You Are What You Eat…Really!

I’ve been thinking about my brain a lot lately.  Why?

I lost both of my brothers to brain tumors, one of them just one year ago.  And I just got a chance to see Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuro anatomist, talk about her 8 year recovery from a massive stroke.

So, what’s been on my mind, literally, is how does this thing up there work and how can I keep from growing a brain tumor?

The answer that seems to rising to the surface these days is surprising.  You are what you eat and your food choices could be killing you.

Dr. William Li, President, Medical Director, and Co-founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation, works with other well-known scientists and physicians a unique approach to fighting and in some cases, preventing, some of the most debilitating diseases affecting men, women and children including cancer and stroke.

Angiogenesis, the growth of new capillary blood vessels, is a naturally occurring process in the human body.  But when capillary blood vessel growth is inhibited or stimulated, disease processes can begin.   Researchers at the Angiogenesis Foundation are successfully using drug therapies to treat cancer but despite tremendous successes, Dr. Li feels that instead of treating the disease, we should be preventing it.

One weapon we can use to try to restore balance to blood vessel growth is food.  In fact, over a year ago, during a TED talk, Dr. Li released a list of foods that might help in the fight against disease, foods that Dr. Li says, “…cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.”   His theory is that we can eat to starve cancer.

So, what’s on the doctor’s menu?

Blueberries, strawberries, tomatoes, raspberries, red grapes, dark chocolate, olive oil, tuna, green tea and red wine, soy, kale, licorice, bok choy and grapefruit among other foods.  The point is that what we put in our mouths makes a difference not just in how we feel, how much we weigh, how much energy we have but in how our bodies stay healthy and fight disease.

So thanks to Dr. Li and the Angiogenesis Foundation and a tip of the hat to nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, who in 1942 published  You Are What You Eat: how to win and keep health with diet, who knew, 70 years ago that we really are what we eat.