FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 27, 2020
For information, contact: Els Fonteyne | els@hfscommunications.com or Emily Snayd | emily@hfscommunications.com or Jody Kass | JKass@PlantPureCommunities.org
RECOVERY FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: TESTING, TRACING, & NUTRITION
Nonprofit group releases Part 2 of urgent commentary from T. Colin Campbell, PhD
Launches Global 10-Day Jumpstart Challenge
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF
As the country struggles to find the right path to reopen our economy, it will be crucial to keep the rate of hospitalizations low – so that the hospital system is not overrun. Governors across the nation are now confronted with the conundrum of figuring out how to lift social distancing limitations without triggering a second wave of hospitalizations. What has so far been missing from the public dialogue is the potential of nutrition to help citizens defend against the worst effects of COVID-19, and thereby reduce strain on the hospital system. As pressure builds to reopen the economy even with the prospect of ongoing waves of the pandemic, this oversight will only get more glaring.
The nonprofit PlantPure Communities (PPC) today released an important commentary from T. Colin Campbell, PhD, that offers a nutrition strategy that has promise in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. This commentary is the second part of an April 3rd article which spoke to the revolutionary idea that people may be able to defend themselves against the worst effects of the infection through their food choices. In the commentary released today, Dr. Campbell makes the case that a low protein, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet, known to comprehensively prevent, and sometimes even reverse a broad range of chronic degenerative diseases, may act in a similar way to minimize viral diseases. According to Campbell, “the nutritional benefits of the WFPB diet are likely to appear, quickly, within days, e.g., lower serum cholesterol (LDL, total), reduced body weight, and decreased blood pressure. This could be especially significant for those currently vulnerable to COVID-19, but not yet infected.”
According to Dr. Campbell, a bio/nutritional researcher with over 60 years experience in the field of nutritional science, a whole food, plant-based diet may offer an important, and to date unappreciated, path to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. His powerful commentary suggests that in addition to testing and tracing to restart the economy, Americans should also be taking steps to address their underlying diet-related conditions (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc.). To implement this important scientific information, the Global 10-Day Jumpstart Challenge was also announced today by PPC – an online, free program offering seminars, daily emails, cooking videos, interactive discussions with medical doctors, and more.
In making these groundbreaking suggestions, Dr. Campbell points to his research in China on diet and lifestyle three decades ago which included research on the hepatitis B virus, whose powerful ability to cause liver cancer, he learned, is strongly controlled by the nutrition offered by this diet, based on data in that study showing a significant association of consuming plant-based food with the formation of antibodies that support immunity. Campbell says that evidence suggests a broader nutrition-viral connection. Campbell, who serves as an advisor to PPC, is famous for his co-authorship of The China Study, now 3 million copies sold and translated into approximately 50 languages. According to Nelson Campbell, son of Dr. Campbell, and founder of PPC, “replacing animal products in our diet with whole plant foods to help us fight COVID-19 should be easier than staying at home for weeks on end — let’s all do our part to get healthier so we can together keep the curve of hospitalizations flattened and restart the economy!” Everyone is invited to sign up today and challenge at least 3 people to take the 10-Day Plant-Based Pledge (and then post it on Facebook and Instagram at #PlantBasedPledge #JumpstartWithNutrition and tag @PlantPureCommunities.)
Key Links: Article & Global Jumpstart!
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INFO ABOUT PLANTPURE COMMUNITIES
Dr. T. Colin Campbell serves on the Advisory Board of PlantPure Communities (PPC), a 501c3 nonprofit organization that works to build stronger, healthier, more sustainable communities through a wide range of research, policy, and program activities and by working with local nonprofits, governments, businesses, and other health and community-based organizations. He also is president of the board of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies that hosts the online certificate course program on plant-based nutrition. PPC supports the PPC Pod Network, which emerged from the 2015 PlantPure Nation film and is comprised of hundreds of independent local groups (Pods) and people promoting the benefits of a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) lifestyle. Pods are groups of like-minded people, working together to share the life-saving nutrition research that shows that a WFPB diet is optimal for humans. To date, there are over 250,000 people involved in the PPC Pod Network (in 23 countries).