 Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. The coronavirus pandemic has made many of us very aware of the importance of maintaining and improving our health. Make that your silver lining. Because the more positive change we can make to our diet and lifestyle, the better. Today we take a close look at how diet can affect the diseases that attack the immune system. We start with the benefits of an anti-inflammatory diet, with a study from a notable new medical journal. The International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention, a new, peer-reviewed medical journal created to document the science of nutrition and lifestyle to prevent, suspend, and reverse disease, with an editor-in-chief no less prestigious than Dr. Kim Williams, Chief of Cardiology at Rush and past president of the American College of Cardiology. I was honored to join their editorial advisory board, along with so many of my heroes. And the best part is it's free! Go to ijdrp.org and put in your email to subscribe for free, and you'll be alerted when new issues are out, which you can download in full for free in PDF form. Instead of preventing chronic lifestyle diseases, we doctors just tend to manage them. Instead of curing, we just mitigate. Why? Because of finance, culture, habit, tradition. Many of us envision a world where trillions of dollars are not wasted on unnecessary medical care. For this reason comes the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention. After all, without data, you're just another person with an opinion. Just to give you a taste, how about pitting plants against one of the most inflammatory diseases out there? The lupus, an autoimmune disease in which your body can start attacking your own DNA. Kidney inflammation is a common consequence, and even with our armamentarium of immunosuppressant drugs and steroids, lupus-induced kidney inflammation can lead to end-stage renal disease, meaning dialysis and death, unless perhaps you pack your diet with some of the most anti-inflammatory foods out there, and your kidney function improves so much you no longer need dialysis or a kidney transplant. Another similar case is also presented with a resolution in symptoms and normal kidney function, unless he deviated from the diet. Even just cutting out animal products, randomizing people to cut out meat, eggs, and dairy without significantly increasing fruit and vegetable intake, can cut C-reactive protein levels, a sensitive indicator of whole body inflammation, by nearly a third within eight weeks. But with lupus, they weren't messing around. A pound of leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables a day, like kale, fruits like berries and lots of chia or flax, and a gallon of water a day, basically a green smoothie diet to extinguish lupus flares. Note though, if your kidneys are already compromised, they should be done under physician supervision so they can monitor your electrolytes like potassium, and make sure you don't get overloaded with fluid. On the mind, with such remarkable improvements due to dietary changes alone, the hope is that researchers will take up the mantle and formally put it to the test. Autoimmune inflammatory skin disease reversals can be particularly striking visually. A woman with a 35-year history of psoriasis unsuccessfully managed for year after year with drugs suffering from other autoimmune conditions like chogrens as well, but put her on an extraordinarily healthy diet packed with greens and other vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, avocado, some whole grains, and boom, within a year. She went from 40% of her entire body surface area inflamed and affected down to 0% completely clear. Oh, and her chogren symptoms resolved as well as a bonus while helping to normalize her weight and cholesterol. Speaking of autoimmune diseases, what about the treatment of type 1 diabetes with plants? We'll find out next. In our next story, we ask, is it possible to stop type 1 diabetes? If caught early enough, here are some answers. The brand new International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention had its share of typical plant-based miraculous disease reversals after having not one, but two heart attacks within two months, a whole-food, plant-based diet, and no more chest pain, controlling his cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugars, while losing 50 pounds as a neat little side bonus. I already discussed the cases of autoimmune inflammatory disease reversal, the psoriasis, the lupus nephritis kidney inflammation, and speaking of autoimmune diseases, we didn't think we could do anything about type 1 diabetes. In contrast to type 2 diabetes, which is a lifestyle disease that can be prevented and reversed with a healthy enough diet and lifestyle, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which your body attacks your own pancreas, killing off your insulin-producing cells, condemning you to a life of insulin injections, unless perhaps you catch it early enough. Maybe if we can switch people early enough to a healthy enough diet, we can reverse the course by blunting that autoimmune inflammation. Now we know patients with type 1 may be able to reduce insulin requirements and achieve better blood sugar control with healthier diets, for example, randomized children and teens to a nutritional intervention in which they boost the whole-plant-food density of their diet, meaning eating more whole grains, whole fruit, vegetables, legumes, which are beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, and seeds, and the more whole-plant foods, the better the blood sugar control. The fact that more whole fruits was associated with better blood sugar control has important clinical implications for nutrition education in those struggling with type 1. We should be educating them on the benefits of fruit intake and allaying erroneous concerns that fruit may adversely affect blood sugar. But this case series went beyond just proposing better control of the symptom of diabetes, high blood sugars, but better control of the disease itself, suggesting the anti-inflammatory effects of whole healthy plant foods may slow or prevent further destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas if the dietary intervention is initiated early enough. One patient who began a vegetable-rich diet at age 3 immediately following diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, but three years later still has yet to require insulin therapy while experiencing a steady decline in autoantibody levels, markers of insulin cell destruction. Another child who didn't start eating healthier until several months after diagnosis maintains a low dose of insulin with good control. And even if the insulin-producing cells have been utterly destroyed, type 1 diabetes can still enjoy dramatically reduced insulin requirements and reduced inflammation and reduced cardiovascular risk, which is the number one cause of death for type 1 diabetics over the age of 30. Type 1s have 11 to 14 times the risk of death from cardiovascular disease compared to the general population. And it's already the number one killer among the public, so it's like 11 to 14 times more important for type 1 diabetics to be on the only diet and lifestyle program ever proven to reverse heart disease in the majority of patients once centered around whole plant foods. And the fact that it may also help control the disease itself is just sugar-free icing on the cake. And all this exciting new research was just from the first issue of the journal. As a bonus, there's a companion publication called the Disease Reversal and Prevention Digest, a companion publication to the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention for the lay public, with the belief I wholeheartedly share that everyone has a right to understand the science that could impact their health. And so, you can go behind the scenes and hear directly from the author of the Lupus series, with bonus interviews from luminaries like Dean Orange, practical tips from dieticians on making the transition towards a healthier diet complete with recipes. The second issue continued to feature practical tips like how to eat plant-based on a budget, what Dr. Clapper is doing to educate medical students, what Audrey Sanchez from Balanced is doing to help change school lunches, and if you think that's hard, Dr. Osfield got healthy foods served at a hospital. What a concept! And what magazine would be complete without an article to improve your sex life? Now while the journal itself is free, downloadable at ijdrp.org, the companion digest available at diseasereversaldigest.com carries a subscription fee, but I, for one, am a proud subscriber. In our final story, the Spice Turmeric was put to the test for the treatment of uncontrollable lupus. Different autoimmune diseases tend to target different organs. For immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells on our pancreas, we can end up with type 1 diabetes. For immune system attacks our thyroid gland, we can end up with hypothyroidism. But in the autoimmune disease lupus, our immune system attacks the very nucleus of our cells, often producing antibodies and attacking our DNA itself, so can damage any organ system and result in almost any complication. Women are nine times as likely to get it, and the peak age is too often at the peak of life. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans suffer from this dreaded disease. One of the most common organ-threatening manifestations is kidney inflammation, occurring in as many as half of the patients. It's also one of the most serious, caused by the disease itself, or as a result of intense immunosuppressive drug toxicity. Chemo drugs like cytoxin, cyclophosphamide, with severe life-threatening side effects that may include leukemia and bladder cancers. Many women lose their hair and become permanently infertile. There's a desperate need for better treatments. Oral supplementation of the spiced turmeric decreases protein urea, hematuria, and systolic blood pressure. The cardinal clinical manifestations in patients suffering from relapsing or refractory, meaning untreatable lupus kidney inflammation, a randomized and double-blind placebo-controlled study. Here's the protein urea data. An ominous prognostic sign the spilling of protein into the urine. In the control group, three people got better, three people got worse, and the rest pretty much stayed the same. In the turmeric group, one got worse, one stayed the same, but the rest all got better. Note they said turmeric, the whole spice, not curcumin, which is an extracted component often given in pill form. They took women without a controlled lupus and just had them take like a quarter teaspoon of turmeric with each meal for three months. In my local supermarket, that would come out to be about a nickel a dose, compared to $35,000 a year for one of the latest lupus drugs. Which of the two treatments do you imagine doctors are more likely to be told about? We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a vital timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audiobook, or now a hard copy of my latest book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, pre-order my How Not to Diet Cookbook out this December. It's beautifully designed with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. And all proceeds I receive from the sales of my books go to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a non-profit, science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates and the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship. It's strictly non-commercial, not sign anything. I just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.