With all the legitimate concerns about AIDS and avian flu --
and we'll hear about that from the
brilliant Dr. Brilliant later today --
I want to talk about the other pandemic, which is
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension --
all of which are completely preventable for at
least 95 percent of people
just by changing diet and lifestyle.
And what's happening is that there's a
globalization of illness occurring, that people
are starting to eat like us, and live like us, and
die like us. And in one generation, for example,
Asia's gone from having one of the lowest rates of
heart disease and obesity and diabetes to one
of the highest. And in Africa, cardiovascular disease
equals the HIV and AIDS deaths
in most countries.
So there's a critical window of opportunity we
have to make an important difference that can
affect the lives of literally millions of people,
and practice preventive medicine on a global
scale.
Heart and blood vessel diseases still kill more
people -- not only in this country, but also
worldwide -- than everything else combined, and yet
it's completely preventable for almost everybody.
It's not only preventable; it's actually
reversible. And for the last almost 29 years,
we've been able to show that by simply changing
diet and lifestyle, using these very high-tech,
expensive, state-of-the-art measures to prove how
powerful these very simple and low-tech and low-cost
interventions can be like -- quantitative
arteriography, before and after a year, and
cardiac PET scans.
We showed a few months ago -- we published the
first study showing you can actually stop or
reverse the progression of prostate cancer by
making changes in diet and lifestyle, and 70 percent
regression in the tumor growth, or inhibition of
the tumor growth, compared to only nine percent in the
control group.
And in the MRI and MR spectroscopy here, the
prostate tumor activity is shown in red -- you can
see it diminishing after a year.
Now there is an epidemic of obesity: two-thirds of
adults and 15 percent of kids. What's really concerning
to me is that diabetes has increased 70 percent in the
past 10 years, and this may be the first
generation in which our kids live a shorter life
span than we do. That's pitiful, and it's
preventable.
Now these are not election returns, these are the
people -- the number of the people who are obese
by state, beginning in '85, '86, '87 -- these are
from the CDC website -- '88, '89, '90, '91 -- you
get a new category -- '92, '93, '94, '95, '96,
'97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001 -- it gets worse. We're
kind of devolving. (Laughter)
Now what can we do about this? Well, you know, the
diet that we've found that can reverse heart
disease and cancer is an Asian diet.
But the people in Asia are starting to eat like we
are, which is why they're starting to get sick
like we are.
So I've been working with a lot of the big food
companies. They can make it fun and sexy and hip
and crunchy and convenient to eat healthier foods,
like -- I chair the advisory boards to McDonald's,
and PepsiCo, and ConAgra, and Safeway, and soon
Del Monte, and they're finding that it's good
business.
The salads that you see at McDonald's came from
the work -- they're going to have an Asian salad. At
Pepsi, two-thirds of their revenue growth came
from their better foods.
And so if we can do that, then we can free up
resources for buying drugs that you really do need
for treating AIDS and HIV and malaria and for
preventing avian flu. Thank you.