Weight Loss Diets, Getting the Big Picture

These dedicated professionals know something that you, and possible even your doctor, may have forgotten: We humans are all very much alike each other. In fact, in most matters relating to diet, exercise, metabolism and health, we are not only very much like other human beings -- we are even very closely akin to mice, rats, hamsters and rabbits!

Your ego is getting in the way of your health! As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his best-selling and very amusing fictional fantasy, Galapagos (1985), our brains are too big for the job... we make ourselves the center of our universe, and our big brains are constantly getting us into trouble. (You may want to read a few entertaining pages about our big brains from the 1999 paperback edition of Galapagos, at Amazon.com.) When it comes to health, truth is stranger than fiction. Our big brains have made a mess of things. We need to back down off our big-brained, self-centered universe and get back to reality. The fact is that we are not the center of this universe or any universe. Each of us is but a momentary spark in the forest fire of life that envelopes this planet. We share most of our metabolism, our dietary needs and our lifestyle requirements for health with billions of other living beings all over the world.

Being self-centered is killing us - our big brains have redrawn the map of the world, with each of us at the center. There is a different map being drawn for each one of us. None of these maps represent the real world very well, until we remove ourselves from the process. Refocus on the real world out there and you will see a true picture of the world; an accurate map that can show you the way to health.

Our focus has been narrow for 150 years - by focusing on individual, highly specialized health issues, modern medicine has made huge advances over the last century and a half. In the middle of the 19thCentury, scientists discovered ways to perform surgery without causing needless infections and suffering, by simply sterilizing the surgical implements. They soon found ways to reduce surgical pain with anesthesia, to treat and often prevent or cure dozens of crippling infections like polio, tuberculosis, small pox and diphtheria with vaccinations. And, they have developed new machines to help them diagnose disease, and new drugs to treat the symptoms of many other diseases from which mankind has suffered for thousands of years.

Modern medicine has focused narrowly on diagnosis, and treatment, and not on preventing diseases - and today's medical doctor or other health professional is better equipped to treat many diseases than ever in human history. However, in today's medical system, your over-worked and usually underpaid doctor is not compensated by the insurance system to dispense education about how you can get healthy, about how you can prevent diseases, and generally not to assess what may have actually caused the disease you may suffer from. He leaves that important work to educators and researchers. Unfortunately, you will probably never see or talk to any medical educators or researchers. And if you did, your insurance would probably not pay them to help you.

Too narrow a focus is killing us - When we're blind to the big picture we can get some very strange ideas about the world, as dramatized by the famous poem "Six Blind Men and The Elephant", by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887), shown to the right. We generalize from our limited experience; our tightly focused perspective, and on our own personal history. And, in generalizing this way, we miss the big picture of the real world out there; what diseases actually are, how to diagnose the actual diseases themselves instead of merely their symptoms, how to prevent disease, and possibly how to even improve and cure some of them.

			Six Blind Men & The Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!" The Second, feeling of the tusk Cried, "Ho! what have we here, So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!" The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up he spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a snake!" The Fourth reached out an eager hand, And felt about the knee: "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quoth he; "'Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!" The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!" The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope. "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! Moral: So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean... And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen.

What are physicians paid to do? - What doctors are paid to do is (1) to administer various tests to determine the state and characteristics of your health, (2) to diagnose your disease state according to the results of those tests, and (3) to prescribe specific drugs aimed at treating the conditions determined by his diagnosis.

How much are we spending on health? - In 2006 we will be spending - about 2 trillion dollars - $2,000,000,000,000.00 per year in the United States! That translates to at least $555.00 per month (actually $5,600 per year in 2003) for each and every person in the country... every baby, teenager, adult, and senior citizen... whether they are healthy or not! We have increased our total spending for prescription medicines by almost 200% in just 5 years (from 1997 to 2002), from just over $600 to over $1,100 in total prescriptive drug costs per person, per year! And, it's getting worse. Expenditures for health insurance alone increased by 7.7% in just one year, from 2002 to 2003. In the last 40+ years, our national health costs have risen from 5.1% of GNP to more than 15.3% of GNP (the total national income or Gross Domestic Product). We have increased health spending by 300%.

How well is this expensive health system working? - Today, we are spending more than 300% more of our total income on health than we did 40 years ago (CDC, 2005). One measure of the failure of the overall system to deliver improvements in health is the exploding trend toward obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for Cardiovascular Disease over the last 10 years, about 1991 through 2001, The US Health Report, 2005 by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (a PDF Doc, 10mb) shows that High Cholesterol is dropping nationally by about 20% or so, while there is a tremendous increase (from 15% to 30% nationally, varying by sex, race and age) in obesity, hypertension and other heart disease risk factors. We're spending a fortune to lower cholesterol, and that goal is succeeding... but while we're focused on that symptom of heart disease, the other symptoms are going out of control. The focus is too narrow.

Over the same period from 1991-2001 roughly, total U.S. Diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed) has increased by about 10%. Total High Blood Pressure or hypertension has increased by about 20-25% in the U.S. And, these failures in health are very expensive.

Cancer death rates (per 100,000 people in the U.S.) have stayed roughly the same since 1960 with only minor improvements of less than one percent (from 193.9 to 193.5). Diabetes death rates have actually increased from 23.1 to 25.4 over the 42 years from 1950 to 2002. And remember that the actual number of diabetics is skyrocketing. Since 1990, ischemic stroke deaths have in fact decreased by about 25%, but remember that we're spending a lot more to make that happen. Despite decreases in smoking, chronic lower respiratory disease deaths have actually increased by about 60% since 1980 (28.3 to 43.5). Deaths from cancer of the trachea, bronchus and lung have more than tripled since 1950; increasing from 15.0 to 54.9. Breast cancer death rates are down only about 20% or so over the 50 year period from 1950-2002 (31.9 to 25.6). Prostate cancer deaths are down only slightly in 42 years (from 28.6 to 27.9). It's not a pretty picture.

We're spending 3 times more money to see a few major diseases improve only slightly over many years, while other major diseases actually get considerably worse. Something is wrong somewhere. Most medical authorities are beginning to admit that something needs to change. And, they realize it needs to be a big change. Today patients and most health care providers agree that changes should happen fast!

The exploding trend toward Integrative Medicine - most health professionals today are beginning to understand their problem with focus. They are struggling with an out-dated system that is too tightly focused, too narrowly confined to deliver effective health improvement for the average person. They know that big changes need to be made, that medicine needs to focus on the big picture. This understanding has lead to an explosive "Mega Trend" in medicine called "Integrative Medicine". A search of the U.S. Government's National Institutes of Health (NIH) web library PubMed.org reveals over 900 research studies, reviews and citations about the emerging practice of Integrative Medicine and another 1,400 studies about Complementary Medicine and another 2,700 about Alternative Medicine. The U.S. NIH has in fact built a special web site to promote integrative medicine called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). You may wish to subscribe to their free Quarterly NCCAM "CAM at the NIH" Newsletter, and also their free Monthly NCCAM Update eBulletin.

The Level 1 Diet focuses on the big picture - there are just a few "big picture points" that you need to understand to get on the road to improved health and a longer, happier life.

THE BIG PICTURE
Steps on the Road to Health

• Learn to avoid this pro-inflammatory food list. Merely adding good foods or supplements to your diet will not make you healthy. You MUST remove foods that increase inflammation, especially the poisonous vegetable oils that are high in omega-6 fats like oils from corn, safflower, peanuts, soybeans, cottonseed, linseed or flax... virtually all vegetable oils except virgin olive oil and avocado oil. You must also avoid saturated animal fats from farm raised red meats, beef, chicken, pork, and all processed luncheon or deli-meats. Also avoid cows milk, cheeses, cottage cheese, and even powdered milk products.



• Learn to eat this anti-inflammatory food list. Your new healthy diet will include mainly colorful high fiber vegetables, beans, peas, greens (spinach, kale, cilantro, parsley, lettuce, cabbage, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, yams, sweet potatos, carrots, squash, celery, olives, peppers, onions, garlic, apples, pears, grapes, cherries, plums, figs, and other fresh or frozen fruits. Eating a handful (1/4 cup or 100 grams) of fresh or lightly roasted unsalted nuts per day is also important -- including almonds, pecans, brazilnuts, macadamia, hazelnuts, cashews, and unsalted pistachios.



• Learn to add these health-promoting dietary food supplements to your new healthy diet, to ensure that you maintain enough of each primary nutrional component -- minerals, vitamins, fiber, anti-oxidants, spices and herbs. A important list of healthy food supplements to consider includes fish oil, magnesium citrate, borage oil, fiber powder, coenzyme Q-10 or ubiquinol, NADH, green tea EGCG extract, cinnamon extract, chromium picolinate, turmeric curcumin extract (from yellow curry powder), ginger extract, plus a good aged garlic extract, vitamin D-3, alpha lipoic acid, and ester vitamin C and a good quality high GAMMA vitamin E tocopherol that's often hard to find in stores, balanced with the more commonly available form of alpha tocopherol vitamin E.



• Learn to perform enough health-promoting daily exercise to ensure your new diet works properly to maintain your health. For most of us, this means at least 45-minutes of brisk walking, bicycling, or treadmill, elliptical machine or rowing machine use. During this three-quarter-hour period, you should maintain your heart rate at 70% of its "maximum heart rate" calculated by our Maximum Heart Rate Calculator.