New Resources: A Short Video, 2 Podcast Interviews with Doctors, A Book, and Dozens of Studies/Articles Supporting Them
4.14.2020
The photo above was taken by Ian on our anniversary hike to Stony Brook State Park. We were married at Stony Brook, walk its trails once a year (around the same weekend of the ceremony), and until 5 years ago I would have told you that Ian was my favorite soul on this earth, but then this spark of a soul joined us.
Ian and I have had 15 years of growing together, but it is this last 5 that have propelled us forward like fireworks of purpose. We thought we cared about our health and the environment, but having a soul in our care crystallized what was hypocrisy (we were participating in the largest environmental/health blight), what needed to be acted upon (our old diet and single-use plastics), and the necessity of continued-learning so we could help Q grow forward.
Ian and I had several decades of dietary decadence. They were fun, but we were ignorant/blind to the harm we were causing the earth and ourselves. As such, Q’s first three years were under the umbrella of two folks still sorting out life, and he was throughly saturated in our old bad habits (dishes stuffed with cheese, ice cream treats, pizza, chicken wings, endless meats, etc).
I could tell you all the various cheeses I adored, sculpt several life-size versions of myself with all the frozen cow’s breastmilk I consumed, and tell you all the complexities of flavor in another soul’s flesh. I’d waste that breath to somehow make you absorb that this food-loving Hobbit understands just how entrenched you are; but I’d rather use that time to tell you what we learned and why we’re never going back. I’m never going to tell you that stuff doesn’t take good; but taste doesn’t negate the absolute fact that those products are cruel, perpetuating environmental collapse, and doing your body great harm.
The cruelty of factory farming animals, and the impact of livestock on land, water, emissions, and other species is well understood as fact. Sadly, it seems those facts are easy to ignore (because if you’re still eating this stuff, you’re basically stating —like I once did— that taste is more important than any of the before-mentioned impacts); my wonder is whether knowing what animal products are doing inside of your body may shake you into wakefulness, or —most importantly— whether this knowledge will make you internalize how they are harming the souls in your care. That was precisely what compelled me to get my husband and son on board. Saving myself by sitting back in silence was selfish: saving my son and soulmate was imperative, hollering out to the rest of you is a compulsion in empathy and purpose.
After years of couch sitting and feasting on harmful foods, I’m now spending my free-time digging into new research and explanations of how our diet is affecting us all; and I’ll keep siphoning off time to relay this information to anyone who wants their mind opened and health bettered. Below you will find some purpose-driven mind-rattlers, but we’ll start with the most important.
Dr. Michael Gregor is here to illuminate studies that showed “almost all persons have aortic fatty streaks by age 10”, and these studies convinced us —as a family— to never touch animal products again.
This video is just under 6 minutes, and illuminates that fatty streaks begin in our arteries during our youth, they turn into plaques by our 20s, and lesions by our 30s. For all of us. How young does it go? Fatty streaks were found in 100% of children studied by age ten! A study of 3,000 accidental death victims ages 15-24 found almost all had signs of these streaks.
Think it’s just Dr. Greger stating this? It’s backed up by the research he shows within the video, but here are a few more:
“Evidence of the Beginning of Atherosclerosis in Infancy and Adolescence”
“Cardiovascular disease risk factors and atherosclerosis in children and adolescents
“A Few Unpleasant Facts About Atherosclerotic Arterial Disease in the United States and the World”
Where is this cardiovascular disease coming from? The saturated fats prevalent in your meats, your cow breastmilk byproducts, and your fatty desserts.
Unless you’ve been plant-based since birth, you should be taking this information and changing your diet RIGHT NOW, because plant-based diets are the only diet proven to reverse heart disease. If you aren’t moved to compassion for your own body (and the earth, and the body of the soul you’re consuming), think about whether you want your kid to be the one with the artery streaks.
Personally, I couldn’t own that culpability. It didn’t matter how tasty cheese and meats were, I grew forward to lead by example.
Wondering why your current doctor isn’t mentioning any of this important information? Mine never did, and I’m in pursuit of a new primary.
Take heart, because Dr. Michael Klaper is now out teaching med students about the importance of nutrition so diseases can be prevented and lives can be saved. He’s working med school circuit and sparking the minds of new doctors: urging them to fulfill their Hippocratic Oath by preventing diseases before they occur. It’s been proven fact for many years that plant-based diets prevent and reverse many diseases, but our doctors would rather give you a pill than act on the knowledge before them.
Have an outdated belief that vegans are Millennials, they’ll just waste away from protein deficiency, and you’ll be left laughing on your high hill? Dr. Klaper has been plant-based since 1981: he’s 72, is on zero medications, and is still very physically active. What compelled him to change from the diet of his raised-on-a-dairy-farm youth? As an anesthesiologist, he oversaw countless surgeries where souls had fats pulled out of the arteries, made the connection that their diet was causing this horror, had that realization backed up with multitudes of studies, and had the wherewithal to take that information to heart. He’s been driven to illuminate us all since the 80’s, and I wish I’d learned of his existence before this year.
Give this podcast a listen or watch the video above. You’ll learn wisdom from doctor who has several decades of healing folks (even lymphoma) with plant-based diets, and why you should start right now if you want to heal yourself and save your kin.
The Exam Room podcast, is an enjoyable and engaging podcast put out by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. In this one, Dr. Vanita Rahman answers questions like:
How much can just one meal affect your cholesterol levels?
What is the best time of day to eat fruit?
Can a plant-based diet help a person diagnosed with multiple autoimmune disorders?
What is the best form of B12 to take, and how much should we be taking?
Are you eating enough calories on a low-fat, plant-based diet?
Plus, Chuck is joined by Mark Kennedy, Esq., to discuss the lawsuit recently filed against the state of California for refusing to list processed meats on their list of carcinogens. (Examples of things already on there? Alcohol and tobacco.)
If processed meat—such as bacon, hot dogs, ham, LUNCH MEAT—is classified by the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen, why isn’t it listed on the state of California’s list of known carcinogens? By law, the state is required to maintain “a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity” and with every other item they’ve followed the direction of the WHO.
Physician’s Committee For Responsible Medicine is a group of doctors out there on the front lines —working on your behalf— trying to get this information out into the public sphere to save lives before more of us die. The meat industry doesn’t want you to hear it, and doctor’s stuck in bad food habits are as reluctant to move forward as the docs who refused to support the Surgeon’s General re: tobacco’s harms. (It took more than 7,000 studies before the dangers of tobacco were finally accepted as truth!)Want to do the same with animal products? Our environment and your body can’t take our ignorance for that long.
Last, but not least, this is what I’m currently reading, and I recommend you pick yourself up a copy and dig into it as well. (You could even listen to a podcast with the author: Dr. Neal Barnard.)
Dr. Barnard has a down-to-earth, colloquial, sometimes humorous, always illuminating way of writing and his books are quick/enjoyable reads.
Chapters Found Within:
How Cheese Keeps you Hooked
Hidden Hormone Effects
Health Problems You Never Bargained For
Heart Disease, Diabetes, and the French Paradox
What The Animals Go Through
The Industry Behind the Addiction
A Healthy Diet
Recipes
All the Flavor, None of the Regrets
I’ve been vegetarian since January of 2018, but it took me until 7 months ago (September of 2019) to finally give up cheese. Why was it so hard (despite all the environmental reasons that should have compelled me, and all the physical distress it was causing me and my son?), because the casomorphin (an opiate peptide) found in cow breastmilk binds to dopamine receptors and sparks opiate-like reactions in the brain.
I was hooked; and if you find yourself saying (like I once did) “I could never live without my cheese!” you’re hooked too.
A day did not pass without me consuming some manner of cheese, butter, ice-delight, and I can’t even write this section without my brain clamoring in a distractionary jangle of sense-memories linked to all my old favorites.
You may know me from a distance and just think I’m a willowy, Earthy harpy; but you don’t truly know me, unless you also bore witness to the profound Hobbit depths of my past cheese zeal.
However, I learned what cheese was doing to my body, my son’s body, yours, and the earth’s; and I cut that cord.
You have the ability to do so too, and this book will explain precisely why you should.
None of this is easy, but it is necessary; and there is joy, kindness, and health on the other side.
