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JOHN WHYTE: Welcome everyone. I’m Dr. John Whyte, Medical Director of WebMD. And you’re watching Coronavirus in Context. What is the role of what we eat in terms of getting COVID or protecting us when we do get COVID? What is the role of diet and immunity?
To help provide guidance and give us some ideas, I asked my good friend, Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. Dean, it’s great to see you.
DEAN ORNISH: Always good to see you, John.
JOHN WHYTE: Dean, you and I have talked several times about these two studies that came out recently that talk about the role of eating habits in COVID. And I want to start with the first one from BMJ Nutrition Prevention and Health, where they followed 3,000 front-line doctors and nurses in six countries. Can you tell us what they found?
DEAN ORNISH: Sure. And I think it’s a particularly compelling study. With the Omicron variant, as you’ve talked about on your previous shows, even if you have the triple shot, there’s still a number of people breaking through because it’s so infectious. So I think people are really looking at, what else can I do other than get vaccinated, of course, wear masks, social distancing, all the usual things, that could also help me stay well, or if I get sick to recover. a softer version of it?
And this was one of two, I thought, particularly compelling studies that came out a few weeks ago. And like you said, they looked at nearly 3,000 frontline health care workers who are exposed to COVID every day. And they found that those who ate a healthy plant-based diet were 73% less likely to get moderate-to-severe COVID. Those who followed a pescetarian diet, a healthy plant-based diet with some fish, were 59% less likely.
And equally surprising, those following a high-animal-protein, high-fat diet (Atkins, paleo, Keto-type) were 400% more likely to get moderate-to-severe COVID. So we already know that a healthy plant-based diet has many beneficial effects beyond COVID. But I think this is just the latest example of things we can do ourselves to help improve our immunity.
JOHN WHYTE: A similar study that you mentioned in Gut that followed 600,000 people in the US and London. And what did they find?
DEAN ORNISH: Yes, they were scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health, people like Dr. Walter Willett and King’s College London. And they looked at almost 600,000 people. And they found something similar, that those who ate a healthy plant-based diet were 41% less likely to develop moderate to severe COVID.
There are other studies that have analyzed and found that when you get vaccinated, those who are smokers, who are overweight or hypertensive, do not develop as much immune response. So it’s just looking at it from both perspectives.
And also, as you know, people who are chronically ill, who are overweight, who are hypertensive are more likely to be hospitalized and more likely to die from COVID. Simply being obese, for example, can increase your mortality risk by 300%.
It’s part of a general theme I’ve been writing about for years: why these simple lifestyle changes can make such a powerful difference? And I think it’s because they affect so many different parts of our underlying system, the biological mechanisms that affect our underlying health, chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, changes in immune function, as we’ve been talking about, with the microbiome and telomeres. and gene expression, angiogenesis, etc.
And these mechanisms, in turn, are directly influenced by what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get, and how much love and support we have. And I think this is just the latest version of that.
JOHN WHYTE: I want to go back to these two studies. One criticism has been, Dean, that they were done at a time when we didn’t have the ability to do a lot of testing. So the presence of COVID was largely determined by symptomatology, not completely, but that was one measure. Does that detract from what these studies seem to be showing?
DEAN ORNISH: Well, not at all. Because, again, we are talking about moderate to severe COVID. So even if you can’t test it as precisely as we can now, when people get to that degree of symptomatology, it’s pretty clear what they have. So I don’t think it really takes.
Now, there’s another view that maybe it’s not so bad if a lot of people get the Omicron because the symptoms seem to be less severe, and maybe that’s part of how we get to herd immunity. And you can certainly make a case for that. What worries me about that is long COVID and that even milder versions of the Omicron variant still don’t necessarily reduce long COVID, which can cause mental fogginess and myocarditis and stuff like that.
JOHN WHYTE: Let’s break it down for people. Because you and I are familiar with these terms. You’ve been an expert on this from the very beginning, when it wasn’t popular to talk about these things. People forget that, the role of stress, the role of diet. But people are going to say, well, what do you mean, Dr. Ornish, plant-based diet?
Split it up for them. What does that mean? That doesn’t just mean they’re eating lettuce and kale. Help them understand what that means.
DEAN ORNISH: A plant-based diet is the way most people ate around the world until they had the prosperity of being able to eat animal protein as often as we do, and processed foods and concentrated sweeteners, etc. So it’s mostly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, as close as possible to how they come in nature.
And I think there’s a growing consensus that this really is the optimal way to eat for most people. Not only is it low in disease-causing substances, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of protective substances in fruits and vegetables that: phytochemicals, bioflavonoids, carotenoids, retinols, isoflavones, genistein, lycopene, and more and more that have anti-cancer properties, anti-cancer and anti-aging.
JOHN WHYTE: Well, let’s talk about barriers. And you’ve heard all this before. I’ve been to many meetings with you. But let’s go over them for our audience. So people will say, it’s too expensive. Food spoils if I don’t eat it soon. Or they will say, as you know, I don’t like that. I don’t like the taste of plant-based foods.
DEAN ORNISH: Am I going to live longer or will it just seem longer?
JOHN WHYTE: Right, exactly. Exactly. I need to– I’m the steak and potatoes type of person. What is your response when they say that food is really something they see that is designed to give them pleasure? And there is a role of food in that, and the community. But at the same time, we’re trying to talk about food as medicine, the properties that it has to help our immune system, particularly when we’re talking about COVID. How do you reconcile that with patients?
DEAN ORNISH: Yeah, well, that’s an important question. First of all, this is a third world diet. This is the way people ate before they had the funds to eat as often as they do animal protein, saturated fat, concentrated sweeteners, or processed foods. This is the least expensive way to eat, number one. In fact, I– one of my colleagues and I–
JOHN WHYTE: People reject that, Dean. They’ll say, you know what? Dollar food at a fast food restaurant is much cheaper and keeps my kids satisfied longer.
DEAN ORNISH: Well, a colleague of mine and I trained the St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter in our program 20 years ago. More than 30,000 homeless people passed through it. Then you can buy food in the food cooperatives. It is actually less. Obviously you can spend more money if you want to eat truffles and really expensive stuff. But you can eat a very healthy plant-based diet for less than what it costs you to get meat, especially now with inflation and the price of meat skyrocketing. Number two, you can eat delicious and nutritious food.
JOHN WHYTE: Now, to be fair, Dean, people will wonder, right? Okay, I’ll switch to a plant-based diet. Suppose people can do that. Will I reduce my risk of heart disease? Am I not going to have a heart attack now until I’m much older in life? Will I reduce my chances of COVID? Will I not get COVID? What do you say to them? They are willing to change. What–
DEAN ORNISH: Yes, it will reduce your risk. But reducing risk, or fear is another way of putting it, is not a sustainable motivator. After someone has had a heart attack or a friend has COVID or something like that, you’ll do pretty much anything your doctor or nurse tells you for maybe a month or two, and that’s it.
JOHN WHYTE: Max.
DEAN ORNISH: What is sustainable? Because we all know that we are going to die. The mortality rate is still 100%. It is one per person. We don’t think about it most of the time because it’s too scary. So when denial breaks after someone has had an event, then there is a moment of motivation. But even so, it doesn’t last as long because the denial comes back. We don’t want to think about the fact that we’re mortal, so we don’t.
But what I have found, actually, what is sustainable is not the fear of dying but the joy of living, that joy and pleasure and love and feeling good are ultimately much more sustainable.
JOHN WHYTE: Well, Dr. Ornish, as always, I want to thank you for giving us a fresh perspective on how what we eat, our dietary habits, impact our health.
DEAN ORNISH: Thank you for having me. Our new paperback is Ornish.com. It’s all there. And I’m so passionate about doing this work because I’ve seen what a difference it can make in people’s lives. And for me, awareness is always the first step in healing, so thank you for helping us raise awareness today. I am very grateful. And it’s always great to see you.
JOHN WHYTE: Absolutely. If you have any questions for me or Dr. Ornish, feel free to write us. You can email me at [email protected]. Thanks for watching.
This interview originally appeared on WebMD on February 3, 2022
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