If Not Us

 In Preventive Medicine Column

If Not Us, Who?

I was privileged this past week to join luminaries such as Dr. Richard Carmona, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. David Satcher, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and many other notables on the stage at the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Florida. My message, however, derived from a famous doctor who was not on that stage, namely: Dr. Seuss.

In his seminal, peer-reviewed paper, ‘Horton Hears a Who!,’ Seuss gave us the curious case of a pachyderm with extraordinary auditory acuity. He gave us a dust-speck world populated by Who’s, facing genocidal annihilation in a boiling cauldron of beezlenut oil. For further plot details, confer with colleagues.

In any event, the Who’s circumvented their grim and greasy fate through the expediency of a choir. Specifically, they pulled together, pooled their voices, and at just the same moment, every last Who shouted out: WE ARE HERE! They were heard, they were saved, and the rest is history.

We do not face annihilation in beezlenut oil, although endless bickering over what kind of oil we should eat has some potential to cook our goose. Nor is there any doubt that we are here. We are a noisome, boisterous horde; everyone knows we are here!

What they don’t know is that we agree. They don’t know that we agree about the fundamentals of healthy living, including healthy eating. They don’t know that we truly are NOT clueless about the basic care, OR feeding of Homo sapiens! We agree- and I have proof.

The Council of Directors of the True Health Coalition is, at present, about 300 strong- it grows weekly. It represents some 30 countries. It is a Who’s Who in nutrition, lifestyle, health promotion, preventive medicine, public health, sustainability, the culinary arts, and even biodiversity- banding together to say: we AGREE about the fundamentals of healthy, sustainable living, including diet.

More impressively still, on this Council are some of the world’s most prominent advocates for a vegan diet: T. Colin Campbell; Caldwell Esselstyn; Neal Barnard. There are also some of the world’s best known experts in the Paleo diet- Mel Konner, Loren Cordain, Boyd Eaton- willing to stand together and be counted. Willing to acknowledge: we agree, far more than we disagree. Our diets look more alike than different. And our diets are much more like one another than any is like the typical, glow-in-the-dark, American diet.

My simple contention is that only in unity is there the strength to affirm what we know, and turn it into what we do. I am not only submitting that concept to you, I am inviting you to support it. Please visit truehealthinitative.org, and sign up to join us. Add your voice to the growing, global chorus. In our unity there is unprecedented strength to go the miles, and keep the promises.

We have gone the miles between us and the moon, and she wears our footprints and flag in testimony to that achievement. So far as I know, we got to the moon for 3 reasons, and 3 reasons only: (1) we wanted to go; (2) we are an ingenious and pertinacious species; and (3) we knew exactly where ‘there’ was.

With regard to the promise of lifestyle as medicine, as luminous as any light ever tossed our way by our lovely satellite- I’m sure we all WANT it. I believe everyone wants to add years to lives and life to years- perhaps their own in particular. I certainly believe every loving parent and grandparent wants to bequeath to our progeny a world in which 8 times in 10, chronic disease simply does not occur. That satisfies the first criterion. As for the second, we remain an ingenious and pertinacious species.

There is, then, only the third: affirming the destination. I submit to your kind attention a new, global force of unity to point the way. We truly do know the formula for eradicating some 80% of the global burden of chronic disease. We know what is needed to add years to lives, and life to years. By rallying to the mandate of the evidence-based, consensus-based fundamentals of health promoting, sustainable living and eating- I believe we can accomplish something for public health and the human condition that is, quite simply- out of this world.

-fin Dr. David L. Katz;www.davidkatzmd.com; author, Disease Proof; founder, True Health Initiative

Dr. David L. Katz
DAVID L. KATZ MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM, is the founding director (1998) of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and current President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He earned his BA degree from Dartmouth College (1984); his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1988); and his MPH from the Yale University School of Public Health (1993). He completed sequential residency training in Internal Medicine, and Preventive Medicine/Public Health. He is a two-time diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a board-certified specialist in Preventive Medicine/Public Health. He has received two Honorary Doctorates. Dr. Katz has published roughly 200 scientific articles and textbook chapters, and 15 books to date, including multiple editions of leading textbooks in both Preventive Medicine, and nutrition. Recognized globally for expertise in nutrition, weight management and the prevention of chronic disease, he has a social media following of well over half a million. In 2015, Dr. Katz established the True Health Initiative to help convert what we know about lifestyle as medicine into what we do about it, in the service of adding years to lives and life to years around the globe.
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