Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are a lot of things I like about McDougal's prescription: * it is a whole-foods based nutrition plan with minimal supplements. Whole foods are indeed much healthier than processed foods and supplements. Dr Terry Wahls only healed her MS when she added whole-foods to her supplements (google her Ted Talk video, inspiring) * it eliminates vegetable/seed oils and trans-fats (e.g. no corn, peanut, soy, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, canola oils). These oils are one of the major causes of chronic disease, and eliminating them is extremely beneficial * it will help most people lose weight and improve their health on a short-term basis. In the long run, though, it creates numerous deficiencies and will lead to poor health. A much better approach is to make sure that you don't have any deficiencies or excesses. The most thorough and scientific approach I've seen is the Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet -- their approach will help you lose weight while you correct any existing malnutrition, and will result in excellent long-term health. * McDougal eliminates soy, wheat, and dairy for people with auto-immune issues. Since auto-immune issues are triggered by leaky gut and these foods all contribute to poor gut integrity, eliminating them helps many people. For the rest, it almost always resolves issues to eliminate all grains, especially corn, to eliminate all legumes and nightshades, and to eliminate any other foods that trigger allergies (e.g. an IgG inflammatory response). So, what happens on a long-term basis with McDougall's plan? I was a vegan for over a year, eating a diet very much like McDougals: no added fats, no supplements. The main difference is that I was getting most of my calories from ripe fruit, and wasn't eating grains/legumes/root vegetables. So much higher fructose than on McDougall's plan, otherwise very similar. It was fantastic for about 4 months: my blood sugar was perfect, I woke up every morning with it at 83. My weight dropped about 10 pounds, to what I had weighed in college. I felt fantastic, and I loved eating all the fruit and greens. Then things stopped working: my blood sugar was erratic, I was hungry all the time, I started having irritable bowel syndrome, I had extremely low blood pressure, my libido evaporated, I started getting cavities. I finally stopped the vegan diet and moved to more of a paleo diet, still grain-free/legume-free, but eating meat and cooked root vegetables (along the lines of Perfect Health Diet). It took about a year to recover, but now I feel great all the time, my blood markers are excellent, my teeth are great with no tartar/plaque, and I wake up every day with my blood sugar perfect at 83. The best predictors for longevity are low triglycerides, high HDL, and low fasting insulin, and that is exactly where I am today. If you do go on McDougall's plan, what are the nutrients you should supplement or consider supplementing? * DHA. This is a long-chain omega-3 fat. Your brain and body absolutely need 1 gram/day for optimal health. You can get this from whole foods if you eat fatty wild-caught fish or eat fermented-fish-liver oil. On a vegan diet, you can get it from algae-based DHA supplements. * Vitamin D. Your body uses sunlight to convert cholesterol to Vitamin D. When you have extremely low cholesterol as is typical on McDougall's diet, your body cannot create as much Vitamin D, and vegans tend to be quite deficient. McDougall on his web site says that levels of 20 are probably ok, but actual studies show that 40 is optimal for bone health in Caucasians, and 30 for African-Americans, so I suspect that his claim is because people on his diet have lower Vitamin D than most. * Vitamin A. Your body will convert beta-carotene to Vitamin A, but conversion rates vary and most people need additional Vitamin A (retinol) from their diet. Animal-based foods such as fermented fish-liver oil are an excellent source. My own tooth health is excellent taking 10,000 IU of retinol per day from fermented fish-liver oil, but only 3,000 IU per day didn't have the same effect. This is despite eating a ton of high-beta carotene veggies such as squash and kale. * Vitamin K2. There are two kinds of vitamin K: K1 (from plants) and K2 (from animals). K2 is much more effective for bone health, for putting calcium in the right places, and for removing it from calcified arteries or tissues. Your body converts some K1 to K2, and your gut bacteria can produce K2 if you have the right varieties. If you have adequate Vitamin A and D (probably 10,000 IU/day of A, 4,000 IU/day of D), then your body will upregulate its conversion of K1 to K2, but on a vegan diet you need to supplement to have adequate A/D. Studies show that populations eating higher K2 have longer lives and better health, so it seems prudent to supplement this. See the excellent book Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life for more details. * Zinc. A plant-food based diet is marginal for zinc. Good sources, such as pumpkin seeds, are high omega-6 polyunsaturated fat so have a downside. * Selenium. This mineral is essential for thyroid health and for your immune system. You can get this from chicken yolks, and mushrooms also concentrate selenium. Brazil nuts from Brazil are high, but usually have mycotoxin contamination. Plants will have selenium to the extent that the soil they grow in has selenium, but most soils are selenium-deficient. * Iodine. This is also essential for thyroid health and for your immune system. This you can get from seaweed, Nature's Way Kelp Capsules, 180-Count is a good source. Start with one per day and ramp up to 6 per day. This particular seaweed also helps reduce tartar and plaque. Plants have iodine depending on how close they are to the ocean, so most are low. * Taurine, carnitine, creatine, glutamine, carnosine, and glycine. You can get some of these from egg yolks and whole-fat dairy, but likely still want to supplement. On a strictly vegan diet these should be supplemented. * B12 is of course an issue on vegan diets, and McDougall does recommend supplementing it * There are numerous other potential deficiencies discussed in more detail in the Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet book. A major long-term deficiency on McDougall's diet is long-chain saturated fat. Your body needs fat for cell membranes, for its immune system, and to switch to fat-burning mode instead of sugar (glucose) burning mode. In particular, long-chain saturated fat is required to stabiize your blood sugar. (This explains why my blood sugar was so good for the first months on a McDougall-type diet, as my body used up my store of saturated fat. Once it was gone, things went downhill.) Your body can manufacture long-chain saturated fat for its critical needs, but it can't manufacture enough to switch into fat-burning mode. On an extremely low-fat diet, you are always burning glucose. This means that you cannot fast, because your blood sugar just keeps dropping. All of your cells are extremely insulin-sensitive all the time, and they will all suck up glucose until there isn't enough for your brain to function. So, if you stay on McDougall's diet long-term, at some point you will want to start supplementing with long-chain saturated fat for optimal health. You can use dark chocolate and cocoa butter for this if you want to stay vegan. Butter is also a good source, as it is about 45% long-chain saturated fat. McDougall says on his web site that a healthy fasting blood glucose is 50 to 100. I can't find any evidence for this, because your body tries to stabilize your blood glucose at 83. When your blood glucose is higher, your pancreas puts out insulin to tell your cells to take up the excess. At levels below 83, your pancreas puts out glucagon to tell your liver to release stored glucose to keep your blood sugar stable. So the ideal is 83. Our bodies are well-tuned to optimal levels, and extremes, either above/below, cause health issues. The only population studies I know of for a culture eating extremely low long-chain saturated fats is for the Kitavans. They live in the Polynesian islands, and their traditional diet was only 5% animal, from fish. The rest was plant sources from sweet potatoes, coconut, etc. It was actually a higher-fat diet than McDougall's because coconuts are high-fat, but coconut fat is all short and medium chain fats, almost no long-chain. Their fasting blood glucose averaged 67, which is what you'd expect if they couldn't stabilize their blood sugar and it dropped all night while they were sleeping. They apparently did not live extremely long lives, usually dying in their 70's, even though they did not get heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc. I suspect that their bodies simply wore out from constantly burning glucose -- our metabolism is optimized to include fat as a fuel source.