Open Future Health Blog

Your habits when you are in your 40's and 50's are the foundation for your good health and fitness at 85. Improved diet is the low cost alternative to extensive medical intervention later in life. The body has the ability to heal itself, if we treat it with respect. ANYBODY who adopts a healthy diet, at ANY AGE, will benefit, and as the months go by, those benefits will multiply.

Changing Dietary Understanding. Dr Ted Naiman

Given what he's now doing and saying, it's useful to look at Dr Naiman's background. (Pronounced Neighman) He trained first as an engineer, hopeful of joining Boeing on graduation. History, got in the way, in 1993 Boeing was putting engineers off. Naiman needed a plan B. So he entered the Loma Linda University Medical School, a place steeped in vegetarian traditions.

[From Wikipedia:] Loma Linda University (LLU) is a Seventh-day Adventist coeducational health sciences university located in Loma Linda, California, United States. The University comprises eight schools and the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Today, a community of about 9,000 Adventists in the Loma Linda area are the core of America's Blue Zone. They live as much as a decade longer than the rest of us, and they believe much of their longevity can be attributed to vegetarianism and regular exercise. Plus, Adventists don't smoke or drink alcohol.

Loma Linda was chosen as an American Blue Zone by Dan Buettner for his book, "Blue Zones: Lessons For Living Longer From The People Who've Lived The Longest."

Life as a vegetarian

Ted Naiman at 28 and again at 43

Naiman was raised as a vegetarian, in Colorado. He was delighted to attend Loma Linda University, and he was very strict about eating in a vegetarian way. Beans and soy were a significant part of his diet. He thought he was "healthy."

On reflection he now understands that he wasn't healthy at all. His body structure was weak. He was always hungry. He felt tired all the time. His skin condition was poor. His athletic ability was weak.

"In my medical education, there was no focus on diet. As far as I could tell, I was eating a "text book" healthy diet. Lots of vegetables and whole grain foods. Almost zero saturated fat, and hardly ever any animal products. In medical school we were taught to look at families, where you could often see a pattern of good health or poor health. We were taught that this was the effect of genetics in the family. Most of the medical problems we would meet as doctors were natural, the effect of aging and genetics."

Having graduated in 1997, he worked for the next three years as a junior doctor, under supervision, in a hospital. During that time, a patient who he had previously seen, suddenly lost weight and reversed his diabetes symptoms. Naiman had never seen that before, so he asked how that happened. He was told about the Atkins diet. Naiman discussed this with his supervisor. He was told that he must never recommend the Atkins Diet to anyone. The patients "success" was dismissed, with the view that on an Atkins Diet, in a few years that patient will be dead. High cholesterol was the problem, in his supervisors opinion.

"So as medical students we were told to accept that because of their poor genetic make-up, and their failure to exercise, most patients would get fatter and sicker, and there was nothing that we could do about that."

Edit 2022: Sadly that's still the view of many doctors. Worse, that's also the view many people have about themselves. I've tried to be "healthy" but nothing works; "It's my genes, or it's just the way things are."

Over the next two years Naiman studied nutrition for a research paper he was expected to write at the end of his residency. He discovered that there was a lot of prior literature that supported the Atkins Diet, and that his own personal experiments seemed to have gone well. In 2000, Michael and Mary Eades published their book "Protein Power" which confirmed the dietary direction his own work was already taking.

Working as a doctor.

"For a long time I tried to apply what I was learning in my own life. In the Medical Center where I worked there as a strong view that low-carbohydrate high-fat diets were dangerous. So while his my confidence grew, I seldom shared this knowledge with patients. For a long time I flew under the radar."

Today he's very open about what he's recommending, and he's got hundreds of patients with successful results, using the LCHF approach. Still at the Virginia Mason Medical Center, where he works, many doctors remain strongly opposed to his interventions.

"In my daily work I like to deal with people who have obesity problems, or type two diabetes, because I know I can help them.

But I also deal a lot with people who have addiction problems, alcohol, meth, heroin, cocaine. It's interesting. If people who are addicted, feed themselves in the same way I ask people who are obese to eat, if they eat nutrient dense foods, their addiction is much easier to deal with.

John Stephen Veitch