are constantly faced with so much nutritional misinformation that we’ve decided to come up for at least one McDougall Weekend a year, just to keep current and recharge our batteries.
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C HAPTER 4
Spontaneous Healing on a Starch-Based Diet
T hree-quarters of the illnesses suffered by people living in industrialized countries are long-standing, chronic conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and cancers. What do people in these regions have in common? A diet dominated by meat, dairy, fat, and processed foods. Understanding the problem points to a simple solution: By replacing these body-burdening foods with healthful starches, vegetables, and fruits, we can reduce or eradicate the enormous personal, social, and economic burden of chronic disease.
Starches support your body’s intrinsic ability to heal by providing a perfect balance of carbohydrate, protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, and minerals, along with a balance of antioxidants and other plant-synthesized phytochemicals. Unlike the foods that are making you sick, starches contain no significant amounts of dangerous cholesterol, saturated or trans fats, animal proteins, dietary acids, chemical toxins, or disease-causing microbes.
T HE K EY TO R ECOVERY: S TOP THE C YCLE OF I NJURY
If your health is deteriorating, do not assume that your body is failing you. Its efforts to heal never stop, not even for a second. However, by thetime I meet most of my patients they will have endured tens of thousands of repeated injuries to their arteries, joints, and tissues, simply because of what they eat. For disease to progress, injury must outpace healing.
For healing to occur, the opposite must happen: Healing must outpace injury. It’s a simple matter of allowing your body to take two (or more) steps forward for every step back. Or better yet, to stop all regressions by very clean living.
Understand, however, that if you continue injuring your body for too long, the disease-causing forces will eventually do irreversible damage. Your body will no longer be able to work its healing magic completely. Fortunately, most of us are not in that much trouble. There is still hope, and the solution is in our own hands. If you want to reverse your body’s disease processes, all you need do is stop the damage. In almost all cases this means changing to a health-supporting starch-based diet. In this manner the five dietary poisons—protein, fat, cholesterol, sulfur-containing amino acids, and dietary acids—that were identified in the previous chapter are removed. With the same shift in food choices, essential nutrients that support healing are provided by a perfect design found in plant foods.
T HE B ODY S EEKS H EALTH
There are plenty of examples of the body’s ability to heal from repeated injuries we inflict on ourselves by our bad habits. A cigarette smoker inhales toxic fumes many times each day, inflaming the lungs with every puff. The lungs fight back by making the smoker cough and produce mucus in an effort to expel the poisons. Because the nicotine in tobacco is addictive, we assault our lungs over and over again, hour after hour and year after year. Eventually, parts of the lung die and are replaced by scar tissue. The result is diminished lung capacity from emphysema. Chronic injury can also lay the foundation for lung cancer. But serious lung disease is not inevitable. Many smokers find the strength to quit before the damage becomes irreversible. The lungs healto the best of their capacity and the former smoker once again breathes in full, deep, restorative breaths of air.
Toxic liver damage from alcohol and skin damage from overexposure to the sun are other examples of harm resulting from our habits and behaviors. In these cases, too, the first sign of the body’s spontaneous attempt to mend is inflammation, an essential step in recovering from injury or infection. Our tissues become hot, swollen,
----
C HAPTER 4
Spontaneous Healing on a Starch-Based Diet
T hree-quarters of the illnesses suffered by people living in industrialized countries are long-standing, chronic conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and cancers. What do people in these regions have in common? A diet dominated by meat, dairy, fat, and processed foods. Understanding the problem points to a simple solution: By replacing these body-burdening foods with healthful starches, vegetables, and fruits, we can reduce or eradicate the enormous personal, social, and economic burden of chronic disease.
Starches support your body’s intrinsic ability to heal by providing a perfect balance of carbohydrate, protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, and minerals, along with a balance of antioxidants and other plant-synthesized phytochemicals. Unlike the foods that are making you sick, starches contain no significant amounts of dangerous cholesterol, saturated or trans fats, animal proteins, dietary acids, chemical toxins, or disease-causing microbes.
T HE K EY TO R ECOVERY: S TOP THE C YCLE OF I NJURY
If your health is deteriorating, do not assume that your body is failing you. Its efforts to heal never stop, not even for a second. However, by thetime I meet most of my patients they will have endured tens of thousands of repeated injuries to their arteries, joints, and tissues, simply because of what they eat. For disease to progress, injury must outpace healing.
For healing to occur, the opposite must happen: Healing must outpace injury. It’s a simple matter of allowing your body to take two (or more) steps forward for every step back. Or better yet, to stop all regressions by very clean living.
Understand, however, that if you continue injuring your body for too long, the disease-causing forces will eventually do irreversible damage. Your body will no longer be able to work its healing magic completely. Fortunately, most of us are not in that much trouble. There is still hope, and the solution is in our own hands. If you want to reverse your body’s disease processes, all you need do is stop the damage. In almost all cases this means changing to a health-supporting starch-based diet. In this manner the five dietary poisons—protein, fat, cholesterol, sulfur-containing amino acids, and dietary acids—that were identified in the previous chapter are removed. With the same shift in food choices, essential nutrients that support healing are provided by a perfect design found in plant foods.
T HE B ODY S EEKS H EALTH
There are plenty of examples of the body’s ability to heal from repeated injuries we inflict on ourselves by our bad habits. A cigarette smoker inhales toxic fumes many times each day, inflaming the lungs with every puff. The lungs fight back by making the smoker cough and produce mucus in an effort to expel the poisons. Because the nicotine in tobacco is addictive, we assault our lungs over and over again, hour after hour and year after year. Eventually, parts of the lung die and are replaced by scar tissue. The result is diminished lung capacity from emphysema. Chronic injury can also lay the foundation for lung cancer. But serious lung disease is not inevitable. Many smokers find the strength to quit before the damage becomes irreversible. The lungs healto the best of their capacity and the former smoker once again breathes in full, deep, restorative breaths of air.
Toxic liver damage from alcohol and skin damage from overexposure to the sun are other examples of harm resulting from our habits and behaviors. In these cases, too, the first sign of the body’s spontaneous attempt to mend is inflammation, an essential step in recovering from injury or infection. Our tissues become hot, swollen,
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