Status Updates From How Not to Die: Discover th...

“Higher consumption of vegetables may cut the odds of developing depression by as much as 62%. A review in the journal of Nutritional NeuroScience concluded that, in general, eating lots of fruits and vegetables may present a non-invasive, natural, and inexpensive therapeutic means to support a healthy brain.”

“Researchers suggest that AA may impair the body’s emotions state. People with higher levels of arachidonic acid in their blood may end up with significantly higher risk of suicide and episodes of major depression.”

- chicken, eggs, beef, pork, and fish: highest sources of AA in American diets

Arachidonic Acid: a polyunsaturated omega fatty acid with inflammatory properties

- found in highest concentrations in chicken and eggs
- found in high concentrations in beef, pork, sheep, other meats, etc.

Fascinating info about how Asian women (living in Asia) have significantly lower rates of breast cancer / some theories point to green tea intake, mushrooms, and soy.

Soy in childhood provides higher future protections, but soy in adulthood is related to a 25% lower rate of breast cancer occurrence.

Soy’s plant estrogen is beneficial for women. Eating 1 tbsp of flax seed a day can decrease period by 1 day

Chapter 12: how not to die from suicidal depression

LDL cholesterol: cholesterol may play a role in the development and progression of breast cancer. Cancer appears to feed on cholesterol; it stimulates the growth of the cells. Tumors may suck up so much cholesterol that cancer patients’ cholesterol levels tend to plummet as cancer progresses (a bad sign, indicates cancer is aggressive)

“Meat consumption is the only food significantly associated with lower melatonin production.”

- melatonin is tested in the urine levels right after someone wakes up

- a Harvard study monitored melatonin and diet and concluded that meat consumption was a major factor in melatonin deficiencies

Pineal gland: right in the middle of the brain, connected to your actual eyes (the “3rd eye”) and has one function - to produce the hormone Melatonin

‘Appeal to Nature’ fallacy: someone proposes that something is good merely because it’s ‘natural’

“In biology, however, this may hold some truth. The conditions under which our bodies were finely tuned over millions of years can sometimes give us insight into our optimal functioning.”

2/2 - Researchers dripped the blood of women before and after 14 days of healthy living onto breast cancer cells growing in Petri dishes. The blood taken after they started eating healthier suppressed cancer growth significantly better and killed 20-30% more cancer cells than the blood taken from the same women just 2 weeks before.”

1/2 “Remarkably, eating a plant based diet while walking every day can improve our cancer defenses within just two weeks. -

“some breast cancers may start in the womb and be related to your mother’s diet.”

Breast cancer: “By the time doctors detect the tumor, it may have already been present for 40 years or longer. The cancer has been growing, maturing, and acquiring hundreds of new ‘survival of the fittest’ mutations that allow it to grow even more quickly as it tries to outmaneuver your immune system.”

- early detection is actually late detection. We don’t have the tech to detect earlier

“Meat already contains highly absorbable phosphates, adding more may just add insult to kidney injury. Chicken seems to be the worst offender. A supermarket survey found that more than 90% of chicken products contained phosphate additives.”

- phosphate affects kidney functioning and increases kidney stone occurrence

- is the coloring agent in Coca Cola

- labeled as flavoring or broth in meats

“Ancient human diets largely consisted of plants.” - plants are less acidic than meats/fish

Tubular toxicity: impact of acid inducing diets that hurt the tiny delicate urine making tubes in the kidneys. They produce ammonia as a base to counter the acid, but the extra ammonia in the kidneys over a long period of time can damage them

“Could substituting plant protein for animal protein help slow the deterioration of kidney function? Yes. 1/2 a dozen clinical trials have shown that plant protein replacement can reduce hyper filtration and/or protein leakage.”

- kidney function/health can be monitored based on the amount of proteins found “leaking” (protein spillage) from the kidney.

“An equivalent amount of plant protein causes virtually no noticeable stress on the kidneys. Eat some tuna and, within 3 hours, your kidney filtration rate can shoot up 36%, but eating the same amount of protein in the form of tofu doesn’t place any additional strain on the kidneys.”