Aseem Malhotra - The 21-Day Immunity Plan

The 21-Day Immunity Plan

How to Rapidly Improve Your Metabolic Health
and Resilience to Fight Infection

Dr Aseem Malhotra

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

Dr Aseem Malhotra is an NHS-trained consultant cardiologist and professor of evidence-based medicine. He is a trustee of the Kings Fund, a pioneer of the lifestyle medicine movement in the UK and a founding member of Action on Sugar. He is a frequent expert commentator in print and broadcast media in the UK and internationally, and has written for the BMJ , British Journal of Sports Medicine and European Scientist , among many other publications. He is the co-author of the bestselling The Pioppi Diet , along with Donal ONeill.

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Yellow Kite

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Aseem Malhotra 2020

The right of Aseem Malhotra to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover image: Shutterstock.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Paperback ISBN 978 1 529 34967 2

eBook ISBN 978 1 529 34968 9

Yellow Kite

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

I dedicate this book to my late mother Dr Anisha Malhotra and my father Dr Kailash Chand Malhotra for their love, unwavering support, kindness and through example teaching me the true meaning of compassion.

Disclaimer

This book is not a replacement for working with your healthcare professionals who know your specific circumstances. All matters, treatments and specific questions regarding your health care should be discussed with your GP or a suitably qualified medical person. The author and publisher disclaim any liability directly or indirectly from the use of the material in this book by any person.

Contents

Foreword

Dr Aseem Malhotra is a quite remarkable man. Hes a consultant cardiologist who took a step back and asked himself why more and more people were getting cardiovascular disease. As well as treating his patients conditions, he took time to think very deeply about how he could prevent people from falling sick in the first place.

His first book, The Pioppi Diet , was a result of these reflections. It helped me on a health journey that led me to lose eight stone in weight, reduce my blood pressure and reverse type 2 diabetes.

His approach to helping people get well is to explain to them, without judgement, that the system is stacked against them; that the obesogenic environment makes it almost impossible to avoid sugary, ultra-processed food. Just think about this for a moment: we serve burgers, chips and ice-cream to heart patients in NHS hospitals. Our kids can buy donuts in school. You can buy a pumpkin spiced latte in a high-street coffee shop with more than 14 teaspoons of sugar in it. When you pause and think about it, you realise how crazy that is.

So its not all your fault if you suffer from conditions related to excess body fat, best determined by your metabolic health, which affects even many of those with a so-called normal body weight. But to get well and stay well, there are lifestyle changes you have to make. And let me tell you: if you take Aseems advice on how to balance your nutrition, become more active and manage your stress, you stand a good chance of living a longer, healthier and more fulfilling life.

Britain was suffering an obesity epidemic prior to COVID-19 hitting us. Nearly 10% of the NHS budget is spent on treating type 2 diabetes alone. Yet research by organisations like Virta Health suggest that with a change of nutrition from the standard Western diet that is high in ultra-processed food and sugar, nearly half of those with type 2 diabetes can reverse their condition or significantly reduce the amount of medication they have to take.

Whether you reverse type 2 diabetes or reduce your blood glucose levels isnt just an academic exercise. Youre actually getting your life back. You dont nod off in the middle of the afternoon. You take fewer trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. You have more energy. You just feel better. And there are millions of people that can have this joy returning to their lives.

In the era of COVID-19, you have an even stronger argument to get well and return to good metabolic health. If you have high blood pressure, are overweight, or have type 2 diabetes, you stand more of a chance of being adversely affected by the virus. Nearly 8% of critically ill patients with COVID-19 in intensive care units have been morbidly obese, compared with 2.9% of the general population. Those are probabilities you want to reduce if you can.

And so, Aseems timely, evidence-based and brilliant new 21-day immunity plan is a perfect way to take the first step to transforming your life. I wish you well on your journey to better health.

Tom Watson

Chair of UK Music and Former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party

Introduction

In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.

Albert Einstein

When the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, was admitted to hospital unwell from symptoms of COVID-19 in early April 2020, the country feared the worst. I had observed that a number of his slim colleagues who had also contracted the virus remained relatively well, managing to cope by self-isolating at home. But rather than coincidence, through analysing the published research and with my own knowledge as a doctor practising in the NHS for almost two decades, it was clear to me that people who were overweight and suffering from conditions associated with (but not exclusive to) obesity, were at significantly increased risk of complications and death, not just from COVID-19 but from many infections.

In early March, data from Italy, a country that had experienced high death rates from COVID-19, revealed that 99% of those that had died had been suffering from at least one chronic condition. Research published in the Lancet demonstrated that 60% of those that died in Wuhan, China, where the virus is thought to have originated, suffered from high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.

What was missing from the mainstream media discussion and public health messaging surrounding the virus, was that the underlying root cause of these conditions is related to lifestyle (fuelled by the environments in which we grow, live and work) and that dietary changes alone, as my own clinical experience with patients had also demonstrated, could rapidly and substantially improve many of these risk factors.

After my comments that the prime ministers more severe experience of the illness was likely linked to his weight were widely publicised, the secretary of state for health and social care asked me to provide him with more detailed evidence linking COVID-19 with obesity. But I informed him, and as you will come to learn in reading this book, this was far from being an issue about obesity alone. Its about all the preventable and modifiable lifestyle factors that lead to an immune system that is not as resilient as it could be.

But aside from my ability to analyse and provide a medical response to the crisis, absorbing the unnecessary suffering and deaths of thousands of people from this potentially deadly contagion was something that had a very personal resonance with me too, and gave me an even greater incentive to write this book: the premature deaths of two family members who suffered and died because of a compromised immune system.