Books – Page 4 – Before Wisdom

Got Diabetes?

I originally wrote this book review about 3 years ago. Though published four years ago, this book has an Amazon.com sales rank of about 382 as of this writing. See the paragraph in bold for how feeding cows milk to children may predispose children toward developing Type 1 Diabetes.

I don’t have diabetes. I won this book as part of a package in a fund raising auction.

I found it to be very interesting.

One current theory for the genesis of food allergies is that “leaky guts”, porous intestines leak out proteins from our food before those proteins have been broken down into amino acids. These proteins then get out into the blood where the immune system is alerted to them, thus triggering an autoimmune response.

Infants, whose digestive systems are not fully matured, are predisposed to having leaky intestines. They are vulnerable to developing food allergies if they are fed highly allergenic foods too early ( dairy products, soy, wheat, citrus, meat etc ). The proteins leak into their blood stream and their immune systems are inadvertently trained to see these proteins as hazards.

Type 1 diabetes is believed to happen, in part, when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys the insulin producing cells of the pancreas ( pages 30 – 35 ). The book describes several studies of children predisposed to type 1 diabetes or children who were on their way to getting it. It turned out that these children’s immune systems were “on alert” to attacking proteins found in bovine milk. It has been discovered that portions of those bovine milk proteins were nearly biochemically identical to the children’s insulin producing cells.

Wow.

Dr. Barnard’s dietary program for type 2 diabetes has been tested in several studies in partnership with the National Institute Of Health. In a nutshell, he prescribes eating low fat ( only 20% of calories from fat, preferably 10% ), high fiber, low glycemic index valued, and vegan foods. That is, each bit of food that a recovering diabetic eats has all of these qualities.

The really interesting part is where the book explains why this works. Too much fat accumulating on the inside of cells causes the mitochondria in those cells to stop burning such fat, which leads to insulin resistance. Though a person’s pancreas might be kicking out enough insulin, the insulin no longer has any effect on the cells. The cells will not absorb glucose from the blood stream leading to toxic levels of sugar in the blood.

The diet described above has been proven to reduce the amount of fat within cells, restart the burning of this fat by the mitochonria, reverse insulin resistance, and lower blood sugar levels — without drugs.

Again, wow.

Weight control is an important part of treating diabetes and this book has a lot of interesting facts about losing weight from the studies of Dr. Barbara Rolls who wrote the book “Volumetrics”. Unlike the various quack popular diet book authors out there Dr. Rolls is a highly respected scientist who has been researching how to satisfy hunger with fewer calories.

One thing she learned is that for each 14 gram increase of fiber in a diet ( via food, not supplements ) people will eat until they are full, but they will feel full on 200 fewer calories.
200 fewer calories per day is enough to lose 20 pounds over the course of a year.

Her theory is that weight in the stomach triggers satiation.

Interestingly, her studies found that not any weight will set this response off. Having study participants drink a particular weight of water did nothing for triggering early satiation. However taking in the same weight composed of water and food ( stew ) did.

Dr. Rolls recommends eating foods that have natural “bulk” – a lot of water and a lot of fiber together naturally. To encourage weight loss she advises eating food that has the more weight per a particular amount of calories.

A neat trick offered by the book is to focus on eating foods that have an equal number of calories as grams of weight…or less.

Another simple weight loss trick offered by Dr. Barnard is to do a “quick fiber check” when your weight loss seems to be slowing down. He has a set value of points for servings of legumes, vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. You count the number of servings of each you have every day. If your points add up to less than 40 and you want more weight loss you eat more food from those groups of foods.

The book also gave a very clear introduction to the disease of diabetes in accessible, but not dumbed down language that I found fascinating.

Old Souls

Picture of the book titled "Old Souls"

Old Souls : Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives
by Tom Shroder. isbn13: 9780684851921

A prominent psychiatrist with a “no nonsense” reputation stumbles across a cure for a patient with an intractable phobia. Putting her under hypnosis he asks her to keep going gradually further and further back into her past. He then asks her to go all of the way back to the event that gave her the phobia. To his shock, she goes “back” to before her birth, thousands of years, to an alleged former life in ancient Egypt where she remembers experiencing a particularly harsh manner of death. Upon awakening she is suddenly free of her phobia, after having had that freedom elude her for years during therapy.

The psychiatrist writes a popular book about that experience and skeptical Washington Post reporter Tom Shroder is sent to write an article about it.

Shroder does find a psychiatrist with a hitherto well deserved reputation for being a down to Earth clinician, but he isn’t satisfied with the psychiatrist’s interpretation of the case. Asking around, Shroder finds that a number of other prominent psychiatrists have stumbled across this phenomenon using hypnosis in their treatment. However, these other psychiatrists did not feel the need to believe that they had found evidence for reincarnation. It was enough that these experiences, whatever they were, helped their patients overcome their long held difficulties.

Shroder then found experts who investigated the reliability (or lack thereof ) of memories retrieved under hypnosis. The consensus of those professionals was that under hypnosis, the brain will do as it is told, even if it means manufacturing a reality to fit the request.

Through these experts Shroder learned of the existence of Dr. Ian Stevenson, a distinguished academic and a psychiatrist who had been traveling the globe for almost 30 years documenting cases of young children spontaneously remembering past lives — without the aide of hypnosis or anything else.

These cases typically involved young children between the ages of 2 – 5 years of age who had no exposure whatsoever to the place or people from which they claimed to come from. These children would often coax their parents to take them to visit these foreign locations. Upon arrival, the children would know their way around the strange city, recognize people they never met, recall shared experiences nobody else knew about with complete strangers and have emotionally charged “reunions” with these strangers. Financial gain, the seeking of fame or a fetish for romantic fantasies were not issues in these cases.

In these cases Dr. Stevenson would typically interview the people involved, compare the accounts of various witnesses for consistency, verify what he could through public records, catalog the details methodically and then move on. Thats it. No movies of the week, no talk show appearances and no best sellers. Just cataloging data without making conclusions for nearly 3,000 cases over the course of 30 years, all over the world.

This lack of sensationalism impressed Shroder enough to seek out the aging Dr. Stevenson and accompany him on the last fact finding tour abroad of his career. Shroder felt Dr. Stevenson’s different, down to Earth, neutral and data centered approach to reincarnation did not deserve to die in an academic obscurity. Shoder’s goal was to publish a book about it, so that at least people would know of its existence.

Aside from Nu Age style cover art pictured above, which is an anathema to what impressed Shroder and what Shroder wanted to show to the world, he succeeded.

I’m guessing the spooky cover art was a concession to the publisher who wanted to make sure that at least some copies of the book sold.

The bulk of the book is a travel log of Shroder’s trip to Lebanon and India with Dr. Stevenson where he follows up on cases he initially investigated decades ago, as well as investigating new cases.

Not all of the cases are as impressive in corroborated evidence as the summary of the book suggests. Rather than discouraging the reader, these accounts give the reader a sense of the frustrations Dr. Stevenson must have felt over the course of his 30 year career. Reaching the people involved in these cases was often an arduous task, only to yield information that Dr. Stevenson felt wasn’t worthy of including in his collection.

Some of the cases described in the book were strong and were flat out intriguing.

Shroder did an excellent job of describing the environments he traveled to and the people he interacted with. I found his account of the trip to Lebanon particularly interesting. I learned a lot about the country that I did not know before, including that a sect of Islam exists, called the “Druse” that believes in reincarnation. I never would have guessed.

More importantly, Shroder plays an excellent “man on the street” narrator of his account of his time with Dr. Stevenson. He asks the questions the reader would want to ask, he is skeptical the way many readers would want to be skeptical and he feels the hopes that many of the readers would feel.

Having gotten a visceral experience of Dr. Stevenson’s typical cases, instead of a stack of Dr. Stevenson’s dry academic reports, Shroder ends the book as he started it. As an agnostic about the reality of reincarnation.

Shroder didn’t believe that Dr. Stevenson’s cases could be explained away via normal means. However, as with the serious academic critics of Dr. Stevenson’s work, Shroder’s only choice was to choose either reincarnation or some other out of the ordinary explanation ( none the more plausible). Instead, Shroder chose not to choose. Deciding that some things are just not known.

I don’t think this book will turn anyone’s world upside down. It will, make the reader stop to take a look into the void of uncertainty, if only for a moment.

This book was well written, sober in tone and fascinating.

The China Study

The China Study was the largest, most comprehensive human nutrition study in history. The China Study was the culmination of a 20 year partnership between Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy Of Preventative Medicine. It is the legacy of Dr. T. Colin Campbell.

Dr. T Colin Campbell ( 1934 – ) grew up on a dairy farm in Northern Virginia. For about 50 years Dr. Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research. Dr. Campbell is a Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. Dr. Campbell has received more than 70 grant years of peer reviewed research funding. He has authored more than 300 research papers and received the Research Achievement Award in 1998 from the American Institute of Cancer Research.

Dr. Campbell opens, his book, “The China Study” by telling us that the top killers of Americans are ( in descending order, page 16 ):

Cardiovascular disease
Cancer
Medical Care
Cerebrovascular Diseases (strokes)
Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases
Accidents
Diabetes Mellitus
Influenza and Pneumonia
Alzheimer’s Disease

The population of the United States is about 300 million people. Out of those 300 million Americans 82% have at least 1 risk factor for heart disease. Over 280,000 Americans died from strokes, diabetes or Altzeimer’s Disease in the year 2000. During any given week 50% – 80% of Americans take at least one medication or one prescription drug. 65% of Americans are overweight and 31% of Americans are obese ( page 346 ).

People can’t be kept in a cages, so nutrition studies on human beings are both rare and valuable. They are incredibly valuable because animals are not people. What works/doesn’t work for common lab animals ( rats, rabbits, mice, etc..) often doesn’t/does work for human beings.

The China Study had the huge advantage of being done in China, where for the most part, even in the present day, people don’t move around much. They will live in the same area and eat the same diet for most of their lives. Composed of distinct cultures with different economic advantages, regional diets in China will vary greatly.

Dr. Campbell found that Chinese people who live in regions that eat diets similar to Americans die in much the same ways and numbers that Americans do.

Dr. Campbell also found that Chinese people who lived in regions where animal products are scarce ( i.e. 4 ounces of meat a day, 3 – 4 thin slices of cold cuts ) did not experience the terminal diseases that Americans do in anywhere near the same numbers. Even when attempting to adjust for physical activity.

The message of Dr. Campbell’s book, “The China Study”, is that if you want to avoid dying and more importantly suffering from, the list of diseases above eat a plant based diet of whole plant foods.

I like to read about nutrition, so the nuts and bolts of the book that other people might find interesting I did not and vice-versa.

The first thing I found interesting in this book, is the list of the top killers of Americans. I have seen that list many times over many years. Never with item number 3 on it. According to Dr. Campbell physician error, medication error, hospital borne infections and adverse events from drugs or surgery kill 225,400 Americans a year( page 15 ). Reads like a good argument for getting serious about preventative self health care doesn’t it? Exactly Dr. Campbell’s point

The other points I found interesting were in regards low carbohydrate diets. Many of the proponents of low carbohydrate diets have the near-conspiracy theory idea that low fat diets recommended by the scientific establishment only served to make American’s fatter. In Dr. Campbell’s own words ( page 95 ):

One of the fundamental arguments at the beginning of most low carbohydrate, high-protein diet books is that America has been wallowing in low-fat mania at the advice of experts for the past twenty years, but there is one inconvenient fact that is consistently ignored: according to a report summarizing government food statistics, “Americans consumed thirteen pounds more fats and oils per person in 1997 than in 1970, up from 52.6 to 65.6 pounds.” It is true that we have had a trend toward consuming fewer of our total calories as fat, when considered as a percentage, but that’s only because we have outpaced our gorging on fat by gorging on sugary junk food. Simply by looking at the numbers, anybody can see that America has not adopted the “low-fat” experiment– not by an stretch of the imagination.

In other words, Americans as a whole, were never on a low fat diet. Americans are fatter now because Americans have been eating more calories overall. Again, nothing new. You can read the same information in more detail in the August 2004 edition of The National Geographic (pages 46 – 61), “Why are Americans so fat” by Cathy Newman ( not quoted in this book ).

My primary complaint with this book is the title. A more accurate title would have been “What I have learned during my 50 year career of nutrition research”. The actual “China Study” takes up a chunk of the book, but only a chunk.

I would have enjoyed reading more about the actual “China Study”.

The bulk of the book is taken up by Dr. Campbell trying to demonstrate that the idea that animal products bring disease and that whole food plant based diets bring health is not a new scientific discovery. In fact, he claims it goes back at least 30 – 40 years.

Why haven’t you heard of this before? Well, that is the title of Part IV of his book, the last 92 pages or so.

Do not expect a typical hippie health food conspiracy theory rant about payoffs and evil plots. Dr. Campbell has been one of the top researchers in the U.S. for about half a century. Many of the scientists and officials he has criticism for he knows on a first name basis. Dr. Campbell gives the reader, instead, a very sophisticated account of how health information does not make it out to the average person and more importantly, how seemingly conflicting medical information ends up in the popular media. Reading this section of the book will give you a valuable perspective on how to view reports on any given study you might find in the news.

Since I waited so long to read this book, I have read many popular criticisms of it.

As a popular reader, I haven’t come across any critics with Dr. Campbell’s credentials, who have addressed a fraction of the over 730 references of this book, who have read all of his research or who are involved in the same research as he was. I’m not saying that such scholarly papers aren’t there, but that is not where I have seen the bulk of criticism coming from.

Some of the popular criticisms of this book are flat out ridiculous. For example, that Dr. Campbell wrote this book because he is a vegetarian and in league with animal rights activists. These “critics” have never read this book or they would have seen this quote (page 107 )

The results of this study, in addition to a mountain of supporting research, some of it my own and some of it from other scientists, convinced me to turn my dietary lifestyle around.

I stopped eating meat fifteen years ago, and I stopped eating almost all animal-based foods, including dairy, within the past six to eight years, except on very rare occasions. My cholesterol has dropped, even as I’ve aged; I am more physically fit now than when I was twenty-five; and I am forty-five pounds lighter now than I was when I was thirty years old. I am now at a ideal weight for my height.

Furthermore, Dr. Campbell describes animal experiments he conducted and defends those experiments. That is something of an anathema to almost every kind of animal rights ideology.

None of what Dr. Campbell has to say is all that new. A number of well credentialed experts over the years have been saying pretty much similar things. The entire book could be successfully condemned by the critics ( far from happening ) but the main message would still stand.

Eating a plant based diet of whole plant foods promotes health, eating a diet high in animal products brings disease.

I do think the book takes on too much and doesn’t walk the reader through enough tight conclusions. I think some parts of it could have been shorter without losing any information. I also think some parts were much too dense.

I do think from the perspective of the full content of this book, that this book is one of the most valuable books any American can read.

Putting the message into practice in your life can save your life and make you a happier person while you are living it.

This book is old enough to be in many library systems, as well as used book venues. The only thing to lose, besides early diminishing health, is a few afternoons of your time to read this book.

It is worth it.