Winners and how they succeed by Alastair Campbell

Winners and how they succeed by Alastair Campbell

Alastair Campbell was the press secretary under Tony Blair and was his official spokesman and director of communications from 1994 to 2003. Alastair Campbell has conducted in-depth interviews and uses his own experience in politics and sport to get to the heart of success. He examines how winners tick. He considers how they build great teams. He analyzes how these people deal with unexpected setbacks and new challenges. He judges what the very different worlds of politics, business, and sport can learn from one another. And he sets out a blueprint for winning that we can all follow to achieve our goals.

“Too many coaches teach technique when they should be teaching strategy - Martina Navratilova”

Strategy is God. That is why it has to come first in the holy trinity of strategy, leadership and teamship. You can have all the talent and ambitions you need, but without clear strategy, understood by everyone from the top of the organization to the bottom, the ambition will not be fulfilled. So, strategy first, last & always.

The simplest way to view strategy is to consider three letters, O for objective, S for strategy and T for tactics. Objective comes first because it’s the most important initial step, and to an extent it is also the easiest one to define. It is where you want to get to, what you want to achieve.

Having decided what your objective is, you need to put in place the strategy to achieve it. A business plan is not a strategy: Strategy is the one of the means of securing strategy. As John Brown says: “Strategy is the bit between your purpose and your business plan. People with a clear view of winning know that strategy is everything. You have to have a strategy and stick to it, and never lose the plot”,

Strategy is like putting together a gigantic puzzle, hard to assemble, but easy to understand once it’s done - Jose Torre.

If you don’t have a clear objective, you have no definition of winning. If you do not have a clear strategy, you have no chance of winning. And if all you have are tactics, you have no right to win - AC

Think in Ink - Marilyn Monroe

Strategy must be repeated endlessly - SIG rule

A company without a strategy is willing to try anything - Michael Porter

Even if people don’t agree with them, they respect leaders who stand up for what they believe - Simon Anholt.

Don’t overbrain things to the point of inaction - Jack Welch

Strategy is the place to have arguments, not avoid them. Strategy is a team game. Strategy is about action, not theory. The best strategies are consistent, but have flexibility to adapt.

• AC

Do what you love and love what you do and everything else is detail - Martina Navratilova.

I believe as well as leader can be a fantastic person who can influence other people’s lives in a positive way. Therefore he has a great responsibility - Arsene Wenger.

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground - Theodore Roosevelt

You have got to be very comfortable with the brightest people alive being on your team - Jack Welch.

You have to know when to go over the top to get a reaction and when to be calm to get a reaction - Alex Ferguson

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. - Vince Lombardi

We can achieve more together than we do alone - Labour’s new clause 4

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success - Henry Ford.

You need more than one leader in a team, but they can’t be all leaders - Ben Ainslie

Only the person who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat - Sign at Burnley FC

In a real team, the instinct for individual self-promotion is realized through the pursuit of the team goal - Sign at Burnley FC

Human beings subconsciously understand that alone I am nothing, but in a team I can achieve great thing - Arsene Wenger

Label a man a loser and he'll start acting like one - Peters and Waterman

The tactics are the model,the principles - Jose Mourinho

Strategy is needed more and more, because as the game has grown and developed, so has the technology that is used, it has all changed.... everybody knows everything about everybody - Jose Mourinho

The purpose of the match was to win. We won. That is all - Andre Schurrle

Ah yes, Jose always wants more. that’s how he is - Michael Emenalo

You have to keep trying to improve. Even if I win a title, I am never happy - Jose Mourinho

Even if you aren’t sure of yourself, pretend that you are, because it make it clearer for everyone else - Anna Wintour

I am always responding to other people’s talents. I am not the talent - Anna Wintour

It is important to have setbacks because that is the reality of life. Perfection doesn't exist - Anna Wintour

I have a much stronger understanding of the dynamics of a team because of my experience in sport - Edi Rama

Talent is limited in any sphere so it is important to get  the best of what talent is available - Edi Rama

In the end, to succeed you need your people to own the strategy - Edi Rama

You need fear and doubt to drive you on. Without it, you end up living in the past and being happy with what you achieved. A P McCoy

When I lost my decathlon World record, I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours - Daley Thompson

Victory is the sweet that can rot the teeth - Oscar Tabarez

The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled - Ric Charlesworth

You cannot be a dickhead all week and play good on Sunday - Jack Gibson

Mental toughness is doing thing you don’t want to do - Craig Bellamy

I am in the zone when my positive thoughts are beating the negative and the conscious and subconscious are in harmony. Then I am operating by instinct and that is a wonderful thing - Sachin Tendulkar

The reason all really successful people have to be slightly mad is because people like that are not capable of living in the comfort zone - Billy Beane

You will not have mental physical strength. If the body has no more to give, there is next to nothing the mind can do about it - Brian O’Driscoll

The brian can’t really distinguish between a visualized and an actual experience. - Andy McCann

Ignore the negative comments. Ignore all the criticism - Wasim Akram

Tough times don’t last. Tough people do - Floyd Mayweather

If you believe you can do it, then everything else falls into place - Floyd Mayweather

Caution won’t win elections, boldness will - Tony Blair

Physically I’m a chicken, mentally I am bold - Jeff Bezos

I just do not believe that boldness is a vote loser if you are actually doing the right thing - Richard Branson

marginal gains means looking at all the things we do, and never assuming we couldn't do them better - Dave Brailsford

Celebrate it when it is successful; reward it when it is successful and learn from failure by not making the same mistake twice - Justin King

Opportunity is manufactured - Biz Stone

We zig when the world zags - Charles Dunstone

Innovation is never seeing yourself as a finished product - Arianna Huffington

The thing about conventional wisdoms is that they are almost always wrong - David Axelrod

We asked different questions and got interesting answers - Billy Beane

When you have done both intuition and data, I don’t believe you will ever go back to intuition - Billy Beane

To win, you need genuine innovation not imitation - Paddy Lowe

If I had one word to sum up our approach to innovation, it would be iteration - Paddy Lowe

This is a sport that likes problems because we are here to try to solve them; not walk away from them - Paddy Lowe

Nothing can become a brand if a product is not a great - Piyush Pandey

I had a very simple objective - survival - Bill Clinton

All of us in public life are too willing to let monetary press coverage define our reality - Bill Clinton

If it has been the only thing, maybe we would have got there quicker but combine it with them, twenty smaller things going wrong and you are in trouble - Willise Walsh

We reset targets out of failure - Willie Walsh

I have lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times. I have been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan

The winner is the loser who evaluates himself correctly - Colm O’Connell

I don’t see obstacles. I see objectives and I see opportunities to meet them - Ade Adepitan

That is where my competitiveness came from, seeing everything as a struggle for survival - Layne Beachley

We have the ‘never give up’ attitude; we like being in the thick of it; and we are not afraid to fail - Shane Warne

In England the average man feels that he is inferior, in America that he is a superior in Australia, he feels that he is an equal - Francis Adams

I would be in a straitjacket if I spent all my time thinking about stuff that I could regret 0 Shane Warne

She [the Queen] ticks a lot of the boxes on leadership. She is clearly good at strategy, instinctively. She definitely has one, and she is good at executing it - John Browne

The Queen just is. That is how she sees herself. Her year is a season and her day is a mini-season - Former member of the Queen's team

If you don’t train enough, you will lose. if you train well, you give yourself the chance to win. I feel the same about politics - Haile Gebrselassie

If you stand still, you get left behind - Jose Mourinho

Crisis management:

1. Stay focused or else lose the plot
2. Be honest with yourself
3. Be honest with others
4. Organize and change quickly
5. Give a crisis a human face
6. Cover all the bases

Book referred:

The human side of enterprise by Douglas McGregor

This is woman’s work by Dominique Christina

This is woman’s work by Dominique Christina

Calling forth your inner council of wise, brave, crazy, rebellious, loving, luminous selves.

In Greek mythology, the Furies were three women born from the blood of uranus, the god of sky, when his son Cronus wounded him in battle. In other words,. the blood of a wounded warrior gave rise to these fiery women. The Furies were catalyzed by was a profound sense of justice. The Furies meted out punishment to those who had committed wrong swiftly and often severely. They were unapologetic about tormenting the tormentor. The one who pillaged and plundered was published.

Each chapter of the book introduces you to an archetype, named and described as I have come to know her.

The Shadow women:

She cannot wait to be born. She is always waiting to be born.

The Shadow woman is mostly unborn. She is the deep silence before the water breaks. Emily Dickinson represents this archetypal energy for me. We know that Dickinson was a woman who led a mostly solitary life. When she died, the world ‘discovered’ how mighty her voice had been and marveled over her commitment to keeping that mighty voice entirely to herself. Her ‘birth’ happened for the rest of us, after death.

The Ghost women:

Why you hanging round here, woman?

Ain’t nobody taought you how to stay gone?

The Ghost woman does not know that she is supposed to be a finished thing. She is the waymaker. She knows how not to leave. In the literary world, the best example is the character Beloved in Toni Morrison’s novel of the same name. She is, in essence, a child whose need for the mother was so great that even after her mother cut her throat to keep her from experiencing chattel slavery, this child’s clamoring was so significant that it allowed her to re-inhabit a body in order to be joined again with her mother.

Maya Angelou has right: every goodbye ain’t gone. Ghost also presents the idea that, despite what we may believe, a person can exit their body and be unaware of that experience. They can still identify with their right now life. They can operate in defiance of reason or science if their attachment or obligation is big enough. The Ghost Woman is willing to haunt every room. And she probably does not even recognize it as a haunting.

The Willing Woman:

She a closed mouth. She a yes every time.

The literary character that emerges for me right away is Celie in The Color Purple. Alice Walker writes this woman as the most obedient kind -until she felt a fire catch in her belly. Until she had the expedience of another woman showing here what free could look like, what it could be like, how she could access it, and when she was ready, she found her spine to be remarkably straight. She found roar in her bones. It was then that she resisted. She rebelled against her own fear and self-loathing., he own powerlessness and the gross misuse of power that had maimed her. And she got fire.

The Rebel Woman:

She a clenched fist. She gon tell you no and mean it.

The rebel Woman is an identity defined by juxtaposition - an identity formed from without. At the risk of bringing the US gov. down on my head, I say Assata Shakur is a dynamic example of the Rebel Woman. Angela Davis, Elaine Brown, Gloria Steinem, Nina Simone, Rosa Parks. They buttressed up against, spoke out, stood up or in case of Rosa Parks refused to move.

The Woman with Cool Hands:

She is her own medicine. A balm. A healer. Her hands are always open.

They are the caregiver. Mother Theresa is an obvious example. She helped scores of people and in so doing, became necessary to them. She was a life preserver. A shade tree.

The Conjure Woman:

You got so much magic, girl, you thick with it.

The Conjure Woman is deep-belly-of-the-earth woman. In Gloria Naylor’s book Mama Day, the character for whom the book is named, is a Conjure Woman. Mama Day works with the natural world. Mama Day was the oldest daughter born to a seventh son of a seventh son. This is not a coincidental detail. The number seven is regarded (in many traditions and faith practice) as a number of some power and significance. In Kabbalism, seven is the number of the natural world. Seven days a week, Seven notes on the musical scale. Seven directions: left, right, up, down, forward, back, and center. Nachmanides, also known as Rabbi Moses, a twelfth-century Jewish scholar in Spain, wrote a great details about the weight of number seven, should you be intrigued enough to wish for additional readings.

The Wombed Woman:

She ample, she big, she a wide, wide road.

The Wombed Woman is the mother. The feminine template.The mother is the alpha. There is nothing without her. The birth itself is what defines mother. She is large and she is complicated.

The Journey Woman:

Where you runnin’ off to, girl?  

You leave before you enter. 

The Journey Woman is the quest-seeker. Amelia Mary Earhart is a good example of Journey Woman, who was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. I never forgot what she wrote to her husband in the last letter he received from her before he final journey. She said, “ Please know I’m quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things, as men have tried. When they fail, their failures must be but a challenge to others”. My favorite part, aside from the feminist tinge, is the business of naming, so simply naming, what drive her. She wanted to fly planes because she wanted to fly planes. Period. She was not running away from her life: she was soaring into it.

The Shapeshifter Woman:

She a slight of hand. She a slippery wort.

The Shapeshifter Woman is whirling and she is a master illusionist. She can spin your top. In terms of the canon, she is a he for the most part. Some Native American people have a figure called the Deer Woman who is a shapeshifter. She is a woman who can become a doe. And the doe, depending on what indigenous tradition you are referencing, can be responsible for matrimony or be the punished for wrongdoing. Whoever put the definition together should know: The Shapelifter Woman is working with more skill sets and she is a transformer. The transmogrifier. The woman whose left hand looks right. The woman who can make Monday morning look like Saturday night. She is the mimicking one. She can outwit and outmatch. Her guise is purposeful and deliberate .And don't you forget it.

The Warrior Woman:

She an open mouth. And an open mouth got teeth.

The Warrior Woman is a strategist. The historiography of African woman warriors is expansive. The Amazon women are probably most recognized. From early Greek accounts, they came out of North Africa - Libya, principally. These women were fearsome in battle and depicted as being large and ferocious. The Dahomey Amazons were an elite group of women warriors whose skills in the area of hand-to-hand combat commanded the respect of the French. In Ghana, an Ashanti queen names Yaa Asantewa fought against British colonial rule. In Nigeria, Igbo women led an insurrection against the colonial gov.’s attempt to exercise a tax on women. In Liberia, women like Leymah Gbowee put their bodies in front of militiamen, who were burning homes, forcing children to become soldiers and using rape as a weapon of war. Leymah faced down them down and did not retreat. Gbowee is responsible for helping to bring an end to the Second Liberian War in 2003. Her stand ushered in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005, which saw a new gov. run entirely by women, from the police chief to the president.

And certainly, let’s not forget women like Joan of Arc, who commanded an army at the age of seventeen, who led France to victory more than once. And Zenobia of Syria, whose leadership defeated the Roman Army. Despite the prevailing representations of women; we have a long history of relating to ourselves as fierce.

The Third Eye Woman:

She sees it. She sees it. She sees it.

The Third Eye Woman is the seer. The Knower. She comes into things by intuition, by instinct. It is difficult to have sight - insight, foresight, even hindsight is inconvenient clarity. Because the mind is not reality. The mind is a simulated and constructed version of it. It is constantly interpolating, interpreting, categorizing, managing, packaging, reasoning, illustrating - on and on In Biblical language she would be a prophet. She is the oracle one. 

One such prophecy incident happened in Sept. 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama at the 16th Baptist Church.A woman whose children attended that church had a dream the night before. She saw blood pouring out of the church. When she woke up the dream had frightened her so that she told her children not to go, which eventually saved them as the Church was bombed by some miscreant.

The Howling Woman:

She got a hole in her chest. She keep her fist in it.

The Howling Woman is a dirge. She is a lamentation; lives in sadness and grief. The famous jazz singer Billie Holiday is a Howling woman. She had a terrible child life, without mother, rape brothel et al. Even after her incredible success in her adult life, her sadness and wounding trailer her. Grief was everlasting for her. It is not her music that keeps her in my consciousness,. it is her sorrow and how it consumed her.

The Violated Woman:

Somebody took it. Somebody took it.  Somebody took it.

The Violated Woman has been mishandled. She has heard the sound of her flesh breaking. The character Mayella Ewell in the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a Violated Woman. Because she was the pivotal figure who falsely accused a black man, Tom Robinson, of raping her. The focus on Mayella is usually on the accusation she made as a way to discuss racism in this country. And that is fair and accurate depiction.

The Beggar Woman:

She a need. She say, “Mista spare a dime”.

The Beggar Woman is Rapunzel and Snow White and Cinderella. She is Lois Lane and Olive Oyl and Mary Jane Watson in Spider-man. She is every girl who acted in King Kong films, remakes included, She is usually smart and yet somehow in trouble over and over again. The Beggar Woman has her hand out, but it is clear that if she elects to, she can ball it into a fist.

The Bone Woman.

Why you always lookin back, woman? Leave the dead alone.

The Bone Woman is a swiveled neck. Her eyes are keen on what is behind her. She is the keeper. In Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the character Auntie Ying-ying is presented as a tragic figure who lived most of her life with deep regret and sadness about the past. It restricted her capacity to move forward. It did not leave her with enough stuff in her gut to offer anything substantive to her child or her new husband. When she finally comes into this clarity, she is galvanized by a need to offer a daughter something made of more backbone.

The Liberator Woman:

She the Underground Railroad. She the freedom train.

Harriet Tubman is an obvious example of Liberator Woman. She escaped from slavery and felt compelled to sneak back onto plantations to liberate countless others from slavery. She could have chosen to rest comfortably in her own liberation, but for her, the fullness of that experience could only be reached if she helped others know it for themselves.

The Woman on Words”

She got something to say. And she gon say it.

The Woman of Word is fat with narrative and lexicon. She is thick with remembered accounts. In the novel, Songs of Solomon by Toni Morrison, the character called Milkman is given stories throughout the novel by different and divergent characters in the book. Each story is an access point for Milkman. He hears stories from his mother that make him empathetic to her. He hears stories from his father that makes him hold him with a wider consideration. he hears stories from his Aunt Pilate that helps him understand the complexity of his familial structure and the relationship therein. And he hears stories from a young man called Guitar that gives him a sense of his own manhood and how the idea of manhood is carried by other men.

The Wild Woman:

She a Saturday night sweet thang, a red dress and a tall drink.

In the novel The Color Purple, the character Shug Avery epitomizes 

the Wild Woman as I understand her. She has babies out of wedlock and left them with her parents so she could be out on the road singing and swinging her hips in juke joints, bedecked in red sequined dress, waving a white feather, and dripping with lustful ooze that made men clamor and women envious. She was available to experience, was unapologetic about sex and her own sexuality, and presided over the men she interacted with, including the central character Albert, who was such dominating bully, an abusive figure in every other area of his life.

The Whisper Woman:

Hush. Hush. Somebody’s callin’ my name.

The Whisper Woman is whatever you have created for yourself to assist yourself in this life. Because she is unique to you, any examples you associate with her will be unique to you too. Only you know whom your Whisper Woman look slike. She should surely be familiar to you.

The Every Woman.

She is a woman built like an atlas. You cannot help but see her.

She is present in every single chapter. She is the sum total. The arranged, constructed, conceived and carried-out woman. She is the fullest expression. She is how you lie down. How you stand up,. How you fight and fall apart and exclaim and leap and beg and weep and curl up and fan out and twirl about and remember the past and forget the past and honor the old ones and create life and rebel and fight and submit and conjure and be and be.

The China Study by T Colin Campbell & Thomas M Campbell

The China Study by T Colin Campbell & Thomas M Campbell

Startling implications for diet, weight loss and long-term health

(National Best Seller Book)

Even though information and opinions are plentiful, very few people truly know what they should be doing to improve their health.

Some of the findings, published in the most reputable scientific journals, show that:

• Dietary change can enable diabetic patients to go off their medication.

• Heart disease can be reversed with diet alone.

• Breast cancer is related to levels of female hormones in the blood, which are determined by the food we eat.

• Consuming dairy foods can increase the risk of prostate cancer.

• Antioxidants, found in fruits and vegetables, are linked to better mental performance in old age.

• Kidney stones can be prevented by a healthy diet.

• Type 1 diabetes, one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child, is convincingly linked to infant feeding practices

In fact, dietary protein proved to be so powerful in its effect that we could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed.

In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer! They were the children of the wealthiest families.

We found that not all proteins had this effect. What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow's milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy.

People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. So, what is my prescription for good health? In short, it is about the multiple health benefits of consuming plant-based foods, and the largely unappreciated health dangers of consuming animal-based foods, including all types of meat, dairy and eggs. The scientific basis for my views is largely empirical, obtained through observation and measurement.

Cancer

Cancer proceeds through three stages: initiation, promotion and progression.  What implants / initiates cancer-prone cells? Chemicals that do this are called carcinogens. These chemicals are most often the byproducts of industrial processes, although small amounts may be formed in nature, as is the case with aflatoxin. These carcinogens genetically transform, or mutate, normal cells into cancer-prone cells. A mutation involves permanent alteration of the genes of the cell, with damage to its DNA.

The entire initiation stage (Chart 3.1) can take place in a very short period of time, even minutes. It is the time required for the chemical carcinogen to be consumed, absorbed into the blood, transported into cells, changed into its active product, bonded to DNA and passed on to the daughter cells.

Promotion is reversible, depending on whether the early cancer growth is given the right conditions in which to grow. This is where certain dietary factors become so important. These dietary factors, called promoters, feed cancer growth. Other dietary factors, called anti-promoters, slow cancer growth.

The third phase, progression, begins when a bunch of advanced cancer cells progress in their growth until they have done their final damage.

From our extensive research, one idea seemed to be clear: lower protein intake dramatically decreased tumor initiation, This finding, even though well substantiated, would be enormously provocative for many people.

Foci are precursor clusters of cells that grow into tumors. Although most foci do not become full-blown tumor cells, they are predictive of tumor development.  Foci development was almost entirely dependent on how much protein was consumed, regardless of how much aflatoxin was consumed!

According to the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for protein consumption, we humans should be getting about 10% of our energy from protein. There are about thirteen grams of protein in 100 calories of porterhouse steak (just over one and a half ounces).

In these experiments, plant protein did not promote cancer growth, even at the higher levels of intake. Gluten, the protein of wheat, did not produce the same result as casein, even when fed at the same 20% level. Rats fed 20% soy protein diets did not form. early foci, just like the 20% wheat protein diets. Suddenly protein, milk protein in this case, wasn't looking so good. We had discovered that low protein intake reduces cancer initiation and works in multiple synchronous ways.

China Study

In the early 1970s, the premier of China, Chou EnLai, was dying of cancer. In the grips of this terminal disease, Premier Chou initiated a nationwide survey to collect information about a disease that was not well understood. It was to be a monumental survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 Chinese counties and 880 million (96%) of their citizens. The survey was remarkable in many ways. It involved 650,000 workers, the most ambitious biomedical research project ever undertaken. The end result of the survey was a beautiful, color-coded atlas showing where certain types of cancer were high and where they were almost nonexistent.

We assembled a world-class scientific team to look closely on China Study.  It was to be the first major research project between China and the United States. We cleared the necessary funding hurdles, weathering both CIA intrusiveness and Chinese government reticence.

When we were done we had more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease variables. We had a study that was unmatched in terms of comprehensiveness, quality and uniqueness. We had what the New York Times termed "the Grand Prix of epidemiology." In short, we had created that revealing snapshot of time that we had originally envisioned

In America, 15-16% of our total calories comes from protein and upwards of 80% of this amount comes from animal-based foods. But in rural China only 9-10% of total calories comes from protein and only 10% of the protein comes from animal-based foods.  (For an American adult male of seventy seven kilograms, calorie intake will be about 2,400 calories per day. For an average rural Chinese adult male of seventy-seven kilograms, calorie intake will be about 3,000 calories per day.)

We compared the prevalence of Western diseases in each county with diet and lifestyle variables and, to our surprise; we found that one of the strongest predictors of Western diseases was blood cholesterol.

There are two main categories of cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol is present in the food we eat. It is a component of food, much like sugar, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals. This cholesterol is found only in animal-based food and is the one we find on food labels. This second type of cholesterol, blood cholesterol, is made in the liver. Blood cholesterol and dietary cholesterol, although chemically identical, do not represent the same thing. Dietary fats and cholesterol don't necessarily turn into body fat and blood cholesterol. The way the body makes body fat and blood cholesterol is extremely complex, involving hundreds of different chemical reactions and dozens of nutrients. Because of this complexity, the health effects of eating dietary fat and dietary cholesterol may be very different from the health effects of having high blood cholesterol (what your doctor measures) or having too much body fat.

Lower blood cholesterol levels are linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer and other Western diseases, even at levels far below those considered "safe" in the West.  In brief, animal based foods were correlated with increasing blood cholesterol. With almost no exceptions, nutrients from plant-based foods were associated with decreasing levels of blood cholesterol.

This connection of breast cancer with dietary fat, thus with animal based foods, brought into consideration other factors that also place a woman at risk for breast cancer:

• Early age of menarche (age of first menstruation)

• High blood cholesterol

• Late menopause

• High exposure to female hormones

Fiber was able to pull water from the body into the intestines to keep things moving along. These undigested fibers, like stick-urn paper, also gather up nasty chemicals that find their way into our intestines and that might be carcinogenic. If we don't consume enough fiber, we are susceptible to constipation-based diseases (these include large bowel cancer, diverticulitis, hemorrhoids and varicose veins).

The most significant vitamin C association with cancer was its relationship with the number of cancer-prone families in each area. When levels of vitamin C in the blood were low, these families were more likely to have a high incidence of cancer. Vitamin C primarily comes from fruit, and eating fruit was also inversely associated with esophageal cancer. II 43 Cancer rates were five to eight times higher for areas where fruit intake was lowest. The same vitamin C affect existing for these cancers also existed for coronary heart disease, hypertensive heart disease and stroke. Vitamin C intake from fruits clearly showed a powerful protective effect against a variety of diseases. : if you want vitamin C or beta-carotene, don't reach for the pill bottle-reach for the fruit or leafy green vegetables

Heart Attack:

Framingham Heart research doctors noticed the ongoing research at the time and made some common-sense connections. They realized that:

• Excess fat and cholesterol consumption caused atherosclerosis (the hardening of the arteries and the accumulation of plaque) in experimental animals

• Eating cholesterol in food caused a rise in cholesterol in the blood

• High blood cholesterol might predict and/or cause heart disease

• Most of the world's population didn't have heart disease, and these heart disease-free cultures had radically different dietary patterns, consuming less fat and cholesterol

There are two different types of carbohydrates: refined carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates are the starches and sugars obtained from plants by mechanically stripping off their outer layers, which contain most of the plant's vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. This "food" (regular sugar, white flour, etc.) has very little nutritional value. Foods such as pastas made from refined flour, sugary cereals, white bread, candies and sugar-laden soft drinks should be avoided as much as possible. But do eat whole, complex carbohydrate-containing foods such as unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grain products like brown rice and oatmeal. These unprocessed carbohydrates, especially from fruits and vegetables, are exceptionally health-promoting.

Another lifestyle choice that is clearly important for this disease is exercise. Increased exercise is convincingly associated with less colorectal cancer.

Dairy intake is "one of the most consistent dietary predictors for prostate cancer in the published literature," and those who consume the most dairy have double to quadruple the risk.

The first mechanism concerns a hormone that increases cancer cell growth, a hormone that our bodies make, as needed. This growth hormone, Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-l), is turning out to be a predictor of cancer just as cholesterol is a predictor for heart disease. The second mechanism relates to vitamin D metabolism. This "vitamin" is not a nutrient that we need to consume. Our body can make all that we need simply by being in sunlight fifteen to thirty minutes every couple of days.

In addition to the production of vitamin D being affected by sunlight, it is also affected by the food that we eat. The main component of this process is an active form of vitamin D produced in the body from the vitamin D that we get from food or sunshine. This active or "supercharged" D produces many benefits throughout the body, including the prevention of cancer, autoimmune diseases and diseases like osteoporosis.

To review the mechanisms:

• Animal protein causes the body to produce more IGF-l, which in turn throws cell growth and removal out of whack, stimulating cancer development.

• Animal protein suppresses the production of "supercharged" D.

• Excessive calcium, as found in milk, also suppresses the production of "supercharged" D.

• Supercharged" D is responsible for creating a wide variety of health benefits in the body. Persistently low levels of supercharged D create an inviting environment for different cancers, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis and other diseases.

Cow~ milk may cause one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child. Cow's milk consumption by children zero to fourteen years of age in twelve countries shows an almost perfect correlation with Type 1 diabetes. 28 The greater the consumption of cow's milk, the greater the prevalence of Type 1 diabetes.

Eight Principles of Food and Health

PRINCIPLE # 1

Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

PRINCIPLE #2

Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.

PRINCIPLE #3

There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.

PRINCIPLE #4

Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.

PRINCIPLE #5

Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.

PRINCIPLE #6

The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis).

PRINCIPLE #7

Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.

PRINCIPLE #8

Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected.