Jane Harris

What explains the Achilles’ heel in certain Asian diets? For decades, Japan has had the longest life expectancy in the world, while spending just a fraction on healthcare compared to other high-income countries. This longevity has been attributed in part to Japanese dietary patterns, which are thought to have contributed to their comparatively low rates of coronary artery disease. Japan has historically had among the lowest rates of colon, breast, ovarian, prostate, bladder, and blood cancers. Japan, however, has among the highest rates of stomach cancer, as you can see below and at 0:42 in my video The Role of Kimchi and H. Pylori in Stomach Cancer . Japanese men may have had seven times less prostate cancer than Americans, but they had six times more stomach cancer. Is there some Achilles’ heel in the Japanese diet? One of the first theories, proposed in the 1970s, was that it was the talc used to polish white rice to give it a glossy sheen. That was the case with ovarian ...

Coffee can improve Parkinson’s symptoms within three weeks compared to placebo, but do the benefits last? When James Parkinson described the classic symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, “he could hardly foresee the evolution of our understanding over the next two hundred years”—like the role of nutrition. High dietary intakes of animal fat, mercury, iron, and dairy products seem to increase Parkinson’s disease risk, while a plant-based dietary pattern and the intake of antioxidants may be protective. “Plant-based diets are known to preserve body tissues from oxidative stress and inflammation, both hallmarks of chronic-degenerative diseases” like Parkinson’s. However, animal-based foods, particularly those rich in animal proteins and saturated fats, are correlated with the promotion of neurodegenerative diseases, in addition to some of our leading killers like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Not all plants are necessarily good, though. For example, consider the potential neurotox...

Our gut flora is determined by what we eat, for good or for ill. When we eat meat (including seafood), dairy, or eggs, our gut flora can take certain components in them (carnitine and choline) and produce something that ends up as a toxic compound called TMAO , which may set us up for a heart attack, stroke, and death. The process is illustrated below and at 0:26 in my video How to Cultivate a Healthy Gut Microbiome with Food . Give people two eggs, and they get a spike of TMAO in their bloodstream within hours of consumption. However, because gut bacteria play a critical role in this process, if they are then given a week of antibiotics to wipe out their gut flora and fed two more eggs, nothing happens. There’s no TMAO in their bloodstream because they have no egg-eating bacteria to make it. But once their gut bacteria have a month to start growing back, the eggs start to cause TMAO production once again, as you can see below and at 1:12 in my video . The same thing happens wi...

Why don’t more big payors in health care embrace plant-based eating? Many of the diseases “that cause a constant drain on health care budgets can be prevented by nutrition;” so, why aren’t the big payors getting involved? Even a 1% decline in excess body fat could alone save tens of billions in medical costs. You’d think at least the health insurance industry would try to get people to eat more healthfully to try to pay out less money. Well, one could say “the insurance industry benefits from high health care costs because these rising costs are simply passed on to both individuals and employers in terms of higher premiums and insurers take a fixed percentage of these premiums as increasing profits.” They get a piece of the pie; so, the bigger the pie—the unhealthier everyone is—the bigger their piece. “As such, insurers have not done as much as they could to help reduce health care costs because lower costs would hurt their bottom line.” Could you imagine “there was a medication t...

The hormonal benefits of fenugreek extend beyond the muscle-bulking testosterone boost. In my video about the benefits of fenugreek seeds, I profiled a study in which young men were randomized to a sugar pill or fenugreek capsules for eight weeks, and they got a significant improvement in upper body strength, lower body strength, body composition, as well as a significant reduction in body fat percentage. The only side effect? It can make your sweat and pee smell like maple syrup. Seems like a bonus! Studies on immature, castrated rats suggest fenugreek’s muscle bulking is a testosterone effect, as you can see below and at 0:44 in my video Fenugreek Benefits for Sexual Function, Painful Periods, and Milk Production . But its effect on humans wasn’t known until four randomized controlled trials put it to the test and found a significant boost of total blood testosterone. And indeed, fenugreek appears to improve sexual function in men, for example, doubling the frequency of morn...

If you put together all the new chemotherapy drugs approved over a dozen years, the average overall survival benefit is only 2.1 months. Though we often hear new cancer drugs described as “game changers” or “breakthroughs,” most afford much more modest benefits. In my last blog, I quoted an editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggesting that the majority of new cancer drugs don’t deliver clinically meaningful benefits—at all. When they’re later proven to be ineffective, they’re pulled from the market, right? No. “[E]ven when postmarket studies show the new drugs to have no clinically meaningful benefit compared with [a sugar pill] placebo or observation, most drugs retain FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] approval and remain on the market at prices comparable to those of the most expensive cancer drugs,” the same ridiculous prices. In fact, the most expensive drug the authors looked at, the one costing $169,836 a year, did not improve overall survival a...