Research
More Studies: Lifestyle Beats Medication
Groundbreaking research shows that diet composition has stronger effects than medication—lifestyle beats pharmaceuticals.
Research
Groundbreaking research shows that diet composition has stronger effects than medication—lifestyle beats pharmaceuticals.
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Last week there was a newsletter with five studies you absolutely should know. The feedback was overwhelming. Thanks for that incredible motivation! But today let's continue. Following up on the last newsletter, just on November 11th, 2021, a study was published in perhaps the most prestigious «nutrition» journal of all – Cell Metabolism.
The results could not be more groundbreaking. Looking at all these astounding study outcomes, one wonders why all this knowledge, all these messages that are practically being shouted at us from the scientific community, finds no hearing in the mainstream. But let's get to the study. In the science magazine ScienceDaily, the scientists comment on their results as follows, in three short acts:
Absolutely clear. Let's take the medication metformin as an example – which is given for blood sugar issues. It activates, for instance, the important energy sensor AMPK in our cells, which forces glucose uptake into cells. Healthy eating, exercise, even a simple green tea activate AMPK equally well.
Listen carefully. Diet is medicine. Says a scientist who just published his results in perhaps the most prestigious journal for nutrition and metabolism. He MUST know. Moreover: he claims that medications weaken the beneficial effects of diet – or let's say: lifestyle – rather than reprogramming the body. So much for «the pill from your doctor.»
Self-evident. Before you take metformin for blood sugar problems, you should change your diet and lifestyle, because that works better than medication.
Again: For you as an edubily newsletter reader and lifestyle optimizer, these may not be new insights. But for the vast majority of our society, these are completely unknown facts. In our technocratic society, most still believe that the doctor can «heal» their aches and pains with pills, and that diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration – lifestyle diseases – simply fall out of the sky. Even some longtime edubily readers haven't grasped the scope of «lifestyle» – they still think vitamin D doesn't help with Corona.
Back to the study: What exactly did the scientists investigate? They conducted an extremely demanding study, testing 40 different interventions with varying protein, fat, and carbohydrate ratios, calories, and medications in mice. Three anti-aging medications – metformin, rapamycin, and resveratrol – were administered and they observed what happened to liver metabolism. Results summarized in the quotes above.
We find that incredibly encouraging. Because it gives us a key, it gives us room to act. When things go wrong, maybe you should quit smoking, stop excessive coffee drinking, get heavy metals out of your body, or drive by McDonald's half as often. That alone heals the body far more powerfully than any medication ever could. Since it fits so well, we're adding two more recent studies that underscore the whole thing:
Caffeine and polyphenols (from tea and coffee) have long been known to provide extreme brain protection. Study results show: «People who drank 2–3 cups of coffee or 3–5 cups of tea daily, or a combination of 4–6 cups of coffee and tea, had the lowest occurrence of stroke or dementia. People who drank 2–3 cups of coffee and 2–3 cups of tea daily had a 32% lower stroke risk and a 28% lower dementia risk compared to people who drank neither coffee nor tea.» Clear and simple.
That gut health essentially controls or at least influences everything in the body is no longer just a tale from alternative medicine – it's fact. New study results confirm: Proteins we eat also contain BCAA, branched-chain amino acids. These amino acids are taken up by gut bacteria, which then excrete a breakdown product that interacts with our immune system. The result: inflammation is dampened.
The latter study is particularly noteworthy because the authors naturally don't recommend taking a few BCAAs or eating more protein – rather, they want to industrially manufacture the breakdown product that gut bacteria produce and administer it as medication. Ouch!
