Disease Proof : Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

I admit, I’m more than eager to trot this story out again-again, but do you remember last week’s post about England’s meat pie pushing mothers? You know. Those uber-moms who started selling hamburgers to students outside of schools in spite of the recent initiatives to improve school food. You got to appreciate that kind of caring—and degree of mental illness!

Well, here’s an example of some homegrown, good old-fashioned American dietary dopiness. How many of you remember the post-soccer-game orange slices? You do, good. But what about the post-game chips, juice-boxes, Ho Hos, and Hawaiian Punch? No? From The New York Times Op-Ed section, Harlan Coben tells us all about it—and he’s none to happy:

Are none of us reading about the obesity of our young people? Do you think it helps their well-being that after every sporting event our children gorge themselves Fall-of-Roman-Empire style on extra calories, extra sugar, extra hydrogenated fat? I recently sat down with Annette O’Neill, a registered dietitian and bona fide nutritionist, and asked her, “Do you think it’s a good idea for our kids to have Cheetos and Kool-Aid after a sporting event?” Her response: “Uh, no.”

Coben certainly is amazed with our cultures propensity to incorporate snacking into every facet of our lives. I guess that’s one reason why it can be so hard to teach kids the importance of healthy eating, especially since—as Coben puts it—every classroom celebration involves softball-sized cupcakes.

If you’re fed up like Coben, check out this podcast where Dr. Fuhrman offers up tips on getting children to eat well.

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Adapted from Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live:

How do you modify your recommendations about superior nutrition and disease prevention for children or those not needing to lose weight?

I believe the diet we currently feed our children is the reason we are seeing so many frequent infections and such high levels of allergies, autoimmune disease, and cancer in this country. Unfortunately, what we eat early in life has a more powerful effect on your eventual health (or ill health) than what we eat later in life. I have three daughters and understand the difficulties of trying to raise healthy children in today’s insane world. It seems we are in an environment in which parents are enthusiastically and purposely breeding a nation of sickly and diseased adults.

In my community, parents and neighbors unknowingly attempt to poison their children at every opportunity. They don’t merely feed their own children a diet chock-full of sugar and trans fat, but at every birthday, athletic event, and social occasion they bring sugar-coated doughnuts, cupcakes, and candy for the entire crowd. The public schoolroom in my community also serves as another avenue for parents and teachers to regularly supply our children with junk food. I would expect, as parents, we all have the same goal of trying to get our children to eat more nutritious foods: more vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, and legumes and beans. However, no child will eat healthfully if he is allowed to eat unhealthy foods on a regular basis.

The only way to have a child eat healthfully is to clear all unhealthful foods out of the house, so when the children are hungry they are forced to pick from healthy choices. They will at least eat healthfully when they are home if they are presented with only healthy food choices.

Nevertheless, the dietary rules in Eat to Live would be too calorie-restricted and too fat-restricted for a child or thin athlete. However, the principles for healthy eating and longevity do not change. All that has to be done to increase the caloric density and fat density of the diet is to add more wholesome sources of fat and calories, such as raw nuts and seeds, nut butters, and avocados. Starchy vegetables and whole grains can be consumed in larger amounts, and vegetable and grain dishes can be flavored with sauces and dressing made with nuts and seeds.

If you want to gain weight, eating more—or eating differently to bulk up—will add mostly fat to your body. It is exceptionally rare for a person to gain more muscle just from eating more food. Forcing yourself to consume more food than your body wants is not in your best interest. If you want to gain weight, lift weights to add muscle; then the exercise will increase your appetite accordingly. When you eat a healthful diet, nature has you carry only the mass you need; your muscles will enlarge only if additional stress is placed on them. Of course, Eat to Live is designed for those who are overweight and desirous of losing weight. Those who are truly excessively thin, and need to gain weight, may have to modify this eating plan somewhat to meet their individual needs.

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In Disease-Proof Your Child Dr. Fuhrman discusses the onset of early puberty in children consuming the Western diet. No one wants to think about preschoolers going through puberty, but a recent article in The New York Times investigates and the information is startling. Darshak M. Sanghavi reports:

Increasingly — though the science is still far from definitive and the precise number of such cases is highly speculative — some physicians worry that children are at higher risk of early puberty as a result of the increasing prevalence of certain drugs, cosmetics and environmental contaminants, called “endocrine disruptors,” that can cause breast growth, pubic hair development and other symptoms of puberty.


Most commonly, outbreaks of puberty in children are traced to accidental drug exposures from products that are used incorrectly.

In addition to these potential causes Sanghavi cites a study from The Lancet that connected breast enlargement among hundreds of Italian schoolchildren to estrogen contamination of beef and poultry.

Much of Disease-Proof Your Child describes the trend toward earlier puberty--which correlates with later cancer risk--and makes specific recommendations. Dr. Fuhrman describes how a diet heavy with fruit and vegetables, especially starting at a young age, can play a major role.

Worldwide, there is a linear relationship between higher-fat animal products, saturated fat intake, and breast cancer.1 However, there are areas of the world even today where populations eat predominantly unrefined plant foods in childhood and breast cancer is simply unheard of. Rates of breast cancer deaths (in the 50-to-70 age range) range widely from 3.4 per 100,000 in Gambia to 10 per 100,000 in rural China, 20 per 100,000 in India, 90 per 100,000 in the United States, and 120 per 100,000 in the United Kingdom and Switzerland2…


…Fat cells produce estrogen, so excess fat on the body during childhood results in more estrogen production. A large volume of high fiber from fruits and vegetables in the gut serves to lower circulating estrogen naturally. The high fiber and the resultant healthy bacteria that colonize the gut of a person consuming a high produce diet conjugates (binds together) estrogens so they are more readily excreted in the stool. As estrogen cycles into and out of the digestive tract, a person eating more animal products and less high-fiber vegetation reabsorbs more estrogen from the digestive tract, rather than losing more in the stool.

Diet powerfully modulates estrogen levels. One recent study illustrated that eight-to-ten-year-olds, closely followed with dietary intervention for seven years, dramatically lowered their estrogen levels compared to a control group with dietary modification.3 Clearly, changing the diet of our children after the age of eight is not futile. It will lower the risk of developing cancer, even when the most sensitive years affecting growth and age of puberty have passed. The good news is that we are not helpless after childhood to reduce the risk.

For more on this topic, check out these previous posts:

• Breast Cancer Causation Is Multi-Factorial
• Prevent Breast Cancer at Every Age
• Prostate Cancer: A Growing Disease In Men
• Research: Diet as Children Affects Lifelong Cancer

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Stay at home moms, working moms, dads—all sorts of parents play an important role in raising kids, especially when it comes to teaching healthy eating. How do I know this? Dr. Fuhrman wrote a book about it, Disease-Proof Your Child. Here’s an excerpt:

Here is the most important: No rules only for children. If the parents are not willing to follow the rules set for the house, they should not be imposed on the children. Don’t argue about what your children should and shouldn’t be eating; discuss this in private. As parents, we must be consistent, but not perfect. Likewise, it is okay for the children to be consistent, but not perfect either. For example, if the parents decide that an unhealthy food or a restaurant meal is acceptable for the children once per week, then that goes for the adults, too. Setting an example supported by both parents is the most important and most effective way for your children to develop a healthy attitude toward food.

Darla Shine of HappyHousewivesClub.com has taken a real shining to Disease-Proof Your Child, as a result once a week she’ll be broadcasting a podcast with Dr. Fuhrman. So, if you’re a stay-at-home-mom and you want you’re kids to grow up disease-proofed head over to HappyHousewivesClub.com, sign up, and start listening.

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Tired of arthritis pain? Looking for an alternative to pricey medications? Well, grab a box of raisins, and a bottle of gin. I’m not kidding! Apparently white raisins soaked in gin are a popular home remedy for arthritis. Anahad O’Connor of The New York Times explains:

“You get some gin and get some white raisins — and only white raisins — and soak them in the gin for two weeks,” she said Teresa Heinz Kerry. “Then eat nine of the raisins a day.”

O’Connor points out that no rigorous studies have been conducted to prove the validity of the claim. However grapes do contain compounds that reduce inflammation, but most are lost during the drying process.

I don’t think you’ll see a recipe for gin soaked raisins popping up in one of Dr. Fuhrman’s book anytime soon. According to him alcohol isn’t exactly the health promoting substance it is sometimes reported to be. Here’s a quote from a previous post:

A few years ago the University of California’s Berkeley Wellness Letter reported on new research about the so-called heart-healthy “benefits” of alcohol consumption. Previous studies had led to a recommendation that moderate consumption of red wine—but not other alcoholic beverages—helped reduce the risk of heart attack. What did the new research reveal?


If we were to rely on the Berkeley Wellness Letter for this information, the latest news would be that moderate consumption of any alcoholic beverage—red or white wine, even beer and spirits—can be heart-healthy. Unfortunately, their latest news is still woefully out-of-date. More recent studies show that even moderate alcohol consumption is linked to significantly increased incidence of atrial fibrillation,1 a condition that can lead to stroke, and to higher rates of breast cancer.2,3

Moderate drinking is defined as a maximum of two drinks for men. Consuming more than this is associated with increased fat around the waist4 and other potential problems. For example, alcohol consumption leads to mild withdrawal sensations the next day that are commonly mistaken for hunger, which leads people to eat more than is genuinely necessary, resulting in weight gain.

In Eat to Live, Dr. Fuhrman explains arthritis is one of many diet-sensitive conditions:

Patients are told that food has nothing to do with the disease they develop. Dermatologists insist that food has nothing to do with acne, rheumatologists insist that food has nothing to do with rheumatoid arthritis, and gastroenterologists insist that food has nothing to do with irritable and inflammatory bowel disease. Even cardiologists have been resistant to accept the accumulating evidence that atherosclerosis is entirely avoidable. Most of them still believe that coronary artery disease and angina require the invasive treatment of surgery and are not reversible with nutritional intervention. Most physicians have no experience in treating disease naturally with nutritional excellence, and some physicians who don’t know about it are convinced it is not possible.


Not only are common disorders such as asthma associated with increased body weight and our disease-causing diet, but in my experience these diseases are also curable with superior nutrition in the majority of cases.5 Asthma is an example of a disease considered irreversible that I watch resolve regularly.

My patients routinely make complete and predictable recovery from these illnesses, predominantly through aggressive dietary changes. I am always delighted to meet new patients who are ready to take responsibility for their own health and well-being.

Dietary-Caused Illnesses with High Prevalence

acne	allergies	angina
appendicitis	asthma	arthritis
atherosclerosis	constipation	colonic polyps
diabetes(adult)	diverticulosis	esophagitis
fibromyalgia	gallstones	gastritis
gout	headaches	hemorrhoids
high blood pressure	hypoglycemic symptoms	indigestion
irritable bowel syndrome	kidney stones	lumbar spine syndromes
macular degeneration	musculoskeletal pain	osteoperosis
sexual dysfunction	stroke	uterine fibroids

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