Dr. Hans Diehl and special guests will show and demonstrate in an 8-week lecture series at the Thai Better Living Center, beginning on January 19, that many of our modern killer diseases can be turned around through a lifestyle medicine approach that is sweeping the country. Register now and call 909-800-3886 to be among the first 50 who will receive special recognition.
Modern Medicine: Its Limitations
The accomplishments of modern medicine have been prodigious. We can use proton beams that zap cancers; we can use robots to perform coronary bypass surgeries; and advances in molecular biology and genetics open doors to amazing new worlds. And yet, the amazing progress of high-tech medicine to halt acute and episodic infectious diseases has not altered the growing epidemic of modern killer diseases.
Heart disease and strokes are now claiming every third American life. Cancers of the breast, prostate, colon and lungs now kill every fourth person. Some 100 years ago, fewer than 10% of deaths in the United States were attributed to cardiovascular disease; now it is the number one killer. In spite of newer and refined forms of insulin and a plethora of bio-engineered medications, the incidence rate of the common form of diabetes has tripled over the last 30 years. The chance of becoming a diabetic in America for a new-born baby is now one in three. And we have no medical cure.
Concurrently, excess weight has gone through the roof. More than 70% of American adults are either overweight or obese with obesity having tripled in the last 35 years making it necessary for manufacturers to super-size everything from shirts to pants and from gurneys to coffins. Modern epidemiology—a science that compares different disease and death rates and then tries to look for answers that may explain these differences—is unraveling the mystery, that most of our chronic diseases are lifestyle related. And these chronic diseases place an enormous burden on our health care system. Their management is now devouring 86% of the US health care budget. These expenses, largely used for symptomatic relief rarely effect a cure or reversal of most of these diseases placing an increasingly unsustainable burden on society.
Lifestyle Medicine: A wholistic approach
The scientific literature is rapidly growing providing evidence that many of these chronic diseases are subject to prevention, arrest and reversal through a lifestyle medicine approach. Such an approach combines the best of medicine, public health, therapeutic nutrition, exercise and stress management. It is most effectively facilitated through intensive education, motivation and inspiration, and offered in a group setting.
More specifically, such an approach would center on the availability of whole foods instead of the current focus on processed and engineered ‘taste sensations,’ high in calories and low in nutrients. Relying more on whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, with some nuts and seeds and plenty of water, would include the progressive lowering of the intake of sugar, fat, and salt and at the same time increase the nutritional density of the diet. It represents a lifestyle choice for better health and for a sustainable future. It would be ecologically protective, and it becomes the ethical choice of responsible consumers. An emphasis on more plant-based foods would significantly and progressively lower the intake of meat, poultry, shrimp, lobsters, eggs and dairy products and thus dramatically lower the intake of cholesterol and saturated fat, the main drivers of the high blood cholesterol numbers as well as reduce the intake of calories.
Such an approach would also aim at the abstinence from tobacco, and a lowering of the use of alcohol and caffeine, an enlargement of consistent exercise and good mental health practices.
New Opportunities
The evidence for disease reversal through a lifestyle change approach was initially highlighted by Nathan Pritikin in his residential center where he introduced patients to a simple diet of whole foods and of plant-origin, plus exercise and intensive education. It was later documented through high-tech medical assessments.
In 1990, Dean Ornish MD and his team demonstrated successfully that atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary arteries of serious heart disease patients began to regress. Their arteries began to open up again. Caldwell Esselstyn, MD at the Cleveland Clinic, showed angiographic results that narrowed coronary arteries indeed began to open up in response to a simple diet low in fat, sugar, salt and cholesterol yet high in nutrient density and in fiber. A four-year follow-up on close to 200 of his heart disease patients showed that that more than 90% maintained their dietary regimen with exceptional clinical outcomes.
Dr. Diehl’s program
Hans Diehl, a clinical professor in the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University, developed an affordable, community-based lifestyle intervention program designed to arrest and reverse society’s most common chronic disease. Today, over 85,000 participants and clinical results published in more than 40 scientific journals, attest to the success of the approach.
Beginning on January 19 and continuing for eight weeks, with presentations on Saturday afternoons from 2 to 4 PM, he and his team will highlight this lifestyle medicine approach at the Thai Better Living Center at 10855 New Jersey Street in Redlands, close to Loma Linda. Aside from multiple professional handouts, each participant will receive confidential blood tests at the Redlands Community Hospital checking for cholesterol, blood sugar, creatinine, etc. before the program begins and at the end of the program to document their clinical improvements. Participants will also receive two lifestyle evaluations and reports covering blood pressure weight etc. In addition, four cooking classes will be offered.
The program is sponsored by the Redlands Community Hospital, the Thai Better Living Center, The Food for Life Bakery, the SE Conference of SDA, Dan Klein, and by the Friends of Thailand. The medical consultants include Henry Chai MD, Rudy Chai MD, Wayne Dysinger, MD MPH. The total fee is $35 per person and $25 for each additional family member in the same household. Registration is limited.
Call now to register: 909-800-3886.
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