Kosher plant-based group promotes lifestyle medicine for better health - opinion

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of some of the board members from the Kosher Whole Food Plant Based group. The meeting took place over breakfast (yes, a healthy, plant based, delicious breakfast) in Brooklyn, NY. The coaches, the doctor and our chairwoman Debbie Ezra were able to engage in a robust discussion of purpose and goals.

Our mission is pretty clear. We want to encourage members of our kosher-eating community to start eating a healthier, plant-centered diet and incorporate all the pillars of lifestyle medicine into our culture. 

We are intent on educating the community that this is the primary way to advance good health – and the best choice to turn around the catastrophic amount of suffering, disability and early mortality which has become prevalent in all of Western culture. 

By incorporating lifestyle medicine as the principle method to prevent and reverse chronic and autoimmune disease, we want to enhance quality of life for all. The time has come to move away from poor diet, sedentary living, and lack of sleep – the main causes of most illnesses.

All of those present at the meeting have the same frustrations. If we know the prevention and we have the cure, what’s holding us back from moving in a better direction and achieving better health? Unfortunately, the dissemination of false claims and faulty information seems to be the biggest culprit. Let’s take a look at what the common thinking is as opposed to what the facts and truth really tell us.

Getting sick as we get older is inevitable

False! It is true that we can’t turn the clock back on chronological aging. Every day we get older than we were the day before. But did you know that on a cellular level, we can actually reverse aging? This was proven in a study conducted by Nobel prize winner Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn together with Dr. Dean Ornish where they observed the telomeres at the end of your DNA strands reversing the aging pattern of getting shorter and more brittle. Through lifestyle intervention, they instead got longer and softer. 

The diseases we see with aging, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s and high cholesterol are not inevitable. The sooner one makes the changes needed in diet and lifestyle, the less likely these are to occur. In short, it’s never too late to take the steps needed to stay out of the doctor’s office.

It costs too much

Definitely false. Eating a plant predominant diet is actually one of the most cost-efficient things you can do. First of all, it is a lot cheaper to purchase potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, quinoa, brown rice, oatmeal, beans, lentils, fruits and other vegetables than it is to buy meat, chicken, fish, eggs and cheese. So, the more you buy of the first group and less of the second group, the more money you save. 

But there is another factor: When you stay healthy, you spend less on medical care. These days, with the cost of both foods and healthcare, this can make a big difference. Drugs for the common chronic diseases can cost hundreds of dollars per month. Lost pay from work absence can also add up. Look at those who are choosing to turn to Ozempic or Majdura for treatment of diabetes and for weight loss – it’s about $1,000 a month without insurance, but even with insurance, those few hundred dollars monthly add up.

Something so simple can’t possibly solve such complex problems

People have developed a mindset that only pharmaceuticals, procedures and surgeries can solve sickness. That is because this is what most of our doctors tell us - because that’s what they have in their toolbox. There is a new breed of doctor out there who, instead of going straight to medication, will offer you a way to put your disease in check and even reverse it with lifestyle changes before prescribing meds. The best part is that the only side effects will be feeling better and having a better quality of life. 

Dr. Ornish points out in his Unifying Theory, that although every disease has its unique pathology, the bottom line is that they all have pretty much the same cause. Therefore, we only need to remove those root causes and the disease will begin to resolve and reverse. Although we certainly need to fine tune and personalize our programs, the framework is fairly universal.

Habits are hard to break

I agree, they are. Just ask a smoker who has quit smoking cigarettes. You’ve been eating a certain way for a long time and your palate is used to specific tastes and flavors. Couple that with the great effort made by processed food manufacturers to addict you to their products that are full of salt, sugar and fat, and this can really be a tough mountain to climb. However, both I and the other professionals I was sitting with have been successful in helping our clients and patients form new and healthful habits. Some do better diving right in; others do better with step by step changes.

At our meeting, we shared our experiences working with a variety of clients and patients. The shared experiences are amazing! Each of us has stories of our clients reversing diabetes, lowering blood pressure, lowering people’s cholesterol and bringing back outstanding quality of life. All of us stay current with the latest research on lifestyle and its effect on health. We’ve all experienced that exhilarating feeling when people we are working with defeat the illness they have.

We are committed to advancing excellent health and a vibrant quality of life so that all of our community can “add hours to our days, days to our years and years to our lives.

The writer is a health and wellness coach and personal trainer with more than 25 years of professional experience, and has recently been appointed to the Council of the True Health Initiative. He is director of The Wellness Clinic, and can be reached at alan@alanfitness.com