WEBVTT

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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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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

00:11:31.264 --> 00:11:35.280
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,

00:11:42.704 --> 00:11:46.050
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,

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they're not so hot for handling roadkill.

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There's the bunny test.
Do you know the bunny test?

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(Laughter)

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You take a bunny,

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and you put the bunny
in front of your cat

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(Laughter)

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what you discover,

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no matter how young your cat is,
the cat has this irrepressible desire

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to capture, attack, kill,
and swallow that bunny.

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Now, you put the very same bunny
in front of a toddler or baby. (Laughter)

00:12:28.007 --> 00:12:30.732
And what you discover is
the toddler say, "Bunny, bunny!"

00:12:30.733 --> 00:12:33.562
They want to play and the baby
is just absolutely delighted,

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the idea of killing and eating him
would never occur to him

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in a million years.

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We're learning something here.

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Do you know the box test?
(Laughter)

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You take a box that it was used
to carry electronic equipment,

00:12:44.931 --> 00:12:49.773
and you look around at the bottom
and what you find is silica gel.

00:12:49.774 --> 00:12:54.503
And silica gel is there
to take moisture out of the box.

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And apparently, the manufacturers
of silica gel have realized

00:12:58.739 --> 00:13:02.389
that human-beings are so indiscriminate
in their eating habits,

00:13:02.390 --> 00:13:07.789
that they have to put
these words on it, "Do not eat".

00:13:07.790 --> 00:13:10.129
(Laughter)

00:13:10.130 --> 00:13:13.217
So, here's how I put this together:

00:13:13.218 --> 00:13:18.421
human-beings are naturally herbivores,
but we're really easily thrown off track.

00:13:18.422 --> 00:13:20.311
(Laughter)

00:13:20.312 --> 00:13:24.254
The fact of the matter is,
before the Stone Age,

00:13:24.255 --> 00:13:27.724
people would have been
just terrible hunters, really.

00:13:27.725 --> 00:13:30.118
You know this is true
because we're not very quick.

00:13:30.118 --> 00:13:32.064
A lion, a lion is quick,

00:13:34.355 --> 00:13:37.354
in the forest,
a lion can easily catch a gazelle.

00:13:37.355 --> 00:13:40.453
A hawk or a falcon
can easily catch a mouse.

00:13:40.454 --> 00:13:43.389
Humans, we sort of catch cold.
That's like it. (Laughter)

00:13:43.390 --> 00:13:47.276
We don't really detect pray very well,
we don't have sensitive noses.

00:13:47.277 --> 00:13:48.575
If you look at the dog,

00:13:48.576 --> 00:13:51.785
a dog has a very highly
developed sense of smell,

00:13:51.786 --> 00:13:54.048
they can detect pray at long distances,

00:13:54.049 --> 00:13:56.785
which is why they are used in airports

00:13:56.786 --> 00:14:00.347
to detect bombs, and drugs,
and that kind of things.

00:14:00.348 --> 00:14:02.513
And their sense of hearing
far outstrips ours,

00:14:02.514 --> 00:14:04.713
they are outfitted
to be able to detect pray.

00:14:04.714 --> 00:14:08.923
Now, human-beings, we have
cute noses and we have cute ears,

00:14:08.924 --> 00:14:12.411
but we really are pathetic as hunters.

00:14:12.412 --> 00:14:15.553
And if you're going to succeed
as a carnivore,

00:14:15.554 --> 00:14:18.525
you need good sharp claws,
good sharp teeth,

00:14:18.526 --> 00:14:20.468
you need to be very, very quick,

00:14:20.469 --> 00:14:24.908
and you need to have sensitive hearing,
sensitive smell, sensitive vision.

00:14:24.909 --> 00:14:27.322
Which actually raises the question:

00:14:27.323 --> 00:14:30.463
what is the most sensitive part
of the human body?

00:14:31.769 --> 00:14:33.336
What do you think?

00:14:34.286 --> 00:14:36.040
Well, I actually learned the answer.

00:14:36.041 --> 00:14:38.051
As I was coming here,
I was at the airport.

00:14:38.051 --> 00:14:41.763
And the TSA agent pulled me aside
and said, "I got to do a pat down,

00:14:41.764 --> 00:14:44.093
and when I get to a sensitive part
of your body,

00:14:44.094 --> 00:14:45.681
I'll use the back of my hand."

00:14:45.682 --> 00:14:47.295
And I realized that apparently,

00:14:47.296 --> 00:14:51.957
the most sensitive part of the human body
must be our back side, I guess.

00:14:51.958 --> 00:14:56.976
So, anyway, what I take from this
is that meat eating began somehow.

00:14:56.977 --> 00:14:58.239
How did it begin?

00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:00.902
I put that question to Richard Leakey.

00:15:00.903 --> 00:15:04.023
- Richard Leakey,
the famous paleoanthropologist -

00:15:04.033 --> 00:15:05.168
and what he said was,

00:15:05.169 --> 00:15:08.948
"You know, human-beings as herbivores,
you don't have to be quick,

00:15:08.953 --> 00:15:11.442
you don't have to be
particularly sharp or sensitive

00:15:11.443 --> 00:15:14.322
because you don't really have
to sneak up on a strawberry,

00:15:14.323 --> 00:15:16.394
it's just sitting, not doing anything.

00:15:16.403 --> 00:15:20.124
But to become carnivores
really took some work.

00:15:20.125 --> 00:15:23.188
And it probably started as scavenging."

00:15:23.189 --> 00:15:25.550
In other words,
a lion doesn't eat everything.

00:15:25.551 --> 00:15:28.520
When they walk away
from the little pile of bones they've left

00:15:28.521 --> 00:15:29.861
there's a little meat there,

00:15:29.861 --> 00:15:32.269
and humans could
relatively easily sneak in

00:15:32.270 --> 00:15:34.933
and cut some of that off and take it back.

00:15:34.934 --> 00:15:37.843
Now, that requires having
some tools to do that with.

00:15:37.844 --> 00:15:40.946
So once the Stone Age arrived,

00:15:40.947 --> 00:15:44.110
then we had the possibility
of actually doing that.

00:15:44.111 --> 00:15:47.050
And once we had arrowheads,
and axes, and that sort of thing,

00:15:47.051 --> 00:15:48.784
then we were really on to something.

00:15:48.785 --> 00:15:53.439
Meat eating really became a big thing.
But, we have pre-stone age bodies.

00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:57.759
To this day, when a person puts
into their body plant foods,

00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:00.871
their arteries open up again,
their diabetes starts to get better,

00:16:00.871 --> 00:16:04.801
their weight starts to come off,
their bodies start to recover.

00:16:10.716 --> 00:16:15.913
Americans, unfortunately, are
really not on a diabetes reversal diet.

00:16:15.914 --> 00:16:19.374
Americans today eat more
than a million animals per hour.

00:16:19.375 --> 00:16:21.958
And the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention say

00:16:21.959 --> 00:16:25.117
that one of three kids born
in the year 2000 and in the years since

00:16:25.117 --> 00:16:28.099
is going to get diabetes
at some point in their life.

00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:30.888
And you see the truth of it,
turn on the television:

00:16:30.889 --> 00:16:35.328
half the commercials are for burgers,
chicken wings, snack foods,

00:16:35.329 --> 00:16:38.338
the other half of the commercials
are for medicines

00:16:38.339 --> 00:16:41.756
to undue the effects
of all the foods that we're eating.

00:16:41.757 --> 00:16:43.214
So, that's where we are.

00:16:43.214 --> 00:16:44.349
And what if it happened

00:16:44.349 --> 00:16:46.558
that instead
of a hundred million Americans

00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:48.896
having diabetes or pre-diabetes,

00:16:48.897 --> 00:16:51.498
what if all hundred million
had diabetes itself?

00:16:51.499 --> 00:16:53.193
Or more people than that?

00:16:53.194 --> 00:16:57.129
All of them need medicines, and testing,
and hospital care, and so forth.

00:16:57.130 --> 00:16:59.732
Financially, it's a disaster.

00:16:59.733 --> 00:17:03.821
But, personally,
the personal cost is just incalculable.

00:17:03.822 --> 00:17:06.503
I think we're starting
to turn the corner:

00:17:06.505 --> 00:17:10.199
my family has promoted me for generation
after generation, after generation.

00:17:10.200 --> 00:17:11.181
However,

00:17:11.182 --> 00:17:16.479
in 2004, we reached the peak
at 201,5 pounds of meat.

00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:18.970
That's what the average person
consumed in that year.

00:17:18.971 --> 00:17:21.507
And in the subsequent years,
it's dropped and dropped,

00:17:21.507 --> 00:17:23.050
and we're now under 190,

00:17:23.051 --> 00:17:26.348
and hopefully,
that downward trend will continue.

00:17:26.349 --> 00:17:30.386
But to this day, doctors,
dieticians, nurses will say,

00:17:30.387 --> 00:17:33.563
"Diabetes is a one way street,
it never goes away."

00:17:33.564 --> 00:17:35.791
But that was before
we looked around the world

00:17:35.792 --> 00:17:39.068
and saw, you know, there are
dietary patterns that are more helpful.

00:17:39.069 --> 00:17:42.727
And that was before we realized
that looking inside the cell,

00:17:42.728 --> 00:17:44.774
we can understand how this occurs,

00:17:44.775 --> 00:17:47.397
and we can understand
how to reverse this process.

00:17:47.398 --> 00:17:49.068
And it was before we realized

00:17:49.069 --> 00:17:54.064
that patients will make bigger changes
than we gave them credit for.

00:17:54.065 --> 00:17:55.647
So, families like mine,

00:17:55.648 --> 00:17:57.778
that have been selling meat
for generations,

00:17:57.779 --> 00:18:02.102
instead, maybe could sell carrots,
asparagus, sweet potatoes, and beans,

00:18:02.103 --> 00:18:05.420
and hopefully, the autopsy room
will more neglected than ever,

00:18:05.421 --> 00:18:08.152
because people are going to live longer,
and look better,

00:18:08.153 --> 00:18:10.897
and maybe the hospital cafeteria,
instead of serving ribs,

00:18:10.898 --> 00:18:13.259
could serve a bounty of helpful foods,

00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:16.098
and instead of studying epidemics,

00:18:16.099 --> 00:18:18.522
maybe we could celebrate
a resurgence of health.

00:18:18.523 --> 00:18:19.551
Thank you very much.

00:18:19.552 --> 00:18:20.603
(Applause)