I advise all my patients that, if possible, change to a vegan diet and stop eating all animal products, including eggs and milk.

Hallo, vibrant viewers, and welcome to this week’s Healthy Living featuring interviews with three esteemed physicians, who will discuss the impact of diet on health, the damage to the body caused by consuming animal products, and the innumerable benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.

Dr. Hiromi Shinya, a renowned gastroenterologist who practices in Japan and New York City, USA, is the inventor of the “Shinya Method.” This is a non-surgical technique to remove colon polyps, or growths on the surface of the colon during colonoscopies or the viewing of the colon using a long, flexible lighted tube. Devised by Dr. Shinya in 1969, the technique remains a world standard for colon polyp removal.

Dr. Shinya is the author of many books, including “The Enzyme Factor,” which has sold over two-million copies in Japan. His recent lecture “The Hiromi Shinya Way of Healthy Living” attracted over a thousand attendees in Formosa (Taiwan). Dr. Shinya now explains the close relationship between diet and colon health.

So that is why I say that diet is very, very important in order to keep us young, healthy and living long. It’s actually like atherosclerosis. It’s like a calcification, the hardening of the arteries. It’s really difficult to return to a youthful state.

But the intestinal muscle is very thick and firm. After about one year or two years of proper diet, one can change it to a certain degree. Even at the age of 90, if I change my type of diet for several years or so, the intestines can change. So if it’s very narrow, and you eat a lot of brown rice or five-grain bread, anything that’s not refined foods, then the colon can become much softer. And if you’re eating a lot of meat and dairy products, milk, cheese and yogurt, this also makes the colon harder and narrower.

According to Dr. Shinya, besides affecting colon health, consuming meat and other animal products can lead to life-threatening diseases and recommends a plant-based diet.

If somebody has breast cancer, colon cancer or prostate cancer, these have a very high propensity to develop from a diet with a lot of meat, four or five times a week or cheese. These people develop breast cancer, and prostate cancer and colon cancer very easily.

But once they have breast cancer surgery, prostate cancer surgery, or whatever he had or she had, it’s corrected by doctors. But doctors don’t think of the future, so they don’t say, "Okay you have to stop eating meat and cheese and yogurt, and things like that.” At that point, if the patient keeps the same diet which she had in the past, four or five years later, she could have another cancer, on the other side of the breast.

Dr. Wang Hui-Ming of Formosa (Taiwan) has been practicing medicine for over 20 years, has performed over 3,500 cancer operations and is an expert in laparoscopic, or minimally invasive, surgery. He is also an authority in colorectal surgery, and as a pious Buddhist has been a vegan for almost 20 years.

His personal motto is, “A vegetarian diet is good for health.” Drawing from his extensive medical background and from current research, he shares the benefits of the plant-based diet with the public. According to Dr. Wang, the carcinogens found in meat are the root cause of many types of cancer.

Aside from colon cancer cases, cancers of all types have been increasing all over the world. The biggest reason is environmental pollution. In the last 50 years, people have produced a lot of carcinogens. These carcinogens become more condensed when they move up the food chain. Finally, they are all condensed in the animals. That’s why when people consume a lot of meat, they are exposed to a lot of carcinogens. This is the reason why nowadays colon cancer ranks the highest.

There are also a lot of lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma, breast carcinoma, and prostate cancer cases. Why are they related to the meat diet? Aside from the pollutants from the environment, meat itself can also cause cancer. There are two kinds of amino acids in meat, especially in red meat like beef and lamb that are different from other kinds of amino acids. They are deadly. One is called L-Phenylalanine. The other one is called creatine.

Red meat contains a lot of these two amino acids. When meat is heated, these two amino acids are converted into heterocyclic aromatic amine or HCAs which have been proven to be carcinogenic. One kilogram of well-done steak produces the amount of carcinogens in 600 cigarettes. One grilled chicken leg produces the amount of carcinogens in 80 cigarettes. That’s why eating meat is deadly.

The third reason for high cancer rates is the preservatives added to food for commercial purposes. A very horrible chemical preservative added to food is nitrate. When nitrates enter our intestines and interact with the bacteria, they produce a kind of compound called nitroso compound, which is a very potent carcinogen. What kinds of foods contain this carcinogen? Preserved meat, sausages, ham, etc. all contain a lot of nitrite.

When we return, we’ll learn more from another respected medical expert about the impact of diet on health. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

I mean the balance of evidence is that a B-12 fortified, whole foods, plant-based diet, absolutely without a doubt is really the healthiest in terms of reducing chronic disease risk.

Welcome back to Healthy Living as we continue our program featuring three top medical professionals, who are sharing their views on how our food choices fundamentally affect our health.

Dr. Michael Greger is a physician, author and internationally recognized speaker on public health, and currently acts as Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States. Dr. Greger is an expert in clinical nutrition, and is the founding member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He now provides his perspective on the consequences of eating meat.

The health risks of consuming meat and meat products in the typical way people do in North America and most kinds of Western countries, is the typical diseases that plague the Western world, the chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and, obesity. These are all diseases critically linked to what we put in our bodies, what we eat.

And so if you want to get typical diseases you eat a typical diet. If you don't want to get these diseases then you need to eat more plant-based foods, whole-plant foods, and less animal foods, less meat, eggs and dairy.

Some people believe that eating fish is healthier than eating beef, pork and chicken. But Dr. Greger has serious concerns about fish consumption.

The greatest concerns with eating fish are the industrial contaminants that have so polluted the world. Basically, all the fish that one can eat contains these toxic industrial pollutants like PCBs and dioxins, heavy metals like mercury, which we've kind of spewed into them, whether it's from a coal-fired power plant or industrial plastics production, everything eventually finds its way into the sea. And so our oceans have become the sewers of humanity.

The worst is actually farm-raised fish, because they get fed fish from the oceans in very concentrated forms. So since food is a packaged deal and you can't get one part of the food without the others, we should strive to get all our nutrients from whole-plant foods as the healthiest source of our nutrition.

According to both the American Dietetic Association and Dieticians of Canada, two highly regarded organizations comprised of nutrition professionals in the USA and Canada respectively, the vegetarian diet is a very healthy way of living. For example, a recent article in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians are less likely to be overweight or have type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer or colon cancer than meat eaters.

Research has shown that a plant-based diet can improve one’s health. Cholesterol levels and blood pressure stay low when we consume animal-free products. Flavonoids and polyphenols, powerful antioxidants associated with reduced cancer risk, are found only in plant-based foods. Flavonoids are present in apples, broccoli, kale and berries, while polyphenols are contained in lentils, berries, broccoli, parsley and whole grains.

Also, we have to eat a lot of vegetables and fruits that contain flavonoids and polyphenols. They are excellent antioxidants. Basically the reason we get sick is because of free radicals. Meat introduces free radicals to our body. Our body also produces free radicals. These are toxic to our cells, so we have to eliminate them from our body as quickly as possible, and then we’ll become healthy.

The vegan diet is an anti-free radical diet.

Drs. Wang and Greger have some final thoughts to share with our viewers.

Change your diet; I hope everyone will begin from our dining table. You don’t need to spend extra money; just begin from your dining table and stop eating animals.

We all know that our entire environment is being affected by the livestock industry which has caused a major increase in global warming. Therefore, to reduce our carbon footprint, we must start from changing our diet. If everyone of us does it, then with the collective power of 100 people or 10,000 people, we can make our planet a better place.

That’s why changing our diet will benefit ourselves and others. We’ll get healthier, and we can protect the environment of our planet. Please help expand this movement and encourage everybody to do the same.

The more whole, healthy, plant foods we can eat and the less animal foods, the healthier we will be for it.

Thank you Drs. Hiromi Shinya, Wang Hui-Ming, and Michael Greger for sharing your sound advice and expertise on diet and health with the world. Through your noble efforts, may many more soon be encouraged to adopt the compassionate, healthy vegan lifestyle, which greatly benefits our planet. May Heaven bless you in your work, and we wish you every success in the future.

For more details on the doctors featured today please visit the following websites:
Dr. Hiromi Shinya ShinyaMedicalGrp.com/en
Dr. Michael Greger www.DrGreger.org
Dr. Wang Hui-Ming www.VGHTC.gov.tw/

Thank you, health-conscious viewers, for your presence today on Healthy Living. Science and Spirituality is next after Noteworthy News. May we all enjoy happy, fit and harmonious lives.