Many of us have been conditioned to think that chronic diseases are inevitable. Once we reach 50 or sprout gray hair, we’re practically next in line for arthritis, diabetes, or heart disease.
But this is just social conditioning created by decades of poor medical education. In fact, when you look back on history, the rise of chronic disease is a relatively new phenomena.
Just 7.5% of American adults had a chronic disease in 1930. That number multiplied eight times over to a whopping six in ten people in 2023. What changed?
The food we eat.
And the food we eat can be changed.
It’s not always possible to reverse the progression of all chronic diseases. However, many of them can be prevented and managed by changing your diet. You may be able to reduce or eliminate your risks with preventative lifestyle changes — especially when it comes to progressive illnesses like type 2 diabetes.
Here’s how.
Why some chronic diseases can be prevented or reversed
Before we get too far into the details, we need to redefine what chronic disease is.
Many of us have been taught to think that ‘chronic’ means ‘forever.’ That’s not necessarily true. Major health organizations around the globe define chronic diseases differently, although major components remain the same. In this compound view, we can define chronic disease as:
- Complex, with multiple factors leading to onset
- Latent, perhaps with long development periods
- Long-lasting, and may not resolve for a long time
Interestingly, none of these organizations have a standardized definition of chronic. Some classify communicable diseases like HIV with noncommunicable ones like cancer. Plus, some say medicine can cure or reverse the symptoms of chronic disease, while others are quick to point out that chronic diseases are ‘incurable.’
But as we now know, chronic diseases are not a death sentence. They’re also not entirely uncontrollable by the patient. And with the research we have today, we now realize medication isn’t the only (or even the best) way to treat chronic disease.
Whole, real food is.
Multiple studies have developed treatment protocols specific to chronic diseases. Nearly all of them include dietary guidelines surrounding whole, real food that emphasize the importance of metabolic health. As you know, metabolic health is a cornerstone for how your body utilizes food, as getting away from ultra-processed ‘near food objects’ is a key component of restoring it.
Just look at the science. Poor metabolic health is the root cause for America’s most common chronic diseases — and a major part of what makes you feel sicker even after getting diagnosed. For example:
- A person diagnosed with obesity switches from white to whole wheat bread, although this continues to get metabolized as sugar, which only exacerbates the issue.
- A type 2 diabetic continues to drink alcohol, which damages their body and prevents the absorption of nutrients.
- A person diagnosed with hyperlipidaemia (high cholesterol) takes statins to control their cholesterol, which does not address the root problem causing heightened levels of LDL.
When you treat the root problem of a chronic disease (such as a poor diet built around the flawed food pyramid), you help your body restore its metabolic health and prevent or reverse progressive illnesses. Multiple studies have corroborating points of evidence that are increasingly compelling to this idea. As we know now, metabolically healthy people tend to live longer lives with fewer instances of disease.
Good metabolic health has been known to manage or even reverse chronic diseases like:
- Type 2 diabetes
- Secondary hypertension
- Obesity
- Hyperlipidaemia
If you’re willing to focus on your metabolic health and make changes to how you eat, cook, and move, you may be able to avoid acquiring chronic diseases and possibly reverse your diagnosis.
How to reverse chronic disease with lifestyle changes.
Chronic diseases are largely avoidable — and depending on the diagnoses, far from incurable. If you’re willing to make significant lifestyle changes and reframe your health as a system, you can start making improvements to your quality of life today.
Here are five places to get started:
- Cut sugars and carbs from your diet. Sugars and carbohydrates are the only food components that create a measurable impact on blood sugar. In fact, carbohydrates are simply another type of sugar. It may be tempting to buy processed breads, candies, and sodas, but the truth is excess sugar and carb consumption have been linked to all-cause mortality and poorer metabolic health.
- Switch your diet to whole, real foods. You can think of whole, real food as anything that comes from the ground or is fed from the ground and remains largely unchanged from its original form. Plus, real food doesn’t have a label — lettuce, walnuts, salmon, and steak are just a few examples. The benefits of whole, real food are widely demonstrated. In a randomized study, participants who ate processed food ate more calories and gained more weight. However, participants on a whole, real food diet ate less and lost weight.
- Limit excessive stress and improve sleep quality. Both high stress and poor sleep are major cofactors for chronic disease. While you cannot completely avoid stress in a cost of living crisis or during work activities, you should still find space for enjoyable hobbies and time for friends and family. There’s no hard cap for sleep and rest, but anything less than six hours or more than nine hours should be avoided for maximum results.
- Strive for daily exercise. You may want to begin your journey with weights or resistance training. In fact, multiple studies correlate hand strength with the length of your lifespan. The more muscle mass you have, the more metabolically active you are — and longer you’ll live with a lower propensity for chronic disease.
- Give up your ‘creature comforts.’ Smoking and excessive alcohol consumption are linked to reduced heart health and increased risks of chronic disease. If you’ve been diagnosed with a condition such as type 2 diabetes, alcohol will only worsen your blood sugar and increase insulin resistance.
Chronic diseases are far easier to prevent than reverse. Although not all diagnoses can be completely cured, many of them can — and a growing pool of evidence suggests good metabolic health is the answer.
If you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic disease and want to improve your metabolic health, I recommend starting my online course: the seven principles of metabolic health. This is a great launching point for reclaiming your metabolic health, and is both self-paced and video-based so you can rewatch at any time.