Healing Through Food: Part 1 — Full Documentary | NBC 6 News

thank you foreign that's my pesticide right there now we got some nice Peppers this year [Music] I'm an investigative reporter with Telemundo 51 and NBC 6 South Florida for more than a decade I've helped the Hispanic Community get their money back but now I have the chance to help them recover something even more valuable [Music] their health it's why I've decided to tell my story [Music] yes of course yeah but it's been months since now hearing officer told you you have to pay him [Music] I have one of the most stressful jobs on TV maybe that contributed to what ended up happening to me in 2017 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called Sjogren's after spending more than two years with terrible joint pain constant swollen glands and this terrible fatigue that felt debilitating I was 42 years old and the doctor that took so long figuring out what was wrong with me had been telling me it was part of getting old he was more than 60 but he was calling me hold I was referred to a rheumatologist who immediately put me on steroids to control my flares and autoimmune suppressors you see they had to deactivate my immune system because instead of protecting me from diseases like it's supposed to do mine was attacking me I felt better for a while thanks to the steroids but the side effects of those meds didn't take long to show up my stomach got distended I look like a bloated frog everything I had made me sick one time I broke out on hives oh and like the warning label said I started to lose my hair I also gained lots of weight and because I'm on TV everyone noticed I remember once I asked my rheumatologist if there's anything I can change in my diet that could help me and she flat out said no discouraged and weak I spent most days laying on the sofa reading about Sjogren's I discovered famous tennis star Venus Williams had it and was controlling it with a plant-based diet that's when I remembered about a story I heard when I was a kid about my dad being told he was going to die and overcoming it with a plant-based diet he was supposed to be dead but there he was strolling past his 80s foreign [Music] he says doctors thought he might have pancreatic necrosis but they weren't sure my grandma his mom wanted to send him to a naturopathic Retreat to see if they could help him there that treatment included a whole food plant-based diet and other natural remedies to bring down his fever that treatment included a whole food plant-based diet and other natural remedies to bring down his fever foreign since then my dad has used naturopathic treatments as medicine but he admits his love for Chilean barbecues and Arab food have taken a toll on him throughout the years he now lives with type 2 diabetes and 10 years ago he had to undergo double bypass surgery he says that although he knows the benefits of a plant-based diet he doesn't see it as a lifestyle that made me think do these natural remedies really work or was my dad going to get better anyways I know most of the Latin American countries we come from have these natural wellness retreats but are they really health centers or just Spas I wanted to see if plant-based nutrition could really be used to heal someone and as an investigative reporter I took a deep dive into the literature I found a mountain of studies where doctors concluded that with the this diet you could prevent slow down or even reverse some of the chronic diseases that affect so many Americans like heart disease the leading cause of death in the United States according to the Centers for Disease Control or CDC it claims 659 000 lives and cost us 363 billion dollars each year diseases such as type 2 diabetes according to the CDC 34.2 million Americans have diabetes and at the rate we're going more than 100 million will have it by 2050. [Applause] that's when I decided to travel board a plane in the middle of a pandemic because I really needed to know more I wanted to meet these doctors who claim to be curing patients with a plant-based diet I traveled from Florida to the tri-state area and in a community garden in Pennsylvania I met Dr Anna Negron and I never learned in medical school that plants were important Dr Negron is a family medicine doctor whose Focus changed over 40 years ago when she stopped eating animal products for ethical reasons and then discovered there's a mountain of evidence that the more of Whole Foods plant-based we eat without processing through a the industry the more Health we have she spent decades prescribing a whole food plant-based diet to her patients as a way to fight chronic diseases such as diabetes hypertension heart problems and autoimmune disorders we are really in deep trouble in terms of health and nutrition in this country she says not only can we survive without consuming meat chicken eggs milk and cheese but these are really not great sources of protein she says adding that protein originally comes from plants people will ask you well then how do I get my protein well just cut the middleman cut the middle animal just eat it straight from the plants if you eat enough calories do not lose weight unintentionally you're getting enough protein calorie per calorie broccoli and meat have the same amount of protein she explains that the animals we eat have produced protein by consuming plants just like we do when we eat fruits vegetables beans and Grains but unlike animal products that only give us protein plants give us vitamins phytochemicals antioxidants and fiber among other nutrients no animal has fiber no meat has fiber she says both animal protein and plant protein contain essential amino acids but with the animal protein you also get saturated fat and cholesterol which contribute to heart disease as well as the hormones those animals produce that promote cell growth including in cancer cells so the animal protein is yes more efficient but it's also a liability something that we really never got into any trouble when we eat plant protein what about chicken and fish some say I mean they've told us that those are lean meats and you know they don't contribute too much to cholesterol people who are thinking you know heart healthy Meats I mean those are terms that we've grown up listening to this is heart healthy yes and who do we hear it from the industry because they say eat more chicken eat less cow eat more chicken this is not from science the cholesterol in in chicken is similar to the cholesterol in in beef it's important to understand that the human body is made to be nourished by a whole unprocessed plants instead of you know what we do consume in the standard American and Western diet evelis Capo is a doctor of Pharmacy and the executive director of Spanish programs and culinary content for the T Colin Campbell Center for nutrition studies in his book The China Study Dr Campbell talks about a 20-year project where he and two colleagues from China analyze mortality rates from cancer and other chronic diseases in 65 counties in China using dietary surveys and blood tests taken from thousands of people he concluded that those who ate a largely Whole Food plant-based diet avoiding animal products and processed and refined Foods could prevent reduce use or reverse the development of several diseases the China project it's it's unparalleled and unique in its comprehensiveness the quality of the um of the data and even to this day it has been the foundation to so many other studies and research in another study Dr Campbell and his team of investigators exposed a group of rats to a carcinogen and then divided them into groups giving them between five percent and 20 casing the protein found in dairy products they noted that the rats given 20 casein grew tumors while those given five percent had very little cancer cell growth at 100 weeks the rats given 20 casein were dead and those given five percent were healthy what may be more surprising is that when they alternated the dose of animal protein from 20 to 5 the tumors shrink so cancer it starts with a genetic mutation and when exposed to certain substances it can actually progress but we're talking about the protein found in milk cheese foods that we've been told strengthen our bones fortunately we don't need to worry about protein or calcium or other macronutrients as long as we are consuming enough calories enough food we are getting enough protein a quick search of the usda's database and I found a hundred grams of kale have more calcium than 100 grams of whole milk as for vitamin D turns out our bodies make it when we get sunlight while it has to be added to cow's milk and if we are worried about osteoporosis several studies concluded countries with the highest milk consumption actually have a higher rate of osteoporosis but what about heart disease the leading cause of death in this country doctors Dean ornish and Caldwell esselstyn have published several studies claiming patients with severe heart disease who switched to a whole food plant-based diet without refined foods and processed oils can Halt and even reverse their conditions so we saw that these patients following this lifestyle they were getting better they were reducing they were reversing their heart disease and they could actually track these numbers and and they you know did all the testing and and it it was life-changing she says she's seen heart disease patients reduce and even eliminate their medication after a few weeks on this diet and talking about prescription medication I learned 45.8 percent of Americans take at least one pill a day 24 take at least three the most commonly prescribed drugs include cholesterol lowering medications beta blockers for hypertension and diabetes medications all drugs meant to address symptoms not the cause of the disease I would say a couple of years into the disease I was taking about 12 medications I had a pill box that I would travel with Dr Sarai stances she gained firsthand knowledge of the prescription drug issue when she became a patient in 1995. third year medical resident and I was on call working an overnight shift and it was a really busy night running from emergency room to the ICU back to the general award and I was I found myself around mid morning hours three o'clock in the morning I had a little bit of time to go take a nap all right I made my way back to the call room and I was feeling so so tired something I had never experienced before the minute my head hit that pillow I was out and then about 30 minutes later I was paged by the nurse and when I tried to get up to answer the call I couldn't feel my legs next thing I know I'm in the emergency room they're ordering an MRI and off I go into this MRI machine she says she spent two hours in the MRI machine and when she came out I hear the radiologist who like is excited he he called he like talking to the intern he's like go get the medical students go get the residents because it was like whatever um bring them because they have to see these images this is classic multiple sclerosis look at this lesion look at that lesion and I'm hearing all of this and that's how I learned that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and it felt like the floor had fallen out from under me and I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach and um and I felt like it was the end multiple sclerosis or Ms is an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and central nervous system it occurs when the immune system attacks you instead of protecting you damaging the protective covering of neurons the cause is unknown there is no cure and many patients end up losing Mobility doctor comes in the MS specialist into the hospital room and he says to me I've looked at your images you have multiple sclerosis you have multiple lesions in both your brain and spinal cord there's a very good possibility that within 10 to 20 years you're going to be disabled and dependent on a wheelchair I don't even know what to say and he says to me the good news is that you're lucky in one way because the FDA has just approved the first treatment to slow the progression of Ms you need to start that like right now he said it was a drug that has a significant side effect profile that includes fever chills muscle aches and pains nausea vomiting diarrhea anorexia injection site reactions depression and Suicidal Thoughts to name just a few she was 28 years old and admits that while she trusted the medical protocol the side effects started testing her resolve and after doing this for a couple of weeks I I just didn't think I could do it much longer and I called him I said I can't do this anymore and then he said no and he reminded me of the wheelchair and he said listen you have to stay on this medication but I know what we need to do what we need to do is treat the side effects of this drug with other drugs of course so when I couldn't sleep I was given a prescription for Ambien and to help me sleep and when I couldn't wake up I was given a prescription for a drug called provigil which is like an amphetamine and then when I became depressed I was given a prescription for Prozac so you can see how over a very short period of time these medications and prescriptions started to add it up and despite being compliant with everything they're telling me to do I continued to have exacerbations regularly and my disease progressed and I found myself wearing a diaper at one point and you know cane crutches um I couldn't feel my legs sometimes I could feel them sometimes they were painful it was just every day I would wake up and wonder what piece of me is missing today at some point I I lost hope that things could get better but that changed in 2003 when she says she came across a medical journal that had an article about blueberries and Ms patients so drop everything pick up the journal turn to the article and of course I find a poorly constructed unscientific study that essentially took a small group of Ms patients and fed them a diet enriched in blueberries and the authors go on to conclude that these patients felt better it's not a very objective clinical endpoint I mean I was a researcher and a scientist I couldn't believe that somebody had done such a study and that it was published it was silly to me she admits while she and her colleagues laughed at the article there was one question that stuck with her could there be a connection between diet and disease if anybody could answer that question of course I should be able to I was a doctor right and my four years of medical school four years of Internal Medicine Residency and then another two years as a subspecialist and I couldn't think of any examples in which any of my professors mentors or Educators ever connected those two dots between diet and disease she says when she started researching she found plenty of evidence showing a connection including the work of neurologist Dr Roy Swank who studied Ms patients for more than 30 years in Norway where the prevalence and incidence of the disease have frequently been reported he first noted that there were more Ms cases in the mountains where meat Dairy and eggs were consumed regularly then in the coastal fishing communities and he hypothesized in the 1950s that somehow saturated fat was playing a role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis but he didn't just hypothesize he actually started to treat patients with a low-fat plant-based diet and he followed a large cohort 140 plus patients over 34 years and he concluded in a publication 1990 in the Lancet that those who adhere to his diet 95 of them remained physically uh active so 95 of them were free of disability but she says when she went to her doctor with the information she found she didn't get the reaction she expected and he said you know you you should know better you're a doctor I know it's not what you want to hear but the truth is that you need to remain compliant with your medicines and if you want to blame anything for having Ms it's because of your genes and there's nothing you can do about that disheartened she said she turned to the research again if genes really were to blame then surely someone had studied the likelihood identical twins would both be diagnosed with the same disease and if my doctor was right if twin a has Ms the the school's going to be close to 100 that's when B would also have MS so again I turned to the scientific literature looking to see what what if anybody had answered that question of course someone had and and it wasn't 100 it wasn't even 50 it was 14 to 33 percent she then took a deep dive into epigenetics epigenetics essentially tells us that gene expression is dependent on outside variables that just because you have a genetic predisposition to a particular disorder doesn't necessarily mean that you will have that disease and what does epigenetics tell us is important what are the factors that play such an important role on influence the expression it's things like diet and exercise and sleep and stress so I start that's when she says she decided to change her lifestyle I adopted a whole food plant-based diet one rich in fruits vegetables whole grains legumes nuts and seeds because the overwhelming evidence in the scientific literature spoke to that that was the ideal diet for human health she also made other Lifestyle Changes like learning how to sleep without meds lowering her stress level and exercising something that was not recommended for Ms patients at the time I was going to put myself first for the first time in my life and it didn't happen in a week and it didn't happen in a month but over time I started to feel better years later in 2010 her help had improved so much she was able to run a marathon today it's going to be 26 years since my diagnosis and I am medication free and disability free and empowered more than ever before to share this healing message with whomever is willing to listen because this isn't complicated anybody can do this she attributes her good health to the changes she's made like switching to a diet rich in plants and free of animal protein processed and refined Foods very different from the standard American diet filled with saturated fat mostly derived from animal products as well as processed and artificially sweetened foods and that's not even counting our junk or fast food problem America's obesity epidemic is apparently getting worse and more than double that number 88 million have what's called pre-diabetes according to the CDC more than 42 percent of Americans are obese and one of the diseases associated with obesity is type 2 diabetes studies show Americans consume an average of 152 pounds of added sugar each year which is included in products such as the sodas we drink and our breakfast cereals so diabetes is one of the conditions that reacts to a change of Lifestyle quite rapidly and it's not an issue of sugar which a lot of people think you know I'm just eating too much sugar and so I have diabetes but it's actually an issue of fat eating a diet high in fatty foods can cause an accumulation of fat inside their cells and interfere with the ability of the insulin to move the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cell so instead of powering ourselves it's actually building up sugar outside of our cells causing diabetes she's referring to the fat we accumulate in our bloodstream when we are overweight or or consume an excess of high fatty foods such as butter that has 45.6 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams but if we're not eating animal protein then what should diabetics be putting on their plate we've been told in the last decade maybe that carbs are bad for you so we lump all carbs or carbohydrates into one big bucket and and that's that's very unfortunate because you can compare you know simple sugars with complex carbohydrates which are whole grains and fruits and legumes as for heart disease Dr Ken Williams the past president of the American College of Cardiology has actually promoted a plant-based diet citing studies like the one Dr Caldwell esselstyn conducted with 24 patients between the ages of 44 and 68 who had severe coronary artery disease had unsuccessfully undergone bypass or angioplasties or were deemed too sick to undergo surgeries five of them were told they would die within the year his patients were ones that were sent home by their Physicians because they've already been through bypass surgery and medications and you know their their medical providers thought there's nothing else we can do in that study the doctor kept patients on their cholesterol lowering medications and took away meat poultry fish dairy products eggs oil added sugar and processed foods leaving them on a whole plant-based diet the group started with an average cholesterol level of 246 of the 24 17 followed the diet for 12 years and ended up with an average level below 150 without one more cardiac event or the need to undergo another surgery such as heart bypass that has done more than 200 000 times a year in the United States at a cost of 6.7 billion dollars according to Dr Negron the problem with relying exclusively on these surgeries is that they only correct one obstruction at a time but we have thousands of miles of blood vessels in in our body and the only way to try to address our entire cardiovascular system is by feeding it better including foods such as leafy greens into our diet that produce nitric oxide so we know that by eating plant-based Foods we are reducing the amount of animal protein the amount of fats as well and if we're eating foods that are high in nitrates for instance you know they that converts to nitric oxide in our body which helps to Inner cells to our for Our arteries to be able to dilate when when needed and so they're more flexible and we have a healthier cardiovascular system but a plant-based diet doesn't just mean eating salads you're going to eat rice and beans and oats and quinoa and cabbage and Brussels sprouts and pumpkin and papaya and sweet potatoes and nuts and avocados from the Animal Kingdom all you get is meat Dairy and eggs from the Plant World we wouldn't we would be here sitting until we are 90 years old and we wouldn't exhaust the list that's a message that's resonating in our Community Driven not only by the desire to be healthy but also concerned for the planet the vegan movement is picking up steam from family festivals where everyone gets to try popular dishes made with plants instead of animals to food and wine festivals where well-known chefs and nutrition experts demonstrate that eating plants can be tasty but be careful swapping meat from mushrooms in a recipe is one thing and eating a veganized version of junk food is likely not the way to go the key is to look for a nutritious and high foods that are dense in nutrition instead of dense and calories and and so forth as I read the studies and interview doctors I began to understand the healing anti-inflammatory and regenerative power of plants but what if what people are looking for is to get strong build muscle a lot of players like our top players they do in plan bass why they all all of them say is because the recovery is faster Cesario is known on social media as soy El vegano is a personal trainer who used to eat what many athletes consider is a clean diet to build muscle filled with lean meats and veggies I only eat like a chicken breast and sometimes meat and a lot of like meal protein and I say I was living in like a healthy lifetime [Music] but that change eight years ago I have the diagnosis with arthritis I had a lot of inflammation in my body I wasn't able to move my my joins I wasn't able to exercise my my life was so sad Cesar was diagnosed with spondyloarthritis a type of arthritis that attacks the spine and in some people their arm and leg joints you went to your doctor and what did they tell you he told me you have a a autoimmune disease and is the treatment for diseases is anti-inflammatory and in monosuppressors and you have to take this medicine for your whole life he says the meds helped with the inflammation but the side effects were difficult to live with yeah I have a lot of side effects my skin my hair so yeah my my side effect was in one point was worse than the disease it wasn't depression because they say I'm so I'm super healthy I'll go to Gene every day so to be honest with you is the first time I say this I think to kill myself in in one moment because I say I don't want to live my whole life with pain and inflammation because what's really sad I remember I was walking like you know like an old guy his darkest hour he says he started searching for another way to heal and found doctors prescribing green juices to bring down inflammation and one physician in Venezuela went even further he said you should eliminate a food what create inflammation in your body milk meat chicken fish and you're gonna see how your body changed though he thought it a crazy idea he decided to give it a shot and began juicing in the morning the first day was horrible I remember like I just like a close my nose and like drink the juice but I say if I take the medicines give me like a lot of side effects you know I can try this and that really helped me I tried the juice and I say okay this is working and I say I don't really like meat and yeah I eat chicken because the protein and I eat it because the protein and I say okay I can't stop this because I don't want to be like a with muscle but I'm not able to to wall or move after removing all the animal protein and adding plant foods to his diet he says his inflammation disappeared and six months later he was strong and began to study the relation between nutrition and disease so eight years later so you now you don't take any pills at all just like Nutrition a lifestyle and yeah no pills at all cessar now promotes a plant-based diet not only as a way to heal but as part of his physical training dispelling the belief that you need animal protein to build muscle and you've been able to build muscle on a plant-based diet I think so yeah yeah you're completely able to build muscle is about a amino acid you have to eat a lot of antioxidant food because that's going to help you to recover faster and when you work out one day and the next day if you want to work out again you have to be able to do it as for that exorbitant amount of animal protein he used to consume like many athletes still do he says he learned that wasn't necessary according to the academy of nutrition dietetics eating protein doesn't equal big muscles instead muscle growth is a complex process that relies on adequate consumption of protein and calories hormones the body produces including human growth hormones and testosterone and a healthy dose of physical activity how do you build muscle without animal protein because it's not it's not just one nutrient it's a lot of like it's a combination of workout nutrients and I take protein plants have protein legumes half protein soy have protein so you don't you don't really need to be build muscled with eating tons of protein the first thing what you need to know is how many gram per protein you need according to the academy of nutrition protein from food does help repair the damage from exercise but evely says we don't need as much protein as we think and it doesn't have to come from animal Foods standard American diet or Western diet has four to five times more protein that we actually need we only need to consume about eight to ten percent of our calories from protein so as long as we're eating enough we should get enough they recommend you consume 0.35 grams of protein per pound of body weight so a person who weighs 165 pounds should consume about 60 grams of protein a day but the average American consumes almost double that amount which some doctors say can negatively affect the organs that have to process it yes we need animal protein and guess what we make it ourselves because we are animals and we make animal protein from the plant protein that we eat and if you're a professional athlete and need to replenish more protein we found some plant sources have more than animals do according to the Department of agriculture's database 100 grams of black beans contain 24.4 grams of protein along with fiber and minerals while a 100 gram porterhouse steak week as 22.7 grams of protein no fiber but a fair share of cholesterol where do you get your protein I eat a lot of legumes I eat ham seed which I love because with two tablespoons you can get 10 grams of protein a I eat a lot of kale spinach I eat mushrooms and I try to like I eat more like vegetables anti-inflammatory food antioxidant and he says eating this way allows him to train more often when you recover faster you can train more yeah like I trained twice a day Cesar says under his doctor's supervision he stopped taking medications and only consumes B12 a vitamin not found in plant Foods everybody you know that's following this lifestyle should have a good source of vitamin B12 you should get your levels tested as well and it's not a problem only of people that are whole food plant-based for people that eat meat obviously they're consuming the vitamin B12 produced by the bacteria of the animals that they're eating and when we were living out in nature and drinking water you know from the lake and being exposed to the bacteria out we were getting our vitamin B12 but we live in a society that's clean and and so you know we're not getting enough so we should really emphasize on that Dr Negron says she's not opposed to medication that she says would be irresponsible she's a traditional doctor that prescribes medicine as a temporary vehicle to help correct a problem but not as a permanent solution which is why she helps patients learn to change their eating habits you know that 80 percent of our diseases are man-made to know that 80 percent of our diseases are associated with our food and lifestyle and to really not be just clamoring for how do we how do we get rid of that and get on the health path why don't doctors tell you this because we don't learn it in medical school when I was in medical school I did not learn this Physicians who are in practice now for 10 20 30 years did not get this in medical school and the young Physicians are getting very little if they get any at all we know that a lot of patients for instance they follow whatever their physician tells them and if their physician is not well informed in nutrition then they're obviously not gonna not gonna have the information that they need to prevent and reverse their disease foreign but that is changing hundreds of Professionals in the health industry doctors nurses as well as personal trainers like cesarios and anyone looking to learn more are taking plant-based nutrition courses like the certificate e Cornell offers through T Colin Campbell's Center for nutrition studies our certificate is an evidence-based program that explains the science behind nutrition and the development of health and other and chronic diseases it also talks about important topics such as protein macronutrients exercise and it connects the dots between diet and the environment sustainability it empowers communities to take action and individuals to utilize these skills in their everyday living and their profession after learning the science behind this lifestyle I decided to see if it could work for me without my doctor's consent I had stopped taking the immunosuppressants and steroids because of the side effects it gave me something I now know I shouldn't have done so I had flares all the time I had nothing to lose so I went for it [Music] I stopped consuming animal protein and two weeks later a routine blood test confirmed my triglycerides had dropped from 239 to 138 something I never thought possible because I was told it was hereditary five months later my new rheumatologist ordered blood tests which indicated that the inflammation in my body had dropped to normal levels for the first time in years and the blood that had been appearing in my urine samples for six years had disappeared my joint pains were gone and instead of debilitating fatigue I had energy again and I started losing weight animal protein animal foods do promote inflammation we have definitely seen a link between animal-based foods and these conditions so when you remove these products from your diet and you introduce the healing power of the whole food plant-based nutrition you get results like yours seeing that it was working I added other components of Lifestyle medicine I learned to manage stress using tools like meditation that I do daily and sometimes with my family I started doing moderate exercise at least five times a week and learned to sleep again since I didn't have aches and pains waking me up at night [Applause] so it's been a year since I started this journey last year I had a wellness check two weeks after I stopped eating animal protein animal products and my triglycerides have gone down so this year my new wellness check has come and I want to see what my numbers look like that test showed my cholesterol levels had plummeted into the normal range for the first time in years I'm truly in awe of how far I've come in just a year under the supervision of my new rheumatologist who knows more about nutrition I haven't had another flare and no longer take medication I've never smoked or consumed alcohol which also contribute to chronic diseases so I didn't have to worry about that without pills masking my symptoms I can now tell when my body needs to rest and when a certain food doesn't sit right I think I finally learned to listen to my body and give it food that nourishes it instead of causing inflammation [Music] with this new lifestyle I'm doing things that I was told I could never do again like signing up for a half marathon with my husband [Music] [Applause] a couple of years ago the inflammation in my joints was causing me so much pain that I could barely walk a few blocks and now I'm running the kids are colonoscopy every year I couldn't help but think of Dr Sarai stancik who was initially offended when someone suggested she run a marathon then found the strength I realized that I was living my life first and foremost as this woman with Ms this doctor with Ms this mother with Ms I was Ms the poster child um and with that label came so many limitations things I could do and things I couldn't and I realized I needed to drop that I thought of her as I ran the 13 miles how she got up every morning and exercised to stay mobile how she ate anti-inflammatory foods to prevent flares and went to bed early to give her body the chance to regenerate you know I was I was given this blessing to recover from my disease so now it's my responsibility to assure that I that I share this message we know that by implementing these very small simple changes in our lives we can prevent so much disease so much pain and suffering and my hope for each and every one of us is that we age gracefully free of those of these chronic diseases I thought of my Dad that says he got his life back this way three years before I was born always finding ways to share his wisdom with his sense of humor I also thought of cesarios who refused to become a victim of his illness if you know how the nutrition affect your life and what you eat affect your future You're Gonna Change there's no way you if you have the knowledge you need to change and the advice he gave me if you make the change now in the future you're going to be healthy that's the main purpose of my life right now telling people you don't have to be sick to change your diet [Music] with those words of encouragement and the support of my family and friends I made it to the finish line and not just of the half marathon I got my life back and now I know that even if I am genetically predisposed to certain diseases I have a better chance of living a long healthy life if I continue healing through food [Music] foreign

Channel: NBC 6 South Florida

Views: 48,408

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Id: ndX4fMu8SWA

Length: 42min 52sec (2572 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023