In Search of Balance Page #2

can do that's either a drug

or a surgery or some kind

of chemical intervention

to make us feel better,

and in fact we know

that there is many, many

other things out there

that have everything to do

with creating this balance.

I mean,

I am really thankful

that Western medicine

saved his life

because, you know, definitely

it was going downhill fast.

But at the same

time, you know,

prednisone caused terrible

side-effects that is --

it's just one of

those things that --

It was like those

old '40s and '50s movies

where somebody saves your

life and now they own you.

This is where I pay you off.

The hubris of thinking

that we could simplify

this complex system,

put it on a pill, we should be

surprised if that ever worked,

if a drug company

came up with a pill

that had the

benefits of broccoli,

I mean, they would be

making billions of dollars

because it's

just so clear-cut.

So, our reductionist

approach is doing very little

in the phase of this epidemic

of chronic disease.

Reductionism means

taking a system

and reducing it into

its component parts

as if the whole was

just the sum of its part

so we can take

any single part out,

you know, get the same

effect as a whole.

Such processes do not

really occur in nature.

One of the first

ones was Descartes

which basically said you cannot

study nature in its complexity,

you have to study

in its parts,

and that's when the

transdisciplinary nature

of knowledge

was divided

into commodities

or disciplines.

The second

influence was Darwin.

Darwin, although he came up

with the Theory of Evolution,

he emphasized the

survival of the fittest,

which means competition,

the cones that are successful

competitors make it,

when it turns out

that in nature

there is much more

complementarity

and collaboration and

covariation than competition.

The traditional

linear model,

the pharmaceutical

company model is,

let's identify

one probiotic,

they would be put into this

extremely complicated system

which is equally

complicated to our brain

and that will

cure disease.

In the modern system's view not

the right way of looking at it.

We see now that we don't

live in a linear world

that A causes B causes C.

What in fact we live in

is a complex network.

It's a complex system

where everything is related

to everything else,

it's that kind of thinking,

the science of complex systems

are adaptive complex systems

that determine our future.

What you need for a complex

problem is a complex solution.

One of the things that

we have done is that

was really important to us

was we started a garden;

when we got the house that

was one of the first things

that we did and started

growing our own food.

It's kind of something

that's become more integrated

into our lives, it tends

to drive a lot of things,

like we look at some of the

food in the grocery store now

and just go,

I don't want that.

You know, I want

tomatoes from my garden.

I started really thinking

about how I eat and what I eat

and started

to refine that.

I grew up outside of Buffalo

and a friend of mine

who grew up there too she

calls it 'The Land of Meat.'

A meal is meat with

other things around it.

Have salad as a meal, you like

having a side dish as a meal.

It was harder to avoid it

than it was to just take it in.

You grow up, you

don't question it,

when you get married

and meat has some bad

effects on your body.

My life then was really

very much about my work

and eating as conveniently

as possible.

Food is emotional and it's part

of, I don't know, who you are.

That was the running down.

Gotten down to

where I am about -

around 210 or so

and that keeps me going.

My blood sugar level has

been in the normal range now

for actually probably

couple of years.

Does that mean that you

don't have diabetes anymore?

I no longer have

diabetes, so --

So you are not taking any

medication for your diabetes.

No, and before I was

taking daily medication

or twice daily medication

for my diabetes.

What we were taught

in medical school is that

you can't reverse diabetes that

was really what we were taught,

that it was kind of like a

runaway train, and once it was,

you know, the breaks

were off, it just --

it was never coming

back to the station,

and you really have disproved

that and I just find it amazing,

and you are not alone

but it's something

that's very inspirational

for other people to know that

that can happen.

My life, especially

in the last ten years or so

has been about trying

to establish routines

where I could

be comfortable

and focus on what's

really important to me.

If the revolution

continues the way

it's gone the

last five years

I think we will have to

see some dramatic changes

that dietary interventions may

have a much bigger of influence

I think in medical care;

both prevention

of diseases

but also treatment

of various disorders.

Yeah I kind of think

of it too as that's money

that I don't have to spend

going to the hospital

or something else later.

It's a part of my

insurance plan.

Hi! I am Daphne Miller.

Oh hi! Nice to meet you!

Thank you!

All right! We had

an epidemic of diabetes,

epidemic of

nutrition-related problems

and I show up at Harvard

and there is only one M.D.

in my nutrition program

and that was me

and I was absolutely shocked.

I had a couple of people lower

their cholesterol over 50 points

in 10 days.

If you can lower your

cholesterol 50 points

in 10 days,

why would you want

to take a statin drug

that's known to cause

liver damage, muscle damage,

memory loss and -- I mean,

now there are lawsuits about

Lipitor causing diabetes.

Why would you want

to take that stuff

if you can

do it naturally?

And by the way the side-effects

of doing it like that is, well,

your blood sugar gets better,

your blood pressure gets better

and you might lose

weight if you are --

well, you will lose weight

if you are overweight.

Here in the United States,

the number one killer is diet.

So what we eat

determines our lifespan,

our health span in terms of

both disability and mortality.

I went from -- close to 300

pounds with a 42-inch waist

down to about a 190

with a 34-inch waist.

Blood pressure was probably

one of the biggest things

that changed.

I was diagnosed

pre-diabetic

because both my blood

pressure numbers

were completely

off the charts

and that almost

changed immediately.

It also changed my pallet.

A lot of the food that's

actually available right now

in our supermarkets or in our

restaurants didn't taste good,

I had to go out and find

or grow the type of food

that my body

wanted to eat.

In less than - I would

even say 9 months,

completely changed

how I look, how I felt.

Now people who have

seen my whole life,

it didn't recognize me, and I

was often accused of being on

drugs because the amount of

weight that I dropped down

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