Stig Bengmark - Anti-Inflammatory Diet Solution: Heal Your Immune System, Boost Your Brain, Strengthen Your Heart

T HE PICTURE OF a long-ago breakfast meeting pops up in my memory when Stigs name is mentioned. We are meeting in a hotel in Stockholm to plan research projects, and it is 8 oclock on a Saturday morning.

Stig chose the hour for the meeting. I wondered quietly what would make the (then) eighty-five-year-old professor want to meet at such an odd hour. The answer was soon obvious. It is all about passion. Passion to make us healthier, a passion for curbing our lifestyle-inflicted illnesses, and a passion to prevent us from ending up as patients under Stigs or his successors knife. It is urgent! It is so pressing that Stig believed an 8 a.m. meeting on a Saturday morning was completely reasonable.

So who is this Stig? He is a professor who practiced surgery at the University of Lund in Sweden. He headed the surgery department at the university hospital for thirty years and led so many important surgical assignments both in Sweden and abroad that his CV would need all the space meant for this foreword and more. The medical database Pubmed contains more than five hundred scientific papers by Stig Bengmark, and he has tutored hundreds of doctoral candidates and other students. This shows tremendous productivity. Stigs name still has a somewhat legendary ring to it in the world of surgery; he is known for his exactitude and for his breakthrough ideas, methods, and forward thinking that have had great impact.

But who is he really? For the answer we need to look at his passion and inquisitiveness. After specializing for many years on the liverthe bodys detoxifierStig started to question if there wasnt a way to prevent some of the serious illnesses he saw in his everyday workload. But how? Were there areas of our lifestyles that we needed to change?

When retirement gave Stig time on his hands, he decided to follow what has now been his lodestar for the last twenty-five years. He searched for the answer to why so many people develop diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart, and circulatory problemsnot to mention why there are so many digestive problems. At last he had the time to study all the medical literature and make a compilation of all that we currently know on the subject. Having decided his path, Stig accepted a position as visiting professor in London and got to work.

Soon Stig arrived at a number of conclusions that are now summarized in his twelve commandments (which you will find in this book). A new system of knowledge grew in which microbiome, dietary fiber, sugar, and how often we eat are taken very seriously. The right, good kind of fat has been shown not to be dangerous. Sugar ended up in the crosshairs. Stig explains how to reduce a kind of inflammation that is so low-grade we dont even know it is there; but because it is chronic, it helps to hasten aging of body tissues.

Stig tested hundreds of bacterial strains to find the ones that could best control this low-grade inflammation. This led to the introduction of several new products on the market. Suddenly he wasnt just a physician, researcher, and professor, but also an entrepreneur with a social conscience. His goal was to help us all live healthier.

Today we talk about social entrepreneurship. Perhaps this took hold in Stig long before it became a buzzword? Perhaps Stig truly is Swedens first social entrepreneur? He is, in my opinion, one of the best social entrepreneurs; because to work to radically improve peoples health is a journey toward the finest goal we can seta healthier life.

I have to admit Stig has infected me with his passion. What started out as a collection of research collaborations has grown into something that affects my daily life. Id rather go out to the vegetable patch than to the granary and Stigs cocktail is a daily beverage. My sugar and meat consumption is moderate. Has this improved my health? I'm not sure, but I do believe my body likes it. As Im a scientist by profession; I cant help using myself as a guinea pig. My blood vessels showusing two different methods of measurementforty-two years old, while my passport says sixty years old. I must admit to a bit of excess weight, but my blood fats and blood pressure are like a teenagers. This was not the case with my father at my age. He had just been hospitalized with a massively enlarged heart and very aged blood vessels.

Do I owe my results to Stigs recommendations? It is difficult to be certain when the health of one person looks anecdotal. Nevertheless, what Stig has done in several wide-ranging scientific overviews is to summarize the known literature, and use this together with his own research to draw his conclusions. Stig has translated science to the benefit of us all.

There is, of course, much more to discover and Stig doesnt hold the answers to all questions. He might, perhaps, even be wrong sometimes in his eagerness to understand. Perhaps Stigs conclusions drawn from current knowledge about how to change lifestyle for a healthier life wont stand the test of time. Personally, though, I doubt that we can get a better and more accessible summary than Stigs of todays knowledge about lifestyle and health issues. This gives Stig probably his finest titlepeople educator!

You who read this are lucky. You are allowed to partake of a lifes work of passion. Hopefully you will be infected, just like I am, by Stigs passion!

Stockholm, October 2018
Martin Schalling, Professor of Medical Genetics,
Karolinska Institutet

M Y NAME IS Stig Bengmark.

I was born in stervla, outside Uppsala, Sweden, in 1929. My parents practiced a very healthy lifestyle. My father, a landscape gardener who was also a Free Church pastor, taught us the benefits and wholesomeness of the plant world.

My mother fed me lots of mashed vegetables and fruit when I was very young. In those days there werent a lot of packaged baby cereals or canned baby foods around to stuff children with. I increasingly realize what a great gift my mothers food must have been for my intestinal flora.

My childhood experience may partially explain why I today hold forth on the subject that people ought to eat themselves healthy instead of sick. In addition, they ought to be more physically active and less stressed.

As a possible profession, I first considered psychology; perhaps psychiatry. But my impatience got the better of me, and I decided on surgery instead. I wanted to see results fast.

My thirty years as a surgeon (19581988) and head of surgery at the University of Lund, Sweden (19701994), have certainly increased my insight into human nature as well as the fragility of the human body. Despite all precautions taken, far too many patients suffered grave infections after having surgery. They fell ill even though everybody was treated with antibiotics, the miracle drug of the era.

I came to another important insight in 1986; the fact that antibiotics could do more harm than good when used in connection with surgery. Youll soon find out how I came to that realization, but from that day on, my research has concentrated on the role of the colons good bacteria in peoples health.