Dr. Doug Graham (80-10-10 raw vegan)

[Aractus]

Okay, so I thought I'd talk about this scandal a bit.

Doug Graham is the crackpot who came up with the 80-10-10 diet, which is now popularised also by 30 bananas a day, and other complete lunatics.

Harley Johnstone, who calls himself "durianrider", appeared on TV in 2007 (check the link at the start of this paragraph), where the dietician discovered that after being a strict vegan for six years he had the lowest B12 levels she had ever seen.

Today he, and his girlfriend, are amongst the most vocal and aggressive proponents of raw veganisim; attacking anyone who disagrees with them because "they know the truth". Their youtube channels are the most watched vegan channels.

Now, there's a very good reason why they think their stupid diet is healthy, which I won't talk about right now, as I want to talk about the Doug Graham scandal that happened this year.

So, the raw food movement is quite broad and there's an annual event called the Woodstock Fruit Festival, which is organised and run by some raw fruitarian vegans, particularly Michael Arnstein who as I understand it was the founder, however they have a board of governors, so any decision is made by the said board.

Here's Doug Graham at WFF 2012 giving a lecture (which I haven't watched but it's relevant since it's on fasting):

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http://youtu.be/Gxiqp_iq6dA

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About a month ago I saw a video on YouTube, which as it turns out was instrumental in having Doug Graham banned for life from WFF - see this announcement.

Leah Branster nearly died earlier this year when she attended one of Doug Graham's fasting retreats in Costa Rica:

http://youtu.be/l4Ge2OCti4I

There's also a video from Leah's mum on the experience:

http://youtu.be/KxwMXwwlz4o

I'll summarise the videos, however I highly suggest watching them:

1. 1. Leah went to WFF 2013, saw a lecture by Doug Graham about fasting and that's how she found out about his retreat. She'd already been following the 80-10-10 diet for 1 year by that time.
   
2. She was suffering from ulcerative colitis before going to the fasting retreat, this was disclosed on her application form and she put her trust in the expertise of Dr. Graham. She expected the fasting retreat to heal her condition (ulcerative colitis).
   
3. She decided she wanted to do both his fasting retreat, and his walking tour and then his course to get "certified as a health coach". Yes, it's a giant scam that Dr Graham runs, but the details are here so you can verify this.
   
4. She paid HALF the cost of the program - i.e. $8,000 - to Doug Graham. The rest was to be paid off, I guess on a payment plan. As part of the application she signed a waiver - that should tell you right now what a scammer Dr. Graham is if he makes people surrender their rights! She also spent $2,000 on air-fairs.
   
5. She fasted for 25 days in Costa Rica. Dr. Graham did not give her proper medical care, and she nearly died. What happened next is truly horrifying...
   
6. Elizabeth Branster (Leah's mum) arrived in Costa Rica and found her daughter in a state she describes as "resembling the fourth state of cancer". Her skin was flaking off her, and she couldn't walk without assistance. She weighed 35 kg. With vomiting and diarrhoea, Leah was unable to hold anything down even water. She believed her daughter could die at any moment. She called Leah's fiancé (Josh) - and Josh immediately started calling their insurance company and immediately started organising emergency medical intervention.
   
7. Dr. Graham tried to convince Elizabeth that it was not an emergency and that her health would improve. Dr. Graham also revealed they don't do blood tests. Dr. Graham tried to convince Elizabeth not to remove Leah from his retreat. Dr. Graham directed both Leah and Elizabeth not to say that Leah had been fasting to the hospital doctors, and they both followed this directive.
   
8. The insurance company (which Josh had contacted), called Dr. Graham and, then spoke to Elizabeth where they directed her to take Leah to the hospital immediately. Even after this call, Dr. Graham went to Leah and tried to convince her to stay at the retreat.
   
9. At 6AM the following morning the taxi arrived to take Leah to the hospital. By this time Leah was critically ill. Elizabeth thought her daughter would die in the taxi - it was a 5 hour drive to the hospital, with Leah vomiting regularly.
   
10. She was in the worst state of dehydration that the doctor in the hospital had ever seen. She was in acute kidney renal failure, had acute bacterial enterocolitis, systemic sepsis (toxic blood), bacterial infection caused by aeromonas, and severe anaemia. Her organs had started shutting down. Despite this she did not want to take antibiotics because Dr. Graham doesn't believe in them, so she called him from the hospital to ask his advice, to which he said words to the effect "oh, you can take them but make sure you get out of there as soon as possible, it's the worst possible place in the world you could be".
    
11. Finally, Leah needed a blood transfusion to live. Costa Rica does not have blood supplies, as a 3rd world country, so if Elizabeth's blood had been incompatible her daughter would have died. She also needed a 2nd blood transfusion, which they got from a Costa Rican woman. After being in the hospital for three days, she developed psychosis and was moved from the intensive care ward to the psych ward, heavily sedated.
    
12. Back in Australia, she needed another blood transfusion.

Leah's total expenses were:

Deposit to Doug Graham - $8,000
Plane tickets - $2,000 (this was probably more in the end, and doesn't include Elizabeth's tickets)
Hospital expenses in Costa Rica - $25,000
Hospital expenses in Australia - $15,000
Loss of income to April 2014 - $7,144 (this would be much more since in the August video Leah says that she still has not been able to return to work).

So the expenses, excluding loss of income, total at least $50,000.

She requests a refund, Dr. Graham writes back saying he'll get his lawyer to draft a NDA for her to sign in order to get her refund, she refuses to sign a NDA saying that his gross negligence, neglect and un-professionalism is what had caused her condition to to get to such a critical state.

The truly tragic thing is that if she continues to follow 80-10-10, the long term health consequences will be terrible, but I'll get into that at another time.

[Aractus]

So why do they think this is a healthy diet, when it obviously isn't?

Well it's because long-term it's very difficult to gain weight on such a diet.

80% - carbohydrate.
10% - protein.
10% - fat.

Now what happens when you have such a diet is that you create an environment in your body where fat storage cannot take place. But that fact alone doesn't make it healthy. Far from it.

Let's put this in perspective, adipose cells (i.e. fat cells) store fatty lipids. Typically body fat constitutes adipose tissue which is about 87% lipid. On the other hand though, some adipose tissue, e.g. in the organs, contains hardly any lipid.

The human body thrives on a variety of foods including starchy foods and meat. Now let's also think about this in perspective. Starch is made up of glucose molecules bonded together, and we can digest it to get the glucose. On the other hand, fruit contains the more simple sugars - fructose and glucose. Our bodies don't really have a specific need for fructose, in fact it has to be broken down and ultimately converted into glucose to be of any use. Same thing happens with alcohol. Monkeys including chimps and gorillas can digest these simple sugars, and they thrive on fruit-based diets. They, however, cannot digest starch like we can. We're not monkeys we're quite different, and we thrive on different foods to monkeys.

Ashton Kutcher was hospitalised after going fruitarian for just a month (which he did to get into character) - and Steve Jobs probably got pancreatic cancer from his fruitarian lifestyle.

Fruit based diets (or for that matter most vegan diets) are deficient in calcium, protein, iron, zinc, vitamin D, most B vitamins, and essential fatty acids.

Vitamin D for instance, people think they get it from the sun. We do not - the skin does carry out the first phase in Vitamin D synthesis using ultraviolet light, that's true, but that is later completed by the liver and kidneys. About 1/3rd of Australians have Vitamin D deficiency - because we're not supposed to get all our Vitamin D from synthesising UV light, we need dietary Vitamin D from milk, fish or mushrooms. You cannot get it from fruit.

B12 is another obvious example, and the reason why raw-vegans typically take IV B12. But, there are reasons to believe that injecting B12 does not work for everyone.

But it's the essential fatty acid deficiency that causes one's body to be unable to store more fat. The reason is simple - and there can be dire consequences as well. Take 10% fat in your 80-10-10 diet. We'll assume that it's roughly 80% unsaturated fat since it's coming from fruits. This can lead to a serious cholesterol deficiency since it is a particular type of saturated fat that stimulates the body to produce cholesterol, and you're supposed to get about 15% of your cholesterol from your diet but plant-based foods have no cholesterol at all. Cholesterol is the precursor to every steroid - so low cholesterol leads to low hormone levels, and can result in chronic fatigue, clinical depression, psychosis, and other serious mental illnesses. High blood cholesterol, as I just mentioned, is due to having a high amount of saturated fat in the diet and can be easily lowered. It is very difficult to raise cholesterol using vegan-friendly foods, and impossible on a fruit based diet.

So you're eating maybe 80% unsaturated fat, and 20% saturated fat with fat comprising 10% of your calories. So in total, 4% of your calories can be directly converted to lipids. This of course could lead to low triglyceride levels, again very serious, if the lipids were to be stored as fat. The remaining 6% which is unsaturated fat, can also be converted so long as half is first converted to saturated fat - a process which burns further calories - but let's assume, since I don't have the numbers, that process will result in a further number of triglycerides which will replenish the ones that were first made when you had your fruit-based meal - okay still with me?

There's not enough lipids to spare for storage in adipose cells, so you cannot put on weight. Again, this assumes you've been following the diet for maybe 6-9 months or longer and have allowed serious dietary deficiencies to develop. What actually does happen to people who first start the diet is they put on weight for the first few months while they're building those deficiencies.

Okay, so if you're still with me, now we have another problem. You're flooding your body with far more glucose than it wants. And what happens when you eat too much glucose? That's right - you release the insulin hormone to tell your liver to flush it out of your blood; which it does. Where does it go? Well it's converted to glycogen. Your body can store only around 2,000 kcal in glycogen.

So what happens when the glycogen stores are full? Aha - usually, the body would instead use the glucose to synthesis fatty lipids; but you don't have enough fat in your diet to make any more lipids. And you can't make lipids without dietary unsaturated fats. So now, there's nowhere for it to go. What happens to it then? To be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% sure how it is removed, but in any case, the body removes it from your system without burning all the Calories, because it can't store it. Quite possibly it will end up in the urine (which indicates that you have diabetes). What I do know, however, is that always eating fruit to excess every day and making your pancreas produce and secrete more insulin than normal will eventually lead to type 2 diabetes.

And that's not to mention all the other health problems you'll have from dietary deficiencies including osteoporosis.

Anyway, the proponents of the 80-10-10 diet are not health experts, and that includes Dr. Doug Graham. Yes he's published books - but have you seen him publish in scientific peer-review journals? And then you hear these people claim "well they don't want to know about this stuff because there's no money to be made ..." Are you fucking serious? There's a huge amount of money to be made, especially by exploiting vulnerable people with these nonsense promises! And it would get published if it was scientifically credible.

To put your faith in fringe ideas instead of peer-reviewed science is just stupid. Experts are people who participate in research; and they usually publish academic material either in journals or some other form, they hold academic conferences, etc. People who do none of those things, people who have training, people who may very well be qualified doctors, and people who publish non-academic books and hold non-academic seminars are NOT experts, even if they claim to be.

To think of the damage that is done to people who follow the 80-10-10 diet and other extreme diets is horrendous. Most qualified dieticians will tell you that there is no one diet that is right for everyone, and especially not extreme diets.

Woodstock Fruit Festival banned Dr. Graham because otherwise it would reflect badly upon their event: just search for the other people who go there and who have had health problems: DTM liferegenrator, jolita brilliant, etc, not to mention other vegans who've also experienced health problems long term and have spoken about it (trollsneedhugs, alex jamieson, etc). Eating nothing but sugary fruits will give you regular sugar-highs and it'll become addictive and you'll literally be chasing the dragon. Fructose is addictive.

[KichigaiNeko]

Do we really understand what causes pancreatic cancer?

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Great post Daniel. How are the studies going?

[LastPoet]

There are many schemes thriving on ignorance about nutrition and other concerns. I don't need to name them, but around here, there is this pyramid scheme called "herbalife" that thrives in selling overpriced vitamin pills. it is a quasi religious enterprise, with all the 'before' and 'after' pics, the whole nine yards. People still fall for it.

[Aractus]

Do we really understand what causes pancreatic cancer?

As far as I know - no. But it would likely have multiple causes. One of the things the pancreas do is produce and secrete insulin when blood glucose is high, and fruitarian diets (80-10-10) are very high in glucose, thus causing the pancreas to produce more and more insulin. This will eventually lead to type 2 diabetes. There is a provable scientific link between even pre-diabetes and pancreatic cancer. I don't think anyone has yet definitively proven which causes which, but ultimately if you're going to eat a diet very high in carbohydrate, it can lead to pancreatic cancer, as it clearly did in the case of Steve Jobs.

(edit) I also forgot to mention what happens to all that excess glucose in the 80-10-10 diets - as I mentioned on so much of it can be stored as glycogen, and the rest will stimulate fat storage if possible (if you're severely deficient in fat of course that can't take place). I then said I don't know what happens to the glucose then, and it's true I don't because it's not a normal part of human anatomy to be in this unnatural state, and also because it's really not that well understood anyway. What some people do when they eat more, as was demonstrated in some BBC documentary, is that some people will burn off those extra calories and some people will burn off "some" of those extra calories, and other will burn off less and store more. So exactly what happens is a matter of dispute. However, while it's possible that some of it will end up in the urine, it's also possible that the body is forced to burn off the energy, and that I didn't mention but I think I should have. It may stimulate muscle palpitations and twitching including heart palpitations etc to burn off those extra calories. It may also cause the liver itself to consume those calories. I should have thought a bit more about that than just suggesting that it ends up in the urine, because in all likeliness that seems more likely to me. To get into the urine it still has to be in the blood, but the liver removes it when the insulin is released, so that now seems more unlikely now that I've thought about it a bit more. It has to go somewhere, and it can't just circulate forever.

Great post Daniel. How are the studies going?

Pretty good.

Here are some links I found interesting:

ABC Factcheck with obesity experts (10-10-2014) The video from that page is also on youtube:

http://youtu.be/gW176oIiygg

Excellent video. I especially like when Proietto says "unless obesity is defined as a disease we will never be able to have subsidised pharmacotherapy to suppress hunger and maintain the weight loss".

WHO considering to HALVE the recommended daily intake of sugar. (2014)
Sugars: a uniquely obesogenic nutrient? (2012)

[Little Rik]

You always get nutcases that go to the extreme.
Most of the vegan are very healthy.
A Peta demonstration in London show that the extreme is not the norm.
http://www.demotix.com/photo/6155282/pet...day-london

[rexbeccarox]

Did someone say Adipose?



OK. Sorry. Carry on.

[miniboes]

I agree that the fruitarian diet is quite stupid. The nutrient deficiency that it results in is not apparent for vegans in general, however. I don't think you can make that generalization.

[Aoi Magi]

We are omnivores, we evolved from hunter/gatherers, just deal with it. Is it too f*kin hard to just exercise and burn off the extra calories instead of going on weird diet plans?

[miniboes]

We are omnivores, we evolved from hunter/gatherers, just deal with it. Is it too f*kin hard to just exercise and burn off the extra calories instead of going on weird diet plans?

Well, however much you exercise, if you have a bad diet you're not getting far. I for one required both and managed to lose 12 kilos. It is also to be noted that if you eat plants rather than animals you do not actually get extra calories that easily, in fact because the fiber fills you up you eat less calories and lose weight that way.

"We are omnivores" and "we evolved from hunter/gatherers" are not very useful claims in my opinion. That we can eat meat does not mean we need it or that it's actually healthy. When we ate meat it was probably corpses left by more proficient predators that actually had claws or sharp teeth or high speed to kill things. Fossils of human teeth show we ate mostly plants anyway.