The Numbers Don’t Lie
The primary
driving factor in the growing rates of and the costs associated with chronic
disease is diet. The solution to this
problem would appear to be simple, change our diet, yet simple and clear is far
from what the public sees. There are so
many special interests associated with this problem that many different
solutions confuse the issue.
The best way
to answer this question is to look at the actual research data we have
regarding it. While it has been very
clear for quite some time, this is often not what the public sees. A striking new study should bring the real
answer into focus.
The study
followed over 21,000 adults over 11 years.
Adherence to the Mediterranean and Paleo dietary patterns were
assessed.
Death rates
from cancer, cardiovascular disease and from all causes were compared between
those with the highest and lowest quintiles (highest 20% to the lowest 20%) of
adherence to these two diets. The
results were striking with high adherence to the Paleo diet reducing deaths
from 22-28%, while high adherence to the Mediterranean diet reduced risks 32-37%.
The
comparable prevention rates of death from about any cause associated with
chronic disease is very telling.
The tale is that bad
diet drives the risk of death from a broad group of diseases, and good diet
offers broad protection against this same spectrum.
If these
results could be produced from a single drug, it would be hailed as a great
medical breakthrough and many would be standing in line to get it. It would also be very expensive and would have
its limitations as every drug has been found to.
For example,
improvements in delaying the complications of type two diabetes (TTDM) have
been made with the ever-evolving group of medications targeting the
disease. The complications include
diseases that diabetes drives such as stroke and heart disease. While the advances in drug therapy have
pushed back these complications by a decade or so, they are simply delayed and
will eventually occur. The problem is
that while the complications can be delayed a decade or so, the age of onset of
TTDM has plunged from 56 years of age
to 40 years of age
over the past 40 years.
It is simple
math, if you push back the complications associated with a disease by a decade
or so but the disease is occurring a decade and a half earlier in life, the
battle is being lost. The real elephant
in the room here is that no medication has made any progress with preventing diabetes. That can only be done with diet.
The only
fail-safe solution can be as it always has been – to fix the factors that cause
the disease in the first place. Diet and
exercise are the two factors that most associate with risk with diet being the
strongest by a long-shot. So, does nutrition really matter? In fact, as this study shows, it literally is
a matter of life and death.
Whalen et
al. Paleolithic
and Mediterranean Diet Pattern Scores Are Inversely Associated with All-Cause
and Cause-Specific Mortality in Adults.
Journal Nutrition, 2017.
