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Health – What’s in Your Mouth?

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Think about this: From the 1930s to 1950s doctors heavily promoted cigarettes as a healthy activity, a treatment to relax and even a useful mechanism with which to open our lungs for improved breathing.

Today we know this “good health” advice is ridiculous. In years to come, we will likely look back and say the same thing about doctors promoting animal-based foods. Unfortunately, most doctors do not have expertise in the healing properties of food.

This is not always our doctors’ fault. There is very little focus on preventive care throughout medical school and training. As cardiologist Joel Kahn, MD, relates, “During the 1980s when I completed medical school and cardiology fellowship, there was no discussion about nutrition and health in the halls of academic medical centers.”

Though the medical world has mostly focused on diagnosing disease and treating with technology and drugs, some doctors have devoted careers to understanding the relationship between health and food. Their conclusions: our “evolution” to an omnivore diet coincides with our rise in disease.

“The greatest medical discovery of the last 20 years is the understanding that our Western diseases are largely lifestyle-related,” Denis Burkitt, MD, said in 1992. But what’s exciting? “They must be preventable and potentially reversible.” And there’s good evidence he is right.

Famed doctor and author Dean Ornish, MD, convincingly proved that a plant-based whole food diet coupled with exercise and stress management could reverse the atherosclerotic plaques and indolent prostate cancer.

And renowned doctor Neal Bernard, MD, has demonstrated that a diet devoid of animal products is very effective in reversing diabetes. Of his diabetic patients, 71 percent were off their oral medications within four weeks and with normal sugar levels.

Ornish and Bernard are in good company. As the following doctors attest, the answers to our leading health woes are not at the bottom of a pill bottle, but at the end of our fork.

Reversing Heart Disease with Plant-based Foods

“We were born with clean, flexible arteries, and they should stay that way throughout our lives. The arteries of most Americans, however, are clogged with cholesterol, fats and calcium. The cause of coronary artery heart disease is no longer a mystery. We know that cultures whether by heritage or tradition that consume plant-based nutrition have virtually no cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis only became more apparent in Japan and China with the import of the rich Western diet laced with meat, eggs and dairy products.

“Atherosclerosis-related diseases are not a ‘natural’ way to go, and individuals with established coronary artery disease who completely transition to plant-based foods can halt and reverse their diseases.”—Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD.

Where Disease and Eating Habits Intersect

“The statistics are convincing. Cardiovascular disease and cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, and lungs are now claiming every third and fourth American life, respectively. In the early 1900s fewer than ten percent of deaths in the United States were attributed to cardiovascular disease. Now it is the number one killer. And consider this: In spite of newer and refined forms of insulin and bioengineered medications, diabetes has gone up 700 percent since World War II.

“What can help explain these changes? In the 1900s, Americans got 70 percent of their protein from plant foods. Today, they get 70 percent of their protein from animal products that are high in saturated fat, cholesterol, trans fat and devoid of fiber.”—Dr. Hans Diehl.

Diet Has the Power to Address the Root Cause of Illness

“Because I suffered from hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and pre-diabetes (I have a long family history of Type-2 diabetes and coronary heart disease), I decided to try this lifestyle approach and became a vegetarian. Although I was told being vegan would be most effective, I decided to try being vegetarian first and my experiment worked. Within a few months my blood pressure and glucose levels were well within the normal range. I no longer required my diuretic for hypertension and my dose of Lipitor had been cut by more than half. Excited by my success, I decided to take the full plunge and see what would happen to my numbers if I became a complete vegan. On a vegan diet I was able to get off all medication, including Lipitor!”—Dexter Shurney, MD, MBA, MPH

Physician, Heal Thyself, Eliminate Animal Products from Your Diet

“I did not know that my diet high in animal products deprived my body of antioxidants, vitamins, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals, enzymes, minerals, essential fatty acids, fiber and many other important ingredients that are only found in plants. My animal-based diet was inflammatory and acid forming—deteriorating my body, causing rapid aging and an array of diseases. I started to gain weight and feel tired and fatigued. My mood started to change. My brain was foggy and my body felt heavier and heavier. More importantly, I didn’t even know it was not normal to feel that way. After getting bigger and sicker every day for two to three years, I finally decided this was not how I wanted to treat my body and my mind.

“As I changed my diet, my weight started to normalize, my energy increased, my fatigue and depressed mood improved, and my heartburn and stomach problems disappeared. I felt much lighter and better physically and emotionally after I changed to a plant-based diet. Thousands of scientific studies prove that the best and the most health-promoting diet is plant-based and devoid of animal products.

“The majority of the diseases afflicting human societies today can be cured by a shift to a plant-based diet. As a gastroenterologist whose first line of theory for her patients is a plant-based diet, I experience and observe this transformation every single day. Illnesses can potentially completely heal or improve significantly with a change of diet. The power of our own healing is in our hands.”—Zarin Azar, MD, Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist

Plant-based Diets Deter Atherosclerosis

“Many patients with atherosclerosis are surprised at the bulk of their plaque, which can be seen and felt without magnification. When enough arteries are blocked, ulcers and gangrene occur in the toes and feet and are the leading cause of leg amputation. Complications of arterial disease are the most common reasons for the estimated 65,000 leg amputations performed in the U.S. each year. Studies have evidenced that a plant-based diet is associated with lower rates of atherosclerotic disease.

“Plant-based diets demonstrate lower serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels, decreased incidence of cardiovascular events, and even reversal of arterial atherosclerosis. In general, vegetarians have lower incidence of atherosclerosis, cardiac events and all-cause mortality.

“A cross-cultural large trial, the Cornell China Study, showed how rural Chinese had a fraction of the death rate from heart disease compared to Americans. American men had almost 17 times the death rate from atherosclerotic heart disease and American women had 5.5 times higher mortality from the same cause. The average Chinese dietary fat intake was less than half as a proportion of diet, fiber intake was three times as high and animal protein intake was comparatively very low at less than 10 per cent of that in the U.S. diet, and vegetable intake was much higher. The rates of atherosclerotic disease were positively associated with meat intake and sodium intake, but decreased in relation to consumption of green vegetables and plasma levels of monounsaturated fatty acids.

“Although the project did not set out to study vegans or plant-based diets, the conclusion was that a plant-based diet is the most preferable way to avoid atherosclerosis.”—Kristofer M. Charlton-Ouw, MD, FACS, Vascular Surgeon

Convinced Yet? What’s on Your Plate

“Doctors are trained that it is a waste of time to talk about nutrition, but I can assure you that it is not a waste of time. The only time I have ever been able to decrease insulin dosages in diabetics or stop blood pressure pills in patients with high blood pressure, it has been because the patient has modified his or her diet to be plant-based.”—Mary Went, MD

Thrive, Health and Wellness, Shushana Castle, vol. 26, 14–16.

“Meat consumption has conclusively been linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other chronic and deadly diseases. God’s people should dispense with flesh foods. Those who are seeking to become pure and holy cannot continue to use as food anything that has so harmful an effect on soul and body.” Counsels on Diet and Foods, 386.

Health – Chew, Chew and Chew Some More!

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We are fearfully and wonderfully made. There are so many fascinating things to learn about ourselves. I cannot wait until we get to heaven where time is unlimited and we will have an eternity to learn and understand the in-depth workings of the amazing bodies the Lord has provided us. But in the meantime, we need to be thankful for the understanding the Lord does provide to us of the simple actions of our bodies. What does happen to food once it leaves the mouth? The following information is very fascinating to learn about the travel of a meal in its journey through the body.

The Mouth

Man was created with a keen sense of taste. This serves a double purpose; first that great pleasure would be derived from the experience of eating, which is a necessary act of existence. The only time food gives any special pleasure is while it is in the mouth; once it is swallowed, the joy is over. It would seem natural that there would be a desire to prolong this joy to its utmost, which would automatically fulfill the second purpose of the sense of taste by keeping the food in the mouth long enough so that it will be thoroughly masticated and salivated. This is necessary to normal digestion and elimination and is a part of the Creator’s perfect plan for our existence.

Science has revealed that while chewing and tasting food the peristaltic activity of the colon is four times as vigorous as at other times. Consequently, if one chews and tastes his breakfast quickly for only ten minutes, he gets but little of this extra help toward elimination, while if he chews and tastes the meal for forty minutes, he receives four times as much help.

“When food is taken into the stomach, the movements of the tube become vigorous. Indeed, while the food is still in the mouth and being chewed, and before the morsel has been swallowed, the movements begin, and are four times as vigorous during the taking of a meal as at other times. This is a very excellent reason why constipated persons should eat deliberately, taking ample time at meals and chewing long and well. Food is the natural laxative. The act of eating starts the action of the muscular machinery by means of which first the food and later the food residues are transported along the alimentary canal, and so long as chewing continues new impulses are continually transmitted to the stomach and intestines which quicken the peristaltic movements and activity of the whole digestive machine. The observation of Hirsch, Case, and others have shown that the colon contents advance as far during the hour of eating as during four hours just before the meal.” J.H. Kellogg, M.D., The Itinerary of a Breakfast, Funk & Wagnalls, 1918, 13, 14, 87, 88.

The Stomach

After the chewing is finished the food passes into the stomach where it is mixed with the gastric juice, beginning the digestion of protein. After about four hours, the food should have passed out through the pylorus, which means gate keeper, into the duodenum where it receives the juice from the pancreas and the bile from the liver, and thence it passes into the small intestine where digestion is completed by the combined work of the saliva, gastric, and pancreatic juices and the bile. Now it is ready for absorption into the blood and to be used in rebuilding the body.

The Intestine

The interior of the small intestine, which is about twenty feet long, is provided with many millions of villi, which absorb the foods into the blood. Mineral oil cannot be absorbed, as it is only a lubricant, and so it smears over these villi and hinders them from passing the food into the blood. After about four hours in the small intestine, digestion should be completed and the nutrients passed into the blood and the residue into the colon for elimination.

Note: Four hours in the stomach and four in the small intestine. The residue should not take over sixteen hours to complete the journey so that no food would remain in the tract over twenty-four hours.

If foods move according to this schedule, the ordinary cases of sour stomach, intestinal decay, gas, and constipation will disappear, for this is normal.

“A breakfast should reach the colon with all of the good already absorbed by the body about noon and it should pass through and out of the body not later than after breakfast time the next day, and if we are perfectly normal the lunch and supper residue may go along with it. Anything slower than this is constipation, and is a retention in the intestine of residue for too long a time.

“Under normal conditions there is an impulse to move the bowels after each meal. A well-trained set of organs in a well-managed body will react in this desirable fashion under perfectly normal conditions.” C. Ward Crampton, M.D., Chairman National Committee on Education, National Congress of Parents and Teachers; and Director Health Service Clinic, Post Graduate Medical School, New York City.

But people do not live that way. If people secured an elimination for each meal, the majority of our ills would disappear; but most people believe that if there is one elimination each day they are doing well, and the majority do not succeed at that without taking some laxative or cathartic. (Americans spend fifty million dollars a year for seven hundred kinds of laxatives.) The X-ray has shown that most of the people who live on the one-a-day plan are holding the residue in the tract for fifty hours. Often there is delay in the stomach, producing fermentation. When fermented food reaches the small intestine and is held there overtime it decays; and when it remains in the colon for still more hours, its condition cannot be accurately described. …

Natural foods … will not ordinarily putrefy in the tract in twenty-four hours, so that if they remain in the stomach four hours, in the small intestine another four, they still have sixteen hours to pass through the twelve feet of the colon and yet be within the safety limit of twenty-five hours. But after twenty-five hours putrefaction begins, so that the people who live on the one-a-day plan and, unknowingly, carry the remains for fifty hours, are allowing twenty-five hours for putrefaction for every meal, every day, year after year. Decayed food is passing into the blood and thence to every organ, gland, nerve, and cell day and night during every hour of life. That program makes health impossible and the coming of disease sure. On the other hand, if all residues leave the body inside of twenty-five hours, there can be no sour stomach, gas, and putrefaction, and life will be one continuous joy. Why not live on that high plane?

Many people do not know that an elimination for each meal is the health rule. They would know it if they but stopped to think. An untrained child often has to go to the toilet before the meal is finished. There is proof that the rule is right. Here is another. When your nose gets the aroma of delicious food, your mouth “waters.” Why? Because the nose said to the mouth, “Something good is coming, get ready for it.” And the mouth prepared the saliva. Likewise, when the food is in the mouth an advance message goes to the stomach saying that food is coming, and it in turn prepares the gastric juice before the food arrives. In similar manner, when the food is in the mouth and also while it is in the stomach other advance messages go on to the intestine announcing that something is coming and that room should be prepared for it, and the only way room can be ready for it is for the intestine to pass its contents to the colon and the colon eliminate its contents. That is easy to understand once you think about it. Any rhythm slower than this is some degree of constipation. Establish this rule and follow what you are reading until you attain this ideal.

Remember, for good health chew your food well!

Adapted from Abundant Health, by Julius Gilbert White, Teach Services, Inc., 2005, 116–118.