Further parts of the book may become repetitive and this may make the reading experience less enjoyable. The best news, however, is that you don’t need drugs to cut off fat’s blood supply. This approach has been borrowed to study the effects of food because many foods contain natural chemicals that can cut off the blood supply to fat and shrink it. Green tea, for example, contains a bioactive compound called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which is a potent angiogenesis inhibitor. 3 Clinical studies have tested extracts from green tea and shown that people drinking them have reduced abdominal fat and waist circumference. 4 Researchers at Inha University in Korea examined 10,030 subjects in the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study and found that women who consumed four or more cups of green tea per week had a 44 percent decreased risk of abdominal obesity. 5 All this to say: Seventy percent of your immune system is in your intestines, where it communicates with your gut microbiome. Part of your immune system is also embedded in your fat. Like the rest of your body’s defenses, your immune system is strongly influenced by the foods you eat. The same principle also applies to fat. The heftier the fat mass, the more blood vessels are needed to keep it nourished. Cut off the blood supply to a mass of fat, and it can’t grow larger.

The problem comes when your diet causes your preadipocytes to become overly active and create too many fat cells. Too much fat disrupts your hormones, so your preadipocytes need to be reined in. Foods such as blueberries, goji berries, and turmeric have restraining power over preadipocytes, taming them so that they do not create too many new fat cells. 10 This book is a wonderful minestrone - a science-led mash up of fascinating facts with smart guidance on where food and fat should be going in the future (who thought fat could be so interesting ?) with a light sprinkling of food history, tasty menus and the immortal Bruce Lee. A perfect feast for someone who wants to lose a few pounds and get a lot healthier. Like me in fact. Peter Gabriel William W Li, MD is a renowned physician, scientist, and bestselling author known for his groundbreaking work in angiogenesis.

Choosing the right foods can take your health to the next level. In my previous book, Eat to Beat Disease, I gave a comprehensive primer on your body’s health defense systems. Since then, medical research has greatly expanded our understanding of the many ways our health defenses are linked to our body fat, and vice versa. What this means is that eating to boost your health defenses can also help rein in your body fat. The harm caused by excess body fat also directly hinders the body’s health defense systems, making you more vulnerable to disease. In this first chapter, I will lay out, for the first time ever, the fascinating connections among food, fat, and your five health defenses. So let’s take a closer look at how each of these systems does its job and how they interact with your body fat. Heroes of Health: Fat and Your Five Defense Systems The Angiogenesis System Dr. Li is rare among physicians in that he's actually more interested in keeping you healthy than chasing your disease. In this excellent new book, he marshals in the best, up-to-date science in an engaging way. If you want to know what to eat and why, it's all here! Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and #1 New York Times Bestselling author of The Blue Zones books In this review, we will take a closer look at ‘Eat To Beat Your Diet’ so you can get acquainted with the main ideas and topics, the book covers, and decide whether it is worth reading. More than seventy diseases can occur when your angiogenesis system is weakened and there are either excessive or insufficient blood vessels. Some of the most common diseases include obesity, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and even Alzheimer’s disease. Insufficient angiogenesis leads to wounds that do not heal or an oxygen-starved heart and brain and organ failure. Excessive blood vessels, on the other hand, can leak fluid and bleed, causing organ damage. If this should happen in your eyes, leaking vessels can cause vision loss in conditions like age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. Whether you have a large body or a small one, excess body fat grows… like a cancer. Just like a tumor, fat needs a blood supply to nourish its mass. To grow larger and become dangerous, growing fatty tissue must take on an ever-increasing blood supply by recruiting new blood vessels through a process called angiogenesis—just like a cancer does. Tumors are angiogenesis-dependent, and so is burgeoning fat.

Your DNA is a six-foot-long folded ribbon of genetic material coiled inside every single one of your 40 trillion cells (very similar to the number of bacteria in your body!). This ribbon contains your genetic code, the instructions for cells to make the proteins your body needs to stay alive. But less than 2 percent of your DNA is used to guide the creation of proteins. Most of your DNA is used to coordinate the inner workings of the two hundred different types of cells in your body to keep them functioning for health.

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Your body contains cells whose job is to constantly regenerate and repair your internal organs. These are your stem cells, also called progenitor cells. They have the amazing ability to morph into any type of cell depending on your body’s needs. You were born with 750 million of these progenitors that are stored in your bone marrow, skin, and fat. Throughout life, your stem cells are spurred into action when a damaged organ needs to be repaired or when it grows—like muscle or fat. Thank you, Dr. Li. My quality of life has changed in large part due to your book, Eat to Beat Your Diet. Food will NEVER be the same to me going forward. Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer by William W Li, MD is not a typical "diet" book. His objective is to educate readers about the best food choices to attain optimal health instead of relying upon pharmaceuticals or surgical solutions. Dr. Li doesn't want to vilify fat because