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Two
Teaching Opportunities for Healthcare Reform
in America:
Sonia Sotomayor, US
Supreme Court Judge (nominated)
Regina Benjamin, MD, Surgeon General (nominated)
The choice
of two sick and/or obese candidates for two highly visible
and powerful US government positions has caused a national
uproar. Considering all we know about effective
diet-therapies, failure to fix their poor health now is
inexcusable and risking our future.
The
Prospects:
Sonia
Sotomayor, a 54-year-old Hispanic overweight federal judge,
with a history of type-1 diabetes since age 8 was nominated
on May 26, 2009 for the U.S. Supreme Court.
On July
13, 2009 Regina Benjamin, a 52-year-old Black obese
physician was picked to become the nation’s family
doctor—our 18th Surgeon General.
The Plan:
The
public’s reaction to the medical histories of these two
women has been dismay. Undoubtedly, both are
extraordinarily qualified in their respective fields and
have the potential to make great contributions to our
country. Their health problems are a potential Waterloo for
each, or they could be an unprecedented teaching opportunity
for healthcare reform in the US.
Obama
says; “This (healthcare) is an issue that affects the health
and financial well-being of every single American and the
stability of our entire economy.” Nothing could be more
important than showing America a way out of these troubles.
I am inviting both candidates for a 10-day visit to the
McDougall Program in Santa Rosa, California. Their results
will be the turning point for America, our broken healthcare
system, and the McDougall Program.
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Judge Sonia Sotomayor
Age 54, Hispanic, Puerto Rican
descent
Born: June 25, 1954, Bronx, New
York
Work: Served as a judge on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit since October 1998. First Hispanic
federal judge in New York State.
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Regina Benjamin, MD
Age 52, African-American
Born: October 26, 1956, Mobile,
AL
Work: Bayou La Batre Rural Health
Clinic in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre,
Alabama. First
African American woman on the
American Medical Association's board
of trustees. Past president of the Medical
Association of the State of Alabama. |
The
Nation Worries about Sotomayor’s Longevity
Appointments to the US Supreme Court are for life.
Unfortunately (regardless of what the experts have told
the press recently), the life expectancy of someone with
type-1 diabetes is dramatically shortened (by about 10
years). These people also suffer more often from
debilitating complications, such as heart disease,
stroke, kidney disease, nerve damage, and blindness,
than do people without diabetes. Because of her
unhealthy diet, which is reflected by her overweight,
premature death and complications should be expected for
this Supreme Court judge. The most recent
analysis using modern therapies found that after 30
years of type-1 diabetes 50% of people have eye disease
(proliferative retinopathy), 25% have kidney disease
(nephropathy) and 14% have cardiovascular disease.
Judge Sotomayor has had her disease for 46 years; I have
no doubt that she is already suffering from major organ
damage from her diabetes and her diet. (She looks
unhealthy even to the casual observer.)
Diabetics are metabolically handicapped people, hampered
in their ability to defend and repair themselves from
outside injuries, like an infection or an unhealthy
diet. Therefore, to help counteract this disadvantage,
people with this disease must be cared for with
extraordinary vigilance—and that means careful control
of their blood sugars with insulin injections, a
wholesome lifestyle, and most importantly, a
health-supporting diet. Sonia Sotomayor still eats the
high-fat, high-cholesterol Western
diet that causes heart disease, strokes, kidney
disease, etc. in hundreds of millions of people
worldwide who do not have this handicap of type-1
diabetes. Obviously because of her physical limitations
caused by damage to her pancreas as a child she is a
greater risk than the average person of rapid bodily
deterioration.
By
changing to a low fat, no-cholesterol, starch-based
diet, type-1 diabetics have a real chance of avoiding
premature death and serious complications. The only
people I have met with long-standing type-1 diabetes who
still have all their parts working after 40 years of
disease, have been those following a low-fat nearly
vegetarian diet—the best example I know is of the few
fortunate people who learned and practiced the Kempner
Rice Diet from Duke University—oftentimes they remained
in great shape for as long as 50 years following their
diagnosis because of their very low-fat diet of
primarily rice, fruits and vegetables.
Sonia
Sotomayor’s diabetes interferes with her daily duties as
a judge. She must test her sugars and administer insulin
multiple times throughout the day. Bouts of confusion
and accidents occur commonly from hypoglycemic reactions
in most type-1 diabetics, especially those who try to
intensively treat their disease. My experience has been
that a change to the McDougall Diet results in more
stable blood sugars throughout the day and at least a
one-third reduction in insulin requirements. (Type-1
diabetics will always require some insulin.) Most
important, what the judge needs to know is that this is
not an irreversible sentence—she can get out of jail;
that a significant amount of the long-term damage to the
eyes, the kidneys, and the blood vessels to the heart
and brain can be reversed with a change in diet. And she
will look and feel better as soon as she makes the
change.
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In 1927 Dr. E. P. Joslin, founder
of the famous Joslin Diabetic Center in Boston,
suspected a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet
might favor the development of diabetes and its
major complication, atherosclerosis. He
prophetically wrote: “I believe the chief cause
of premature atherosclerosis in diabetes, save
for advancing age, is an excess of fat, an
excess of fat in the body (obesity), an excess
of fat in the diet, and an excess of fat in the
blood. With an excess of fat diabetes begins
and from an excess of fat diabetics die,
formerly of coma, recently of atherosclerosis.”
And now, 82 years after Joslin’s farsighted
message, diabetes is the fastest growing disease
in the world.
Ref: Joslin EP. Atheroscleriosis
and diabetes. Ann Clin Med 1927; 5:1061. |
The
Nation’s Anguish over Dr. Benjamin’s Appearance
Since
Dr. Regina Benjamin’s selection, one negative comment
has been emphasized over all of her other
qualifications: her obesity. People are asking, “How
is she to impact the nation’s health if she can’t even
take care of herself?”
Some
supporters point out that being overweight actually
qualifies her for the job because she has more empathy
for the obesity epidemic than a trim person would. Most
comments have, however, not been so supportive. On the
Fox Business Network, the Neal Cavuto show, a guest
said, “Dr. Benjamin is 50 pounds overweight, she is
obese…she is a size 20…The Surgeon General is a symbolic
position…Would you then want your head of the Federal
Reserve be a guy that lives in a cardboard box
underneath the highway because he understands the plight
of poor people?...Would you want Michael Jackson’s
doctors to be in charge of drug control of the DEA?...If
(you are going to be Surgeon General) you should
look the part…”
The
example of the Federal Reserve guy is one of a lifetime
of lack of education and opportunity, and the DEA
example is one of moral depravity. These problems are
largely unfixable. Dr. Benjamin’s obesity problem is a
simple misunderstanding about which foods to choose and
this wrong thinking can be fixed instantaneously—or at
least in 10 days at the McDougall Program.
Let’s
Make This a Racial Matter
Medicine and health remain the last bastions of broad
segregation in the US.
In
general, Blacks are considerably more often, and Hispanics
are a little more often, fatter and sicker than are Whites.
According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, on average; Blacks, Hispanics, and American
Indians and Alaska Natives are
more likely (1.6 to 2.3 times as likely) to have
diabetes than non-Hispanic Whites. Compared with
Whites, Blacks experience substantial excess mortality from
cancer, cardiovascular disease, and infant death. Hispanics
still have less heart disease than Whites.
Making
health a matter of racial pride could turn the tables. Not
long ago, because of widespread poverty, Black and Hispanic
people followed simple diets—they could only afford
starch-based meals, with little meat, dairy, and processed
foods. By no coincidence, Blacks and Hispanics were
typically trim and healthy back then, too. With the better
job opportunities and an improved overall economy, these two
subgroups have been able to eat like kings and queens, and
it shows. Most people can remember a past generation when
people were healthier. Sotomayor’s parents emigrated from
Puerto Rico during World War II. The traditional diet then
was based on corn, beans, and rice. As a US territory, the
local diet has become very rich and the people are now in
trouble like most other Americans.
As a young
doctor working in Hawaii with people of Hawaiian, Filipino,
Japanese, and Chinese descent I made great efforts to
personalize the diet-health connection. My third and fourth
generation patients were sick due to the rich foods they
consumed. I would ask them if they knew why they suffered
with obesity, type-2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and
cancer. Then I would ask them if grandma and grandpa were
still alive, how was their health, and what did they eat.
Commonly the answer was: “Grandma and grandpa are in their
nineties, working hard every day, trim, and eating poi or
rice.” Then I would comment, “The reason you are not in the
same shape is that you have abandoned your family’s
traditional foods. Look what the White man’s diet has done
to you.” Common illnesses are not genetic. But, they
certainly have become racial.
Besides
being fatter and sicker, Blacks, Hispanics and minorities
receive lower-quality health care; even when members have
the same incomes, insurance coverage, and medical conditions
as Whites, they receive
worse care.
Give the
World a Demo
I am so
confident in the effects of the education we provide at the
McDougall Program that all I ask is for these two unhealthy
representatives of the United States to attend the lectures,
eat the foods served “all you can eat buffet-style,” and let
us measure the results as we usually do—body weights, blood
pressures, and a few simple blood tests. I will challenge
both women, as I do many other participants, to “overeat” if
you wish during the program, in an effort to prove me wrong
(no outside food allowed). In 10 days with TV, radio, and
newspaper reporters looking in, the world will see beyond
any doubt that the growing epidemic of obesity, diabetes,
heart disease, and cancer worldwide is due to what people
eat, not how much they eat—and more important, serious
diseases can be cured by a simple change. Being overweight
and sick are not matters of intelligence, gender, genetics,
or race. Judge Sotomayor and Dr. Benjamin right now have a
teaching opportunity to prove to the world, it’s the food!
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 2009
John McDougall All Rights Reserved
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