Dr. Sears proposes low-cost solutions for the health crisis
Last Updated Aug 2007
Dr. Sears last week offered a surprisingly simple solution to the financial dilemma
that the medical insurance industry faces: The reduction of silent inflammation
using the combination of the Zone Diet and high-dose fish oil.
"Type 2 diabetes is the wild card that threatens future health-care costs. While
much of the focus on the future of health-care costs is on the impact of the aging
population, the greatest threat might be the younger population in which obesity
and type 2 diabetes are growing at epidemic rates," he said.
Dr. Sears spoke to leading executives in the health insurance industry at the
American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) conference, which meets once a year
to discuss how to contain the growing impact of health care on the economy.
Rather than looking at the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes as simply an
inability to eat less and exercise more, Dr. Sears said that both of these
epidemics should be considered as different forms of adipose tumors.
"The underlying cause of such adipose tumors is silent inflammation that can only
be reversed by diet, but the key is to treat food as a drug to be taken at the
right time and right dose," he said.
Dr. Sears presented clinical evidence that the Zone Diet and high-dose fish oil
have dramatic impacts on diabetes in a very short period of time as well as on
seemingly intractable disease conditions, such as prostate cancer and neurological
disorders.
The dilemma for the health-insurance industry is that anti-inflammatory diets and
high-dose fish oil are currently non-reimbursable, thus making it difficult for
patients to follow these recommendations on a lifetime basis. The solution may lie
with the processed food industry, he said.
"The processed food industry got us into this problem of silent inflammation, and
it can also get us out of it. The challenge to the health insurance industry is
to pay for these processed foods and supplements that have been demonstrated
to have clinically equivalent, if not superior, results to current drug
treatments," he said. "Economically, it may become more cost effective to eat our
way out of the current epidemic of type 2 diabetes rather than to treat this life-
long condition with drugs."
Dr. Sears also discussed how a new line of frozen Zone meals from Cedarlane Foods
is undergoing testing in reversing type 2 diabetes in multiple clinical trials.
These frozen Zone meals are indicative of this new generation of therapeutic foods
that can have a rapid impact in chronic disease conditions.
"If these trials are successful, then health insurance companies may have to answer
to their members why such a therapeutically superior treatment program is being
withheld from them," he said.
AHIP is composed of more than 1,300 health insurance companies that serve more than
200 million Americans. This year's conference in Phoenix featured speakers whose
topics ranged from high-tech solutions to improve health care economics, to Wall
Street's view of managed care, to the economic trends that threaten the foundation
of the country's fiscal stability.
Perhaps the most telling statement came during the question-and-answer period after
Dr. Sears' talk when one of the executives said, "It can't be this easy."
Dr. Sears replied, "It is simply a very low-cost solution with a very high-health
yield."