Table Of ContentBLENDING CULTURES, BRIDGING TIME
Pteroglyph found on Anasazi Ridge, New Mexico. The childlike
glyph on the right is probably Anasazi, agrarians who lived between
400 and 1000 A.D. The left is possibly Numic, hunter gatherers who
displaced the Anasazi after 1200 A.D. No one knows for certain
what story it tells. What most attracted me to this particular
petroglyph, however, is how the meaning of the original has been
modified in a wonderful way, by a younger artist who attached his
own symbol to it, in much the same way that our own ancient
genetic code has been modified over time by everyone who has
carried it.
DEEP NUTRITION
Why Your Genes
Need Traditional Food
Catherine Shanahan, M.D.
Luke Shanahan
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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To Buddy
Of all the souls we have ever met,
he was the most human.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is for John Doyle.
Soon after John retired, he and his wife relocated from Ohio to
Clearlake, north of Napa County, California. They came to be close to
their son, to watch their new grandbaby grow, and to play in a four-
season outdoor paradise. But weeks after relocating, John picked up his
two-year-old granddaughter and felt a searing pain shooting through his
back. What should have been a simple strain that might have resolved
itself in a few days simply got worse—to the point that he needed help
taking a shower. A stoic man, he endured the pain for two weeks before
going to see his doctor. An X-ray showed a funny shadow, and the
follow-up MRI identified a benign mass growing around his nerve that
his doctors thought might be contributing to the pain. He counted
himself lucky that the tumor was caught before it became inoperable. So
John and his wife came to the hospital where I worked, in Napa, for
what should have been a routine neurosurgical procedure. And that’s
when his luck ran out.
The routine surgery turned out to be not at all routine. It was
complicated by an infection, and the infection was complicated by a
blood clot in John’s spinal cord that, by the time we met, made it
impossible for him to walk or control his bladder and bowel. As his
primary care physician, I saw John multiple times a week, and always
there was a new problem. It was tragic. To this day, I remember his case
in detail; I remember the frustration of dealing with a new medical issue
each time he came in for an office visit only to see another problem pop
up a few days later. Everything I’d hoped to help people to avoid—by
writing books and posting articles on my blog and speaking in public—
and all the work I’d done, was to prevent bad things from happening to
good people the way they were happening to John. His body was falling
apart, and in spite of how easily it all could have been prevented, I’d
never had the opportunity for early intervention. John was not my
patient until it was already too late.
This book is for John’s wife, Margaret. Six months after we met, John
Doyle was dead. His infection never cleared and he developed another
clot that stopped his heart. After her husband of almost fifty years
passed, the RV Margaret and John were going to travel in together
became difficult to manage, and aside from her son and grandchild, she
didn’t know anyone in Clearlake. She relocated to a retirement
community in Napa, where I continued to treat her for insomnia,
depression, and anxiety. Unlike John, she’d always tried to eat right, so
aside from stress-induced conditions, she was in good shape.
Unfortunately, their son followed John’s eating habits more than
Margaret’s, giving low priority to healthy eating and, unknowingly,
putting his offspring at risk.
This book is for John’s young granddaughter, Kayla. Her dad and his
girlfriend were dedicated parents, and when baby Kayla developed
eczema, her mom’s pediatrician advised switching to formula. It didn’t
help. But by the time they figured that out, her mother’s breast milk
production had stopped. At age three, Kayla developed a limp that
turned out to be the result of a brain tumor. Margaret took her RV back
up to Clearlake and parked it in her son’s driveway so she could help
out. Like so many of my health-conscious patients, she found herself
staring down at two generations of failing health, a scenario that too
many health practitioners would just chalk up to bad luck.
The story of the Doyle family—a story of life interrupted, of hopes,
dreams, and plans taking a sudden, unfortunate turn—is one I see play
out in my office all the time. These are stories that could have happier
endings.
The narrative of this entire family would have played out differently
had they benefited from preventative intervention. But in the current
healthcare system, people don’t receive the most powerful form of
preventative medicine—a comprehensive dietary education. We hear
about barriers to healthcare all the time, but that was not John Doyle’s
problem. He was lucky enough to have had excellent insurance; it
covered all his bills and granted him plenty of access to every specialist
he needed, whenever he needed it. What John’s medical providers
couldn’t offer him—what few doctors can offer any of their patients—
was a crash course in healthy eating. Without this knowledge, he was
left vulnerable to a most insidious killer: the standard American diet.
His previous doctors never spoke to him about diet. And why would
they? Medical doctors are simply not trained to consider how a person’s
diet might contribute to medical conditions other than obesity, diabetes,
or heart disease. What little we physicians do learn about preventing
illness is so useless that few of us even abide by it ourselves. Since
there’s not much by way of standardized nutrition training, any doctor
interested in nutrition must take it upon himself to study on his own.
And any physician hoping to fully understand how nutrients and toxins
act in the body would need a particularly strong background in
biochemistry and cell physiology.
When my own health took a turn for the worse in 2001, I leaned
heavily on my undergraduate training at Rutgers University and
graduate work at Cornell studying biochemistry and molecular biology
as I tried to flush out any possible connection between my health
problems and my diet. The deeper I dug, the more critical that training
became. The revelations were so profound, I immediately started putting
them to use to help my patients.
Like most doctors, I had an average of seven minutes with each of my
patients. So although there was no time for a wholesale revision of their
dietary program, I could at least leave them with some key advice—like
cut out vegetable oils and reduce sugars—that would, more often than
not, produce amazing benefits. I’m talking about reversing high
triglycerides, hypertension, eczema, recurring infections, migraines, and
more.
As much as hospitals and clinics like to talk about wellness and
prevention, the truth is, a real discussion about healthy eating cannot
take place in a doctor’s office. This is why in order to check off the
“nutrition-discussion box” they rely on sound-bites, like “eat your
colors,” which doesn’t really mean much, or “everything in moderation,”
which, in a world where toxins are marketed as health foods, can be
harmful advice. Providing real dietary guidance requires far more time
with patients than insurance models currently allow. You could fill a
book with what needs to be discussed for anyone to adopt a truly
healthy diet—which is why, in 2003, I started writing this one.
Five years later, Deep Nutrition was complete, and the book started to
catch on. People around the world wrote me, sharing stories of how
their lives had been changed for the better by implementing its
principles. Soon thereafter, the L.A. Lakers took interest. Head trainer
Gary Vitti and strength and conditioning coach Tim DiFrancesco felt that
good nutrition was being underutilized in the NBA. And so, with me as a
member of their training staff, we developed the PRO (Performance
Recovery Orthogenesis) Nutrition Program and created a partnership
with Whole Foods Markets to ensure that no player, whether on the road
or at home, would have to rely on junk food if they didn’t want to. Since
that time other NBA teams have developed relationships with Whole
Foods Markets with excellent results—a trend toward real food in
professional sports that is certain to grow.
I don’t think of Deep Nutrition as a diet book. It’s a book that gives
you control over your own health destiny. It’s an alternative to handing
that control over to the financial interests of hospitals and multinational
corporations—institutions that see you as little more than an image on
an X-ray and will turn a blind eye to lucrative procedures performed
without proper medical indication. You don’t want to have to depend on
anyone else—well-meaning or not—to set your life back on track. And
you don’t need to.
Deep Nutrition isn’t just a diet book. It’s an I’m going to enjoy my
retirement book. It’s an I’m not dependent on medications book. A My kids
are healthy book. It’s an I have all the energy I need book. An I get to see
my granddaughter’s graduation book. An I can play whatever sport I want
book. An I can do anything I put my mind to book. It’s first and foremost
an I’m getting to live the life I want book, because to live the life you want,
the life you imagine for yourself, you first need to take control over your
health.
