cancer cell growth in Ex Vivo Cancer Proliferation Bioassay.

Fenugreek is certainly something I’ve been trying to incorporate more into my family’s diet based on all this amazing new data. It’s strong stuff though! I’d be interested to hear any tips on how folks have been able to sneak it into their diets. I make these mean chia seed-encrusted dried mangoes that I sprinkle with fenugreek powder using the mix-a-yummy-with-yucky technique for adding less-than-delicious things to one’s diet (like putting amla in smoothies). I find home-dried mangos so yummy I figure I could rub them with just about anything!

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: sportsandsocial / Flickr

The Anti-Wrinkle Diet

2013-04-18T12:00:00Z

The skin is the largest organ in the body—about 20 square feet—and the most vulnerable organ in the body. It’s exposed to both the oxidizing effects of UV radiation from the sun and the oxidizing effects of oxygen in the air, and years of oxidant stress can take a toll. As we age, our skin becomes thinner, more easily damaged, loses volume and elasticity, and can sag and wrinkle. So what can we do about it?

Three things contribute to the aging of skin: 1) Oxidative stress induced by sun-damage, 2) inflammation, and 3) ischemia or lack of adequate blood flow. Oxidative stress means we need antioxidants so one might predict plant foods would help (see Antioxidant Power of Plant Foods Versus Animal Foods). Similarly saturated fat and cholesterol intake may contribute to inflammation and ischemia (see The Leaky Gut Theory of Why Animal Products Cause Inflammation and Blocking the First Step of Heart Disease). Let’s see if our predictions hold up.

In my 3-min. video Beauty is More than Skin Deep I profile a study that concluded “In particular, a high intake of vegetables, legumes [beans, peas, lentils, and soy] and olive oil appeared to be protective against skin wrinkling, whereas a high intake of meat, dairy and butter appeared to have an adverse effect. Prunes, apples and tea appeared especially protective.”

For more on the power of prunes see Dried Apples Versus Cholesterol and To Snack or Not to Snack?.

Another recent study found that green tea phytonutrients were able to protect skin against harmful UV radiation and help improve women’s skin quality. After a few months on green tea there was a 16% reduction in skin roughness and a 25% reduction in scaling. See the video for micrographs that track the changes.

For an extraordinary report on green tea and skin health, check out: Treating Gorlin Syndrome With Green Tea.

Eating healthier can produce healthier skin, but who cares about microscopic changes? What about overt visible-to-the-naked eye changes? See my 2-min. video Preventing Wrinkles with Diet to see what dietary intervention may significantly protect against wrinkles in the crow’s foot area around the eyes.

For other videos on appealing to vanity to get people to eat healthier, see:

Golden Glow
Produce, Not Pills to Increase Physical Attractiveness
Rosy Glow
Can Cellulite Be Treated With Diet?

Want to know what else green vegetables can do? I’ve got 45 videos on greens. Here are a few of my favorites:

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Orofacial / Flickr

Treadmill Desks: Stand Up For Health

2013-04-16T12:00:00Z

A few months ago the New York Times ran a piece reiterating the hazards of prolonged sitting, which is associated with a shorter lifespan–even in those who exercise regularly. Our bodies were built to move.

My 2-min. video Standing Up For Your Health is my contribution to the subject. In fact, I’m walking on the treadmill desk I feature in the video as I speak! (well, write). I'm now up to 17 miles a day! (though at only 2.5 mph).

More on the benefits of physical activity can be found in my videos Exercise & Breast Cancer and Reversing Cognitive Decline.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that what we eat may be even more important. See:

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: dietbruboy, HandsettBattery, ginatrapani, Shreyans Bhansali, massdistraction, and KOMUnews

New DVD to Help Spring Clean Your Diet (proceeds to charity)

2013-04-11T12:00:00Z

I'm excited to announce that last month the NutritionFacts.org podcast reached #1 on the iTunes health video podcast charts (subscribe here). What perfect timing to announce a new DVD!

The newest volume of my Latest in Clinical Nutrition DVD series launches today. Order on my website or through Amazon (all proceeds go to keeping NutritionFacts.org alive and kicking).

The current batch of videos from volume 12 on NutritionFacts.org are set to run out soon, so starting mid-month and running through July I'll be rolling out the videos from this new DVD, volume 13. The DVDs give folks the opportunity to sneak-preview videos months ahead of time, watch them all straight through, and share them as gifts. However, there is nothing on the DVDs that won't eventually end up online free at NutritionFacts.org. If you're in need of catching up, I've packaged the first ten volumes into a 12-disc DVD set.

Here's the list of chapters from the new volume 13 DVD -- a preview of what's to come on NutritionFacts.org:

    • Can Cellulite Be Treated With Diet?
    • Update on Cinnamon for Blood Sugar Control
    • Don't Eat Too Much Nutmeg
    • The Safety of Tarragon
    • Plant-Based Diets For Breast Pain
    • Flax Seeds For Breast Pain
    • Does a Drink of Water Make Children Smarter?
    • Eating Healthy on a Budget
    • Breast Cancer and Alcohol: How Much is Safe?
    • Which Fruit Fights Cancer Better?
    • Cranberries versus Cancer
    • Strawberries versus Esophageal Cancer
    • Black Raspberries versus Oral Cancer
    • Boosting Immunity While Reducing Inflammation
    • Preventing and Treating Diarrhea with Probiotics
    • Should Probiotics Be Taken Before, During, or After Meals?
    • Gut Feelings: Probiotics and Mental Health
    • Lavender for Generalized Anxiety Disorder
    • Lavender for Migraine Headaches
    • Bacterial Vaginosis and Diet
    • Avoiding Chicken To Avoid Bladder Infections
    • Can Cranberry Juice Treat Bladder Infections?
    • Childhood Tea Drinking May Increase Fluorosis Risk
    • Fukushima and Radioactivity in Seafood
    • Cancer Risk From CT Scan Radiation
    • Do Dental X-Rays Cause Brain Tumors?
    • Mediating Radiation Exposure From Air Travel
    • Reducing Radiation Damage With Ginger and Lemon Balm
    • Trans Fat In Meat and Dairy
    • Male Fertility and Diet
    • Eggs and Cholesterol: Patently False and Misleading Claims
    • Beans and the Second Meal Effect
    • Why Might Vegetarians Have Less HPV?
    • Breast Cancer Risk: Red Wine vs. White Wine
    • Anti-Angiogenesis: Cutting Off Tumor Supply Lines

Order the new DVD on my website or through Amazon

The DVDs also function as a fundraiser for the operation of NutritionFacts.org. If you're just going to wait to watch all the videos here online individually -- great! But please consider making a donation. Between end-of-year giving and what I've been able to raise so far this year, we have funds sufficient to pay total operating expenses through to mid-August. I'm really hoping to achieve at least a six month buffer, so I can spend less time worrying about fundraising and more time focusing on the research at hand. To make your contribution to NutritionFacts.org Inc. (the 501(c)3 nonprofit charity set up to support the site) you can use a credit card, use a direct Paypal link, or send a check to "NutritionFacts.org Inc." c/o Michael Greger, 700 Professional Dr., Gaithersburg, MD 20879.

Hundreds of thousands of people like you benefit every month from the free nutrition education they can get every day at NutritionFacts.org. Have you seen some of the testimonials I've been posting on the NutritionFacts.org Facebook page? Read Devin's story and David's story. I hope you'll consider chipping in. On the donate page you have the option to sign up for monthly donations, which really help us budget for the future. Anyone signing up to make at least a $10 monthly donation will receive complimentary sneak preview copies of my next two DVDs before they're released to the public.

Another way you can help is by volunteering. If you have a Mac, access to the software "Keynote," and could regularly offer at least five hours a week I could use help with creating the presentations upon which all the videos are based. Since the inception of the site, I've done all the research and created all the content, but would really like to be able to concentrate more on the research side than the production side. Email me at mhg1@cornell.edu.

In the last week I've given seven talks in six cities, and have another few dozen presentations scheduled throughout the year. Check out my ever-evolving speaking tour schedule at DrGreger.org/dates.html and bring a friend!

-Michael Greger, M.D.

Gerson Therapy for Cancer?

2013-04-09T12:00:00Z

Gerson Therapy is a largely diet-based alternative treatment for cancer invented by the late Dr. Max Gerson. What have 65 years of medical research concluded about its efficacy and safety?

According to a recent review out of Sloan-Kettering in the journal Oncology, for about $16,000 you can fly to a clinic in Mexico and spend three weeks “consuming fresh raw fruit and vegetable juices” and “eliminating salt from the diet.” Sounds pretty benign. Patients are also given a number of supplements including pancreatic enzymes as well as coffee enemas to “stimulate metabolism.” I do not deny that coffee enemas would be stimulating, but I don’t recommend them given the case reports I note in my 2-min. video Gerson Therapy For Cancer where they’ve killed people. Is oral coffee okay? See my video Coffee and Cancer.

To their credit, modern Gerson practitioners have moved away from the original tenets of the plan, which included feeding people raw calf liver smoothies, after too many people died from systemic blood infections. (These infections were from the same fecal bacteria in chicken I cover in my video Poultry and Paralysis). After learning of the outbreak, staff at the Gerson Institute decided the policy of drinking blended liver was to be altered and they apparently started injecting raw liver instead.

But hey, conventional cancer treatments are no walk in the park either! The reason people choose them is in hopes that they work. How does the Gerson therapy compare? The first formal investigation into the treatment was back in 1947, and in the 65 years since there’s been over a dozen studies published. Most came to the same conclusion: Gerson therapy is useless or worse.

These negative reviews of Gerson Therapy were written before a head-to-head trial was published of a Gerson-style (Gonzalez) regime versus chemotherapy in terms of survival and quality of life for pancreatic cancer patients. That’s the study I profile in my 3-min. video Gerson-style Therapy vs. Chemotherapy. You can read the study for yourself here (you’ll note that I always list links to all of the papers I cover in my videos in the “Sources Cited” section beneath each video).

How do you prevent pancreatic cancer in the first place? See my video Largest Study Ever.

Dietary strategies associated with prolonged cancer survival can be found in my videos:

I’ve got 47 other videos on Alternative Medicine in which I do my best to relay the balance of evidence. Just because it may be the best available science, though, doesn’t mean the science is particularly good (as this chemo trial demonstrated). But how else can we make decisions except with the best evidence available?

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Sigurdas / Wikimedia Commons

Are Bioidentical Hormones Safe?

2013-04-04T12:00:00Z

Hormone replacement therapy for menopause grew to prominence in the 1990s when millions of women were sold hormones made from horse urine. Premarin (from the words pregnant mare urine) was promised to prevent age-related diseases. When the truth got out in 2002 that the opposite was true—it actually increased risk of heart disease, stroke, pulmonary embolism, and invasive breast cancer—the number of prescriptions dropped and so did the rates of breast cancer.

Thanks to some high-profile celebrity endorsements interest then switched to so-called “compounded bio-identical hormones,” from plant rather than equine sources, which were said to work the same without carrying the same risks. But what does the science say?

In my 4-min. video Plant-Based Bioidentical Hormones, I note there’s been several new reviews on the subject from the American College of OB/GYNs, Mayo Clinic, and the editors-in-chief of the journal of the International Menopause Society. They all concluded that bio-identical hormones—being bio-identical!—carried the same risks, benefits, and side effects, which we now know is not a good thing. Even worse, when the FDA actually analyzed bio-identical hormone batches to see if the contents matched the label, nearly a third failed the analysis. Even in the same bottle, the dose of hormones could be all over the place.

How do we know all these medical authorities condemning bio-identical hormones aren’t just in the pockets of drug companies that don’t want the competition? After all, there are literally billions of dollars at stake. Whenever I’m skeptical I turn to The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics, considered one of the least biased sources in medicine. It’s kind of like the Consumer Reports of the drug world—and, in fact, was actually co-founded by the co-founder of the publisher of Consumer Reports more than 50 years ago. As The Medical Letter likes to brag on their website, they do not accept grants (from any source), donations (from anyone), or funding (from any entity). They won’t let their work be used for promotional purposes and they don’t accept any advertising.

The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics recently reviewed bio-identical hormones and came to the same conclusion: “There is no acceptable evidence that bio-identical hormones are safe or effective. Patients should be discouraged from taking them.”

Another way to rid oneself of excess estrogen is in the way nature intended. See my video: Relieving Yourself of Excess Estrogen.

We can also stop consuming steroid hormones. See my videos Anabolic Steroids in Meat and Acne & Cancer Connection.

For other ways to decrease breast cancer risk see:

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my 2012 year-in-review presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: justthismoment / Flickr

Countering Dietary Pollutants & Pesticides

2013-03-26T12:00:00Z

We have so polluted our planet that eight different pesticides were recently found contaminating the snow-capped tips of the Rocky Mountains. If they’re contaminated, then everywhere is contaminated. The best we can do is just try to eat as low on the food chain as possible–plant foods, preferably organic. Click on my 2-min. video Food Sources of Perfluorochemicals to see where a variety of industrial pollutants tend to concentrate in our food supply.

Not only do plant foods tend to have significantly lower levels of industrial pollutants, they may have phytonutrients that combat the effects of some of these toxicants. In my 2-min. video Plants vs. Pesticides I profile an experiment where scientists dripped dioxin and DDT on some human white blood cells with and without a variety of phytonutrients to see if they would have a protective effect.

The two most effective agents in protecting human blood cells appeared to be zerumbone, a compound naturally found in ginger, and auraptene, a natural component of citrus. These are very preliminary findings, as this was only done in a test tube and the researchers surveyed only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of known phytonutrients. It does, however, open up the possibility that plant-based diets may play a dual role in protecting us against industrial pollutants by reducing our exposure and, potentially, reducing some of the damage these chemicals can cause.

Get more information on ginger in Amyloid and Apple Juice and Dangerous Advice From Health Food Store Employees. See how we can incorporate it in our diet in Healthy Pumpkin Pie and The Healthiest Beverage.

-Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Scot Nelson / Flickr