| The Power of Food The EDGE Interview with Dr. Ruth Heidrich by Tim Miejan Ruth Heidrich, Ph.D., 70, is a six-time Ironman Triathlon finisher, holder of more than 900 gold medals from every distance from 100 meter dashes to 5K road races to ultramarathons and triathlons. She has completed more than 60 marathons all over the world, including Boston, New York, Moscow, and has held three world fitness records in her age group at the famed Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas. She also was named one of the "Top Ten Fittest Women in North America" in 1999. She is the author of A Race For Life, The Race For Life Cookbook, several videos and co-host of a weekly talk show, Nutrition & You on KWAI, in Honolulu. Her next book, Senior Fitness: Empowering Your Golden Years, will come out in September. You can pre-order it at Amazon.com A native of Hawaii, she is a graduate of UCLA and holds a Master's degree in psychology, and a doctorate in Health Education. She has also taught in this field at the University of Hawaii. As of the year 2004, she has been vegan for 22 years and a daily runner for 36 years. She's run the marathons in Boston, New York and Moscow, run at the Great Wall of China, and all points in between. She spoke with The EDGE from her home about food and how it has played a major role in being able to accomplish so much and remain so healthy. When did you first become aware of the power of food in your life? Dr. Ruth Heidrich: Probably 22 years ago when I started training for the Ironman triathlon. One of the things that came up for me at that time was a diagnosis of breast cancer. Up to that point, I didn't think too much about food. I ate the way most people in America ate. At the time of my cancer diagnosis, Dr. John McDougall [www.drmcdougall.com] was doing research on breast cancer and diet and was looking for subjects who would participate in his study. He was trying to prove that diet was a factor in causing breast cancer in women and men. So that was the very first inkling I had about the power of food, that it has a negative power. The wrong foods can actually cause cancer -- and heart disease, as well. As a result in enrolling in this scientific, clinical study, I had to agree that my diet would consist of only plant foods. I was to eliminate all animal foods. I was already a marathoner at that time. I had been running for 14 years and was a serious runner, in that I did it every day. I wasn't a serious competitor, because I wasn't quite fast enough. I felt I was too old to be really competitive. And I went through the shock of, "Oh my God. I'm so fit. I run marathons. How could I be so sick as to have cancer?" I had the surgery to remove the tumor, but with no chemo and no radiation. The treatment was going to be first the surgery and then the diet. While I was recovering from the surgery -- I hadn't been back to work yet -- I happened to see ABC's Wide World of Sports coverage of the Ironman Triathlon. It was 1982. It just grabbed me. I was transfixed. I told myself, "I have got to do that! That looks like so much fun!" I could swim, having been raised in Hawaii. The bicycle is a piece of cake right? You just sit there and pedal. And I had the hardest part, the marathon, handled, having done a lot of them by that time. So I knew I would be doing the Ironman triathlon. I started training for it with the new diet -- again, the power of food, all kinds of plant food, fruits, vegetables and grains. And I had enough energy to take me through a training regimen that included the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run. After having done a couple Ironman triathlons in Kona, Hawaii, I was approached by Continental Airlines. They wanted to sponsor me and fly me to New Zealand for an Ironman event there. I was first place in my age group by 32 minutes. And I was the only vegan there. Most everybody else was eating regular food, so I thought, "Ah ha! The power of food again." I came back with a New Zealand newspaper, big picture on the front page with the headline: "Ruth: A Woman of Iron." I threw that on the desk of the sports director of Continental Airlines and said, "There! Take that!" He looked at that and his jaw dropped, and he looked at me and said, "Where do you want to go next?" I said, "What? What do you mean?" He said, "Don't they have an Ironman event in Japan?" And I said, "Yeah, but I need some recovery time!" I thought to myself, "Shut up lady. He's offering you a free trip to Japan." So I figured I would not stop training and just keep on going." So in 49 weeks, from October 1986 to October 1987, I completed four Ironman triathlons -- Kona, Hawaii in October, New Zealand in March, Japan in August and Kona again in October. At that point, nobody thought you could do more than one a year. Since then, more people have, but back then, it was common knowledge that if you did an Ironman, it took so much out of you and had to recover for a long time. With this diet, I was receiving so many complex carbohydrates and I was able to do it. What do you think of the current emphasize on low-carbohydrate diets? Heidrich: I have to laugh at the low-carb diet. It is going to have such long-term repercussions on people's health. People don't understand that the way to control your weight is exercise. And people don't do enough. I really believe that walking, which is being promoted so much, is not enough. It doesn't get people breathing hard enough. A lot of people really believe that walking a mile and running a mile burns the same number of calories. It's not true. You only burn half the number of calories. Just because it takes you longer to walk, you aren't burning the same number of calories. Your metabolism never gets going fast enough. You're not breathing hard, you're not sweating and you're not burning the calories. I promote triathlons because people need some kind of goal. For many, it is competition. If you line a whole bunch of people at the starting line and say there's a prize for the one who gets to the finish line first, people will turn themselves inside out to get there. How have you been able to accomplish so much over such a long period of time? Heidrich: For me, the power of food has taken me on this journey of now over 900 first-place trophies in races from track-and-field -- running events, the pentathlon -- marathons and ultramarathons (distances beyond the standard 26.2 mile marathon). I've done the "Run to the Sun," which is 37 miles on Maui. It begins at sea level and rises 10,000 feet up to Haleakala. It's an ultramarathon, and you're climbing. I got a first place in my age group there. I know it's not that I'm gifted athletically. I did the training, as required, and I ate the right fuel. And it is plant food. The breakdown is 80 percent carbohydrates, 10 percent fat and 10 percent protein. The idea that a lot of people have with the low-carb diets is that you need a lot of protein. But protein does not give you the glycogen that you need during strenuous exercise. That comes from carbs. So what is needed is to change the type of carbohydrates we eat? Heidrich: Yes, moving toward pure foods from refined ones. Get rid of the white flour, white sugar products, and anything processed and refined. My diet is whole plant foods. What led you to your plant-filled breakfast? Heidrich: This goes back to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. I was invited to work as a handler for some of the athletes, which was a thrill for me to get to go there and live in the Olympic Village with the athletes. As you looked around in the cafeteria, which was a large, round building, you would see the different ethnic groups in their separate places. The Japanese athletes ate in the Japanese section and the Africans went to the African section. I walked around to see what the different ethnic groups ate. I saw that the Western athletes -- those from America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe -- ate mostly bacon, eggs, sausage, omelets and white toast. The others, including so-called Third World, developing countries, were eating vegetables. The Japanese and Chinese had miso soup with greens. I knew they were good athletes and wondered what would happen if I switched to vegetables in the morning. I already knew from my studies in nutrition that vegetables were much higher in the nutrient-per-calorie ratio. It made such perfect sense to me. I had already completed a number of Ironmen. I figured it would be beneficial if I could get even more nutrients in my body during my first meal of the day. It made perfect sense to me. I tried adding kale, romaine lettuce, watercress and all of the greens that I had seen the Asian athletes eating for breakfast, and I found that I liked it. Now, when I suggest this to other people, most of them react with a, "yuck." When you're not healthy, for some reason grains and fruits sound more appealing. I haven't made too many converts as far as veggies for breakfast. They want the cereal and toast, bagels and pastries, which are actually very low on the nutritional charts. What will it take for the general public to come to understand the true value of whole foods? Heidrich: There is so much money to be made on the current Atkins® diet. You see it on billboards, at bus stops, in magazines and newspapers. Doctors, who have very little knowledge about nutrition, are promoting it, because they know they have to get the weight off of their patients. Obesity is a killer. What will be the long-term effect of the low-carb diet? Heidrich: You'll see increased rates of heart disease and stroke, due to a build-up of animal protein and fat in the arteries. You'll see more cancer -- and osteoporosis, because high protein leeches calcium from the bones and leads to bone weakening. Animal protein leads to arthritis -- both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. You will see an increase in diabetes, because if you're not exercising, you are not burning up the glucose and the glycogen from the blood, and it builds up and creates high blood sugar. So if what you're saying is true, the medical community is actually serving itself by promoting low-carb diets, because more people will get sick and will need its services. Heidrich: Yes. Hospitals will get more customers and the drug companies -- oh, my heavens! There are billions of dollars to be made in drugs. They are promoting the idea that everybody needs to be on a cholesterol-lowering drug, because diets don't work. Of course diets don't work when you switch from one type of animal protein to another. Switching from beef to chicken or fish doesn't matter, because they have the same amount of protein per ounce. A lot of people don't know that. Doctors will try switching a patient from beef to chicken, and when that doesn't help, they say, "Well, that didn't work, so let's try this drug." The pharmaceutical company ends up to be the big benefactor. What would you say to someone who is looking for a diet that is healthy and tastes good? Heidrich: I'm trying to explain in my books that the whole foods are so good, if we could just get people to try eating this way. Exercise by enrolling in a mini-triathlon: a 400-meter swim, which takes you about 10 minutes; a 12-mile bike ride; and a 5-kilometer run, which takes about 20 minutes. Doesn't that sound like fun? You have to eat healthy and get the exercise. You have to do both. It can't be just the diet and it can't be just the exercise. Most books that are out there promote one or the other. It's just been an entrée to an exciting life at an age when most people hit 50 and say it's downhill from here. That's when most of the degenerative diseases hit and people think they are a natural part of aging. I am now 70 and I'm still exercising and eating whole plant food. I'm still running and still competing. I'm using weights now, because I think we need to stress ourselves more than just running, biking and swimming. My bone density has been followed by doctors for 22 years, and it's way off the charts. It's much denser than women at their peak density, supposedly at about 30 years of age. So you have at least 50 years to go, right? Heidrich: (Laughing) I hope so! I have had a few set-backs. I've had probably every injury that is known to runners. But again, the power of food -- when you're eating right, your recovery is faster. You heal faster. I've been hit by trucks twice on the bicycle. The second time was when a truck full of kitchen cabinets made a left turn right in front of me in an intersection. The bumper of the truck hit me in the calf area of my leg and shattered my tibia. I flew in the air and landed on my right hip and broke my pelvis in three places. The doctors in the E.R. said that had I not been so fit, there was no question in their minds that I would've been killed, due to the extent of the injuries. The orthopedic surgeon was called in to put me back together. He knew who I was and was surprised to see such a finely tuned athlete turned into an invalid. He said, "I'm afraid your racing days are over." He put me back together and I began physical therapy. While he said I was doing great, I didn't see enough progress after a month, so I doubled my therapy to four times a week rather than twice a week as covered by my medical health plan. Four months later, I did my first 10-K race. Back to your theme, "The Power of Food," it is incredible. It has the power to give you major disease and it has the power to power you through an Ironman triathlon or ultramarathon. Isn't changing our diet one of the most difficult habits to change? Heidrich: It is. We start the orientation and brainwashing at age 2 and all through school. It is the meat and dairy industries that provide nutritional material to teachers. By high school, kids are addicted to fast foods. It's pretty discouraging. I've gone through this journey of cancer and Ironmen, and as each year passes, it is another year into the journey. Even after 22 years, I have never really considered myself cured of breast cancer. I know that if I went back to eating the standard American diet, it would recur. There's no way you're going to get rid of every single cancer cell out of anybody's body. Cancer is happening all the time. We depend upon our immune system to detect and destroy those cells. And the typical diet weakens our immune system. Most people don't realize the extent that it's really true. When I hit the five-year mark of recovery from cancer, that was a big celebration, but still I knew I wasn't out of the woods. When I hit the 10-year mark, I started thinking, "I can start getting people's attention." Look, this was a case of advanced breast cancer with a tumor the size of a golf ball and it spread to one lung and my bones. When I hit the 15-year mark, it was another milestone. When 20 years came, I started working on the book Senior Fitness: Empowering Your Golden Years, which will be out in September. Disease is reversible. When I first met Dr. McDougall, I told him, "It's too late. I already got advanced cancer." He said, "It's never too late." Change your diet and get rid of what's causing the problem. Then the body can heal itself. That's the message we have to get out to people. - - - Dr. Ruth Heidrich's Daily Vegan Meal Plan BREAKFAST: Served in a LARGE bowl. All items are raw. Lots of greens for the base: 3-4 leaves of Romaine, 1 stalk kale, 1 stalk of celery, 10 sprigs of parsley or cilantro. Slice and add 1 large carrot, 1/2 mango, 1 large banana, and half dozen large, seeded Globe grapes. Top off with 1 rounded Tbl of B12-fortified nutritional yeast, and 1-2 Tbl of blackstrap molasses. ¥ Because I eat this after my daily workout, this is served late and I eat no midday meal. SUPPER: Lots of greens for the base: 3-4 broccoli florettes, 2-3 stalks of kale, 1 stalk of celery, 1/4 unpeeled English cucumber, 1/4 head of green or red cabbage, 1 large carrot, 1/2 red (or orange, green, or yellow) bell pepper, 1/2 large field tomato, half a head of garlic (about 6 cloves) Half of a yam or sweet potato, raw. On top of the above ingredients, to 1-2 cups of prepared salsa (mild, medium or hot), add 1 Tbl of regular mustard, 1 Tbl of flax seed, freshly ground DESSERT: A base of blueberries (fresh or frozen, depending on availability and season) - 1/2 cup; 1/2 cup of a second fresh fruit (e.g. strawberries, bananas, grapes,); top with a small handful of walnuts, and 1Tbl. blackstrap molasses. SNACKS: For those times when the hunger pangs strike, I eat carrot or celery sticks, grapes, dates, and in the evening, plain air-popped popcorn. For more on Dr. Ruth Heidrich and her continuing journey of fitness in combination with whole foods, visit www.ruthheidrich.com, and to pre-order her upcoming book, Senior Fitness: Empowering Your Golden Years (Lantern Books), visit Amazon.com and search for the author's name. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com Copyright © 2004 Tim Miejan |
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July 2004 |
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