Forks Over Knives Page #6

Okay, and you'll need

how many shirts?

Probably three?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Zhou enlai's cancer study

would ultimately

have a major impact

on what Dr. Campbell himself

has called

the capstone of his research.

Early 1980.

And you were there for

two or three months?

Dr. Junshi Chen is now

senior research Professor

with the Chinese center for

disease control and prevention.

He first met Dr. Campbell

at Cornell in 1980,

when he was a member of

the Chinese Institute

of Food and Nutrition Science.

The cold war was just

beginning to thaw,

and Dr. Chen was among the

first senior scientists

from China to visit

the United States.

By then, Dr. Campbell had become

one of the most distinguished

nutritional biochemists

in the world.

When they discovered this book,

a significant

collaboration was born.

This is the atlas of

cancer mortality in China.

Published in 1981,

the cancer atlas

was the result of Zhou

Enlai's nationwide study.

It showed a highly unusual

geographical distribution

of different types

of cancer in China,

which tended to be clustered

in certain hot spots.

The same was true with

cancer after cancer.

And the counties with

the highest levels

were often far greater

than the counties with

the lowest levels.

So, for example,

esophageal cancer,

according to this cancer map,

the mortality has a

among different

counties in China.

- That's huge.

- Yeah.

And in...

I understood, in the United States,

only several-fold difference.

Not even...

maybe twofold or so, we see.

Yeah, yeah.

So that caught our attention

in term of, so, why?

Because they're all Chinese.

Genetically, they

are all the same.

And the why they have

so much difference

in single cancer mortality?

So we believe it has to be

related to the environment.

The bigger environment.

And from our professional

perspective,

of course, it's

diet and nutrition.

Dr. Chen and I said, you know,

"why don't we just go

there and do a study?"

For Dr. Campbell,

it was the opportunity

he'd been looking for.

Among other things, he could

examine how his observations

about liver cancer

in Filipino children

and the findings

from his lab studies

applied to a large

human population.

The project would consider

health-related variables,

making it one of

the most ambitious

nutritional studies

ever conceived.

Dr. Campbell and his associates

carefully chose 65 counties

scattered across China.

These counties were

mainly located in rural

or semi-rural areas.

We used the rural counties

because they are stable

in their residents,

and they have been

in this lifestyle

for at least 20 to 30 years.

More than 350 workers

were trained.

They carefully surveyed

the diet and lifestyle

of 6,500 people in

the chosen counties.

Urine and blood samples

were also taken.

In 1983, doctors Campbell,

chen, and their collaborators

began to analyze the vast

amount of information

that had been collected.

The job would take years.

After eight weeks eating

plant-based foods,

Joey Aucoin was still off

all his medications.

When I started this, I had

all these side effects

from medication and from

my being so unhealthy.

But now I'm getting in better

and better shape every day.

I feel more healthy.

I very seldom get

tired during the day.

I just feel so

good all the time.

This... this is the scale

that I weigh myself on.

And it started about eight weeks

ago way up here around 218, 220.

And now it's bouncing

between 180 and 185.

None of my belts fit.

This one here, I

actually had to have

two new holes punched in, 'cause

I liked the belt so much.

Nothing fits.

I gotta go shopping.

It's just everything,

all my clothes.

A good problem to have.

It's been fun for him,

because I think he's learned

in addition to the fact that

he's seeing such great results,

that it's...He loves it.

I don't think he'll go

back to his old ways.

He feels too good, and he likes...

even if he started to

go off a little bit,

he feels too good, his energy's

too good, he looks younger.

And the fact that he

would have to go back

on all the meds, you

know, if he did,

I think that that's

a huge motivation

for him to maintain

the lifestyle.

In the mid-1980s, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn

was struggling to

organize a study

on coronary artery disease.

His plan was to put

a group of patients

on a diet of low-fat

plant-based foods,

along with small quantities

of low-fat dairy products

and minimal amounts of

cholesterol reducing drugs.

And slowly over the

next, uh, 18 months,

I got the 24 patients

that I had asked for.

But the ones they sent me

Were a little bit sicker

than I had thought.

These were patients

who had failed

their first or second

bypass operation.

They had failed their first

or second angioplasty.

And there were

five who were told

by their expert cardiologists

they would not

live out the year.

One of the most

gravely ill patients

was a 59-year-old speech and

communications teacher,

Evelyn oswick.

Ate all the chocolate

candy I could eat,

ate every doughnut I

could put my hands on.

Oh, I just love

things like that,

a lot of gravy.

And then, um, I had my...

I have had two heart attacks

before I met Dr. Esselstyn.

When I had the

second heart attack,

the doctor said that I

should prepare for death,

really is what he said.

And I looked at him and I said,

"do you really mean that

what you want me to do

"is buy a rocking chair

and just sit there and

rock away and wait?"

And he just looked

at me and he said,

"yes, that's just exactly

what I'm saying."

Anthony Yen was born

and raised in China.

And we were eating a typical

Chinese cultural diet.

A very small piece of meat.

But they sliced it, and so

it was cooked for flavor

rather than your American style,

when you eat, you eat a large,

great, big piece of meat,

which you could easily fed

the whole family in China.

And we eat a lot of

vegetables in China.

And we had soup.

But once I came to

the United States,

you find beginning to

experience fast food.

The hamburgers and

cheeseburgers, pizza.

And I noticed my weight

beginning to gain.

When Mr. Yen was 56 years old,

he suddenly experienced

severe chest pains.

At that point in time, I

had a open heart surgery.

I have five bypass... five.

But it was very interesting.

About a week later, uh,

I felt my chest

tighten up again.

So myself and my wife went

to see Dr. Esselstyn.

I saw every one of

these patients myself

every two weeks for

the first five years.

And at that visit, we would get

a full cholesterol

lipid profile.

We would get blood

pressure, weight,

and I would go over

every morsel they ate.

By using simple foods

as the main treatment

for his patients,

Dr. Esselstyn was bucking a

high-tech, high-cost system

that was deeply entrenched

in both big medicine

and big government.

You know, behind my back,

I got to be known as Dr. Sprouts.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes