The Pritikin Edge: 10 Essential Ingredients for a Long and Delicious Life - Hardcover

Vogel, Dr. Robert A.; Lehr, Paul Tager

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416580883 ISBN 13: 9781416580881

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2008

Synopsis

A lifestyle primer based on the practices of the Pritikin Longevity Center clarifies contradictory recommendations about diet and exercise while outlining a ten-step plan for losing weight safely and maximizing one's longevity, in a guide that is complemented by recipes and comprehensive eating plans. 175,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr. Robert A. Vogel is a cardiologist, Pritikin's chief medical director, and professor of medicine at the University of Maryland. He has been designated as one of the best doctors in America by Good Housekeeping magazine and is a weight and heart consultant to the National Football League and a diet consultant to the National Health Institute.

Son of Pritikin cofounder Dr. David Lehr, Paul Tager Lehr is the president of the Pritikin Organization, which has helped more than 100,000 people worldwide who have gone to the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa and the 10 million plus readers of Pritikin books lose weight and prevent and reverse obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1
Lifestyle and Heart Disease

You know Bill. At 58 years old, a strapping six feet two inches tall and 220 pounds with a full head of silver hair, he was outwardly the picture of power and health. He received great medical care. He jogged and golfed frequently. But just like most Americans, Bill loved food -- especially fatty, spicy, salty food. His typical American extra pounds pushed his blood pressure, sugar, and LDL (bad) cholesterol too high and dropped his HDL (good) cholesterol too low. He lived with chronic stress, big time. None of his numbers were awful, but every warning sign was there.

One day Bill had chest pain. The next week, his quadruple coronary bypass was all over the news, because Bill is President Bill Clinton. Yes, even American presidents can get heart disease. Since his wake-up call, Mr. Clinton has changed his lifestyle quite a bit. He is now off the ribs and fries and is working hard to do his part to prevent heart disease in this country.

Improving your lifestyle after a heart attack or bypass surgery is certainly a step in the right direction, but wouldn't it be so much better to do so before you end up in the coronary care unit or surgical suite? Or worse, the morgue? Our guests at the Pritikin Longevity Center sometimes complain that they don't have enough time to exercise. We remind them that they will have plenty of time to exercise, but not much inclination after they are dead.

Heart disease is a great barometer of a lousy lifestyle. Wherever heart disease is epidemic, so are obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stroke, and diabetes. Obviously, few people are heeding the early warning signs, because I don't know any fellow cardiologists looking for more work. We live in fear of cancer, but heart disease is still the number-one killer in America. I wish I could tell you how to avoid most cancers. Sadly, I can't. But I can tell you how to prevent most heart disease simply by changing your lifestyle. Some cancers may even be avoided by these same lifestyle changes. What you eat, how often you exercise, how you manage your stress...it all matters, and it's all easier to improve than you might think.

THE 10 ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS OF THE PRITIKIN PROGRAM

In this book, you will learn the 10 essential ingredients of the Pritikin Program. These 10 Pritikin essentials deal with diet, exercise, and emotional wellness. By adopting these lifestyle practices, as thousands of our patients and participants have, you will get back the seven years of life you might otherwise lose to heart disease. (By the way, if seven years doesn't seem important to you right now, imagine how much more important they will seem to you when you're 75.) You will learn how to lose weight permanently without feeling hungry, to cook really tasty, heart-healthy food, the best ways to be physically active, and how to sidestep stress. You will learn the real science of lifestyle and heart health, so that you are able to make choices every single day that will contribute to your wellness and enable you to live a long, delicious life.

You'll learn much more in Part Two about the specifics of the 10 essential ingredients of the Pritikin Program, but here is a quick glance:

1. Healthy, satisfying eating starts with super salads, soups, whole grains, and fruit.
2. Eliminate high-calorie beverages.
3. Trim portions of calorie-dense foods.
4. Snack smarter.
5. Forget fast food; dine unrefined.
6. Watch less, walk more.
7. Go lean on meat, but catch a fish.
8. Shake your salt habit.
9. Don't smoke your life away.
10. Step around stress.

Adopting one or two of these essential lifestyle practices is okay, but optimal health requires that you follow the whole program. Why? Because obesity, inactivity, heart disease, and emotions are intricately connected. Couch potatoes tend to be depressed; depressed people eat more; people who eat more gain weight; those who gain weight tend to sack out on the couch rather than exercise; lack of exercise contributes to heart disease; heart disease can trigger depression...you get the picture. You may already be following several lifestyle essentials, but now is your chance to complete the program and get all seven years back, not to mention being able to more fully enjoy your life right here and now.

THE PRITIKIN PHILOSOPHY

The Pritikin Program is simple, thorough, and most of all, smart. No gimmicks, fads, pseudo-science, or rhetoric here. The philosophy is based on five main points:

· prevented through lifestyle changes.
· Emotional wellness and heart healthiness are intricately connected.
· Wellness is much more than the absence of illness.
· Complex health problems do not have simple solutions.
· Illness and wellness are global issues: they affect families, communities, and nations.

Lifestyle Changes versus Medication

I love sushi. Almost every day while we had a sushi bar in our hospital, I would eat ahi along with a green salad. One day, without notice, the sushi bar disappeared; it seems it wasn't making the hospital money. After all, why lose money selling tasty food that just might prevent heart disease when you can get paid a great deal to treat it? Sayonara, sushi bar. Did I complain? You bet! Now it's back.

This story illustrates the paradox of our unhealthy culture and medical care. When we become ill, we immediately turn to drugs to fix the consequences of a poor lifestyle. We focus on fixing a problem after we've created it, rather than trying to prevent it altogether.

Pop a pill, or hop on the treadmill -- which is easier? Taking a pill, of course. Which is better? Hands down, preventing the illness that mandates the pill in the first place through healthy living. When we change our lifestyle, we not only negate the need for costly medications, we lessen our risk of developing a myriad of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and depression, not to mention heart disease, because these common afflictions share many of the same root causes.

I readily admit I will use medications in my practice to lower cholesterol in patients who will not change their lifestyle or for whom this change is not enough. But time and again, I've seen that my patients who do lower their cholesterol through diet and exercise rather than medication look and feel better. Yes, they have to put in a little more time and effort than it takes to pry the top off a pill bottle, but the quality of their lives is far superior. They are more physically fit, emotionally engaged, and energized by their ability to improve their well-being.

Prescriptions or Power Walks? Consider This:

· Most lifestyle changes are free, or very inexpensive. Salads are still cheaper than any prescription drug.
· You don't need preapproval from an HMO to go for a long walk.
· Lifestyle changes have few negative side effects. You don't have to worry about mixing good habits, and I have never had a patient allergic to walking.
· The most valuable lifestyle changes have no drug substitutes. As yet, we have not been able to capture all the benefits of friendship and love in a pill.

Emotions and Heart Disease

Our metaphorical "heart," from which we feel love and affection, and our physical heart are actually one and the same. How you feel can absolutely affect your cardiovascular health. As we like to say at Pritikin, a happy life equals a happy heart.

Depressed people tend to eat poorly, smoke more frequently, and exercise rarely -- all major contributors to heart disease. There is a lot of research that shows depression and anger increase the chronic factors that contribute to heart disease, most specifically inflammation and a decrease in protective chemicals like nitric oxide (more on this in Chapter 2). And, not surprisingly, the relationship works both ways: depression and anger frequently follow heart attacks and bypass surgery.

Can you die of a broken heart? Absolutely. Faced with sudden emotional stress, your heart can actually stop pumping effectively. Learning about the death or illness of a loved one can do it; this is literally called "broken heart syndrome." In response to extreme stress or grief, an outpour of adrenaline and related hormones can stun the heart, mimicking a heart attack.

Fortunately, though, the same holds true in reverse. Upbeat emotions and heart healthiness are also intricately connected. It has been proven that watching 30 minutes of a humorous video relaxes your blood vessels. Socially and spiritually connected people, such as churchgoers and others who are socially active, tend to live healthier lifestyles and thus experience less heart disease. In one of the best-known studies of cardiac health, the Normative Aging Study done in VA hospitals, it was shown that optimistic men actually have few heart attacks.

There's another component to the link between emotions and heart health: think about how your self-image improves with weight loss and the joy of shopping for slimmer clothes. I know of few compliments more welcome in our society than being told that you look like you lost weight. (By the way, I've come to learn that the only correct answer to your wife's question of whether a dress makes her look fat is, "How could it, dear?")

Wellness versus Absence of Illness

Just like illness, health and wellness come in degrees. You may not be ill, but can you run a 6-minute mile -- or even a 12-minute mile? You may not be depressed, but are you truly happy? You may not have had a heart attack or stroke yet, but do you really think that all those double cheeseburgers and French fries have not done you any damage?

We call heart disease the silent killer. You usually feel fine the day before a heart attack or stroke, but you are really a coronary time bomb. Did you know that 85 percent of 50-year-old people have blockage in the arteries of their hearts without any symptoms? It is a traged...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1416580883
• ISBN 13: 9781416580881
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400