Bebac and Mokolo are gorillas who live at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Even though they were barely in middle age, they were dying of heart disease – the number one cause of death for western lowland gorillas living in captivity. Captive western lowland gorillas also demonstrate odd behaviors, such as pulling out their hair and regurgitating their food and re-eating it. These behaviors are not seen in wild gorillas. This perplexed zoologists, and some began to suspect that the gorillas’ diet was to blame. Why? Because almost all captive gorillas are fed vitamin-rich, high-sugar, and high-starch nutritional cookies to ensure that they get all of their nutrients. However, in the wild gorillas obviously do not eat foods like this. The zoologists at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo decided to radically change the gorillas’ diet to see if they could improve their health. So, they started giving them their natural diet of wild greens, nuts, seeds, bamboo and flax, and instead of putting their food in one place they scattered it around their enclosure so they had to go and look for their food. This new approach worked wonders. The new diet contained twice as many calories as the nutritional cookies; however it took the gorillas up to 75% of their day to forage for their food, so they became much more active. Within 1-year, they had lost 65 pounds each and they had also stopped regurgitating and re-eating their food.
Bebac and Moloko were not happy with their new diet at first. It took them about a week to accept that they were no longer going to be receiving their daily sugar-fix. The same is true with patients; we tell our patients that it will take about a week to break their sugar addiction. Once that week is over they will start to feel better and they will get healthy.
Even though we know how bad certain foods are for us, people keep on eating them. Nutritious and healthy food can be so beneficial, yet people keep opting for food that is more poisonous than nutritious. Moreover, it is often the people that desperately need healthy food (e.g. people in churches, hospitals, homeless shelters, prisons, and drug rehab centers) that are fed the worst diet.
Figures from the CDC show that the incidence of attention deficit disorder (ADD) has increased by 53% since 2001, with 20% of boys and 11% of all children being diagnosed with it. However, 2 studies from Holland have showed that simply eliminating sugar, gluten, soy, dairy and food dyes significantly improved the symptoms of nearly 70% of children with ADD.1,2 So, just cleaning up their diet can have a dramatic effect. Let me show you how this works in large groups.
In 2011, Pastor Rick Warren, Mark Hyman, my husband Dr Daniel Amen, and I helped to set up the Daniel Plan health program in the one of the largest churches in America. The decision to set up the Daniel Plan came about in the fall of 2010, when Pastor Rick Warren baptized over 800 people and he realized that they were all fat. He realized that he was not healthy and neither were most of the people in his congregation. By using the principles of the Daniel Plan, the church lost over 250,000 pounds in less than a year along with many other benefits, such as reductions in blood sugar and blood pressure.
The Bible belt is widening, but not in the way that we had hoped – the states of Tennessee, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Mississippi are at the center of our obesity epidemic. We are targeting this population, but fortunately these principles do not apply only to strictly churchgoing folks. Sinners can be helped too! So there is hope for us all. My husband and I also helped to plant these principles into several large drug treatment programs. One of them is with newly court ordered criminals and the results have been just incredible.
The secret is that you have to develop warriors and empower them in order to create massive change. Figure 1 shows Laura, one of our affiliates. She went through our program herself and lost 55 pounds. She no longer suffers from IBS, rosacea, and hot flashes. As she became healthier, she came to realize that she had to share this information with the people she serves (she is the director of one of the largest chemical addiction recovery programs in America). She came to understand that not removing the disease-promoting food in her center really amounted to negligence, as the center was unconsciously contributing to their patients’ illness. Together, we helped to radically transform their menu and we added an exercise program. The results have been truly astounding.
Figure 1. Laura before (left) and after (right) embarking upon the Daniel Plan.
Here are just a few comments from people at Laura’s center who were helped by the Daniel Plan:
Chad: “I am far less impulsive. I thought I was stupid but I now realize it was brain fog and my mind and self-esteem are so much better.”
Alejandra: “I have so much natural energy and don’t crave caffeine throughout the day.”
Jason: “The doctor told me due to drugs I had brain damage and would not be able to work. But being on the program my energy and focus is so much better. I’m also sleeping through the night.”
William: “As the days went by my mind began to clear, plus my focus, memory and even speaking abilities were better. Plus I lost 55 lbs in 87 days and I have a 6 pack… the kind that won’t get me arrested!”
Thomas’ story is my favorite. When he first came into the program he said he was depressed, hopeless, felt like he had no future, and was overweight. Within months he had lost 55 pounds and he felt energized. In the past he had tried to pass the General Education Development test (GED) 3 times and failed. While he was on the program he took the GED again, and this time he passed. He was so proud. Thomas said of the program:
“My life was a mess, now it’s a message. I have been tested, now I have a testimony. I was a victim, now I’m victorious. I went through trials, now I am triumphant!”
The good news is that you can be triumphant too. You can also help your patients become a warrior by following the 4 simple steps laid out by the Daniel Plan.
The First Step – Educate Patients on an Emotional Level
Take the time to educate your patients on the dangers of unhealthy food. Too often healthcare providers forget that our patients do not have our knowledge. You need to take the time to teach them. When I took the time to teach the group at the drug treatment program they became advocates for their own health. I showed them what junk food does, and that it is actually more addictive than cocaine and morphine. They were shocked, but it did make sense to them.
One of the women on the program, Tammy, was addicted to doughnuts. She told me that she just could not imagine her life without eating doughnuts every morning. She was also diabetic and her blood sugar was never under 160, even with medication. We all know what high blood sugar does to your body, but it has no meaning for the majority of patients. You have to reach into their limbic or emotional brain and make them never forget it.
So, in the next class I taught them about diabetes and about my experience with my grandmother. I told them that I still remember being little and giving my grandmother her shots, and worrying that if I gave her the wrong dose I could make her really sick and possibly even kill her. I told them that my grandmother suffered from neuropathy and that she would have needed to have her toes amputated if she had not died of heart disease first. I told them about how she went blind and had to be helped when bathing and using a commode – which was devastating for a modest woman. I told them about the new research that is referring to Alzheimer’s disease as type 3 diabetes.3 I told them that obesity doubles the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and that new research has shown that type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. I told them how the sugar and trans fats present in foods such as doughnuts not only leads to type 2 diabetes, but also significantly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. I told them that people with type 2 diabetes are 2 to 4-times more likely to die from heart disease, just like my grandmother did. I also told them about how cancer feeds on sugar, and about research showing that people with type 2 diabetes are not only at higher risk for developing breast and colon cancer, but they are also more likely to die from it. I finished off my talk by telling them