Longevity is one of the medicinal benefits of a superfood diet. The right foods
are like high-octane fuel, increasing the efficiency and function of all your
body’s engines so they’re less likely to break down. Remember all those systems
I talked about in chapter 1? Healthy food helps to squash chemical chaos so
everything works properly, and for a long time.
A second way in which healthy food works to heal you: On a chemical level,
it acts a bit like body armour, protecting you against life’s insults. Let me give an
example.
I remember being a general-surgery resident and operating on a man who had
colon cancer. He wasn’t obese, but he didn’t eat well. In many ways, he followed
the junk-laden, standard American diet or SAD (which is often how we feel after
consuming it). His health history showed that he didn’t have many bowel
movements, which partly explained why it took a while to detect his cancer.
Poor nutrition meant that he wasn’t regular, so when the colon cancer caused
even more irregularity, he didn’t pick up on the problem.
Our team operated on him, successfully cutting out the cancer and reattaching
his intestines. Medically speaking, he should have been cured and lived for many
years after that. But the man’s wounds never healed. He died after a month in the
hospital—not because of the cancer, but because his immune system couldn’t
overcome the insult of surgery. When we reviewed his case, we confirmed that
his diet had played a role: Two very important markers in his blood—albumin
and total protein, which are indicators of proper nutrition—showed that he was
deficient in many nutrients and that his immune system was compromised.
WHY WINE WORKS
Wine may be the best example of how the plant kingdom relates to the
animal kingdom. Grapes grown in hard conditions produce more of the
compound resveratrol, which helps the grapes live longer—so they can
survive the environment. When you take in resveratrol (by drinking wine
or having foods that contain it—it helps contribute to your longevity,
because the anti-ageing benefits that the grape obtained are passed along to
you. (This isn’t licence to glug-glug-glug the bottle, just insight into the
origins of the health benefits of wine. While I don’t want you to drink on
my 21-Day Plan, after that, a glass of wine a day is fine.)