How Not to Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

PROS: The advice in this book can prevent all of, and reverse most of, the following conditions:Heart DiseaseHigh Blood Pressurejust about every form of CancerHypertensionDiabetesAcneObesityGoutArthritisCluster MigrainesAlzheimer'sParkinson'sSuicidal Depressionand more.CONS: There is a typo on page 272.So ya know, if you hate typos more than you hate dying, this book probably isn't for you.

This book details the connection between our food and many diseases. I myself have prostrate cancer, stage 4 with bone metastasises. I was given less than a year to live at diagnosis. My conventional meds had stopped working, my cancer markers had steadily increased for the last 4 months when I read this book. I followed the recommended diet of no more processed foods, no animal products, such as dairy, eggs and meats. This was a drastic change for me. Within about twelve weeks my five metastatic areas became inactive, my cancer markers returned to normal, my blood values returned to normal, my previous borderline high blood pressure became excellent. I feel good, I have no more pain and I look healthy. Personally I don't need any more scientific proof to tell me I am on the right track. Is it easy? .... No! But I have a five year old daughter and a wife, and i need to be here a little longer. I am not claiming I am cured. I continue my conventional treatments, but I am also changing my diet, and I have started a one hour per day exercise program. The way I understand things now, I see that we are giving ourselves these terrible diseases, by eating stuff we aren't supposed to. In the process we are lining the pockets of some companies with billions of dollars. We have to understand that these industries are getting rich off our backs. I can only recommend reading this book, following the advice and if not saving your own life, at least you will make it a lot better.

I bought this book in January 2016, after hearing an interview with Dr. Greger on a podcast. At first I found it hard to read, but not because it difficult or confusing, but because it was changing everything I thought I knew about food. I had lost 45 lbs already by eating "healthier."I stopped reading about 1/3 way through and then continued my "healthy lifestyle." This included lots of prepackaged "health" foods and shakes. Lots of sugar and oil too.In March of 2016 I started to get a rash on my face. Psoriasis. I've never had it before but it quickly spread to other parts of my body. By May 2016 I was miserable with my rash and still sitting at 204 lbs, despite my healthy lifestyle and consuming 1500 calories a day.I decided something must be going on in my body, why was it attacking itself? Why wouldn't my psoriasis clear up, despite the creams my doctor prescribed?I went back and started the book "How Not to Die" again in late May 2016. By Mid June I had fully adopted his diet and now in September 2016 I will never look back. I'm down 30 more lbs, my skin is finally clearing up, and I have so much energy!This book has changed my life and my only wish is it cost less so I could buy a copy for all of my friends!Update: 7/2017I've been eating this way for a year now and I could never go back. I'm 36 and feel better than I ever did in my 20's. I'm down over 50lbs in a year- see update pic below!

This book saved me from crippling diverticulitis, which at 32, had already robbed me of nearly 8 years of my life. The weirdest thing about fully plant-based eating is how horrifically extreme it seems before you attempt it, and how OBVIOUS it is after you've made the change. Faced with horrible pain associated with recurrent intestinal infections, I spent YEARS trying and failing on every fad quackpot miracle diet. GAPS, SCD, Paleo, AIP Paleo, FODMAPS. I tried every insanely expensive probiotic, and tried every fiber supplement. Despite spending thousands of dollars and every second of every day trying to heal myself, I was lucky to get two days a month where I felt even remotely like a person. Yet it wasn't until my weight declined to the point where I was faced with resection surgery and associated risk of a colostomy bag that I finally said "enough". This book found me just in time and I'm grateful every single day. It was definitely a process going from barely tolerating 10 grams of fiber daily to eating upwards of 100 grams of unprocessed plant fiber, but I got there, and got my life back in the process. No pain. No constipation. No more flares. Of course my doctors and specialists mumble contemptuously when I present them this information, as if it were obvious but never presented to me because a life without bacon is no life at all. Sometimes, I get angry about losing a sizable chunk of the best years of my life to Western food and medicine. Sometimes I get angry that all my friends and family thing I'm one of those crazy "vegan hipsters". I find the best remedy is just popping on one of Dr. Greger's Youtube vids and enjoying his positivity and enthusiasm for plant-based eating. Thank you Dr. Greger for all that you've done, and all that you continue to do!

I will start at the end in the hope that more people will read some useful advice. A huge amount of ill health is caused by today's indulgent western diets. There is no doubt that eating sugar and unrefined carbohydrates takes a lot of the blame. Eating lots of fat, especially animal fat, and other animal products, probably shares the blame, but the science is less certain. A lot of confusion arises because people who stop eating animal products often switch to refined carbohydrates so they are swapping one bad diet for another one. Dr Greger has much less to say about carbohydrates and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the book is grossly biased. That doesn't mean his advice is bad. If you follow his recommendations, you will get the best of all worlds (except gastronomical pleasure) because he does not recommend switching to refined carbohydrates, he recommends switching to healthy whole grains, vegetables and fruit. The challenge is that if you stop eating meat, dairy, and all the yummy foods he goes on about, and also stop eating all the refined carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, and pasta, that he doesn't say so much about, you are going to have to eat an awful lot of those healthy fruits and vegetables.Now I go back to the beginning. Once upon a time a man called Dr Joel Furhman wrote a book called Eat to Live, which recommended, in sensationalist prose, that we should all eat a lot of varied plant material, little or no animal material, cut back heavily on saturated fat and sugar, and basically avoid just about everything really yummy like cake, chocolate, meat, biscuits, ice-cream, cheese, crisps. Dr Fuhrman became very rich selling books, healthy foods, health retreats, and running a clinic.20 years later a man called Dr Michael Greger repeated the trick by by writing a book offering the same advice. Dr Greger's style is even more sensationalist than snappy Dr Fuhrman's and at times he sounds more like a salesman than a scientist or doctor. His solution to everything is to stop eating animal products and eat a lot of plant products. How not to die from suicide? become a vegan. How not to die from pollution? don't worry about air quality, just become a vegan. Flatulence from beans? Just cut out the dairy. Heart condition? become a vegan and whatever you do, don't take those dreadful statins which, in his world, have no role to play.The book is stronger in places than others. The dietary advice in the second half is well balanced and sensible. The same can't be said about the dismissive remarks about statins scattered throughout the first half of the book in contradiction to the vast respectable medical orthodoxy. In this his style is well into the conspiracy theory that characterises medical quackery, and indeed his chapter on how not to die from iatrogenic causes i.e. doctors killing you, treats the whole medical profession as a conspiracy to get rich without caring much about the health of their patients.A lot of his recommendations are properly backed up by science but I noticed that many of his assertions are carefully phrased using the word "may" as in "X may help with Y". This word "may" is littered through the book. Probably most of his recommendations are sound, but they reek of bias. I will focus on the heart disease chapter as I spent several hours studying his references. The problem is that he keeps talking about the damage caused by animal fats but the evidence mostly shows that heart disease is caused by fats in the blood. It doesn't necssarily follow that high fat in the blood is caused by eating fat. Indeed there is a strong body of opinion that says the opposite - this is the low carb school (strictly, the low refined-carb school). He cites a book called The Low-carb Fraud which has been convincingly discredited, and some of his references go back 40 years and more. Four of his key references are from the same self-confessed maverick. He does not mention a single risk or dietary disadvantage from turning vegan (although he does recommend B12 supplements). He ignores the array of scientific literature that disagrees with him, for example a huge, meta-study that showed only a very modest benefit from eating fruit and vegetables and no significant benefit from eating more than 5 a day. (If you are interested, look for the BMJ meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies by Wang). I sent this to Fuhrman's Institute and they did not seem to have heard of it either, although they did at least make an attempt to respond, thoughnot a very convincing one.In the heart chapter which I studied in detail, I was concerned to see that some of his evidence is presented erroneously. I have to go into some detail to explain this. He says on page 22 that two papers prove that (a) fish oil supplements don't work, (b) eating more fish doesn't work, and (c) fish oil doesn't help even if you have already had a heart attack. The paper which he says proves (c) actually proves (a). The one he says proves (a) and (b) is actually positive about fish oil. Neither of them support his assertions (b) or (c).Overall it is difficult to rate the book. The advice is probably worth following (if you can), and probably will make a big difference to your health. There is a lot of excellent discussion based on science but the salesmanship and the bias is a serious concern. For a more balanced, honest discussion it is worth reading Graham Lawton's This Book Could Save Your Life. However, it is so broad and so balanced, it doesn't go as far as it could safely go in making recommendations, and its discussion only skims the surface compared with the detail in Dr Greger's book. It is also worth reading The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung, a brilliant book with the same faults as Dr. Greger's. For Dr Fung, the solution to everything is to reduce sugar and his interpretation of the evidence is biased in the opposite direction to Dr Greger's. In Dr Fung's view there isn't a "shred of evidence" that a high fat diet is bad for you. I would love to get Dr Greger and Dr Fung in the same room together.

EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK! It is an invaluable resource. Dr Greger extolls the virtue of a plant-based lifestyle, but does so with an absolute raft of scientific evidence behind his claims and theories. The 'nutrition facts' team and the online resource is a fountain of knowledge - mining data from global studies to pull together key facts/summaries, making our job easier!This book is split into two sections. The first discusses key ailments of the 21st century, and presents theories behind how our diet could be responsible for causing, and curing, these ailments (with a gazillion references to peer-reviewed studies, blind studies, etc). The second section offers a load of recipes - ideas for helping us to get to that magical 'daily dozen' (tip: download the free daily dozen app to help you track your intake of the valuable food groups).Do your health a favour and read this book.

I almost stopped reading when I reached the middle of the book but I am grateful I continued. It could be boring sometimes but it is the boring stuff we don't know that kill us.

About the book: How Not to Die explains how a plant-based diet can extend your life while transforming your quality of living. It offers a wealth of health-boosting nutritional information and hands-on dietary advice that you won’t get from your doctor.About the author: Michael Greger, MD, is an internationally renowned doctor, author and speaker. Additionally, he serves as director of public health and animal agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States and runs the website NutritionFacts.org. Gene Stone is the author of several books on plant-based nutrition, including the bestseller, Forks Over Knives.My highlights:Poor diet is the number one cause of premature death, and it’s often ignored by the medical industry.Meat, dairy, eggs and processed foods that dominate the typical American diet are bad news. The study found that people who ate diets rich in these food groups were at greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and a number of other chronic ailments. Not just that, but excessive animal fat and processed meat also resulted in high cholesterol and an elevated chance of heart disease.A plant-based diet can provide better treatment than pharmaceuticals.Vegetarians of 12 years who began eating meat one day per week saw a drop in life expectancy of 3.6 years.So are vegetarians healthier? Well, cultures that eat plant-based diets certainly experience much less disease than we do in modern American society.Plant-based diets can even help reverse disease.Doctors find it easier to prescribe drugs than to change a diet, even though medication poses potential threats.Plant-based diets have been shown to be just as effective and come with none of the risks.Fruits, especially berries, help deter cancer and boost the immune system.A healthy diet should contain four servings of fruit a day, one of which should be berries. Keep in mind that means whole fruit and not fruit juice.Eating fruit has been found to improve lung function.This is due to fruit’s rich antioxidant content, which limits cellular damage and reduces inflammation. And don’t worry about the natural sugar in fruits causing weight gain. Only the fructose in added sugars is associated with health problems. The fiber, antioxidants and phytonutrients in fruit itself can combat the adverse effects of fructose.This incredible antioxidizing power is believed to come from their pigmentation, and berries are second only to herbs and spices as the most antioxidant-rich foods, with an average of ten times more antioxidants than other fruits.Vegetables are vital to a healthy diet.Whole vegetables, as opposed to processed ones, have been found to protect cellular telomeres – nucleotide “caps” that keep DNA healthy as cells divide and age. Not just that, but vegetables like broccoli and cabbage can aid liver and lung function while cutting the risk of lymphoma and prostate cancer.Eating five servings of veggies a day is the magic solution. Out of these five, two should be leafy greens like kale, arugula and chard. One should be a cruciferous vegetable like broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower. And the other two should include carrots, beets and mushrooms. Cruciferous vegetables are essential as they produce sulforaphane, a potentially powerful, anti-inflammatory, cancer-fighting molecule. These vegetables are best eaten raw since the enzyme that activates sulforaphane is destroyed by heat. Chopping them up before cooking is fine, however, since doing so activates the enzyme, thereby forming sulforaphane. After just 40 minutes, the molecule is preserved, and the vegetable can be safely cooked. Dark leafy greens are important since they contain the most nutrition per calorie of any food on earth. If you don’t like them, just try blending them into a fruit smoothie.Beans and whole grains are great for your health.The American Institute for Cancer Research recommends eating a serving of beans or legumes with every meal since they offer an animal-free protein with added benefits, like fiber.Soy is the most popular bean in America, but processed versions of soybeans, like tofu, should be avoided.Lentils are a good choice for legumes as they can cut a sugar spike, even hours after a meal. Beyond that, they’re loaded with prebiotics, can relax the stomach and slow the rate of sugar absorption.You should eat beans three times a day, and the same goes for whole grains, which can deter debilitating diseases.Whole grains can cut the risk of heart disease, type-2 diabetes, obesity and even strokesCheck nutritional labels and confirm that the ratio of carbohydrates to fiber is five to one or lower.14 October, 2017 12:29 ShareNuts and seeds are super nutritious.A single daily serving of nuts or seeds can make all the difference in fighting disease?The phytates found in nuts and seeds detoxify excess iron from the body, which can create free radicals linked to colorectal cancer. While phytates used to be considered inhibitors of mineral absorption, they’ve since been found to increase bone density.The most recommended seeds are chia, hemp, pumpkin, sesame and sunflower.Walnuts are the most nutritious. They’re even among the most antioxidizing foods and boast high levels of omega-3s.Herbs and spices make healthy foods even more beneficial.Herbs and spices can add flare to a dish, but these fragrant flavorings are also powerful fighters of disease, especially cancer.Spices like cloves, cinnamon, oregano and nutmeg inhibit an enzyme known as monoamine oxidase, which can spark depression.But of all the herbs and spices, turmeric is the best, especially for cancer.While turmeric is eliminated from the body quite quickly, simple black pepper can suppress this process.When it comes to beverages, water reigns supreme.Aim for at least five 12-ounce beverages per day, and there’s nothing better than pure H2O.Coffee, which benefits the liver and the brain. Those who drink more than two cups of java per day experience half the risk of both chronic liver issues and suicide.The second is tea, which can have powerful medicinal effects.Milk is a big no-goWhile moderate drinking – one drink a day for women and two for men – has benefits for heart disease, booze is also correlated with cancer.Exercise coupled with a healthy diet is the recipe for a long life.While healthy eating is essential, its benefits can only be increased by adding exercise to the mix. The daily recommendation is 90 minutes of moderate or 40 minutes of intense exercise.Final summaryThe key message in this book: Switching to a plant-based diet can help you live longer and more healthily. Many of the debilitating diseases we suffer from today are merely a result of eating animal-based foods. By changing your diet, you can prevent or even reverse conditions as serious as heart disease or cancer.

A lot more detailed information than I expected. Packed with useful stuff that you can choose to act on - or not ! This must be one of the most informative books about the links between what we eat and the health of our bodies ( and minds ).