iThrive, diabetes, Whole Foods Plant-Based diet and the Healthcare Crisis

The iThrive project is a series of 9 documentaries, supporting materials and online support for recovering from diabetes with the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet. It is an overwhelming project, reflecting one man's journey back from the brink with diabetes. That man is Jon McMahon, and the first episode of the series is the most important of them all, because Jon takes responsibility for his condition by realizing that it was he who shoveled the junk food in his mouth that ultimately caused his condition. No change is ever possible unless and until we take responsibility for our condition. Every psychotherapist knows this, though physicians tend to ignore this issue, because they are stuck in a Newtonian universe.
Subsequently, Jon pursues all avenues that could help him overcome his disease, and he made it into a series of documentaries, whereby we join in his journey of discovery.

The launch of this effort comes at the same time as updated versions of Dr. Neal Barnard's books on diabetes, one explaining his basic program for reversing diabetes without drugs and the other a cookbook.

This is an updated 2018 edition of Dr. Barnard's book on Diabetes, which first appeared in 2008.The importance of the iThrive project being released at the same time, is that it is the "do it yourself," corollary to the medical findings of Dr. Barnard (and others), that diet should always be the first priority in any protocol dealing with diabetes.
Jon McMahon's commitment and his thoroughness is inspiring. He does not leave a stone unturned, but the essence of it remains what I said above, he took responsibility for his situation and went systematically about the task of finding out what he could do to turn it around. Dr. Barnard also appears in the iThrive series. In the process we find out (in episodes 2 & 3) that the standard medical protocol for dealing with diabetes (type 2 primarily, but not exclusively) is oriented to treating symptoms, not healing the disease and in the end leads to nothing more than a spiraling escalation of drug prescriptions as our condition worsens and produces on average a 10-year shortened life-expectancy.

The key description comes from Dr. Anthony Lim, who is the Medical Director of the McDougall Healthe Center, at 26:50 of episode 2, where he describes the "standard" medical protocol, and how it produces nothing but a slippery slope of medication to suppress symptoms and allowing the condition to worsen, without doing the one thing that would actually reverse it, which only a Whole Foods Plant-Based, low-fat diet would do. Again the outcome is a horrible quality of life with more and more drugs, and on the average a 10-year reduction in life expectancy versus non-diabetics. Evidently, it is as important to realize that the medical protocols are in fact deleterious to your health, as it is to realize with Jon McMahon that you are the one who can change what you are putting in your mouth. The patient becomes the central actor and their conscious desire to change must drive the bus.

Enter Whole Foods Plant-Based nutrition

In episode 2, T. Colin Caldwell delivers a ringing indictment of the fact that medicine has traditionally completely ignored diet. Evidently, this is slowly beginning to change and diabetes and cardio vascular disease are just two areas where this is hugely important. Not only do medical protocols not work, they are often counter-productive: one drug leads to another.
 
We accompany Jon on the journey to the whole foods plant-based lifestyle (#WFPB) and away from the path of the "accepted" medical approach, which does nothing for dealing with the cause of the problem, but just suppresses the symptoms, and as explained above is basically a path of medication and more medication and a 10 year shorter life expectancy for the average diabetic.

Switching to the #WFPB lifestyle deals with the cause, refined foods, and in particular too too much animal proteins, refined (i.e. simple carbs) and too much oil.For diabetics in particular, the impact can be so swift, they cannot do this without medical supervision to adjust their medications, their insulin needs will be rapidly reduced, sometimes to zero. Rip Esselstyn, from his experience with his 7-day immersion trainings with his "7-day rescue challenge" reports that pre-diabetics, who are not on medication yet, frequently can normalize their A1C-level even within the week of his class. By comparison, the traditional low carb diet buys the patient nothing but a delay of execution, it cannot reverse the disease.

Two Interlocking Paradigm Shifts

 I wrote about the paradigm shifts that are occurring here in an earlier post on this site, but I want to recap the issues here:

1. The first step, the recognition of the massive therapeutic value of Whole Foods, Plant-Based nutrition, means a shift towards the causes of disease. However if we leave it at that we are limiting the matter to a deterministic, mechanistic, and ultimately Newtonian model of man, which is where medicine is stuck. However, if diet is the cause, what then is the cause of us not eating a healthy diet? Etc. This is where Jon's realization that he himself shoveled all that bad food in his mouth is so important, along with the realization that he now has the power to do otherwise... but does he really want to?
2. The direct consequence of this insight is empowerment of the patient to improve their condition, as in fact the change of diet is the single biggest thing anyone can so for themselves. It is more powerful than many medications. Along with it, human resistance moves center stage, so the whole question becomes a matter of the human will. Meaning that the mind of the patient is ultimately the healer. This notion brings us into the domain of Amit Goswami's concept of the quantum doctor: he explains painstakingly in his book of that title how quantum physics implies exactly that. Along with it he demonstrates meticulously how medicine is stuck in a Newtonian model and he discusses in depth the differences of the quantum physical model and its meaning for the practice of medicine.

In the iThrive material, there is valuable discussion of the psychological dynamics of the addictive nature of certain foods, and how and why all of the "comfort food" of various kinds is addictive. In the 6th episode this is more fully explored and it is helpful to understand these dynamics, however the explanation offered still does not go beyond conditioning and evolution and so on, which gets us nowhere, except to the problem of "the child is the father of the man." It is not all behavioral and deterministic, otherwise you could not have two children of the same parents and one becomes a democrat and the second a republican. In other words, we do have a mind capable of transcending and the process of healing cannot ever even start unless we step up to the plate and start taking responsibility. This is why I noted above that this was the single most important concept in this entire series.

In short, the introduction of the Whole Foods Plant-Based nutritional model into clinical practice is a drastic paradigm shift in our concept of what medicine even is, and it restores Hippocrates' notion of "let food be thy medicine," to center stage. Vast amounts of medical treatments and medication will be made superfluous. Too many medications cover up the symptoms and allow us to practice deferred maintenance, and the trouble builds up over a lifetime, and in old age people do nothing else but battling degenerative illness that has resulted from a lifetime of neglect. This is what the Standard American Diet is: nutritional deprivation that leads directly to a whole range of serious degenerative diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, MS, Alzheimers, and many others.

However, this shift is only the beginning of the paradigm shift, the second step must follow, for again, it is the patient who stuffs all that bad food in their mouths, and they now have the option to make a change. The quantum mechanical model makes it clear that the body, and it's conditions are a choice of consciousness from the hologram of quantum possibilities, so the chain of causation is from the mind to the body, and the body in and of itself does not cause anything - it is merely an effect.

A new health care model

The realization that it is the mind of the patient that is the healer also has profound implications for the selection of healing modalities. It levels the playing field for the various medical specialties. Certainly, the dominant position of the allopathic medicine practitioners with their obsolete Newtonian model of the human condition is well past the sell-by date and the future must result in greater freedom of choice in this area. For this reason, I proposed an entirely different health care model, in which the primary care physician becomes more of a personal health coach and a medical subject matter expert on a retainer, who can guide us to the most optimal treatment options. For more details, see my earlier post, referenced above.

Health and Well-being: on wanting to be healthy 

The steps we followed above lead us to the idea that it is the mind of the "patient," which is the key to healing, and, contrary to what is often believed, much psychological conflict gets in the way of wanting to be healthy. One very helpful guide that I wrote about recently is Cindy Lora-Renard, in her book A Course in Health and Well-being, where she looks deeply into the spiritual process of finding our way to healing and health and well-being. Doing this inner work in one form or another is the key to the journey back to wholeness, which is what healing is.

Health and Well-being Comes First

Health means more than physical health, it must first mean spiritual and psychological health and well-being, the example of which is perhaps best seen in Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, about spiritual health and how it helped him survive the Nazi death camps. Cindy Lora-Renard, in her book A Course in Health and Well-being, frames the issue in a modern way, with practical advice on how to put inner health, inner peace central in your life.

During my visit at Plantstock in August of 2017, I listened to many of the personal stories of people who were finding health through the Whole Foods Plant-Based nutritional paradigm, and two in particular really drove the message home to me of how much this transition is part of a spiritual growth process for many.

Health and Well-being is First Spiritual

Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President, spoke about this dimension explicitly. He was well aware of the fundamental change in his life of going from abusing food, almost like a drug, to enjoying the empowerment of taking control of your health with the Whole Foods Plant-Based lifestyle.

Another presenter who stood out for me was Tim Kaufman from Atlanta, who blew me away by his realization that as a trial lawyer all of his life his business had been to catch people in a lie, but that his unhealthy relationship with food had made his own life a lie. His description of his turnaround was truly a cathartic moment.


I have encountered many who at some point in their spiritual journeys actively pursued a change in their relationship to food as part of that journey. There is something about becoming conscious about all of your relationships, with people as well as things, including food. Around us, the awareness of the health problems resulting from the Standard American Diet is growing to the point that the fast food industry, and really the whole food industry is fast finding itself in the place of the tobacco industry. Particularly the recent book by Dr. Neal Barnard, The Cheese Trap, makes it very clear how junk food is not just psychologically addictive, but in some cases - cheese obviously - may be physically addictive as well. No wonder people abuse food as a pacifier.

Before anything else, psychological and spiritual well-being means an equanimity with the physical, for we know it is not the be-all and end-all of who we are, but certainly the body is our vehicle in this world and being reasonable about the upkeep makes sense. In the end the old saying holds:

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

Or, just be normal, but being normal in this case includes stopping self-destructive behaviors. One thing I know from experience now and that is that, since I consciously committed myself to the Whole Foods Plant-Based paradigm, this has opened up a whole new level of enjoyment of food. This does not mean in any sense that you would never get sick, but still it produces a tremendous new level of empowerment to feel how you can take responsibility for your own health.

Particularly important is the message from the work of T. Colin Caldwell, which says that never mind the genetic predispositions (or other challenges) you may have, it always holds that, all else being equal, the Whole Foods, Plant-Based nutritional approach produces superior results. In short, you can take responsibility by doing your part, and if you do have to deal with disease of any sort, you will deal with it that much better if you've taken care of your body as best you can.

Let food be thy medicine

Hippocrates said that. The whole Whole Foods Plant-Based revolution falls in line with this notion. The truth is that 75% of healthcare spending is in fact sick-care, related to the growing list of chronic, degenerative diseases that all result from the Western diet. The economic incentives in our system are to provide ever more sick care, for that's where the money is. On the ground, people are feeling sicker and sicker as they get more sick care, until they finally realize that they can take charge, and growing numbers of people are dumping hands full of medications almost as soon as they get on a #WFPB diet. In fact, for diabetics the results are often so dramatic that they need regular medical attention to adjust their insulin doses, and often their insulin needs can be drastically reduced, or even eliminated altogether within weeks or months. In cardiology the results tend to be equally dramatic.
Here are some interesting videos:

• T.Colin Campbell, PhD. suggests an alternative approach to the health care crisis in a TEDx talk, based on WFPB, pointing out that 75% of health care dollars is spent on caring for degenerative diseases caused by diet, and that since the 70's till now our healthcare costs have risen from 5% of GDP to 18% of GDP, and are still rising, while we are in 37th place in terms of health outcomes.
• Irminne van Dyken, MD proposes that many surgeries can be avoided in the same way. She focuses on surgeries, because she is a surgeon, but she says, she would rather not be.
• And an interesting presentation about the health cost of our fast food culture from the Food Revolution Network.

Here is a brief list of some of the best literature in this area. It is rapidly growing.

• Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: the expropriation of health. The updated edition of his 1975 paper. This remains one of the seminal papers on the health threat posed by our modern Western medical model.
  The results cited by T. Colin Campbell (above) merely confirm it: with growing "healthcare" expenditure from 5 to 18% of GDP we have fallen to 37th on the global list of health outcomes. As we now understand, the fact that doctors do not learn anything about nutrition has something to do with this outcome. The currently proposed solutions to our healthcare crisis are counterproductive for making dysfunctional care cheaper makes the dysfunction worse, not better.
  Illich's frame of reference may seem "too Roman Catholic" for some, but once you adjust to that, and put his findings in your own words, you know that he has nailed the problem better than almost anybody has to this day.
• E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America, which is the perfect corollary to Ivan Illich's points.
• Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. MD, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-based Cure.
• Neal Barnard and Bryanna Clark Grogan, Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven Program for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs.
• Dr. Joel Fuhrman, The End of Diabetes.

I could go on, but this is a blog post, not a book. The gist of it is that we are in a dysfunctional medical model, which is perfectly characterized by Illich with the words "expropriation of health." Recently, we seem to be regaining an understanding of the role of nutrition in health, as per the work of Campbell, Esselstyn, Barnard, Fuhrman, McDougall, Greger, Ornish and many other leaders in this field. 

The gist of it is the new sense of liberation that goes with the realization that the Whole Foods Plant-Based nutritional paradigm empowers us to take responsibility for our health in a major way. And, while it is definitely a transition that takes some effort, once you are used to it, it turns out it all is simplicity itself, you just eat mostly whole foods plant based nutrition, cooked or raw, and watch your SOS: No added Sugar, Oil or Salt. Staying within that paradigm, you can eat as much as you want since this diet burns more calories than it gives you, and you will automatically arrive at a homeostatic weight and a BMI below 25.

In short if the majority of the leading causes of death can be prevented or reversed with diet, the implication also is that the 3rd leading cause of death, iatrogernic illness, can also be massively reduced with the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, because prevention over pills is the sound version of the old saw that an apple a day keeps the doctor away... we just need to add some kale, whole grains, and legumes to the list - an apple alone won't do.