Overflowing hospitals, burnt out and demoralised health professionals, long wait lists and a largely unwell population – we have a massive health crisis in Australia. Half of all Australian adults reported having one or more chronic diseases in the last census. The actual numbers are likely higher. Two-thirds of us are overweight.
An estimated 80% of hospital patients are there because of what they put in their mouths. Cigarettes and alcohol are major contributors, but a huge cause of sickness, disability and death is poor diet.
Heart disease is the biggest cause of death in Australia – and in most of the world. What if there was a way to prevent and reverse this killer disease? Imagine the money and lives saved!
Well there is – in fact we have known since 1990. Research showing how to arrest and reverse heart disease was first published in The Lancet in 1990 by Dr Dean Ornish and has since been replicated by many others. Similarly for type 2 diabetes, research showing how to arrest and reverse type 2 diabetes was published in the 1940s by Dr Walter Kempner.
Heart disease and type 2 diabetes are diseases of affluence and over-consumption and were virtually unknown in places like Uganda in the 1950s. In fact they were rare in most developing nations back then.
We now know that if a patient makes the appropriate lifestyle changes, in most cases their heart disease and diabetes (type 2) can be reversed.
Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, who has published research showing reversal of heart disease, has described heart disease as “a toothless paper tiger that never need exist”.
Dr Kim Williams, former head of the American College of Cardiology, has quipped: “There are two types of cardiologists: vegans and those who haven’t read the data.”
The much touted Mediterranean diet is better than the standard Australian diet – but it has never been shown to reverse heart disease. Only a low-fat, plant-based diet has been shown to do this.
Yet, in Australia, almost 50 people per day die of heart attacks. That’s approximately 17,000 deaths per year. Did these people know that there was a way for them to avoid this fate?
Our healthcare system is wonderful if you present with acute injuries like a broken leg. However for the majority of hospital admissions – which are for chronic disease – what we have is a sickness care system.
The standard Australian diet – high in animal foods and processed foods, low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, along with minimal exercise, poor sleep and too much stress – is virtually guaranteed to give you chronic disease.
Once ill, your options are generally drugs for the rest of your life and/or surgery. The system will treat the symptoms of your sickness, but won’t support you to get well, to reverse your disease – or even inform you that this is an option!
Yet, heart disease is not caused by a statin deficiency, nor is type 2 diabetes due to a metformin (or any other drug) deficiency.
Dr Ornish uses the analogy of doctors busily mopping the floor under an overflowing sink, while failing to turn off the tap. Why are we not doing more to address the upstream determinants of the epidemic of chronic disease now overwhelming our ‘sickness care’ system?
Do we not have a duty of care to at least inform patients that there is an alternative to a lifetime of drugs and/or surgery? It took 16 years of lobbying, but Dean Ornish’s Lifestyle Medicine program is now federally funded in the US – because it works and because it makes powerful economic sense.
The Ornish Lifestyle Medicine program involves plant-based nutrition, exercise, stress management and social connection.
In Australia, it can cost up to $50,000 to give a patient bypass surgery for the treatment of heart disease. However, we know that this is only a stop-gap measure and that if the patient continues the same lifestyle that gave them the heart disease, then the implanted vessels will also block up.
Yet a Lifestyle Medicine program, such as that offered by Ornish, could be delivered in Australia for around $4,000 per patient – a huge saving to the taxpayer. And powerfully, through such a program, the patient can actually get well and stay well – and now has the tools to take control of their own health. Such a program could help unclog not just patients arteries, but also our congested ‘sickness care system’. It could save billions of dollars and many thousands of lives. Unfortunately, there is no funding for this kind of program in Australia.
About the author:
Dr Peter Johnston is a dietitian and an advisory council member of Doctors For Nutrition.
Find out more about his services via his website:
www.perfecthumanfood.com.au