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Today, I'd like to talk about
turning around an epidemic.

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One hundred million Americans right now
do have either diabetes or pre-diabetes,

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and that puts them
at risk for amputations,

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for heart disease, for blindness.

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and we're exporting
this epidemic overseas.

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The word "epidemic" comes from Old Greek:

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'epi' means 'on', 'demos' means 'people',

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so an epidemic is something we study with
sterile statistics, and maps, and graphs,

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but the truth is, it's something

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that impinges directly on people,
on living, breathing human-beings.

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But my story actually starts
in the basement of a Minneapolis hospital.

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The year before I went to medical school,
I was the morgue attendant,

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or as I'd like to say,
"the autopsy assistant".

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What that meant was,

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whenever anybody died,
I would bring the body out of the cooler,

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and put the body on
an examination table,

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and the pathologist
would come into the room.

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And one day, a person died
in a hospital of a massive heart attack.

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Probably from eating hospital food,
but that's another story.

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(Laughter)

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To examine the heart,
you have to remove a section of ribs,

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and this is not done with great delicacy:

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you take what looks like a garden clipper,

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and you go crunch, crunch, crunch,
through the ribs on this side,

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and crunch, crunch, crunch,
through the ribs on this side.

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And the pathologist pulled
this big high wedge of ribs off the chest,

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set it on the table.

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And he knew I was going to be
going to medical school,

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so he wanted to make sure
that I saw everything.

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And he would say, "Neal, look at this.
These are the coronary arteries,"

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- we call them coronary
because they crown the heart -

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and he sliced one open,
and he said, "Look inside."

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With my gloved finger, I poked around,
and it wasn't a wide open artery,

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it had what was sort
of like chewing gum inside,

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except that it was hard
like a rock, and he said,

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"That's your bacon and eggs,
Neal, that's atherosclerosis."

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And we looked at the carotid arteries
going to the brain,

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the arteries going to the legs,
the arteries going to the kidneys.

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They all had this hardening
of the arteries, that's atherosclerosis.

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He said, "We see the beginnings of this
in two thirds of people by age 23,

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which happened to be the exact age
that I was at the time.

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(Laughter)

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So, anyway, he writes up his findings,

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"massive atherosclerosis,
acute myocardial infarction,"

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and he leaves the room.

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So, I picked up the ribs
and put them back in the chest,

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tried to make them fit
right with the other ribs,

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and I sewed up the skin, and cleaned up,

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and then I went out
and went up to the cafeteria,

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where turned out
they were serving ribs for lunch.

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(Laughter)

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Now, let me tell you something,
I knew about ribs.

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I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota,
I come from a long line of cattle ranchers

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and I remember the smell
of the cows out in the field,

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I remember the smell of the cows
in my grandpa's barn

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and driving a load of cattle
with my uncle to East Saint Louis,

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to the National Stockyards,

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and I remember the National
Stockyards hotel, two dollars a night,

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and the smell of that room.

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(Laughter)

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And I have to say, everyday in my life,

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it was roast beef,
baked potatoes, and corn.

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Except for special occasions, when it was
roast beef, baked potatoes, and peas.

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(Laughter)

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And that's the sort of the way we ate,

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but my father did not like
the cattle business, so he left,

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left the family farm,
and he went to medical school.

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And he spent his life at the Fargo clinic
treating diabetes,

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he became a diabetes expert
for the whole region.

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And I have to say
my father really was frustrated

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because patients were given diets
that they did not like.

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What we would say is,
or what they would say,

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is diabetes is a condition
where it's too much sugar in your blood,

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so don't eat anything that turns to sugar,
so don't eat bread, don't eat fruit,

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don't eat pasta, rice, sweet potatoes,

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don't eat regular potatoes,
beans, don't eat carrots;

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all these things had to be limited
and while you are at it, cut calories,

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and that's what people had to adhere to,
that's gets old by Wednesday.

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Patients were also given medicines,
and they were given needles,

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and instructions on how to stick
their fingers and how to inject insulin.

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And despite all of this,
diabetes never got better,

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it always progressed,

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and it then became something
that we're exporting overseas.

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And when I got out of medical school,
we had more medicines,

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and I think we had sharper needles,
but to tell you the truth,

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it was the same sort of result,
we had unhappy patients,

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and we've never ever cured
this disease, it never turned around,

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it was always considered
a progressive disease.

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But there are two scientific discoveries
that really turned all this around.

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And the first one was taking
the widest possible lens.

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If you look around the world,

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at those countries that have the least
diabetes, like Japan, for example,

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they weren't following anything

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like the diet we were given
to diabetic patients.

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They weren't saying, "I'm not going
to eat rice, I won't eat noodles,"

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they eat this kind of food all the time,
it's front and center on their plate.

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And the second discovery
came from looking inside the cell,

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especially the muscle cell.

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And the reason we look
at muscle cells in particular

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is that's where glucose is going,
that's where blood sugar is going,

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that's the fuel that powers your movement.

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Do you know about a person
who's running a marathon?

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What are they doing in the weeks leading
up for it? They're carbo-loading.

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So they're eating pasta,
they're eating bread

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to try to get that glucose
into the cell for energy.

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And that is the problem in diabetes,

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because glucose, glucose is there,
outside the cell, trying get inside.

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In order to get in, it needs a key.
And that key is insulin.

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Now, what if I get home,
and I'm getting up to my front door

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and take my key out of the pocket,
I put it in the front door--

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Wait a minute, it's not working.

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And there's nothing wrong
with my key, but I look in the lock,

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and while I was gone,
somebody put chewing gum in my lock.

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So what am I going to do?
Crawling in and out the window? No.

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I'm going to clean out the lock.

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Well, when a person has diabetes,
their insulin key is not working.

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Why would that be?
Why could insulin not signal?

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What supposed to happen is the glucose
is supposed to enter into the cell.

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And [insulin] is the key
that makes that happen.

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But the reason it doesn't happen

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it's not that there's
chewing gum inside the cell.

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What there is, is fat.
Fat, little globules of fat.

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I have to say, doctors hate
words like "fat",it has one syllable.

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(Laughter)

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So we want to call it
intramyocellular lipid.

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(Laughter)

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'Intra' means' inside', 'myo' means
'muscle', 'cellular' means 'cellular'

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(Laughter)

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'lipid' means 'fat'.

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Intramyocellular lipid is fat
inside your muscle cells,

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and that is what interferes

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with insulin's ability to work
like a key to signal glucose coming in.

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In 2003,

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The National Institute of Health
gave my research team a grant and said,

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"Let's test something
completely different.

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Instead of limiting breads
and all these kinds of things,

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if fat is the issue, what if we have
a diet that has effectively no fat in it?"

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Well, where does fat come from?

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It comes from two sources:

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animal products, animal fat,
and vegetable oils.

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So we brought in 99 people,
and we asked them to do two things:

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to really eat a bounty of food
and not worrying about quantity,

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we're not counting calories here,

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we're not counting carb grams
or anything like that.

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What we're doing instead,

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is we're setting the animal products aside
keeping the vegetable oils low.

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Very simple.

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One of our participants
was a man named Vance,

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and Vance's father was dead by age 30.

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Vance was 31 when he was
diagnosed with diabetes,

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he was in his late 30s
when he came to see us.

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And he said, "This is not hard!"

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Unlike every other diet he'd been on,
we didn't care how many carbs he ate,

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or how many calories,
or how many portions.

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If he was having chilli,
not a meat chilli,

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would be a bean chilli,
chunky vegetable chilli.

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If he was having spaghetti,
instead of a meat topping,

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it would be topped
with artichoke hearts

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and wild mushrooms,
and chunky tomato sauce.

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So that kind of thing; very, very easy.

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Over the course
of about a year, he lost 60 pounds,

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his blood sugar came down
and down, and down,

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and one day his doctor
sat him down and said,

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"Vance, I know you've had
family members die of this disease."

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But he said, "I look at your blood tests;
you don't have it anymore."

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And can you imagine what that feels like
to have family members who felt

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there's this absolutely one way street
and have this disease just turn around?

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And when I asked Vance's permission
to tell you about his story, he said,

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"Make sure you tell everybody that
my erectile dysfunction went away too."

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(Laughter)

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Write that down.

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(Laughter)

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So, we published our findings
in peer-reviewed journals,

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the American Diabetes Association cites it
and accepts this as an effective approach.

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And people around the world
started using this

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and I heard from a man in England,

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who wanted to let me know
about his experience.

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He had had diabetes,

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tried all kinds of diets
without a lot of success.

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And then he heard about our approach,
tried it for several weeks,

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went to the doctor,
the doctor drew a number of blood tests.

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And he got home.

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The phone rang,
"This is the doctor's office.

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Could you come back right now?

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So he [goes], "Good heavens!
What's in my blood test?

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He races into his car,
he's driving to doctor's office

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thinking what disease did they discover
on my blood test, what did they find ..."

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And he runs into.

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They say,"We need you to sit down.
Explain exactly what you've been doing."

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All traces of his diabetes were gone.

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The doctor said,
"Your blood tests are better than mine,

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and I don't have diabetes,
how is this possible?"

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The doctor explained to him, "We can never
say a person has been cured of diabetes

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because we all know that's not possible,
but technically, it's not there.

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And the doctor was skeptical,

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he said, "Come back in two months,
I want to test you again."

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Never came back.

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Now, wait a minute.

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Diabetes is genetic, right?

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It runs in families.

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And there, in fact,
are genes for diabetes,

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but this is an important thing
to remember,

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genes are in two categories.

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Certain genes are dictators,

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I'm talking about the genes that say,
'blue eyes' or 'brown hair'.

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They are dictators,
they give orders, you can't argue.

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But the genes for diabetes are committees.

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They're making suggestions.

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And you can say, "Wait a minute,

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I don't really think
I want to have diabetes."

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And, in fact, most disease genes,
whether it's for heart disease,

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or diabetes, or hypertension,
certain forms of cancer,

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00:10:54,572 --> 00:10:57,024
even Alzheimer's disease,

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they're not dictators, they're committees.

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And their activity depends on
what we put into our bodies.

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So, what I'm saying is

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that we're putting into our bodies
foods that we're really not designed for.

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Which raises the question:
what foods are we really designed for?

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There are different ways
of looking at this.

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And one is called the dental test.
Do you know the dental test?

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What you do is you wait
for your cat to yawn,

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and you look in your cat's mouth
and what you notice is

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in its mouth are these very, very long
protruding canine teeth,

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and on each side of its mouth,
it's just like a pitchfork

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that's really good for capturing pray,
killing small animals,

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and ripping the hide off the flesh
and eating meat.

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So now look at your own mouth.

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What you discover

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is that your canine teeth
are no longer than your incisors.

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And that change occurred
at least 3,5 million years ago.

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So our molars are really good
for crunching on an apple,

232
00:11:59,468 --> 00:12:01,955
they're not so hot for handling roadkill.

233
00:12:01,956 --> 00:12:05,005
There's the bunny test.
Do you know the bunny test?

234
00:12:05,006 --> 00:12:06,193
(Laughter)

235
00:12:06,194 --> 00:12:07,935
You take a bunny,

236
00:12:07,936 --> 00:12:11,228
and you put the bunny
in front of your cat

237
00:12:11,229 --> 00:12:13,464
(Laughter)

238
00:12:14,504 --> 00:12:16,103
what you discover,

239
00:12:16,104 --> 00:12:20,064
no matter how young your cat is,
the cat has this irrepressible desire

240
00:12:20,065 --> 00:12:24,513
to capture, attack, kill,
and swallow that bunny.

241
00:12:24,514 --> 00:12:28,007
Now, you put the very same bunny
in front of a toddler or baby. (Laughter)

242
00:12:28,007 --> 00:12:30,732
And what you discover is
the toddler say, "Bunny, bunny!"

243
00:12:30,733 --> 00:12:33,562
They want to play and the baby
is just absolutely delighted,

244
00:12:33,563 --> 00:12:36,389
the idea of killing and eating him
would never occur to him

245
00:12:36,390 --> 00:12:37,597
in a million years.

246
00:12:37,598 --> 00:12:39,204
We're learning something here.

247
00:12:39,205 --> 00:12:41,329
Do you know the box test?
(Laughter)

248
00:12:41,330 --> 00:12:44,930
You take a box that it was used
to carry electronic equipment,

249
00:12:44,931 --> 00:12:49,773
and you look around at the bottom
and what you find is silica gel.

250
00:12:49,774 --> 00:12:54,503
And silica gel is there
to take moisture out of the box.

251
00:12:54,504 --> 00:12:58,738
And apparently, the manufacturers
of silica gel have realized

252
00:12:58,739 --> 00:13:02,389
that human-beings are so indiscriminate
in their eating habits,

253
00:13:02,390 --> 00:13:07,789
that they have to put
these words on it, "Do not eat".

254
00:13:07,790 --> 00:13:10,129
(Laughter)

255
00:13:10,130 --> 00:13:13,217
So, here's how I put this together:

256
00:13:13,218 --> 00:13:18,421
human-beings are naturally herbivores,
but we're really easily thrown off track.

257
00:13:18,422 --> 00:13:20,311
(Laughter)

258
00:13:20,312 --> 00:13:24,254
The fact of the matter is,
before the Stone Age,

259
00:13:24,255 --> 00:13:27,724
people would have been
just terrible hunters, really.

260
00:13:27,725 --> 00:13:30,118
You know this is true
because we're not very quick.

261
00:13:30,118 --> 00:13:32,064
A lion, a lion is quick,

262
00:13:34,355 --> 00:13:37,354
in the forest,
a lion can easily catch a gazelle.

263
00:13:37,355 --> 00:13:40,453
A hawk or a falcon
can easily catch a mouse.

264
00:13:40,454 --> 00:13:43,389
Humans, we sort of catch cold.
That's like it. (Laughter)

265
00:13:43,390 --> 00:13:47,276
We don't really detect pray very well,
we don't have sensitive noses.

266
00:13:47,277 --> 00:13:48,575
If you look at the dog,

267
00:13:48,576 --> 00:13:51,785
a dog has a very highly
developed sense of smell,

268
00:13:51,786 --> 00:13:54,048
they can detect pray at long distances,

269
00:13:54,049 --> 00:13:56,785
which is why they are used in airports

270
00:13:56,786 --> 00:14:00,347
to detect bombs, and drugs,
and that kind of things.

271
00:14:00,348 --> 00:14:02,513
And their sense of hearing
far outstrips ours,

272
00:14:02,514 --> 00:14:04,713
they are outfitted
to be able to detect pray.

273
00:14:04,714 --> 00:14:08,923
Now, human-beings, we have
cute noses and we have cute ears,

274
00:14:08,924 --> 00:14:12,411
but we really are pathetic as hunters.

275
00:14:12,412 --> 00:14:15,553
And if you're going to succeed
as a carnivore,

276
00:14:15,554 --> 00:14:18,525
you need good sharp claws,
good sharp teeth,

277
00:14:18,526 --> 00:14:20,468
you need to be very, very quick,

278
00:14:20,469 --> 00:14:24,908
and you need to have sensitive hearing,
sensitive smell, sensitive vision.

279
00:14:24,909 --> 00:14:27,322
Which actually raises the question:

280
00:14:27,323 --> 00:14:30,463
what is the most sensitive part
of the human body?

281
00:14:31,769 --> 00:14:33,336
What do you think?

282
00:14:34,286 --> 00:14:36,040
Well, I actually learned the answer.

283
00:14:36,041 --> 00:14:38,051
As I was coming here,
I was at the airport.

284
00:14:38,051 --> 00:14:41,763
And the TSA agent pulled me aside
and said, "I got to do a pat down,

285
00:14:41,764 --> 00:14:44,093
and when I get to a sensitive part
of your body,

286
00:14:44,094 --> 00:14:45,681
I'll use the back of my hand."

287
00:14:45,682 --> 00:14:47,295
And I realized that apparently,

288
00:14:47,296 --> 00:14:51,957
the most sensitive part of the human body
must be our back side, I guess.

289
00:14:51,958 --> 00:14:56,976
So, anyway, what I take from this
is that meat eating began somehow.

290
00:14:56,977 --> 00:14:58,239
How did it begin?

291
00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:00,902
I put that question to Richard Leakey.

292
00:15:00,903 --> 00:15:04,023
- Richard Leakey,
the famous paleoanthropologist -

293
00:15:04,033 --> 00:15:05,168
and what he said was,

294
00:15:05,169 --> 00:15:08,948
"You know, human-beings as herbivores,
you don't have to be quick,

295
00:15:08,953 --> 00:15:11,442
you don't have to be
particularly sharp or sensitive

296
00:15:11,443 --> 00:15:14,322
because you don't really have
to sneak up on a strawberry,

297
00:15:14,323 --> 00:15:16,394
it's just sitting, not doing anything.

298
00:15:16,403 --> 00:15:20,124
But to become carnivores
really took some work.

299
00:15:20,125 --> 00:15:23,188
And it probably started as scavenging."

300
00:15:23,189 --> 00:15:25,550
In other words,
a lion doesn't eat everything.

301
00:15:25,551 --> 00:15:28,520
When they walk away
from the little pile of bones they've left

302
00:15:28,521 --> 00:15:29,861
there's a little meat there,

303
00:15:29,861 --> 00:15:32,269
and humans could
relatively easily sneak in

304
00:15:32,270 --> 00:15:34,933
and cut some of that off and take it back.

305
00:15:34,934 --> 00:15:37,843
Now, that requires having
some tools to do that with.

306
00:15:37,844 --> 00:15:40,946
So once the Stone Age arrived,

307
00:15:40,947 --> 00:15:44,110
then we had the possibility
of actually doing that.

308
00:15:44,111 --> 00:15:47,050
And once we had arrowheads,
and axes, and that sort of thing,

309
00:15:47,051 --> 00:15:48,784
then we were really on to something.

310
00:15:48,785 --> 00:15:53,439
Meat eating really became a big thing.
But, we have pre-stone age bodies.

311
00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:57,759
To this day, when a person puts
into their body plant foods,

312
00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:00,871
their arteries open up again,
their diabetes starts to get better,

313
00:16:00,871 --> 00:16:04,801
their weight starts to come off,
their bodies start to recover.

314
00:16:10,716 --> 00:16:15,913
Americans, unfortunately, are
really not on a diabetes reversal diet.

315
00:16:15,914 --> 00:16:19,374
Americans today eat more
than a million animals per hour.

316
00:16:19,375 --> 00:16:21,958
And the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention say

317
00:16:21,959 --> 00:16:25,117
that one of three kids born
in the year 2000 and in the years since

318
00:16:25,117 --> 00:16:28,099
is going to get diabetes
at some point in their life.

319
00:16:28,100 --> 00:16:30,888
And you see the truth of it,
turn on the television:

320
00:16:30,889 --> 00:16:35,328
half the commercials are for burgers,
chicken wings, snack foods,

321
00:16:35,329 --> 00:16:38,338
the other half of the commercials
are for medicines

322
00:16:38,339 --> 00:16:41,756
to undue the effects
of all the foods that we're eating.

323
00:16:41,757 --> 00:16:43,214
So, that's where we are.

324
00:16:43,214 --> 00:16:44,349
And what if it happened

325
00:16:44,349 --> 00:16:46,558
that instead
of a hundred million Americans

326
00:16:46,559 --> 00:16:48,896
having diabetes or pre-diabetes,

327
00:16:48,897 --> 00:16:51,498
what if all hundred million
had diabetes itself?

328
00:16:51,499 --> 00:16:53,193
Or more people than that?

329
00:16:53,194 --> 00:16:57,129
All of them need medicines, and testing,
and hospital care, and so forth.

330
00:16:57,130 --> 00:16:59,732
Financially, it's a disaster.

331
00:16:59,733 --> 00:17:03,821
But, personally,
the personal cost is just incalculable.

332
00:17:03,822 --> 00:17:06,503
I think we're starting
to turn the corner:

333
00:17:06,505 --> 00:17:10,199
my family has promoted me for generation
after generation, after generation.

334
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:11,181
However,

335
00:17:11,182 --> 00:17:16,479
in 2004, we reached the peak
at 201,5 pounds of meat.

336
00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:18,970
That's what the average person
consumed in that year.

337
00:17:18,971 --> 00:17:21,507
And in the subsequent years,
it's dropped and dropped,

338
00:17:21,507 --> 00:17:23,050
and we're now under 190,

339
00:17:23,051 --> 00:17:26,348
and hopefully,
that downward trend will continue.

340
00:17:26,349 --> 00:17:30,386
But to this day, doctors,
dieticians, nurses will say,

341
00:17:30,387 --> 00:17:33,563
"Diabetes is a one way street,
it never goes away."

342
00:17:33,564 --> 00:17:35,791
But that was before
we looked around the world

343
00:17:35,792 --> 00:17:39,068
and saw, you know, there are
dietary patterns that are more helpful.

344
00:17:39,069 --> 00:17:42,727
And that was before we realized
that looking inside the cell,

345
00:17:42,728 --> 00:17:44,774
we can understand how this occurs,

346
00:17:44,775 --> 00:17:47,397
and we can understand
how to reverse this process.

347
00:17:47,398 --> 00:17:49,068
And it was before we realized

348
00:17:49,069 --> 00:17:54,064
that patients will make bigger changes
than we gave them credit for.

349
00:17:54,065 --> 00:17:55,647
So, families like mine,

350
00:17:55,648 --> 00:17:57,778
that have been selling meat
for generations,

351
00:17:57,779 --> 00:18:02,102
instead, maybe could sell carrots,
asparagus, sweet potatoes, and beans,

352
00:18:02,103 --> 00:18:05,420
and hopefully, the autopsy room
will more neglected than ever,

353
00:18:05,421 --> 00:18:08,152
because people are going to live longer,
and look better,

354
00:18:08,153 --> 00:18:10,897
and maybe the hospital cafeteria,
instead of serving ribs,

355
00:18:10,898 --> 00:18:13,259
could serve a bounty of helpful foods,

356
00:18:13,260 --> 00:18:16,098
and instead of studying epidemics,

357
00:18:16,099 --> 00:18:18,522
maybe we could celebrate
a resurgence of health.

358
00:18:18,523 --> 00:18:19,551
Thank you very much.

359
00:18:19,552 --> 00:18:20,603
(Applause)