V. Sierpina
SuperHealth by Steven Pratt, MD with Sharyn Kolberg.
Dr. Steve Pratt has long been one of my favorite experts on health and nutrition. Starting with his first bestselling book, SuperFoods Rx, Pratt has it figured out a formula for changing lives. He and his team are masters at presenting sensible, readable, research-based material on nutrition and health in an easy to understand and to adopt for lifestyle change.
His latest book, SuperHealth contains a 6 week plan to making such lifestyle changes by choosing healthier foods, improving our exercise patterns, better handling stress, and much more.
SuperHealth was a perfect textbook for a community program offered In the fall of 2009 in Galveston, Texas. My colleague at UTMB, Dr. Julie Mckee and our Integrative Medicine Green Team residents, Drs. Sashi Braga, Richard Donaldson, Miguel Guerra-Valencia, Eric Nolen, and graduate physician Oscar Salinas have collaborated in a 2 month weekly course for community senior citizens sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Over 70 enthusiastic seniors interested in improving their health enrolled in this life changing program. What the attendees appreciate is the same thing I enjoy about Pratt’s work. It is easy to comprehend, easy to implement, highly practical, and grounded in solid research. Our course, like the book, is not oriented to merely imparting knowledge but is focused instead on encouraging lifestyle change. Moving from health or illness to SuperHealth requires action, not just more information.
The first two chapters describe the author’s background and motivation for writing the book. These chapters serve as a substrate of encouragement for the reader to make healthier choices in their lifestyle. The SuperFood Pyramid, interestingly presented with apex pointed down, is in itself a crisp synopsis of all of the rest of the book in terms of recommended amounts and mix of healthy foods.
Chapter 3 is the Step 1 of the 6 week program. Entitled, “Control Your Genes Through Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Resveratrol,” it summarizes the latest nutritional research on this class of SuperFoods. Pratt lists the sources of these omega-3’s, foods like wild salmon, spinach, walnuts, blueberries, soy and soybean oil, flaxseed. He describes the benefits of resveratrol from foods like peanuts, peanut butter, purple grapes and purple grape juice, cranberries and cranberry juice, and red wine. He also gives a brief course on nutrigenomics, provides recipes, a sample weekly meal planner, and interesting data on Vitamin D and other longevity nutrients in this important Step 1.
Step 2: “Become an Environmentalist and Detox Your Body” shows how foods like tea, soy, apples, garlic, onions, broccoli, and many commonly uses spices can activate detoxification systems in our bodies. These offset toxins and pollutants from our foods and the environment. He also provides a useful section on greening your home and lifestyle including ways to make your own organic cleaning products.
Step 3: “Watch Your Waistline. Burn Those Calories” describes the risk of too much girth in the midsection. These include metabolic syndrome, diseases associated with obesity such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and many cancers. He offers a SuperFood “waist watcher plan” to help lose weight by eating healthier foods and burning calories through exercise. Practical suggestions abide in this important and popular chapter with recommendations and tips on how to eat more fruit, whole grains, yogurt, pumpkin, tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, honey and beans and how these can help in your weight and waist reduction plan.
Step 4: “Control Inflammation” summarizes recent findings on the importance of the anti-inflammatory diet. He also incorporates aspect of the “anti-inflammatory lifestyle” such as exercise, stress management, sleep hygiene, and supplements.
Step 5: “Keep up Appearances” is a surprising chapter that examines practices to prevent premature aging of our skin. The skin, it turns out is a marker for aging throughout the body so it is beyond vanity to keep our skin looking healthier. It turns out that SuperFoods like avocados, dark chocolate, citrus fruits, tea, pumpkin, tomatoes provide us with internal sun block through their antioxidant pigments. They are key to looking younger and becoming healthier inside as well. Again, he incorporates information on exercise while adding useful information on dental health, supernutrients like vitamins A, C, and E that can protect our skin from aging and cancer.
Step 6: “Preserve Your Senses” offers a list of anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory foods to help keep the mind and senses. Such senses are important to your enjoyment of life like seeing, hearing, along with others. The foods to preserve these senses include pomegranates, blueberries, walnuts, spinach, kiwis, oranges, what germ, and almonds. A section on each documents health benefits as well a providing shopping and cooking information. As in previous chapters a weekly meal planner and exercise program is included, along with mind-body approaches, social interventions. Protecting hearing, preserving vision, and tips for avoiding Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline round out this useful chapter.
Part II, the SuperHealth Reference Guide follows the 6 week program and summarizes important messages in easy to read tables and charts. Sources and amounts of micronutrients and macronutrient are listed along with brand names to help you shop more wisely. Luscious recipes, food and exercise planners, and shopping lists all make this section a practical tool for moving from health to SuperHealth.
A final chapter in this section gives 22 tips for preventing (or living with) the 6 major causes of death in our country, heart disease, stroke, cancer of the lung, colon, breast, and prostate. Like so much of the rest of SuperHealth these tips, based in clinical science promote healthier lifestyles through simple steps.
This book, like Pratt’s earlier works, is an eminently practical guide to along with basic nutritional principles dealing with exercise, mind body methods to helping us move from health to SuperHealth. It is a useful resource to recommend to anyone, including health professionals, seeking specific steps and motivation to lose weight live longer, and better and helping others to do so.
Pratt, S. SuperHealth. New York: Penguin, 2009. ISBN 978-0-525-05093-6
Victor S. Sierpina, MD