Paradoxically Americans are becoming both more obese and more nutrient deficient at the same time. Obese children eating processed foods are nutrient depleted and increasingly get scurvy and rickets, diseases we thought were left behind in the 19th and 20th centuries.
— Mark Hyman
Our typical Western diet is full of inflammatory fats - saturated fats, trans fats, too many omega-6, inflammatory, processed vegetable oils like soy and corn oils. These increase IGF-1 and stimulate pimple follicles.
We have to pay close attention to what we see, and be ready to work with the unexpected according to the basic principles of systems biology and medicine.
You cannot control the primitive urges and hormones that drive your eating behavior.
The body maintains balance in only a handful of ways. At the end of the day, disease occurs when these basic systems are out of whack.
While weight loss is important, what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.
Lifestyle change and changes in diet work faster, better and more cheaply than any medication and are as effective or more effective than gastric bypass without any side effects or long-term complications.
My advice is to give up stevia, aspartame, sucralose, sugar alcohols like xylitol and malitol, and all of the other heavily-used and marketed sweeteners unless you want to slow down your metabolism, gain weight, and become an addict.
Children with obesity and diabetes live harder poorer lives, they often don't finish school and earn much less than their healthy counterparts.
The best advice is to avoid foods with health claims on the label, or better yet avoid foods with labels in the first place.
Today there are not even enough fruits and vegetables in this country to allow all Americans to follow the government guidelines to eat five to nine servings a day.
You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet.
Through my work and travels I have been lucky enough to have been exposed to various eclectic cuisine running the gamut from small local cafes to iconic five-star restaurants.
Your social networks may matter more than your genetic networks. But if your friends have healthy habits you are more likely to as well. So get healthy friends.
If you want to get healthy, you just might not want to go to a doctor. You might instead, go to church.
Nutrients are not drugs and they can't be studied as drugs. They are part of a biological system where all nutrients work as a team to support your biochemical processes.
While pimples are not as simple as too much milk or sugar in your diet, both have a significant impact. Nutritional deficiencies as well as excesses can worsen acne.
The food industry profits from providing poor quality foods with poor nutritional value that people eat a lot of.
When it becomes a revolutionary act to eat real food, we are in trouble.
Part of my training was learning how to refer patients to cardiologists for heart problems, gastroenterologists for stomach issues, and rheumatologists for joint pain. Given that most physicians were trained this way, it's no wonder that the average Medicare patient has six doctors and is on five different medications.
Shrinking someone's stomach to the size of a walnut with surgery is one way to battle obesity and diabetes and may be lifesaving for a few, but it doesn't address the underlying causes.
Seems you can't outsmart Mother Nature.
Tricking your brain into thinking you are getting something sweet plays dirty tricks on your metabolism.
We need a grassroots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy, healthy successful lives.
In the 21st century our tastes buds, our brain chemistry, our biochemistry, our hormones and our kitchens have been hijacked by the food industry.
It is just physics - who can argue with Newton and the first law of thermodynamics?
One in four kids have either pre-diabetes or diabetes - what I like to call diabesity. How did this happen?
I don't need the fillers, additives, excessive amounts of sugars, fats, salts and other measures taken to taint the natural goodness of real food.
You are more likely to be overweight if your friend's, friend's friend is overweight than if your parents are overweight.
Stay away from milk. It is nature's perfect food - but only if you are a calf.
It seems that for many the cure to acne is at the end of their fork, not in a prescription pad.
Calories from protein affect your brain, your appetite control center, so you are more satiated and satisfied.
Placing too much emphasis on a yes/no diagnosis, meaning you either have a disease or you don't, can lead even the most well-meaning physicians to miss underlying causes and early warning signs of illness.
The way most doctors practice medicine right now isn't working.
Recommending gastric bypass as a national solution for our diabetes epidemic is bad medicine and bad economics.
There are ways to cut cravings by naturally balancing your blood sugar.
Most schools have only a microwave or deep fryer, hardly the tools needed to feed our children real, fresh food.
We need community action and policies to support healthy communities.
The very fact that we are having a national conversation about what we should eat, that we are struggling with the question about what the best diet is, is symptomatic of how far we have strayed from the natural conditions that gave rise to our species, from the simple act of eating real, whole, fresh food.
Just eat less and exercise more.
Don't get me wrong, I admire elegance and have an appreciation of the finer things in life. But to me, beauty lies in simplicity.
I have experienced some amazing food! Yet when I think about the most luxurious and exquisite meals I have had, visions of simple food made from a few natural ingredients are what most excite me.
The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.
