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Contact Paden Eye Care CenterNutrition & Health
Dr. Paden is as passionate about your overall health as he is your eye health; after all, they go hand in hand! Optimal full-body wellness, of course, has a positive impact on your vision. Dr. Paden spends a great deal of his spare time researching nutrition and health topics to bring clarity to issues regarding the Western diet.
Paden Eye Care Center in Southern, OR, is proud to deliver actual evidence-based recommendations on nutrition and health consequences.
The Problematic Nature of the Western Diet
According to Dr. Paden, there are two problems with the “western diet”:
- If a recommended diet does not differ dramatically from the standard American diet, then the resulting health outcomes will not dramatically differ from the current situation (worst health outcomes in history, much worse in affluent countries than in the parts of the world where, by choice or by necessity, the people eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet).
- Going along with these dreadful health outcomes, the cost of this “health care” is the highest in the world, nearly double in the nation #2: Germany, which is experiencing the same terrible health outcomes nearly matching ours. Something significant is wrong with this picture!
- “Research” to justify these nonsense diets comes from those whose huge incomes depend on the status quo: The beef and dairy lobby (backed up by the US Department of Agriculture), the drug companies, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetic Association, the American Cancer Society, Susan G Komen for the Cure, Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s, etc.
- Look carefully at the chart below. It shows clearly why this section of our website was written.

Data: From the United Nations and the NIH Chart credit: p. 60 Eat to Live, Copyright © 2003, 2011 by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. Little Brown.
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The Paleo Diet: They get rid of dairy and refined foods. This diet, for these reasons, is a little better than the standard American diet. For this reason, they have a few (true) stories about people who benefited from a change from a truly awful diet to the very suboptimal Paleo diet. They have no serious research and missed the dramatic message in the above chart. They got the “unrefined” part but missed the “plant-based” part of the formula. Dramatic health improvements are possible, but not if you only get it partly right. It’s like dialing 3 out of 4 numbers correctly on a combination lock.
In 2011, US News & World Report rated 25 diets for weight loss, heart health, diabetes, and other health measures. Twenty five different diets, and at the drop-dead bottom of the list: the Paleo diet. Their experts concluded that concerned people are “better off looking elsewhere.”
“Junk” food vegans and their famous health problems: They get the plant-based part correct but miss the “unrefined” (whole foods) part. Again, that combination lock won’t open.
“Junk” vegans and their famous health problems: They get the plant-based part correct but miss the “unrefined” (whole foods) part. Again, that combination lock won’t open.
There is a diet that results in: (“diet” here means what you eat, not a short-lived attempt to starve yourself thin)
- Heart-attack proof, down > 98.5%
- Ischemic strokes down > 98%
- All cancers down > 90%
- Osteoporosis gone
- Obesity and type 2 diabetes gone
- Dementia rare, and not a “normal consequence of aging”
- Arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, like type I diabetes and multiple sclerosis, nearly eliminated
- Benefit to the individual who decides that personal responsibility trumps faith in our failed health care system: Read the above list again. You should decide the value of these proven benefits for yourself: nearly total elimination of our most common, most deadly chronic diseases.
Benefit to the US federal budget: 3½ Pentagon budgets saved each year (numbers calculated by the US government’s Centers for Disease Control). That is real money.
We benefit individually. We benefit as a nation.
Do not listen to nutritional nonsense. It is only your intellect, your mobility, your heart, your kidneys, your legs, your brain, and your life that are at risk.
—Philip Paden, M.D.
Type II diabetes, heart attacks, and cancer risk all come down to a choice that you can make. Read how to do that with the book and DVD suggestions below.
Dr. Paden’s Reading
& Watching List
Forks Over Knives
This is an entertaining and an entirely on-the-mark documentary film. It is your introduction and inspiration to read the following books.
Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
By Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.
The most amazing heart disease story from the US’s best-regarded interventional cardiac facility is the inside view of the most fantastic heart disease story. A “how-to” book with many good recipes. This book presents the MOST STRICT version of the ideal diet, but remember that he treated the very sickest heart patients.
Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition
By T. Colin Campbell, PhD
Dr. Campbell gives the most incisive analysis of our “health care” disaster and why misinformation is easier to come by than the health-promoting real science.
Eat to Live
By Joel Fuhrman
This has been the ultimate “how-to” book to reverse type 2 diabetes and quickly and permanently lose weight. Type 2 diabetes goes away in weeks, and all medications are stopped. Proper food choices (and eating more if you wish) is the ONLY way to eliminate the vascular risk (heart attack, stroke, dementia, etc.) that goes along with medically treated diabetes. Proper food choices (and eating more if you wish) are the ONLY way to eliminate the vascular risk (heart attack, stroke, dementia, etc.)
End of Diabetes
This book is quite new and reflects what Dr. Fuhrman has learned in the years since he wrote Eat To Live. The message is similar, but refined by his ongoing clinical experience. I particularly appreciated the references to research articles that support the recommendations he makes in the book.
The China Study
This book is the scientific basis of all the other books and gives the inside view of food politics in Washington DC. It is long and technical but overall a WOW. It is not a how-to book, nor does it have any recipes.
Further Recommendations
Dr. Paden’s Selected Recipes
From Caldwell Esselstyn’s Prevent and
- Caribbean Black Beans with Mango Salsa over Brown (or Wild) Rice (page 223)
- Tortilla Pie (page 229)
From Rip Esselstyn’s The Engine 2 Diet:
- Raise-the-Roof Sweet Potato-Vegetable Lasagna (page 202)
(Try garnet yams instead of sweet potatoes, and skip the tofu if you wish)
From LeAnne Campbell’s The China Study Cookbook:
- Best Broccoli Salad (page 82)
- Sesame Noodle Salad (page 112)
(My wife, Debbi, makes this without the noodles and we like it just as well…)
From Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live (2011 Revised Edition)
- Black Bean Hummus (Page 254)
Note: Grind the cumin fresh from dried seeds in a mortar and pestle. Aromatic! Tahini is optional and the hummus is excellent either way.
Dr. Paden’s Recipes
All Fruit Smoothie
Mushroom Bomb
Paden Eye Care Center
221 W Stewart Ave #110
Medford, OR, 97501
Monday — Thursday
8:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Every Other Friday
8:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday
Closed

Phone: 541-776-9026
Email: paden@padeneyecare.com