Preventing the Leading Causes of Death in the US

I wanted to share this powerful video on how we can prevent the leading causes of death.  Important stuff, right?  I highly recommend watching all (or at least part) of this video.  To summarize and hopefully encourage you to watch it, Dr. Michael Greger presents scientific facts on how we can prevent 14 of the 15 leading causes of death. In the US, the 15 leading causes of death (in order) are:

1. Heart Disease
2. Cancer
3. Respiratory Disease, (COPD, Emphysema)
4. Stroke
5. Accidents
6. Alzheimer’s Disease
7. Diabetes
8. Kidney Failure
9. Influenza
10. Suicide
11. Blood Infection
12. Liver Disease
13. High Blood Pressure
14. Parkinson’s Disease
15. Pneumonia

And interestingly enough, the medical system, when you look at side effects from prescription drugs, medical mistakes and hospital acquired infections, results in 187,000 deaths per year making it the 3rd leading cause of death in the US!  (Good reason to avoid unnecessary doctor visits).

 ALL of these leading causes of death, with the exception of accidents, can be prevented or combated with a strict vegetarian (i.e.: vegan) diet.

Don’t worry if you are a devoted meat eater.  Small changes in your diet like adding in greens at every meal and cutting out meat a few days a week will still have a positive influence on your health.

But, for me, I have found the vegan route to be the best option.  For example, in one year, my cholesterol has dropped 38 points, and my triglycerides (the measure of fat in the blood) dropped 104 points!  That’s proof enough for me.

Here is the link to the video   http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/

Vitamins and Minerals on a Vegan Diet

You can get plenty of calcium (as well as other vitamins and minerals) on a vegan diet.

This is a great “cheat sheet” for identifying non meat sources of important vitamins and minerals.  This was provided by No Meat Athlete, one of my favorite blogs for nutritional information. 

Three Years of Health and Blogging

Today this blog is 3 years old!  Cool, I’ve never managed to keep a journal for more than a few weeks, and I’ve been pretty faithfully posting here for 3 years.  I started this as a means of motivating myself to get back into shape (which you might have guessed from the name of this blog!)  For most of my adult life I was physically active and health conscious, but then I had a 2-3 year lapse while I was dealing with some personal issues.  I ended up gaining about 20 pounds, but even more troublesome was that my cholesterol and triglycerides went up to unhealthy levels.

So in February 2010, I took the first step…I went to the gym.  I also started this blog with this post   The goal of the blog was to 1) keep me motivated to get back into shape and 2) to share my journey and hopefully motivate others.

One year later, in February of 2011  I reported that I had lost 12 pounds, and had gone from barely fitting into the size 8 clothes I had to buy when I gained weight, back into my size 6 clothes.  I had also started making smarter food decisions and eating better.

In my birthday post in 2012 I proudly stated that I had lost most of the excess weight I had gained, and more importantly that my cholesterol numbers were moving back down.  My objectives were to eat healthy are to buy (and use) a juicer and start buying organic vegetables.

Now, three years later, I am doing great!  I am exercising regularly, either running, weight training or practicing yoga. And over the past year, (as you may have noticed in my posts), I have completely changed my dietary habits.

 I am now eating a plant-based diet and have eliminated all dairy products.  If you want to know why I have eliminated dairy, you can check out my earlier post on dairy!  I did indeed buy a juicer and I use it regularly, and I eat mostly local organic fruits and vegetables.

I feel great; my running has improved, and since changing my diet my cholesterol has dropped 34 points and my triglycerides dropped to less than half of what they were!  I attribute this completely to my vegan diet.

My physical fitness goals for the upcoming year are to improve my running times to run a 5K in 24 minutes and a 10K in 50 minutes, to improve my flexibility so that I can stretch out over my legs and get my chest to the floor, and be able to 20 military push ups.

Phew, I have a lot of work to do, stay tuned…