More Than an Apple a Day – Preventing Our Most Common Diseases

evolution0706aThe Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) seminal study of preventable medical errors showed that in the United States side effects from prescription drugs kill an estimated 106,000 Americans a year, the sixth leading cause of death. This is from adverse drug reactions alone. If you add in medical mistakes (which the Institute of Medicine estimates kills at least 44,000 Americans) and in hospital-acquired infections we are talking about approximately 187,000 Americans dead every year, with millions injured, by medical care!

The best way to avoid the adverse effects of medical and surgical treatments and tests is not to avoid doctors, but to avoid getting sick in the first place, and for this reason we have today’s post. Here is a simple question: what are the top dozen reasons people visit their doctors? Are they avoidable by changing your diet?

The answer to this question is available in the phenomenal talk “more than an apple a day” by Dr. Michael Greger. This talk reached more than one million views in just a few weeks, making it one of the most successful nutrition talks on the web, if not the most successful one ever.

Dr. Greger is a physician who specializes in clinical nutrition. He is a known author and internationally recognized speak on nutrition, food safety and public health issues. He NutritionFactsis the maker of NutritionFacts.org, a website which just like Nutrino aims to address the issue of conflicting and contradicting nutritional advice. In NutritionFacts.org, Dr. Greger scours the world of nutrition-related research, and brings that information to you in short, easy-to-understand videos. They also provide links to the original journal articles whenever possible so that you can source the information directly if you wish. And the best thing about it is that it is completely freeNutritionFacts.org is a non-profit organization that runs on donations to avoid conflicts of interest.

If you find NutritionFacts.org useful, you can subscribe to it for free and receive emails daily, weekly, or monthly highlighting all their new content. Here is a message from Dr. Greger.

But before you go anywhere, don’t forget to watch this great talk!

References

Preventable medical errors – the sixth biggest killer in America

Kohn, Linda T., Janet M. Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, eds. To err is human: building a safer health system. Vol. 627. National Academies Press, 2000.

Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. 

Lifestyle and the use of health services.