The good life is killing us! Our country is in the grip of an epidemic of chronic western-lifestyle related diseases. This harsh reality isn’t sexy. It is insidious and almost invisible and gains little exposure in the media. Our national road toll is insignificant alongside the loss of life and vigour attended by these chronic diseases. The vested interests of the food industry and a plethora of industries making a healthy living off this burden of disease obfuscate the truth.
The good news (and challenge) for every Australian, and of course public-health policy-makers and purse-string holders, is that the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease that causes tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes each year is almost completely preventable, arrestable and, in many patients, reversible. Likewise, type 2 diabetes is the product of our sedentary high fat diets and, like heart disease, almost unseen in people groups that eat differently to us.
This realisation hit me toward the conclusion of a 17-year career as a paramedic with the Queensland Ambulance Service. Responding to gripping chest pain or cardiac arrest – pushing on the outside of folks’ chests – was clinically mundane and a daily reality. Insidiously, yet unfalteringly, this disease of the lining of the arteries had progressed from childhood. In its onset there was nothing sudden about it! I could see that my patients had been sick for a long time, with plaques forming inside these arteries obstructing blood flow to vital organs or too often rupturing without warning and with tragic loss of life or crippling loss of vital capacity. The last 10 of my Ambo years were spent in both Warwick and Stanthorpe where I still remain connected to many families who have suffered what I now see as needless losses.
While this reality was being driven home for me at the bedside and on the road-side, US cardiovascular epidemiologist Dr Hans Diehl was conceiving CHIP – the Coronary Health Improvement Project – an educational and motivational program which, in just 30 days, decreases the risk of heart attack and stroke, lowers blood pressures and cholesterol, and at the same time disarms diabetes. The program also addresses the issues of osteoporosis and reduces the risk of some of the most prevalent cancers. His program is grassroots, accessible and supported by scientific studies in peer reviewed journals (see www.chiphealth.com) Outcomes are consistent with the work of others like Essylstyn and Ornish who have demonstrated dramatic reversal of chronic disease using a lifestyle prescription.
These ‘optimal lifestyle’ changes are affordable, sustainable, simple, safe and side-effect free! And unlike so many diets, it offers participants the opportunity to not only eat more and weigh less, but to embark on a trajectory of continued and never-before-achieved weight optimisation. At the CHIP’s core is a simple low-fat, low-salt, plant-based diet and community connectedness like that of the ‘Blue Zone’ – in Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda, Nicoya Peninsula and Icaria.
Whilst undergoing post-graduate nursing study in New Zealand in 2008, I was able to observe first-hand this project in action and was keen to bring it back to my own community. The Stanthorpe SDA Church auspiced the project and 2010 saw a pilot group of 19 locals embark on the month-long CHIP lifestyle makeover. The results have been consistent with those of 50,000 other CHIP graduates. When you know better, you can do better! And with the support of a group of fellow traveller,s change can make for an exciting and enjoyable journey.
On Friday, March 4, CHIP will launch another 30-day program in Stanthorpe. Funding from Queensland Health will subsidise 60 participants. To learn more I invite you to attend one of four free one-hour information sessions at the Granite Belt Neighbourhood Centre on Wednesday, February 23, at either 10am or 7pm. (Feel free to contact local CHIP ‘graduates’ Karen Steinhardt on 4685 2045 or Theresia Vanderpal on 0448 221 147 for further information.)
Do you want to do something about the modifiable risk factors – cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol or obesity? Have you been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or even advanced heart disease, eg angina? You’re invited to look at what this lifestyle prescription can do for your health.
Health isn’t everything … but without it, everything is nothing! Perhaps CHIP is the lifeline many in our community have been waiting for.
David Entermann
RN Director
Coronary Health Improvement Project Southern Downs Chapter
Eukey
