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2009-10-28 John Lewis PhD Prostate Cancer Plant-Based Diets

An Interview with John E. Lewis, Ph.D.

October 28, 2009, By Kirkham R. Hamilton, PA-C
© copyright 2009, Prescription 2000, Inc.
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KIRK HAMILTON: Hi, my name is Kirk Hamilton, your host of Staying Healthy Today, and our mission is simple: To provide you credible, usable health information from interviews and our educational resources to help you Stay and Be Well in the busy modern world. Please take a few moments before or after listening to this interview to browse through the Prescription2000.com website, the home of Staying Healthy Today Radio, for our free educational services.

Today's show topic is "What Plant Foods And Their Phytonutrients May Be Protective In Prostate Cancer Patients." Also,"How To Be Strong And Athletic Eating Only Plant Food." Our guest today is Dr. John Lewis, a research assistant professor from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Lewis is also the director of research for the Division of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Dr. Lewis received his M.S. in exercise physiology and Ph.D. in education and physiological studies. His primary research interests involve investigating the combined roles of nutrition education, physical activity and behavioral strategies to reduce the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. Most importantly his interests are in promoting whole food, plant-based nutrition in combination with cardiovascular conditioning, strength training and flexibility as a comprehensive approach to health promotion.

So with that introduction, welcome Dr. Lewis and thank you for taking the time to be on our show today.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be here.

KIRK HAMILTON: What initially got you interested in looking at plant foods with regards to prostate cancer?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Well as you probably are aware, and I'm sure many of your listeners are aware, there is quite a bit of, I would say, let's not call it necessarily controversy but certainly inconclusive findings in the literature regarding what foods are either protective or not protective when it comes to various types of cancers. And prostate cancer being one of the leading killers of men in terms of cancer, it's clearly an important area that we need to look at in terms of trying to figure out some of these behavioral risk factors, specifically nutritional factors. So we have a very rich data set that we use to conduct this study in terms of this ongoing clinic based practice where these prostate cancer patients are coming into, and then controls from the community. And so it was really a great opportunity looking at the data we had on these folks to see if we could examine, based on their food frequency questionnaire data, what some of these risk factors might be in terms of nutritional habits.

KIRK HAMILTON: Tell me then. Give us a little brief overview of this study (Intake of Plant Foods and Associated Nutrients In Prostate Cancer Risk, Nutr Cancer, 2009;61(2):216-24) and what groups you were looking at, and then what your findings might have been.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Okay sure. So basically what we had pretty much were, in terms of race, we had Caucasians and African-Americans. This was a study conducted actually from a clinic in North Carolina, so it really wasn't an opportunity to look at Hispanics, but it was pretty much just white people and black people. Then we broke it down three ways between the controls, and then we had incident cases of prostate cancer which would be people recently diagnosed, and then we had prevalent cases which are typically people that have been diagnosed over a year ago. And so in addition to looking at the specific nutrients that might possibly either confer risk or be protective of the risk of cancer we also wanted to see if there were any differences between those two racial categories as well.

KIRK HAMILTON: Can you now share the differences between the Caucasians and the African-Americans, what you found and then maybe we will go into the specific nutrients that might either be protective or adverse risk factors?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Sure absolutely. So basically what we showed was that - well we looked at - first we looked at within Caucasians and within African-Americans we found that the Caucasian controls had significantly more daily servings of vegetables and fruits or fruit juices compared to African-American controls. So that was one obvious factor that - or one finding that we found that stood out to us. So then we looked at it like I said within the two racial groups themselves. So within the Caucasians we found that the incident cases reported lower intakes of fiber, vitamin C, vitamin A, alpha carotene, beta carotene, cryptoxanthin, folate, genistein, daidzein and fruits or fruit juices in controls and/or prevalent cases in this case. And then in the African-Americans the incident cases had lower intake of alpha carotene compared to the controls in the prevalent cases. So basically what that tells us is, is that because the African-Americans didn't really have - I mean other than this one nutrient, the alpha carotene, there were essentially the same types of eating patterns whether the person was an incident case, recently diagnosed, a prevalent case or a control. It's obvious that the African-American community in this case is not getting, in terms of men, and obviously we're not talking about women here having prostate cancer, but certainly what it's telling us is that within the African-American community we're not getting the education out there that the African-American community needs to understand what some of these key foods or nutrients are that may be protective of prostate cancer risk.

KIRK HAMILTON: We should put that I guess in the context of that we know that African-Americans who are at high risk in general of prostate cancer so the question would be, is it more of a genetic thing or a lifestyle thing relating to, for example, less fruits and vegetables?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Well that's exactly right. And I forget what the numbers are exactly but I know it's - and I think maybe we even quoted it in our paper - but within the African-American community it's clearly a much higher risk compared to Caucasians for prostate cancer and it's also that they get a more advanced stage of disease typically than Caucasians. And you make a great point. Is it the behavior that's driving the gene expression or suppression? Maybe it's expressing bad genes or suppressing good genes. My personal bias or my personal opinion on stuff like is is that if you think of a gene, if you use the analogy of a handgun or any type of gun, the gene is essentially like an unloaded gun. And then the bullet or the ammunition would be all these behaviors out in the environment that you can load the gun with. And so you know if you're going to McDonald's all the time and eating Big Macs and drinking milkshakes and eating things like that, then you're loading the gun with really bad ammunition. But if you're eating fruits and vegetables and whole foods, you know, non-processed, hopefully organic foods of that nature then you're putting - I mean it doesn't even make any sense really to call it good ammunition versus bad ammunition, but the point is is if you think of a gene as the gun and then you think of the behavior as like the ammunition, I personally feel that we have much farther to go in terms of helping people understand the correct behavior. In this case eating better, eating more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, a whole food plant-based diet as opposed to the typical, I know people use the term the SAD diet, the Standard American Diet as an acronym for that. And then - I mean I think that's really the key. I think getting people to understand eating better is really the key.

KIRK HAMILTON: If you were going to do a follow-up study of these individuals who just got diagnosed with the incident prostate cancer and you were going to design either for African-Americans or Caucasians foods to eat, could you be specific in designing a anti-cancer diet or a cancer treatment diet?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: You know just speaking from the results of our study, what I would clearly suggest is that because we did show that say for example, cryptoxanthin and vitamin C were protective so clearly you get those two nutrients from most of your fruits, and then along with it we also found a protective factor for fruits and/or fruit juices. Now some people would say well you know if you're just eating like, you know some sort of processed apple juice off the counter that's really not what you would call a health food and I completely agree. I mean but it's the limitation of the way that again these food frequency questionnaires are analyzed. So working within that limitation clearly we've showed that in addition to those three things fiber was very protective. On the other hand, we showed that too much protein, or the highest tertile of protein, and the highest tertile of grains were not protective or increased the risk of prostate cancer. So just based on our results alone it's clearly showing, even though we don't have like 10 or 20 nutrients showing significant risks unfortunately, but clearly these data speak to increasing whole foods, plant-based foods, and then reducing the amount of protein in the diet. Clearly I was impressed by the protein finding. I definitely found that it to be very impressive that that turned out. So reducing the amount of protein in a diet clearly seems to be a key in terms of decreasing the risk of prostate cancer at least in this study. And then the grains issue. I mean, that would seem to be pretty easy to figure out too. Of course that's going to have a mixed range of, were people eating say for example white bread and white rice as opposed to some sort of whole grain bread or brown rice or you know some other type of grain that would have been considered not processed, not had synthetic nutrients added back into it?

KIRK HAMILTON: That's actually where I wanted to hold the conversation. The protein and the grain issue. So alright. Increased protein. Are you including animal and plant protein mixed together or dose this study couldn't separate those out?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Unfortunately we couldn't separate it out but I would suggest that based on the way that this particular program analyzes the data in terms of the way it breaks nutrients down, I'm going to guess that for the most part we're talking about foods that are of animal origin, as opposed to say for example nuts or grains or rice or you know beans or pulses or other things that people typically associate as a plant variety or origin, having a significant amount of protein in them. But for the most part I would say that if we could split it out, if we could break it down into what was an animal source and what was a plant source, I would say that definitely within the way we analyzed these data that it was definitely leaning more toward an animal source as opposed to a plant source.

KIRK HAMILTON: And how about likewise the grain? Obviously you and I have a bias where we would just assume that whole grains would be better, and you know the data is that about 85% of the grains that are consumed are refined grains. So would you probably say that same argument? They were both lumped together and that's why grains were increased as a risk factor?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Correct. Absolutely. They were lumped together in this analysis. Unfortunately we can't break that category down. I wish we could and again that's where this type of study, the way the data are collected, is clearly a limitation and I think hopefully - I mean I'm not personally working on any validation type studies where people are looking at, you know using different types of questionnaires to be able to get at these issues much more clearly. But definitely that is a limitation that needs to be addressed. And again you know I don't work for a company that spends time doing that type of a study but it's clearly a huge thing. As you see things coming out from different institutes within NIH talking about okay how can we better assess, say physical activity patterns or dietary patterns and that's clearly a huge issue.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let's talk about soy for a second here. In the alternative medicine community there's great controversy about soy. Now I look at soy, I look at the Okinawan centenarians, I've read the study and you know, I think soy should be a part of a basic diet. But there are people vehemently on the other side who think that soy is an evil food. Give me your two cents.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: It is interesting, isn't it? I mean people - it seems like there are no middle ground people when it comes to soy. They either love it or they hate it. So I agree with you. I think it should be part of a typical diet. I mean, do you eat it every day? Not necessarily. But again when you think in terms of like Asian people who have eaten soy for I don't know how many years. Thousands of years. And only until probably like the 50s when they started having the Western influence of fast food come in to the continent did their cancer and their heart disease rates start increasing. So to me there are plenty studies out there, plenty of good studies either in vitro or in vivo showing that the isoflavones that you get from soy are clearly protective of many different types of cancer. I mean it's a no-brainer. All you've got to do is just go to the literature and looks at these studies.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let me be the devil's advocate because a patient - in fact I had a phone call yesterday just about this topic. So they would say to the Asian conversation, they would say "Well it was all fermented and it was from miso and it was from tempeh and not regular soy protein isolates" which the soy protein isolate part is probably true. So is soy protein isolate the same as - or a concentrated isoflavone supplement - the same as eating tempeh or tofu or miso?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Well that's a good question too. And I guess the other thing that I would probably wonder about certainly in this country. I can't speak to the Asian countries. But because so much of our food is now genetically modified, and so if you're not buying organic, if you're buying this Franken-food, and I don't know again I couldn't speak to like how many years this, say for example, not only soy but corn and wheat and these other cash crops that we have that are so prevalent in our agricultural farming or in our mechanized farming in this country. I wonder if there is a study or whatever studies out there that are showing that soy has some sort of increased risk factor with say for example prostate cancer or breast cancer or heart disease or anything else. I'm wondering, you know, how much of that is really attributed to people that are eating genetically modified soy as opposed to stuff that would be organic. And because I just feel like we sort of, you know if you think about the precautionary principle I think we just completely circumvented that when it comes to what we do to our food.

KIRK HAMILTON: I think we're probably in relative agreement and since I don't have anybody else arguing with me that plant food is probably - whole plant food with lots of vegetables and fruit and whole grains is good for prostate cancer. Let's switch a little bit because you shared with me some principles that I believe in a lot and were very similar in a lot of ways. But let's talk about why did you become a vegan, and then I want to get into athleticism in vegans, and how you get your protein intake, and how you keep your bones strong because those are always the questions that people ask.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Absolutely. Well I think you know it's a multifaceted answer to why I started becoming a vegan. Clearly I started reading the literature and I didn't learn this through my own training. This was actually just going beyond my own personal training. I just started reviewing the literature myself and the sad reality that you well know I'm sure is that are so many - there are thousands of studies on just any literature. Pick whatever you want. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, you name it, showing protective factors for all the various plant nutrients. I mean, have you ever heard of a study showing that blueberries, for examples, are bad for you? You know it just doesn't exist. But all of that kind of information is really pretty nonexistent in the typical person's mind. I mean you just don't think about it and so as a society we've been just led to believe that you know meat-based diets or animal foods are very healthy primarily because of the protein, and then I guess to a lesser extent things like vitamin B12 and iron, but I'm not really answering your question. Let me answer your question. The reason I did it was again several fold. One, for health, my own personal health. I just felt like based on the literature that I had read and all the comprehensive, just sort of self education - I mean I know that's not the best way to educate yourself but literally reading what the studies are, that I've found out there are thousands of them - it led me to believe that I was much better off eating a plant-based diet going forward for the rest of my life which I stated doing about 14 years ago. So I'm not just a johnny-come-lately in terms of being a vegan. I have consciously avoided all animal foods for about the last 14 years. Do I occasionally, you know somebody may slip in some butter or a little dairy or something you know in a soup of something like that. You know maybe I went to somebody's house and I didn't realize I was getting it, I guess that's been possible over the last 14 or so years, but in terms of eating meat I can tell you any kind of meat I haven't put anything like that in my mouth.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let me hold for just a second here. I actually have a term for that. It's called "sloppy vegan", and that's what I am a little bit. You're probably much tighter than I am, but every once in a while I you know a piece of cheese will fall on something but it's rare.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Yeah, I'm going to say if that's happened five times in 14 years, that's probably been it, and I'm not even saying that it has happened. I'm just saying it could be possible. I mean even though everybody that knows me knows that I am a vegan.

KIRK HAMILTON: Vegan means no animal food whatsoever. So let's say you were - there's many people who call themselves vegetarian and they will have eggs and they will have dairy products. So tell me your two cent overview of dairy products.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: We could spend the whole interview just on dairy. I tell you. Okay. It makes no sense from an evolutionary biological point of view. I understand that people started eating dairy in times of food scarcity. I understand that. But from an evolutionary biological point of view, it absolutely makes zero sense that we eat the hormonal delivery system fluid of another species. It just makes no sense. And then on top of that, when you think that Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 is for whatever fluke of the universe, identical between cows and humans. Its biochemically exactly the same and that would have been called growth hormone probably had it been discovered before growth hormone, and that is a very powerful cellular promoter. So it's no surprise at all to me when you see all these studies correlating dairy intake with prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. And then in addition to that, I mean it's just simply besides the IGF-1, you're getting all these other hormones. Cows are typically - you know they're loaded up with all these different drugs that they take. It's just not healthy. I mean, and then if people want to make the argument about oh well you need calcium to protect your bones. Well I've got at least a couple of answers for that. One, dairy is very low in magnesium and so the body needs magnesium to be able to assimilate that calcium in the presence of that calcium, and you're not getting it there. And then number two, with all that protein you're getting at the same time you're getting that calcium it's just a very inefficient way to get any kind of calcium because the body has a difficult time assimilating all that calcium in the presence of that protein. So you know you could just - we literally could spend the whole interview talking about dairy. It's just mind boggling that people - you know you'd never think oh well, I'm going to have some elephant milk today.

KIRK HAMILTON: And neither would the elephant think they were going to have giraffe milk to grow up either.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Exactly, I mean it's just crazy that you would think the species - the nursing fluid of another species is appropriate nutrition for humans. It just doesn't make any sense.

KIRK HAMILTON: Well let's stay on that then and let's stay on two things. You're a vegan bodybuilder. You don't use dairy products and you probably have strong bones. So tell me the things you do for your bones and to get adequate protein because those are key things that everybody, when you switch them to a plant-based diet, they ask ad nauseum.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Absolutely. Well the first thing that I would tell the average person is Dr. Edward C. Koop, the surgeon general from back in the 80s, he was quoted, and I forget which study that he was referring to but, - so this was like back in 85 or something that the average American gets something like 200% of the needed protein any day anyway. So just right off the bat, I would argue that what we think in terms of how much protein we need the average person, the lay person is already so overinflated, what we really biochemically need every day anyway that we have this major bias to deal with. And so the average person, the study showed the average person needs about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight of protein per day. And then if you're somebody that's like strength training and body building, you know somebody doing really high intensity work you might need 1 gram protein per kilogram of body weight. Something like that. So there definitely is a little bit of an increase in the need if you're doing a lot of high intensity type of activity. Now where I get mine? Well every plant - you know again we're led to believe so many different things and we - and one of the failings of our country in terms of education, how we educate our children and our teenagers is that we don't really teach them any good nutrition. I mean they get a little bit here and there but I can't really remember getting too much in school and it was so sporadic. And what we did get was really kind of unfulfilling, but all plants have protein. Now clearly all plants don't have as much protein as animal flesh does. I mean nobody's going to argue that. However, if you're eating a wide variety of food, and also to add to what I do personally, not only am I a vegan but I eat about, I'd say 75% of my food is raw, so I try to get food in it's uncooked state. But I rotate my foods a lot and not because I believe that that's necessarily a critical thing to do because that's what somebody from, you know the mountains in Tibet said to do, but just because obviously we need a wide variety of foods. It doesn't matter if you're vegan or not. You still need to eat a wide variety of foods to make sure that you get all the phytochemicals you need for yourself to function properly.

KIRK HAMILTON: Could you be specific about the kind of plant protein foods that you think are more concentrated?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Okay. Well I think the real key ones are clearly all the greens. I mean I eat a lot of greens. I'm eating greens like practically at every meal. And I eat a lot of different nuts and seeds. So when - and when you compare the way we eat to our most common relatives in the animal kingdom being the great apes, the gorilla, the bonobo, the orangutan, the chimpanzee. The chimp is the only one that really goes out and hunts other creatures. I mean that's - I don't think that's true for the whole species. It's within certain segments of them. But the other three are primarily vegetarians. I mean they don't really eat, you know too much animal food if at all as far I know. I think the bonobo and the orangutan are fruitarians and the gorillas as far as we know are pretty much predominantly vegan. But anyway, if you think about what they eat and how that relates to us because of how much shared DNA and genes that we have with them, they're eating greens and plants and things like that all the time too. So again, I eat a lot of greens. I mean I'm talking about all the leafy stuff. So it's collard greens, chard, kale, bok choy, mustard, dandelion, romaine lettuce. I'm eating all that stuff every day. I eat greens all the time.

KIRK HAMILTON: How about for your bones?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Same thing. Again, I think your best source of calcium other than spinach because of the oxalic acid which has some inhibitory effect on the way we process calcium from spinach. But your greens are essentially your best source of calcium. And then of course you can eat things like sesame seed or black strap molasses. Those things are very high in calcium as well which I do eat. And then just your - you know a wide variety of nuts. I mean I eat virtually any kind of nut you can think of. And one of the things that I do a lot of too is that I blend smoothies. And so I mix all these things together so I have a combination of different fruits, I throw in greens and then I throw in the different types of nuts and I'm - again I'm constantly rotating these foods. I also like to put in there some shiitake mushroom and then that way I get a little bit of a boost with my immune system there. But I'm constantly rotating these foods.

KIRK HAMILTON: How about are you satisfied that your fatty acid requirements that are from the nuts and seeds and maybe the green vegetables and whole grains?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Absolutely. To address that specifically I eat a lot of flax seed. I eat a lot of chia seeds. So I'm making sure that I get plenty of omega 3s plus when you look at this, there's a pretty big literature now comparing how the typical person eats and what they're getting in the ratios that they're getting between the omega 3s and omega 6s and where the typical person is having a big problem now is that they're getting too many omega 6s. And so the omega 6s are thought to be a contributory factor to this whole problem now that we're looking at within all the different literature about inflammation. You know there's chronic systemic inflammation that sort of underlies all these diseases that we're plagued with as a society, and so one of the contributory factors to that appears to be too much omega 6 fatty acids in the diet which interestingly enough comes from people who are eating heavy meat based diet where cows and chickens and pigs are getting fed a lot of corn. And so eating too much of that food - you know these omega 6s that are in the meats that they're eating from these animals and so when you're eating that type of a diet you're getting way too much omega 6s. So given that I'm not eating those foods and the fact that I'm supplementing or I'm putting in flax seed or chia seed and some of these other nuts and seeds that are very high in omega 3s I feel like I've - you know I've got that part of the formula figured out pretty well too.

KIRK HAMILTON: I've gotta say. I'll make a retraction. You're no sloppy vegan! You're really hard core! You're a great example and I'm not making fun of you. I mean I admire it.

I have two last questions then I'd like to wrap it up. One is what would you say the biggest mistake is, that vegans make on their health?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Well from the other folks that I know, I'd say one clearly is not eating enough raw food. You know relying on too much say pasta, too much refined grain. I think that's a big mistake. There's nothing wrong with whole grain. I certainly don't have a problem with whole grains. But I would say that's definitely - well probably so I guess it's the combination of the two. One, not eating enough raw food, and then two, simply relying on two much processed food. I'd say those are probably the two biggest mistakes that people make. And then I could add a third point to that too. I'd say probably not getting enough greens in the diet. I mean we assimilate all green foods so well. It really is our elixir when you think about just basically the best kind of food we could eat. I mean whether it's broccoli, broccoli being clearly one of the best foods that we could eat, and then all of the leafy greens. I mean those are just - those foods for us, there's no - there is no better medicine than just pick any kind of a green food and that's really what people ought to be doing, and so I would say that's - in fact that might even be the first one. It just popped into my mind right after I said the other two points. But maybe not eating enough greens I would say would be the biggest mistake that people make.

KIRK HAMILTON: You know they're slugging it out on Capitol Hill about health care reform and every time I think about it I just want to, you know, yank my hair out because the simple diet that you recommended, if people were even vegans with a little bit of animal food we would wipe out - and I know it's your passion, the chronic diseases like you know heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity and your two cents. Health care reform would be a nonissue, correct?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Kirk it is so sad. I mean you just said it succinctly and perfectly. It's so sad. If we could just get people - and again it all starts with education and pulling your hair out about that, I also want to pull my hair out about NIH's budget. I mean we're sinking so many billions of taxpayer dollars down these research avenues for gene - you know the so-called gene cure for all these diseases. Sure it may help some people, but it all comes back to behavior and people can't behave properly if they're not educated and so again it is a completely simple approach. I mean it's so simple it's ridiculous. The problem is is when you add in all the psychology and the culture and the sociology and even the religion. You know all these other factors that sort of create this big soup that either confuses people or simply puts people in a mind set that they don't want to believe. I mean I've been called a crazy vegan before and the first thing I ask people is "Look, do I look sick? Do I look protein deficient? Do I look like I need iron, B12, whatever?" That's the first thing I ask people. You know it's like okay look at me. I've been eating this way for going on a decade and a half. Do I look like I'm sickly? Do I look anemic? Do I look something like something's wrong with me? No because I know what to do. I know how to do it and it's easy. I'm not - this isn't brain surgery. This isn't flying a rocket to the moon. This is easy. This is just who we are as an organism. How we function as a being.

KIRK HAMILTON: Dr. Lewis you're making me grin from ear to ear because you're almost verbatim kind of part of the chapters of the book that I'm working on on that particular topic. "It's easy, it's not brain surgery, it's not rocket science. It is so simple!"

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Yes.

KIRK HAMILTON: It is so simple. And that's what makes it almost so sad. You have a book that you're working on. What's the name of it and when might it be done?

DR. JOHN LEWIS: I had really hoped to have it finished by the end of this year but unfortunately just too many other commitments and priorities and responsibilities got in the way, but I do hope to have it finished next year. It is tentatively going to be titled "Simplicity in Health." And I'm going to use myself as a model because that's what I know. I mean, I know what I've been doing for the last 20 years and how I've evolved to this point in life and where I've come to be and how well I feel and how healthy I feel and how good I look, and so I don't want it to be - there are so many wonderful books out there that are very scientifically intensive, you know thoroughly researched in terms of like having all the references in the back. I really don't want it to go in that direction because there are so many good ones out there and I could recommend a bunch in terms of nutrition and exercise, but what I really want to focus on is giving people a simple plan because in addition to all these other problems we discussed most folks have the attention span of a flea. And so if you can't give the a simple solution, some simple steps to follow I think you lose people very rapidly. And so what I'm trying to do as the title suggests is just give people a very simple plan to follow, and really if you've got, you know a refrigerator and a blender, and perhaps a juicer, if you want to go that route too that's all you need from that point of view in terms of how to eat. And then if you've got a gym membership, or if you've got you know some equipment in your house you know it's not like we're talking a huge financial commitment to do what I'm suggesting that people do. But it's really just following a simple plan that is fully backed up by thousands of studies in the literature that I will refer people to those books to be able to, you know go and look at those studies, but again using the way I've been living for the last, nearly a decade and a half and how I've come to discover that it really is so simple. And I will give you another point of where I came to in this and that is I saw all four of my grandparents die very miserable deaths from chronic disease. They all four had poor quality of life their last let's say two to five years and so I think that really motivated me. Probably even I was unaware a lot of the time how much it motivated me to say wait a minute, I don't want this to happen to me! And I was also very strongly led to believe as a young kid that my dad's side of the family - we all had this genetic predisposition to heart disease and we were all going to die of a heart attack at somewhere between 50 and 70. Well guess what? I'm from the south. All those folks - they ate the typical southern diet. A lot of fried food, a lot of animal food, a lot of processed food. Some of them smoked. Some of them drank. Most of them didn't exercise. And so yes they all dropped dead, like just boom, from either a heart attack or stroke. In some cases some of them had both.

KIRK HAMILTON: With that said, we've got to go. I had to cut you off, but -

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Oh, I'm sorry.

KIRK HAMILTON: No, we're kindred spirits. I mean my book is actually a reflection of me. It' called "Staying Healthy in the Fast Lane." It's you know what I do mixed with some literature on how to stay and be well in a busy world. So we have - we're very kindred spirits. I want to thank you so much. You know I'm sorry to cut you off there but I want to keep it at this time frame. Dr. Lewis, your work is great. When you get your book out give me a call and we'll get you on. So thank you very much for coming on today.

DR. JOHN LEWIS: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been my pleasure.

KIRK HAMILTON: And I want to thank you, the audience, for listening today on this edition of Staying Healthy Today Radio. And remember until next time, Stay and Be Well.

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