 Good morning colleagues. So today I Want to put processed food on trial for the cause of macular degeneration? And I'll play the part of the prosecuting attorney and you guys will be the jury. How does that sound that sound good and So we the defense attorney for processed food didn't show imagine that Unless Ben were you gonna do that? I Think he's gonna decline too So I think you know a defense attorney for processed food here thought he'd be crucified, right? So today ladies and gentlemen you will witness further evidence that age-related macular degeneration is caused by processed food consumption and that it is not caused by aging and genetics as conventional ophthalmology would currently believe what you're going to see is that Macular degeneration was an extraordinarily rare disorder just a hundred years ago and prior and today It is of epidemic proportions all around the world in developed nations And the only thing that's changed that can account for that is our diet the other thing I'm going to show you today is that The same people known to consume the most processed foods also develop the most heart disease hypertension type 2 diabetes stroke cancer obesity and Macular degeneration and that those correlations could not possibly occur by chance alone so age-related macular degeneration for those of you not aware is The leading cause of irreversible vision loss and blindness in people over the age of 65 worldwide Nearly one of three people over the age of 75 is affected with AMD today and has been since 1992 globally one of every 11 people over the age of 50 now affected 20,000 people will be diagnosed with macular degeneration today and tomorrow and the day after that 20,000 per day All right, so this is what the healthy macular looks like it is just about six millimeters across accounts for our central 10 degrees of vision and Of course, that's the most important part of your vision That's what sees faces and stop signs allows you to read and drive and and do all those things as It begins to degenerate in dry macular degeneration. It looks like this and then about 15 percent of patients will go on to develop wet macular degeneration and this is a progression of vision loss so at this stage a person would develop much more vision loss and eventually if this undergoes scarring Could result in what envision that's like this on the left these huge central blind spots But the question today is this is the difference due to diet and diet alone and In seven years of study what I will tell you is that I believe 100% That this disease is caused by diet and Diet alone now no question genetics plays a role But environment pulls the trigger and that environment is our diet. All right, so Now some of you may have heard me speak here a couple of years ago But if you didn't what do you what do you suppose the lifetime risk of developing AMD was back in the year? 1900 anybody Sorry Yes So the answer is nearly zero one in many thousands and I'll present just a little evidence of that today But the question is is if it affected one in many thousands in 1900 how did we go to nearly one in three affected by 1990 because that's what happened. That's what we need to think about as we go through this today so After studying nutrition and understanding Weston a price principles back in 2013 I developed this Hypothesis goes like this the displacing foods of modern commerce are the primary and proximate cause of AMD and the corollary to this Hypothesis is that any ancestral diet will prevent and may treat existing AMD now We're going to talk really briefly about ancestral versus westernized diets Now I know all of you here Understand this but let me just give you my perspective briefly because to me an ancestral diet is any diet that existed anywhere on the planet before 1880 the reason I picked that number is because we had virtually no processed foods Anywhere on the planet before 1880 with the exception of sugar in really small quantities 1880 is when we first got refined white flour. We've got vegetable oils the polyunsaturated vegetable oils then and then we got the Trans fats in 1911 when Procter and Gamble introduced those and of course as you know those have overtaken our food supply, right? And of course today our westernized diet looks a lot like this, right? 600,000 food items that you can put on the American plate today But if we break this down what we know is that 63% of this is made up of those for refined processed nutrient deficient foods in the form of added sugars refined white flour Primarily polyunsaturated vegetable oils and the trans fats, right? And you all know this is the recipe for Metabolic disaster and physical degeneration, right? Okay, so let's go back to Macular degeneration for a minute. Let me give you some perspective. I'm an ophthalmologist and let me tell you about what My profession believes about Macular degeneration today This is a statement from Joan Miller who's the chief and chair at mass Massachusetts, I and your infirmary in 2012 at the American Academy of Ophthalmology She made this statement quote it seems that AMD is a complex disease That results from the interaction of genetic susceptibility with aging and environmental factors Now so all about genetics and aging these are the huge two factors that Ophthalmologists believe Macular degeneration degeneration is about with environmental factors being a distant Diminutive third and of that Most of that is considered to be smoking that environmental factor. That's the big big issue Diet very little role is what is currently believed now This is a paper that came out in 2016 out of Bascom polymer I Institute major ophthalmology training institution in the US and regarding genetics of AMD and the authors wrote this currently 52 gene variants have been a significantly associated with Macular degeneration 52 and The genetic component of AMD has been estimated at 45 to 70 percent So up to 70 percent of this disease believed to be genetic Anybody know what's wrong with this thinking? Everything everything love that okay, what I would say is faulty genes don't produce epidemics of disease Right Okay, and I think it was said best in this paper that came out regarding an epi the epidemic of coronary heart disease David Grimes at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary said it well He wrote this it is obvious that an epidemic cannot be due to faulty genes Which have have a stable prevalence over a long period of time? However, genes can have an influence on susceptibility, right? Does that make sense? It's exactly the situation with Macular degeneration 52 snips right these polymorphisms associated with Macular degeneration. They set the stage for the disease Genes load the gun environment pulls the trigger, right? Okay into it last year November of last year 2017 My little group published this paper This is the beginning of the fundamentals for this hypothesis and we're going to cover a little bit of this today I'll just give you the basis of it today, but I want you know, it's there and it's available through our website So let's go back to the hypothesis proffered publicly in 2016 When I first presented it actually at this meeting in Boulder, Colorado So again goes like this the displacing foods of modern commerce are the primary and proximate cause of AMD And most of you here probably know that I borrowed the term displacing foods of modern commerce From Weston a price, right and probably most all of you here know Weston price But in case there is somebody that doesn't let me just give the really brief Review that Weston price was a highly accomplished scientist researcher and dentist who in the 1930s Spent the better part of that decade Traveling the world evaluating people on five continents 14 nations hundreds of tribes and villages and thousands upon thousands of people as they transitioned From their native traditional diets over to Westernized diets, right and what price found was first of all that that when people began to To consume what he called the displacing foods of modern commerce Which he defined as refined white flour sugars canned goods sweets confectionary and vegetable oils They began to develop first thing was dental decay, right? And then that was followed by other degenerative conditions like arthritis and cancer and they lost immunity to infectious conditions like tuberculosis, right and today We know everybody in this room probably knows that process foods now have been linked with all these diseases of Western civilization Right heart disease cancers type 2 diabetes stroke the list goes on and on right I understood this For the first time in 2013 and so when I did This is what went through my head Could macular degeneration be another one of these diseases of Western civilization? Might it be a disease that just follows processed food consumption? So let's go back in time here for a minute to 1920 There was 4.9 million Americans in the US over the age of 65 The Social Security database has this data, right? so if the problems of macular degeneration in 1920 was the same as in 1990 which was 22.8 percent then there should have been 1.1 million people with macular degeneration in 1920 if we only Considered those over the age of 65 Well, guess what between 1851 When ophthalmologists first began to see that the macula in 1920 there was no more than about 50 cases of AMD in all the world's literature Ophthalmologists had been using ophthalmoscopes since the 1850s. They had atlases They were dilate using dilating agents beginning in the 1860s used six different dilating agents in the 1880s They used up they had 200 versions of ophthalmoscope to look into the back of the eye These are different models in use around the world by 1913 and yet 50 cases of AMD in nearly 70 years of potential discovery So it wasn't like they weren't looking there's loads of evidence They were evaluating the retina and and they were astute clinicians So but today 15 million Americans affected way back in 1994 It's estimated 196 million people will be affected with macular degeneration by 2020 2 million blind worldwide both eyes as of 2002 according to the World Health Organization So I think that number is close to 3 million today blind both eyes a travesty. Yes But of course today as of 2009 63% of the American diet is made up of processed food, right? This comes from our own USDA the yellow slice of the pie there is our processed food. Why does the USDA? Published this because they know They know this is a massive problem. They list it right there processed foods added vegetable oils trans fats sugars and refined grains Not reflected in our food pyramid, right? But they know So let's look at macular degeneration because what we see in our data, and we evaluated 25 nations Is that macular degeneration follows processed foods worldwide? So we use proxy markers to track processed foods just like good nutrition researchers and we used sugar and vegetable oils Why sugar because it's in 74% of the 600,000 food items available in the United States and It's 21% of the food supply Vegetable oils because it's probably in hundreds of thousands of our processed foods and it's 24% of the US food supply We believe this would track at least 90% of processed foods So let's take a look at what happened. So I'll just review this briefly Which I presented two years ago, but this is the United States and you'll see sugar in the blue Rising from 1844 where it's total vegetable oils. We really began in 1880 But only at about two grams a day till about 1909 So you can see total vegetable oils climbing All the way up to 80 grams a day by 2010 right now these are split out in the red as This is the what we called harmful vegetable oils, which is primarily the polyunsaturated oils the tropical saturated oils are Healthy we'll see any issue with those and so are the mono unsaturated olive oil so now if we go back to this that the Macular degeneration is in the the prevalence is in the green bars now. We know back here in 1900 We had virtually no AMD right and by the 1930s if we could go through all the history There was it was on a very small scale by 1970s We are at epidemic proportions of disease and the point here is that 30 plus years of consuming these processed foods And we're at epidemic proportions of disease. That's what we see repeatedly All right, this is Japan which is the quintessential nation to illustrate this whole point so We see sugar consumption back in 1961 about 50 grams a day Didn't elevate that much 80 to 90 grams a day in succeeding decades But here's the huge problem look at the vegetable oils the harmful polyunsaturates down in red 9 grams a day 1961 elevated four and a half fold by the early 2000s Okay, now look at the macular degeneration prevalence in the green So it's down there in the 1970s at 0.2 percent prevalence by 2007 Their prevalence was 11.4 percent That's a 57 fold increase in the prevalence of AMD in just 30 years Now we can't possibly explain that with genetics and aging, right? In fact any hypothesis you want to proffer to explain the causation of macular degeneration needs to explain data like this and This is not the only nation that looks like this But diet explains it doesn't it Processed foods the the Japanese processed third. I mean they they began to consume processed foods over the last five decades That's what's happened to them Okay, this is Nigeria in Africa this is a hundred percent African population First look at their sugar and vegetable oil consumption down there in the blue and red respectively really low, right and If you look at the first green bar on the far right the AMD prevalence in 2004 that's 3.2% prevalence of AMD now that pales in comparison to our 22.8% here in the US and it should because their processed food consumption Is in comparison dramatically less Right, okay, but that 3.2% was in Onitsha, Nigeria That's a metropolitan population of 1.1 million people So guess what they have access to their grocery stores processed foods, right? That's where they're getting the processed foods now if you look to the right of that that green bar over at 2007 You see a little tiny green blip. That's a prevalence of AMD of zero point one percent That was in southwestern rural, Nigeria Zero point one percent prevalence guess what they don't have access to their Grocery stores processed foods. They can't get them They're consuming a native traditional diet Okay, these are African people keep in mind 0.1% prevalence of AMD in Africans of southwestern rural, Nigeria who can't get processed food when we look at this next nation Barbados because the people of Barbados the indigenous people are of western African descent Okay, all right, and the in this study. This was a nearly 97 percent African population in this study Now if you don't know this nutrition researchers around the world know that Barbados is a mecca for processed food consumption Why because they import almost all of their food? Imported food is almost exclusively processed food. This is a lot like Greenland It's a recipe for disaster. You can see it look at their sugar consumption 140 plus grams a day since 1960s, which is more than four times the World Health Organization's recommendations They're polyunsaturated vegetable oils down there in red Approaching 20 grams a day since 1970s. This one was underreported. There's there are companies producing vegetable oils for them That did did not report to the FAO the food and agricultural Organization of the United Nations on this data. We know that so the the vegetable oils are underreported But so the people of Barbados have a quote world profile of metabolic disease metabolic syndrome type 2 diabetes hypertension Cancers all that right well, of course, they would consuming mostly processed food diet now look at their macular degeneration 244.3% in the green bar 243 times greater than the Africans of Southwestern rural Nigeria who can't get processed foods Does anybody want to argue that's about aging and genetics? I Didn't think so Okay, so here's the Solomon Islands down in the South Pacific These people are consuming mostly a native traditional diet look at their sugar about 20 ish grams a day since 1960s Look at their harmful vegetable oils the polyunsaturates zero. They don't get them. Why do they not get them? the big food manufacturers don't even want to sell down there these are impoverished nations and They they can't hardly sell their food down there. So these people are living off of Seafood root vegetables and coconut oil mostly now look at their macular degeneration from 2005 to 2015 the Ophthalmologists that collaborated with us down there determined their AMD prevalence about 0.2% That means we have 74 fold more AMD here in the US prevalence than they do But you can see the difference Extremely low processed food consumption as evidenced by their sugar and especially the polyunsaturated oils All right, the last nation. I'm going to show you is cure body. This is an island nation 1200 miles south of Hawaii It's out in the Central Pacific middle of nowhere 115,000 people Look at their sugar consumption pretty high since the 1960s bouncing around but 80 upwards of 120 grams a day But look at their harmful vegetable oils in red down at the bottom once again They don't get them now over at the far right the green bar at the very bottom 2015 AMD prevalence 0.2% this nation of 115,000 people has one ophthalmologist in 2015 he saw two patients with macular degeneration The entire year. I don't think I ever went a half day of practice in 24 years without seeing Three or four patients with macular degeneration That's the difference all right, so next we're going to see This link between diet chronic disease and macular degeneration these this comes from our own CDC our centers for disease control So take a look at this. This is the percent of adults consuming vegetables less than one time daily in 2015 so the darker colors just Let's call that low vegetable consumption, right So we see that the low vegetable consumption is in the south and we're just going to point out the south and I'm going to use My home state of Colorado. I hope everybody knows where Colorado is there. It's hard for me to get the pointer But my oopsie daisy that That didn't help let me go back here Here we go. Okay, so I won't point that that again. You all know where Colorado is So notice Colorado is amongst the highest consumers of vegetable oils This is the percent of adults consuming fruit less than one time daily. Notice low fruit consumption in the south highest in Colorado, right? This is soda pop consumption in teenagers notice High soda pop consumption in the south and Colorado has no data here All right, but here we see gallons of soft drink per capita high consumption in the south right and Colorado amongst the lowest consumers of soft drinks Okay Now this is food deserts as defined by the CDC which is no car and no super supermarket store within a mile Why is that important because the CDC knows that if you have no car no supermarket store within a mile You're shopping at convenience stores. That's a recipe for consuming processed foods, right? so we see again food deserts dense in the south and Really low in Colorado. So now we know where all the processed foods are being consumed, right? So let's see what happens. So here's heart disease death rates notice, it's severe in the south and lowest in Colorado This is high blood pressure highest in the south lowest in Colorado Diabetes prevalence This is type 2 diabetes. So highest in the south again Lowest in Colorado. This is stroke Highest in the south lowest in Colorado and Then finally cancer deaths Once again highest in the south Lowest in Colorado. Okay. Now we're gonna look at obesity highest in the south and Colorado is the lowest in the nation Seem like a pattern here Okay, I brought I brought you through that to show you this correlation This is the percentage of people age 18 plus with severe vision loss Why is that important because we know since 2002 54% of the severe vision loss is macular degeneration So where the darker colors are that's where we have the most macular degeneration. It's worse in the south lowest in Colorado again, right Okay, and this is the US county's in the top quartile top 25% for both both severe vision loss and poverty Worse in the south lowest in Colorado. Why is poverty an issue? Because in this nation you can you can purchase about two thousand dollar 2000 calories worth of processed food for about three dollars and fifty cents that same 2000 calories coming from whole food meats Eggs fruits vegetables grains nut seeds dairy all that costs you about 13 dollars or more the studies show it All right, that's a sad fact and I hate the fact that that's the case But but it's reality okay so here We're gonna go back to this slide. This is the same slide severe vision loss. All right, so if Macular degeneration is all about aging then what we should see Those people in the south must have the longest lives, right? So let's see if that's true So here's the US life expectancy for females Notice that average US life expectancy for females at this time 81 years and yet in the south they're living to about 74 to 77 years about four or five years shorter than on average, right and And this is US life expectancy by county for males Notice again the shortest lives in the south and the longest lives in Colorado So let's go back to this. This is severe vision loss on the left and Life expectancy for males on the right So notice again where we have the greatest vision loss in other words the most macular degeneration We have the shortest lives, right? This is not consistent with the theory that Macular degeneration is a disease of aging is it and If we're to believe that Macular degeneration is a disease of genetic predisposition Then are we also to believe that the same people who consume the fewest fruits the fewest vegetables The most sugar sweetened beverages live in the most food deserts and therefore consume the most processed foods and Who then develop the most heart disease hypertension type 2 diabetes stroke cancer obesity Just happened to have the worst genetics for Macular degeneration Does that seem likely to you I just want to show you very quickly This is my home state of Colorado notice severe vision loss on the Left and life expectancy on the right correct, so Notice the counties in white are where the severe vision loss is the lowest 2.0 less than 2.3% are the exact same counties where the life expectancy is the longest 83 years and The counties in blue where the severe vision loss is the highest greater than the 4.2% in the words more than twice as much Macular degeneration are the same counties where the average life expectancy is 74 years nine years shorter for men This is true ladies and gentlemen because Macular degeneration is not a disease of aging It's not a disease of genetics It is a disease of processed food consumption and that results in more Chronic metabolic and degenerative disease more Macular degeneration and earlier deaths, right in conclusion AMD was a medical rarity from 1851 to 1930 by the 1970s were epidemic proportions today 190 plus million people with AMD what changed what changed is the displacing foods of modern commerce The polyunsaturated vegetable oils these deserve special mention They're the greatest contributor to Macular degeneration These are biological poisons and I think the single greatest contributor to vision loss But the big picture ladies and gentlemen is this displacing foods of modern commerce lead to Macular degeneration We've indicted Processed foods. Do you think we can convict them? Today 270 people will go blind due to Macular degeneration They'll lose vision in their second eye Due to this disease. I believe it's all preventable For more information come to our website cure AMD foundation. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization We're at cure AMD org. We give away all the information Books are available for the cost of print and I hope you all will consider this and become ambassadors in this cause I want to thank the ancestral health society and I want to thank all of you. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you Thank you, doctor. I'm glad I didn't have to play devil's advocate over there All right, you guys are good. We're just gonna go to Q&A. We have like about eight minutes for that Linda for said I'm from San Francisco So I'm a kidney doc and a lot of what we do is vascular stuff Do you think this is a vascular problem? Or is it an inflammatory problem? Or is the biology of AMD not well known? I mean, I don't know anything about it. So I'm kind of asking so processed foods are are Part of the cause but if you had to talk about the biology of it, what do you think the pathophysiology is? Okay, sure great question. Do we have four hours to cover this? In a nutshell, I'll say this it's extraordinarily Complicated, but one of the first things that happens is that we lose retinal pigment epithelial cells They somehow get sick they support the photoreceptors, which is the rods and cones Sandwich down in there is Brooks membrane and Brooks membrane separates the vascular layer From the photoreceptors and that Brooks membrane thickens and becomes less permeable and it calcifies And then the Corio capillaris, which is the vascular layer that nourishes the retina undergoes Attrition it undergoes occlusion. So what we see is is we see a vascular disease in that Corio capillaris And I think that's where the vegetable oils and the trans fats play a huge role So we see all of these things together come together to result in retinal pigment epithelial loss Loss of vascular flow and ultimately the RPE cells the retinal pigment epithelial cells support the photoreceptors So when they die then the photoreceptors die and neither are regenerative So whatever you lose is gone forever in that regard. You can't get it back. That's why prevention is key Kurt Smith, I'm Atlanta. I have a personal theory after watching the study of Metabolic disorder in the American Heart Association and the American Diabetics Association we still see low-fat diet brochures in their Waiting rooms and being handed out by doctors and we we know so much research that if the right information was It was put out there that the number of patients for those doctors would drop like a rock now It would be an interesting experiment and I'm wondering what your what your theory is. What will the American eye doctors association? Recommend be put out in the waiting rooms of ophthalmologist will it be The same information and we should be seeing in the heart doctors associations or will they not Disseminate information because I know it'll drop patients like a rock Great question. I really don't know the answer to that because the American ophthalmology association has not taken a stand on that really at all there's very little recommendation regarding diet other than leafy greens and Multivitamins and beyond that there hasn't really been a stance and Although there are ten studies before hours that made a link between vegetable the polyunsaturated vegetable oils and the trans fats in total that have linked those Strongly with macro degeneration and yet there still is no stance about that at all So I cannot predict at all what what they're going to do. It's Unknown Probably probably All right, this might be a little redundant from the first question But I wonder could you expound it all on a possible mechanism by which like these Polyunsaturated fats could be contributing to AMD I know like you lose the RPE layer and that's you know, that is the like the overall Symptomatic part of the disease, but do you have any idea if you were just to speculate right that might be that the that they're actually doing Yeah, absolutely another great question. I think the polyunsaturates Play a huge role in the vascular disease at the coroid vessels, which are the large larger ones and the coriocapallaris Just like they do in heart disease and vascular disease they play a massive role there and Then of course, they're displacing The animal fats where we would get the vitamin K2, right because they're displacing Butter lard beef tallow, but where we so we're missing the vitamin K2 and so then I think the second factor is that these Just speculation, but I believe the polyunsaturates play a role in the thickening of Brooks membrane that Creates a barrier between the coriocapallaris and the and ultimately the photoreceptors so That's basically it in a nutshell Okay, so would you expect to see like a worsening or AMD to be earlier on set like in diseases like that like hypercholesterolemia or any other disease that actually would affect like the Blood flow to the to the macula would you would that be expected or is that observed at all? Because it's possibly like it just like the blood flow is part of the issue right just that right the feeding the RPE layer Right. I don't think there's a good Any good studies that draw a correlation between the cholesterol levels? Like it's some some people have more like arthrosclerosis or anything I mean that you show all these all this correlation between hypertension diabetes. We know those are all You know gonna be related, but I wonder if there was any Genetic, you know diseases specifically that led to AMD that would cause like vasoconstriction or anything that would affect the RPE Being fed by the vasculature Well, there's definitely studies that are connecting heart disease you know coronary vascular disease and Disease of the carotid arteries to macular degeneration no question about that those are those are Strongly linked, but I think that's as far as it goes. Okay. Thank you sure Is it reversible now, I've seen at least nine patients result we've reversed the early stages of drusen Which is where the metabolic deposits occur? So I think when you begin really early you're you can reverse the beginning stages, but you certainly cannot reverse the fact that if you have already lost retinal pigment epithelial cells and photoreceptors the you know the rods and cones those are non regenerative and so Once you've lost vision That won't be coming back You know, I there certainly we're seeing patients anecdotal reports who are going to their out They're changing their diets based on this and going back to their ophthalmologist and they are seeing Better but and we're seeing that they are losing some of those drusen these metabolic deposits But in general, I would say you're not going to see a great recovery from somebody that has moderate or more advanced macular degeneration that won't happen I The questions about stem cells and I don't think there's any data there yet. Is there anything you can say about glaucoma? Yeah It's a bad disease You mean in relation to diet. Yeah Well, I think that oh This is very off the cuff because it's not my area of research, but in general, I think that Our diet is driving glaucoma in the same way would be my knee jerk reaction, but I have not Investigated that and that that's up and and there's many many kinds of glaucoma. So the open-angle glaucoma is Yeah, I think that it could play a very big role and the low tension or normal pressure type of glaucomas I think the vascular flow there is so critical and such a big factor that yes I think this plays a role in glaucoma, but nobody has gone down the path of you know Investigating that like we did for macular degeneration hasn't been done