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Stroke & Diabetes

Heart Diseases’ Close Cousin—Stroke:

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Across North America and Europe, stroke is the third leading cause of death. It is also the most common cause of long-term disability among adults in the United States. Anyone who has witnessed a loved one’s arduous struggle in the aftermath of a stroke understands just how heartbreaking this can be. The good news is that vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke; vegans’ risk of stroke is even more less.[1]

 

“The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and plants and seeds….”

—Plato

 

The Most Serious Manifestation of Trouble—Diabetes:

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Diabetes is yet another close cousin of cardiovascular disease.

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The latest World Health Organization (WHO) estimate for the number of people with diabetes worldwide is 177 million. This figure is likely to more than double by 2030. Overall, direct health-care costs of diabetes range from 2.5 percent to 15 percent of annual healthcare budgets, depending on the prevalence of diabetes and the sophistication of the treatment available.

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This dangerous medical condition is strongly correlated with obesity. As the disease progresses it begins causing systemic nerve and blood vessel damage, which can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes, amputation of extremities, septis, and if you somehow manage to survive all that, it causes all types of dementia. Diabetes is strongly linked to meat-loaded diets high in saturated fat and it shares all the common markers of obesity and coronary heart disease, especially raised cholesterol levels and elevated blood pressure.

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Tragically, this disease now appears in our children as well. Arriving with the skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes in children is increasingly common throughout North America, Europe, and even some Asian countries such as Japan and Thailand.

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In the largest and most comprehensive study of the link between diabetes and meat consumption, Harvard researchers followed three hundred thousand people over the course of several decades and found that eating meat raised the risk of type 2 diabetes by 19 percent if it was lean meat, up to 51 percent if it was processed meat, even controlling for obesity, exercise, and smoking.[2]

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Once an individual is diagnosed, the current dietary prescription is a regimen low in starches, processed carbohydrates, and sugar, while high in fiber and low in fat—in other words, a vegetarian diet. Indeed, studies have shown that the vegetarian diet can be a cure for many type 2 diabetics[3] and the American Diabetes Association highly recommends going vegetarian and vegan.

 

“A man can live and be healthy without the killing of animals for food: therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking an animal’s life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

—Leo Tolstoy

 

[1] Kaluza, J., Wolk, A., Larsson, S.C. (2012). Red meat consumption and risk of stroke: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. Stroke, 43(10):2556-60.

[2] Pan, A., Sun, Q., Bernstein, A.M., Schulze, M.B., Manson, J.E., Willett, W.C., Hu, F.B. (2011). Red meat consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: 3 cohorts of US adults and an updated meta-analysis. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 43(10):2556-60.

[3] Barnard, N.D., Cohen, J., Jenkins, D.J., Turner-McGrievy, G., Gloede, L, Green, A., Ferdowsian, H. (2009). A low-fat vegan diet and a conventional diabetes diet in the treatment of type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, 74-wk clinical trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 89(5):1588S-1596S.

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