Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a wood cutter at the edge of the forest.  He lived there with his wife and two children.

Every day, the wood cutter went into the forest to cut wood.  In the middle of the day, he would sit on a log and eat his lunch.  At the end of the day, he would bring the tree trunk back to his house.

Once a week, on market day, the wood cutter would bring his wood to the market and sell it to the townspeople.  He would take the money he earned and buy food and clothing for his family.  

Diabetes is a complicated disease.

I think that they give Dr. Ornish only three minutes for his talks because he talks so fast. 

Watch the map of year to year changes in obesity in the US.  It is a great graphical demonstration of what is happening to our health.

This talk is really about an experiment done on humans.  All the people volunteered for the experiment.  Asians used to eat, well, like Asians, and had very low rates of heart disease and obesity.

Now, Asians eat like us, and the rate of death by heart attack is climbing.

This is a dizzying three minute video of a presentation that Dr. Dean Ornish gave at the TED conference in February 2008. 

He talks about how changing diet and exercise habits and stress levels can reverse heart disease and help us live longer.  Not just by reversing heart disease, which would do it, but by increasing the length of the telomeres at the end of our genes.  

The telomeres are like the rope that measures the length of our lives.

This shows how intricate Chinese herbal medicine is.  Many of the herbs are very unusual looking. 

If the makers of grape juice kept the skins of the grape in the juice would it have the reservetrol that red wine has?

It is the reservetrol in the skin of the grape that helps the heart and now, we find, helps the prostate too.

Watch this short video from Johnson & Johnson.

This nine minute video describes all that glutathione does for the body.  Because it is an important anti-oxidant, it helps get rid of toxins in the body. 

How can we get more glutathione?

* Eat garlic and onions, my favorite, (not my wife's).

* Eat more broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage,  my wife's favorite, (not mine).

* Get more exercise.

* Take supplements.

Jim is a tile setter and Mark a bricklayer.  If they are working together on a job, they have their special jobs to do.  But if Mark has a lot to do, Jim can help him run a few courses of brick.  If Jim is slammed, Mark can help set tile.

Our bodies are the same way.

For example, choline is needed to make acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter.  The nerve impulse says contract the muscle, acetylcholine is released and attaches to a receptor on the muscle fiber, then the muscle contracts.  This is one of its unique jobs, like Jim the tile setter.

Jim Fixx ran every day and was in great shape. He dropped dead of a heart attack at age 49.

How is that possible?

Well, Jim Fixx’s dad died of a heart attack at age 48. We all know that genetics plays a large role in health. Still, genes are not destiny. The more we understand about the way the body works, the better we will be able to nourish it.

But still the question nags us, could the running itself have contributed to his death?