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How Prebiotic Foods Keep Your Microbiome Healthy

We co-evolved a symbiosis with our good gut bacteria, but we aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. If you look at the classics—the most frequently cited articles in the scientific nutrition literature—the original glycemic index paper ranks tenth, cited more than a thousand times. Learning about fruits, vegetables, and cancer prevention comes in seventh. But hitting the top four, cited more than 2,000 times: “Dietary Modulation of the Human Colonic Microbiota: Introducing the Concept of Prebiotics.” As I discuss in my video How to Keep Your Microbiome Healthy with Prebiotic Foods , prebiotics are the food components that nourish and feed the good bacteria in our gut, like fiber and resistant starch. Eating high-fiber plant foods is generally “a good foundation for a prebiotic-rich diet.” Once upon a time, fiber was thought of as just the undigested part of food, known only for bulking up stools and keeping bowels regular. Then researchers discovered an array of receptors in ...
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How We Eat vs. How We Think We Eat

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The so-called optimism bias may get in the way of a healthy lifestyle. Yes, media messages about nutrition are often confusing and inconsistent, but many Americans know what is considered a healthy diet. I mean, does anyone really think drinking brown carbonated sugar water is good for them? The issue is that they don’t appear to be translating their knowledge into action. Why do people have such difficulty changing their dietary behaviors? While ignorance and confusion may play a part, being motivated to change is likely much more important. Certainly, we are living in a world that pushes us to eat whatever we want, regardless of the long-term consequences. “One of the major problems in getting people to change their behaviour is the need to get them to recognise the need to change.” For example, if you ask people how much meat they eat—or how much greasy food, eggs, sweets, alcohol, or butter—they claim to be eating less than the average person. So, if people think they’re at...
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The Link Between Breast Cancer and a Virus in Meat and Dairy

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Exposure to the bovine leukemia virus from meat and dairy (or a blood transfusion from those who eat meat or dairy) is a risk factor for cancer. In 2015, researchers in California found bovine leukemia virus (BLV) stitched into the DNA of human breast cancer tumors from mastectomies. The virus was found at much higher rates than in normal breast tissue obtained from breast reduction surgeries. Based on this difference, they calculated that as many as 37% of breast cancer cases may be attributable to exposure to BLV, likely through consuming milk or meat from infected animals. In response, the milk and meat industries seemed more concerned about consumer confidence than consumer cancer. But scientifically, the research priority turned to the question: Could the California results be replicated? The answer, it turns out, was yes. They were replicated among women in Iran. Replicated in Brazil. In Australia, the link was even stronger. In Texas, they found the same thing. Women dia...
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Could Bovine Leukemia Virus be a Cause of Breast Cancer?

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As many as 37% of breast cancer cases may be attributable to exposure to the bovine leukemia virus. The incidence of breast cancer continues to increase worldwide. In the United States, this amounted to a 40% increase in the incidence by the turn of the century. Presently, the main approach to preventing mortality is early detection and treatment. That’s important, but why not focus more on primary prevention—protecting people from risk factors so they don’t develop breast cancer at all? “Overall, it is estimated that 20% of all human cancers have an infectious origin.” Viruses can trigger cancer by turning on cancer genes or turning off cancer-suppressing genes, but they can also contribute to tumor formation just by causing chronic inflammation. Currently, cancer-causing viruses are considered “the major plausible hypothesis for a direct cause of human breast cancer.” How did we get here? It all started about 40 years ago when a professor of virology at UC Berkeley learned ...
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NDMA: A Cancer-Causing Contaminant in Meds and Meat

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Billion-dollar drugs have been pulled from the market for less carcinogenic contamination than is found in a single serving of grilled chicken. In 2018, one of the bestselling blood pressure drugs, valsartan—sold as Diovan—was found to be contaminated by the “probably carcinogenic” nitrosamine known as N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). It’s believed that about 20 million people worldwide were prescribed the drug tainted with this contaminant, which has a cancer risk shown to exceed that of many known potent carcinogens, such as asbestos, PCBs, and benzo[a]pyrene. As I discuss in my video Cancer-Causing NDMA in Medications (Zantac, Metformin) and Meat , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimated that taking the drug for a few years could cause cancer in as many as 1 in 8,000 people, whereas the European equivalent of the FDA estimated the cancer risk could be as high as 1 in 5,000. It is unlikely, researchers wrote in this 2019 paper, that drugs like valsartan are “a uniq...
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Peeling Back the Onion Claims

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What did randomized, controlled human trials find about the ways we may—or may not—benefit from eating onions? Onions are potentially a good source of antioxidants, which, interestingly, are concentrated in the outer layers just beneath the papery peel. White onions, for example, contain more than ten times the antioxidants in the outer layer compared to the inner core. Unfortunately, most people discard the most nutrient-rich outermost layers, “thus losing a valuable part of the antioxidant-rich material.” In general, yellow onions have more antioxidants than white onions. Red onions beat them both, based on three different antioxidant testing methods, as seen at 0:39 in my video Are Onions Beneficial for Testosterone, Osteoporosis, Allergies, and Cancer? Though red onions are indeed slightly better, yellow and white onions are no slouches, containing considerable levels of antioxidant activity. We know they’re nutritious, but are there any particular clinical benefits to eating...
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How to Boost Your Life Expectancy by 12 to 14 Years

What can physicians do to promote healthy, life-extending lifestyle changes? A pivotal paper published in Europe more than a decade ago entitled “Healthy Living Is the Best Revenge” found that practicing just four simple, healthy lifestyle factors compared to none could potentially have a strong impact on preventing chronic diseases. We’re talking nearly 80% less chronic disease risk, slashing diabetes risk by 93%, dropping heart attack risk by 81%, and cutting stroke risk in half and cancer risk by 36%. Think about what that means. The potential for preventing disease and death is enormous. In the United States alone every year, there are a half million first heart attacks, a half million first strokes, a million new cases of diabetes, and a million new cancer diagnoses. The message is clear: Practicing a few healthy behaviors can have a huge impact. What are those four fabled factors? never smoking not being obese averaging about a half hour of exercise a day following healt...
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