Comment on McDougall Research In Nutrition Journal

[John McDougall]

Please leave your comments on the recent publication of the results of 1615 people who have attended the McDougall Residential Program in Santa Rosa, CA.

Important Medical Findings attained from eating a healthy diet in 7 days include:

Weight Loss = 3 pounds with unlimited amounts of food encouraged
Cholesterol Reduction = 22 mg/dL
Off Blood Pressure and Diabetic Medications = Almost 90% of cases

Download and share the entire article free: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/13/1/99

John McDougall, MD

[geo]

There were some comments already made here in the lounge: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45161

However I think its an excellent paper. Clear, simply written, easily readable by the general public. Just the way it should be.

And what I said earlier, Normally, I would say fantastic results, considering that many were taken off medications at baseline (usually you would see a detrimental increase in values due to the abrupt ending of medications). But in fact I think I'll just say, the results were typical and expected for this type of nutritional intervention

What will it take for doctors and nutrition experts to take notice of great results in only 7 days with the only intervention being is removing medications from people! How much simpler can you say, "Its the food, stupid!"

My only quibble is with the title of the paper..."ad libitum low-fat vegan diet"... really doesn't do your program or the study justice. It should have read..."ad libitum Starch Centered, Whole Food, Plant Based Diet". We all know the negative connotations of "low-fat" and "vegan" these days and it isn't an accurate representation of your work.

At any rate, congrats to you both Dr's McDougall!

[One2many]

It's about damn time!

[chrisdo99]

Dr. McDougall, you are an inspiration to all of us. Thank you for your untiring efforts to promote a whole foods plant-based diet as the solution for our health care crisis. Your website, newsletters, books have illuminated my journey to educating myself on this topic. Of all the big names in nutrition today, yours has been one of the clearest for me because you promote nutrition without pushing any supplements or food products, even though I understand you do have them available for people who want it. I appreciate it!!

I don't understand one thing about Table 2 in your study. Although Cr overall and Cr between 1-1.4 did not change, why is it that the P-value is <0.001? It makes all the other P-values suspect. Am I misunderstanding something about P values?

Thanks for your time.

Christine Tsou MD
Hospital Medicine
Kaiser San Jose

[John McDougall]

From our statistician, Kelly Richardson:

The p-values for Creatinine are correct. I know they look weird because the median and interquartile range appear to be the same for all 3 categories but the p-value is not significant for 1 category and significant for the other 2. I assume this is, in large part, due to rounding. The numbers are very small so with rounding they look exactly the same but, at a computational level, are not the same.

[Dougalling]

A great concise paper that can be understood by everyone.
The report site is posted on my FB page and on my pinterest page.
Any doctor I see in the future will receive a copy.

[Birdy]

The study is very well done and thorough. Strong research with a significant number of subjects over a long period of time. It looks like confounders were taken into account, i.e., health markers taken at baseline. However, I'm not qualified to comment in much depth on this study. I found Table 3 interesting in two ways: the positive changes in blood pressure and cholesterol in the majority of subjects, but also the smaller percentage of people who went from normal at baseline to elevations in blood pressure and cholesterol. I wonder what explains the second effect?

It would be very interesting to see a study reporting long term results for a sizable number of McDougallers (maybe after following the McDougall Program for 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years).