DR. PINEDA OCHOA: You wrote an article about some things that happen to your body when
you stop using animal products. Tell us about some of those things that happen to your body
when you eliminate the eggs, the fish, the chicken, the organic beef, when you get rid
of all of the animal products? What are some of the changes that we start seeing in our bodies?
DR. MCMACKEN: So there’s a few really cool things that I’ve learned that can happen
when you eat that way and eliminate animal products from your diet. And one that I find
very alluring is the amount of inflammation that we can measure and probably inflammation
that we can’t measure. So when you look at C-reactive protein, which is a marker of
inflammation that we can test in the blood, we know that people following plant-based
diets tend to have much lower levels of CRP. And when people who are eating a traditional
Western style diet adopt a plant-based diet, their levels drop as well. So it’s very
powerful.
And the reason it’s powerful, inflammation sounds like it’s a loaded word. And we don’t
want — some inflammation is normal. After you sprain your ankle, that’s a normal type
of inflammation for the short term. But living with inflammation day in and day out is not
normal. And that’s exactly what most Americans and most patients I take care of have.
They’re walking around in this low grade level of inflammation all the time. And it’s
closely tied to those same diseases that we see. It’s tied to diabetes, cancer. It’s
tied to Alzheimer’s disease. It’s tied to heart disease. And so I find it really
incredible that we can modify this through the foods that we eat. So that’s one.
I think a lot of people realize that cholesterol is very tied to our diets. But what I don’t
think they realize is that you can actually lower your cholesterol as much by changing
your diet as you can with pills. And I don’t think a lot of doctors realize that either.
And doctors will often see a patient with high cholesterol and just right away be tempted
to prescribe a medicine for them without actually checking in and saying, what are you actually
eating?
I have had patients change the way they eat to a plant-based approach and drop their cholesterol
40%. And you don’t necessarily see that when you follow one of the nationally recommended
diets that might include fish or chicken, eggs, modest — everything is very modest.
But when you eat that way, you get modest results. So what I’ve seen in my experience
and what the literature supports is that, when people transition to a plant-based diet,
they can drop their cholesterol tremendously and obviate the need, in many cases, for taking
a drug. And there’s, of course, only positive benefits to eating this way, because it addresses
so many other things at the same time.
Other things that happen when you stop eating animal products, prevention of diabetes, which
we talked about a little bit, is very, very powerful. And we know that — I think the
latest numbers are that 38% of Americans have a condition called pre-diabetes. So it’s
really astounding when you think about it. And I see it in my practice as well.
There’s a tremendous number of people — the burden that people face, the burden our society
faces of future diabetes is astounding. We think we have it bad now with diabetes. But
if 38% of Americans have a condition where they’re going to develop diabetes, we’re
looking at an even worse epidemic down the road. So eating a plant-based diet, again,
the whole grains, which are very powerful for preventing diabetes, vegetables, fruits,
which by the way prevent diabetes as well, beans —
DR. PINEDA OCHOA: You’re not afraid of fruits?
DR. MCMACKEN: Not afraid of fruits, yeah. And I tell my diabetics, eat fruit, you’ll
do great, you’ll do really great. Preventing diabetes, changing the way our genes work.
Dr. Dean Ornish has done incredible research with others showing that, when people eat
a plant-based diet, that cancer genes can change the way that they’re expressed.
We talked a little bit earlier about telomeres in plant-based diets, the caps on the end
of our chromosomes that keep them stable and tend to shorten as we live, we can actually
lengthen those telomeres by eating a plant-based diet. We also talked about the microbiome
and how — this is so cool — within a couple of days of changing to a plant-based diet
or changing your diet at all, your microbiome patterns change completely. It’s very quick.
And you eliminate bacteria that make toxic substances, like TMAO, which is a substance
that, if you eat an omnivorous diet, you eat certain foods, eggs and meat and fish, it’s
not just the components of those foods that cause disease, but it’s also how they interact
with your gut bacteria. And they make a substance called TMAO, which accelerates our atherosclerosis,
which is hardening of the arteries. So the benefits are so vast — these are just a
few of the benefits — but the more you learn about it and the more you practice it and
see it, the more you realize just how powerful it is.