The fourth McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from John Abramson, MD, author of Overdo$ed America. It is the only disc in the series that contains three lectures, the first two run about 45 minutes in length, with the third lasting for an hour. The first lecture is “The Misdirection of American Medicine: The Biomedical/Commercial Juggernaut,” with the second lecture on “Evidence-Based Medicine vs. Epidemiologically-Based Medicine,” and the third lecture on “National Cholesterol Education Program Guidelines: Pushing Statins or Preventing Heart Disease”

As you can tell from the lecture titles, this disc is all about the medical industry and not as much about diet and nutrition. In “The Misdirection of American Medicine: The Biomedical/Commercial Juggernaut,” Abramson talks about his revelation that the medical journals had been infiltrated by the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and that it was no longer safe to trust the information as the medical community had previously done. He is also aware that he comes across to his colleagues as a conspiracy theorist of the highest order. Thankfully, he has a lot of studies and photographs in his lecture to let us know that he’s on the right side of the evidence.

He documents that the medical community gets a lot of credit for things it hasn’t accomplished, which is often the basis for our trust. For example, the tuberculosis epidemic is something that was greatly reduced in society, but medicine was introduced when it was already nearly controlled by public health campaigns, so it played a very minor role. Similarly, people are living up to 30 years longer than before, but Abramson shows studies whereby the medical community only accounts for five of those 30 years, though they are often credited for the whole thing. In this lecture, he also explores the paradox whereby the more we spend on medical care, the worse the end result; and the complete co-opting of the medical community by the pharmaceutical industry, whereby even going to get re-accreditation is now navigating a big pharma obstacle course. It’s an interesting lecture and one you hope will someday show up in a time capsule as a document to what things were like before the reform.

“Evidence-Based Medicine vs. Epidemiologically-Based Medicine” builds on the information in the first lecture, showing how drug companies use misdirection to tout the benefits of their products. Compared to doctors working with their patients to discuss better health responses to their issues, which have dramatically better results, they are instead shown very processed data showing the effectiveness of one drug versus another. But the sad part is, the medical journals and clinical trials have been corrupted by the drug makers. With research money drying up, academia entered into a relationship with the pharmaceutical companies for their funding. While they don’t necessarily influence the process itself, many times the drug companies write the first draft of the findings, and use their more favorable data slides than the ones the academics prepared. With Vioxx, the company actually based its research findings on the first six months of a 12-month trial, because more cardiac issues were found in the second six months. But this information was never included in the report, which means it never was included as part of the information doctors use to determine whether to prescribe drugs. Ironically, the government reviewed the study and knew what had happened, but said they couldn’t stop them because the drug companies have a “first amendment right to commercial speech.” Abramson is passionate about this issue, although it does make you wonder what path there is to get things back on the right course.

In the final lecture “National Cholesterol Education Program Guidelines: Pushing Statins or Preventing Heart Disease,” Abramson digs down into what he showed in his previous lectures to show how this system works against us, focusing on cholesterol-lowering statins. He shows how the numbers don’t add up in the bigger picture, seeing that the United States currently takes twice as many statins as other industrialized nations, but still has three times as many angioplasties, and three times as many bypass procedures. In addition, for some populations of people for whom statins are recommended, such as women at risk of heart disease, there are no studies that show it would have any benefit, and one study indicates there might be a possible cancer increase as a result of taking statins.

Ironically, studies also show that diet, exercise, and stopping smoking all have extremely higher rates of preventing heart disease compared to statins, but they are not the recommended path because doctors are programmed to prescribe medications and their patients have similar expectations.

Abramson shows the vast different between what the medical studies say, how that information is reported in medical journals, and how those studies are then used as supporting documents in future recommendations despite them having no connection to the conclusions they are used to support.

Although this review is long, it is worth noting that these are incredibly dense lectures with a lot of facts, figures, charts, and additional resources. This information barely scratches the surface of what was presented. The overall thing that kept running through my mind as I watched these lectures was wondering how, in a time where candidates are running on universal health care, how the end result if it based on our current system still wouldn’t be health. In fact, the inability to get on medications for chronic conditions based on perpetually-reduced dosage guidelines might actually save more lives than giving everyone access. (Although, this doesn’t apply to necessary things the medical community provides that would save people’s lives who currently can’t afford them).

This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, Michael Greger MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

The third McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from Michael Greger, MD. I had previously downloaded the audio of some of his presentations from his website, but think it’s worth watching them on this DVD series, as well. The first lecture is on “Stopping Cancer Before It Starts”, with the second lecture on “Coming Home To Roost: Bird Flu and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases.”

“Stopping Cancer Before It Starts” is an entertaining lecture mainly due to Greger’s presentation style, which in addition to his interesting cadence includes a lot of fun with the expectations of presentation delivery. For example, in one slide he shows the level of DDT-like toxin that is allowable in food by the government, and says he’s going to put McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, ice cream and other fast foods up on the slide. Now, the expectation is that they would fit on the slide, which went from 0 to 200 units, with 120 being the daily limit. The presumption is that everything will come in at less than 200, though, since that is the top number on his graph. But when he puts Haagen-Dazs ice cream on the slide, though, it logs in at 49,000 units with the line crashing through the top of his slide. The other junk food also ranks with similarly high levels.

Greger’s lecture gives a primer on cancer itself and how it spreads, and he shows how a low-fat vegan diet can prevent the spread at different levels of its growth. He then starts talking about the antioxidant and other cancer-fighting properties of different foods in an entertaining way, showing how much anti-cancer bang for the buck you’d get with different fruits and vegetables. It’s good to see this recommendation about including these various whole foods in your diet rather than the reductive way the processed food industry will use this information to add health claims to their products.

A word of warning, though, the presentation does end early as this is a one-hour version, and he mentions you can download the complete presentation from his website to find out the full top ten list of cancer superfoods. But it’s certainly a worthwhile watch and reinforces how important it is to incorporate some of these foods into your regular diet.

“Coming Home To Roost: Bird Flu and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases” shows how human interaction with animals has led to many of our common ailments, such as the common cold. It started 10,000 years ago, when we started using animals as part of our workforce on farms. Once people got into close proximity with animals, they began to get colds and diseases that were previously unknown to them. It is why when Europeans came to America, the Native Americans were getting illnesses they had never known before encountering Europeans. There was no contamination from the Native Americans to the Europeans, however. The major difference is the Europeans had a closer relationship with animals, and Native Americans did not.

But our current wave of animal agriculture poses one of the biggest health threats, because factory farm conditions could not be any more conducive to growing more savage strains of viruses if it tried. With millions of birds in a huge room with no sunlight, feces everywhere, the virus can just infect and mutate at a rate that was previously unheard of. Greger shows articles from poultry industry magazines where they clearly understand the problem, but then don’t do anything about it. The government’s plan if such a strain of influenza were ever to be released is to quarantine people at home for up to 90 days, according to the Department of Homeland Security, a measure for which few if any people are ready.

So, similar to Dr. Barnard’s lecture, the first one is more pratical advice you can put into use and the second lecture is more of a bigger issue piece that is good information to have. It seems unlikely that government regulation will ever respond in a dramatic enough way to address this situation, in which case it is only a matter of time before this crisis happens. But, if you’re lucky, you could be one of the two to five percent of the population who might get the vaccine for this bird flu, as that is the amount our government has stockpiled, as opposed to Western European countries who have up to 30 percent of their population covered.

This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, John Abramson MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

The second McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The two hour-long lectures on this DVD are “Breaking the Food Seduction,” and “New Dietary Approaches for Diabetes and Cancer.”

The first presentation is based on Barnard’s book of the same name, where he shows that a lot of the foods people crave, such as sugar, milk, chocolate and meat are actually chemically addictive. Barnard says a lot of this activity is a product of nature not leaving anything to chance.

He starts with the example of dipping a baby’s pacifier in sugar water and holding eye contact with the baby for several minutes while it sucks on the sugared pacifier. If you then leave the room and come back with a group of people, the baby will specifically track you around the room. There is a similar opiate effect in milk to ensure calves and babies nurse from their mothers. Chocolate ups the ante by building several addictive things into its product including caffeine. It’s an interesting lecture that also links some of these addictions to their ability to promote cancer, such as a graph where countries with the larger consumption of dairy products have the highest incidents of prostate cancer.

At one point, Barnard said that there is a drug they give in emergency rooms to people overdosing on heroin, who are about to die. It is an opiate-blocker and it stops their brain from being affected by the heroin, saving their life. If the same drug is given to someone who regularly craves and binges on chocolate, they will lose their interest in chocolate.

I first saw Barnard give this lecture several years ago when the book was released, to a room that included many invited members of the medical community, to try and get them to include nutrition as part of their practice. The lecture hasn’t changed too much over the years, but helps to show people that in many instances there is more going on than mere cravings or weakness when it comes to certain foods in our diets.

The second lecture starts with a look at the fundamentals of diabetes and how different diet-based studies have affected people with diabetes. After that, Barnard goes in a different direction than the standard vegan diet and cancer connection, focusing on studies where people already have cancer and how different diet choices affected their health and survival rates. It focused primarily on breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

I don’t think I’ll be giving away the results here if I say that a low-fat vegan diet seemed to provide the best result no matter what area of focus the study was addressing. But it was interesting to see how the low-fat vegan diet compared to other tests and control groups in the various studies. The second lecture is less interesting to a general audience, but still helps to reinforce the power of a low-fat vegan diet for everything from weight loss to diabetes prevention to reducing the symptoms of various cancers.

I’m a big fan of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, John Abramson MD, and Michael Greger MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

In one of five new McDougall Advance Study DVDs (the other four reviews will be posted daily), Howard Lyman delivers two interesting hour-long talks. The first “The Journey of a Mad Cowboy,” chronicles his life from being a farmer, rancher and feedlot operator to becoming vegan and being sued alongside Oprah for disparaging beef. The second lecture, “Eating The Earth One Bite At A Time,” starts with a history of civilizations that built themselves on bad foundations and ends with a call to action.

Surprisingly, I have never attended a Howard Lyman presentation, but I was fortunate enough to be volunteering in a booth for the San Francisco Vegetarian Society once the day after Lyman had presented. What no one told us is that Lyman was going to sit in the booth all afternoon, talk to people, and sell his books and DVDs. So, when he showed up with his stuff, we really didn’t know anything about it.

Throughout the afternoon, there was a steady stream of people stopping by to meet him and talk. Some had been to his presentation the previous day, but many just knew of him and wanted to connect with the guy who got sued alongside Oprah. Whenever there were breaks in the action, I chatted with him about our mutual respect for Dr. McDougall, and other issues. He was a really nice guy, and gave me two of his DVDs at some point that was probably under his own cost, but he was more interested that I see his DVDs than be able to afford them.

The thing I most remember about Lyman is evident in his lectures, which is his complete lack of pretense. In his first and more polished of the two lectures (probably because he’s been delivering it longer), he plays up that he grew up a farmer, rancher, and feedlot operator. He eventually turned his small family farm into a large agribusiness, until a medical issue almost left him unable to walk. Lyman really plays up his down-home nature perfectly to get people to lower their defenses. The lecture isn’t big on medical studies and research as much as his no-bullshit delivery about how his life changed as a result of becoming vegan.

The one interesting element (that I was completely unaware of) is language that was passed as part of the justifiably-maligned Patriot Act, which replaces the food disparagement legislation for which Lyman and Oprah weren’t found guilty. If the same situation came up again, Lyman could be considered a terrorist under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which can consider civil disobedience and speech as ‘domestic terrorism’ if animal-related businesses lose profits or property. Now, if some militant group burns down an animal processing plant or poisons the food supply beyond the levels currently accepted as normal by industry, then sure, I’m fine with that. But speech? It’s good to see that even in the wake of September 11, the Bush Administration was still sneaking corporate favors in under the cover of patriotism.

I think “The Journey of a Mad Cowboy” is a great lecture to show to friends and family who aren’t entirely convinced of vegetarianism. His personality will win them over and make every point get even deeper by the time the hour has ended. I also enjoy the fact that, like McDougall and T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study), Lyman found veganism as the answer to a problem (in this case, his health), rather than being a vegan first and working backward to connect the dots. Like Campbell, who started his research on protein in an attempt to grow cattle faster, Lyman actually ran a huge cattle ranch before becoming “The Mad Cowboy.” So, this was definitely not the expected path for him.

“Eating The Earth One Bite At A Time” starts with a history lesson, of various civilizations that let their desires overshadow reality. One example is how on Easter Island the natives made elaborate carved statues to establish hierarchy within the group. At some point, rats found their way onto the island, but the natives didn’t mind since the rats only seemed to eat the seeds dropped by the palm trees. But, over time, the lack of seeds meant the older trees were not being replaced, which were being cut down for canoes to transport the statues. The deforestation also led to erosion, until the island became uninhabitable.

Lyman goes on with a series of examples of such history lessons. But ultimately the lecture ends on as a rallying cry, where he admits he’s only worried about reaching a good-sized chunk of the 20 percent of the population that is even listening. The down-home stuff continues, where he says if you lecture people about how they should eat and the consequences of their diet, you may be pointing one finger at them, but three fingers back at yourself.

Overall, another strong entry in the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard MD, John Abramson MD, and Michael Greger MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

McDougall recently wrote an article on grains: “All large populations of trim, healthy people, throughout written human history, have obtained the bulk of their calories from starch. Examples of thriving people include, Japanese and Chinese in Asia eating sweet potatoes, buckwheat, and/or rice, Incas in South America eating potatoes, Mayans and Aztecs in Central America eating corn, and Egyptians in the Middle East eating wheat.”

He also wrote an article against intensive therapy: “Research over the past four decades has consistently shown that intensive drug treatment will lower risk factors, such as cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure; but will also cause patients to die sooner, albeit, with better looking numbers.

And Karen Baaron was profiled as the latest Star McDougaller: “Now when I get out of bed I feel very awake and my energy stays level throughout the day. I love the way I look, but even more I love the way I feel: light, energetic, strong, and confident that I can do this for the rest of my life and never have to worry about portion control and weight gain again.” Congratulations, Karen!

By Jeff Walsh

In the new DVD “Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind,” Doug Lisle points out that only three species struggle with gaining excess weight: humans, dogs, and cats. So, there seems to be one factor at work here if among two million species only one seems to be having a problem (and feeding two others).

In two filmed lectures given as part of a McDougall Program in Santa Rosa, Lisle says all other species eat as much as they want, don’t worry about portion control, or burning off more calories if they ate a lot, yet nature seems to sort everything out.

In his first lecture on the DVD, Lisle, the psychologist for the McDougall Wellness Program and co-author of the book The Pleasure Trap, says it all comes down to evolution and that our diet of processed foods is affecting our body’s ability to gauge satiety (when you feel full).

In one chart, he tracks the caloric density of different foods and most of the low-fat vegan stuff on the McDougall Program is around or under 500 calories per pound (raw salads, other veggies like corn and carrots, fruits, and grains — in ascending order of caloric density); whereas meat is at 1200, bread and cheese are both at 1700, and potato chips are 2500 calories per pound.

So, the more we take food away from its natural state (grain at 500 calories per pound becomes bread at 1700 calories per pound), our bodies lack the ability to correctly count these foods that were not previously part of our evolution. As he covered in detail in his book, the Pleasure Trap is our evolutionary impulse to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and try to expend the least amount of energy in the process. But we have made calorie-dense food much easier to obtain without expending energy, so that is immediately appealing.

The second lecture is all about Success Forces, and looks at the psychology of weight loss existing as a war within our brains. Lisle uses the example of catching a monkey to illustrate this dilemma. To catch a monkey, all you have to do is put food in a barrel with a hole too small for it to retrieve the food, and while its hand is in the barrel, it is vulnerable and, at some point, it cannot make a decision for its own freedom over the food in its hand.

Lisle explores why so many people have that same internal war between wanting to lose weight, but simultaneously wanting to eat, and it’s interesting information to consider. Lisle also goes on to look at many of the other mental games we play that help us from achieving our goals.

The McDougall Wellness Program has been putting out phenomenal DVDs pretty regularly now, and this is yet another keeper in the collection (expect some reviews of their previous DVDs in the future). Aside from the rather-blah stock titles on this one, it is a pretty straightforward two-camera lecture with his slides intercut, presented live in front of an audience of McDougallers.

Lisle is funny and entertaining, and presents a good case that a whole food vegan diet is the way to go (even to those of us who don’t need further convincing). The total running time is about an hour and 45 minutes, which is a pretty good deal for a $19.95 DVD.

You can find out more information on this DVD, or order it online at http://www.drmcdougall.com/store_losing_weight.html

Michelle Bachmann, the latest Star McDougaller, went from 275 to 170 after finding out about Dr. McDougall’s program by reading another amazing book, The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.

She says: “Obesity has shaped my life, but it no longer shapes my body. I am going to keep on doing what I’m doing, and hopefully when people I know are ready, they will come back to ask me what the McDougall lifestyle is all about. And maybe we can even exchange some recipes!”

Congrats, Michelle!

In the current McDougall newsletter, Dr. McDougall discusses the recent influx of exotic juices with wild health claims, but sticks to his guns about whole foods being better for you than juices. McDougall references the following experiment in the article:

In this experiment ten normal subjects consumed meals based on apples, applesauce, and apple juice. When whole apples are blended into applesauce, nothing is removed, but the natural fibers of the apple are disrupted. To make juice, the fiber is filtered off and discarded. This research found fiber-free juice was consumed eleven times faster than the whole apples and four times faster than the applesauce. Juice was less satisfying to the appetite than was the applesauce and the applesauce was less satisfying than the whole apples.

He goes on to wrap up the article in a way that spikes a lot of the promise of these acai, goji and other exotic juices flooding the market:

“Juices, even exotic and expensive ones, will not correct fundamental problems. Juice is no longer a whole plant-food and the consequence on human health of consuming large amounts of this alteration of whole fruits and vegetables is yet to be determined. At the very least, consuming any kinds of juices, rather than the whole food, will promote weight gain.”

In his November newsletter, Dr. McDougall discusses the meat-eater’s last stand: that a vegan diet is unhealthy because of its deficiency of Vitamin B12.

“How many vegans have you met with B12 deficiency anemia or nervous system damage? I bet not one! Furthermore, you have never even heard of such a problem unless you have read the attention-seeking headlines of newspapers or medical journals,” McDougall writes.

Good reading for people whose meat-eating friends are smart enough to know about this deficiency (but seem to prefer unapplied knowledge, if they read this much and still eat meat), or if you think you’re the one vegan in a million who might suffer from this unlikely malady, which is easily prevented.

“I am now 68 years old and am in excellent health. I take no drugs, vitamins, nor supplements. In addition to losing weight, and lowering my blood pressure and cholesterol, I have also gained much more energy and I am less susceptibility to colds, flu, and other common maladies. I bicycle 70 miles a week, play tennis twice a week, and work out with light weights every other day.”

– Charles Alexander, the latest Star McDougaller