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Food Reversing Disease
Could thy food be thy medicine?
The largest population studies on diet and risk of death implicate a vegan diet as the most protective from many chronic diseases [1]. These population studies help identify food and diet habits that lower the risk of disease complications, and potentially developing those disease in the first instance, as detailed earlier. Many indicators of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disease have been shown to start improving after just 7 days of adopting the plant-based diet itself [2]. But is there any evidence that food can reverse the progression of diseases that people already have?
High blood pressure is a fairly prevalent problem in society, but 2 glasses of beetroot juice a day can start to mitigate this issue within 2 weeks [3], as detailed previously. High blood pressure is lowered further if patients maintain 2 glasses of beetroot juice per day beyond 2 weeks, and beetroot juice is able to do this even if nitrate content of beetroot juice is removed [3].
An analysis of the long-term effects of exercise and diet on blood pressure shows that the combination of an omnivorous diet and little-to-no exercise is a poor lifestyle choice as far as blood pressure is concerned [4]. However, when omnivorous marathon runners were compared with vegans who didn’t exercise, inactive vegans had a markedly better…
