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Now available through the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM): a directory of health care providers who advocate a plant-based diet.
Still looking for a physician who understands plant-based nutrition? Through an easy-to-use searchable worldwide database, users can now find physicians, nurses, dietitians, and many other health care professionals by region and specialty.
Just go to PCRM.org/FindADoctor!
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is excited to announce the Redlands, California-based Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) as the first in the nation to earn its Certified Lifestyle Medicine Program designation. The new designation recognizes, supports and encourages adoption of evidence-based health intervention programs that meet rigorous review requirements and standards for offering lifestyle modification for chronic disease treatment and reversal.
“CHIP is a powerful disease reversal tool that disrupts and curtails the rising chronic disease rates in a highly effective manner,” said ACLM President Dexter Shurney, MD, MBA, MPH, FACLM, DipABLM. “We congratulate the program as the first to earn this prestigious designation.”
The certification process is designed to support and leverage programs that use lifestyle change as a therapeutic intervention for disease treatment and reversal. — READ MORE
“New Guidelines: No Need to Reduce Red or Processed Meat Consumption for Good Health!” This was the surprising headline on a news release distributed by the Annals of Internal Medicine on Sept 25.
The release was promoting a group of articles that would be published in the Annals on October 1. News outlets worldwide picked up the story. The message was clear: Meat had received scientific dispensation from its links with heart disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and other serious problems. Documents unearthed by the Physicians Committee, however, revealed that the authors of these studies had hidden financial ties to a multimillion-dollar meat-marketing entity.
“A study says ‘Full speed ahead on processed and red meat consumption.’ Nutrition Scientists say ‘Not so fast’”
—The Washington Post
Just days before the release of the Annals articles, the Physicians Committee confronted an equally dangerous publication which pushed parents to make dairy milk the choice for their children, despite dairy’s health risks. Non-dairy milks got surprising thumbs-down from the authors. Again, the Physicians Committee found industry ties, including dairy industry payments to the organizations that sponsored the publication.
Here are some of the details more fully covered in GOOD MEDICINE.
Bradley Johnston, the lead author of the Annals articles, had hidden the fact that he had been promised a $188,889 job with Texas A& M University’s AgriLife program which has conducted a reported $4.5 million in beef research in 2019 alone. In addition, AgriLife had signed an agreement for an additional $76,863 for Johnston to lead a follow-up research project designed to reexamine the risk of saturated (“bad”) fat.
Furthermore, AgriLife’s vice chancellor and dean, Patrick Stover, who was co-author on the Annals article, also hid from the Annals journal his conflict of interest in overseeing a vast meat research and marketing entity.
For the pro-dairy publication Healthy Beverage Consumption in Early Childhood, the money trail was more obvious. Among the report’s sponsors was the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND, formerly known as the American Dietetic Association). As a sponsor, it has received repeated financial infusions from the National dairy Council. As a second sponsor, the American Heart Association (AHA), has also received annual cash payments from the National Dairy Council to be listed on the AHA’s Industry Nutrition Forum.
“For the pro-dairy publication, the money trail was more obvious.”
—Good Health
After the Physicians Committee reported the money trail, the AHA quickly erased the National Dairy Council’s name from its web site.
(This article represents excerpts from the Physician Committee’s Winter 2020 publication GOOD MEDICINE.)
Following a vegetarian diet reduces medical care expenses compared with consuming a diet containing meat. Researchers in Taiwan looked at more than 12,000 Buddhist volunteers (vegetarians) and compared them with Taiwan’ general population. The vegetarians had a 25% lower medical expenditure, especially in the areas of hypertension, elevated cholesterol, depression, coronary heart disease and kidney disease.
(Nutrients. 2019;11:2688)
Plant-based diets help prevent and manage chronic kidney disease, according to a review published online in Current Opinion in Nephrology and Hypertension. Reviewing the most recent body of literature behind dietary interventions for the treatment and prevention of kidney disease, they recommend the advantages of a plant-based diet over the traditional animal protein diet, which exacerbate the progression of preexisting kidney disease. The use of a plant-based foods in the treatment of kidney disease showed results comparable to oral medications with added improvements in blood pressure, weight and other health outcome measures. Healthful plant-based dietary interventions offer new and effective tools for treatment and prevention of kidney disease.
(Curr Opin Nephrol Hypertens. Published online Nov. 12, 2019)