WIDLIMS ep #15 – Time for Plant-based Nutrition in Medicine with Dr Shireen Kassam

In this week's episode, I chat to the amazing Dr Shireen Kassam (she/her) who is a consultant haematologist, as well as founder and president of Plant-Based Health Professionals (a CIC in the UK) and facilitator of the UK's first university-based Plant-based nutrition course (and she regularly reviews and updates it!). We talk about...

• why plant-based nutrition education is needed
• the evidence behind consuming more plants and less animal products
• how she counsels her patients, including those recently diagnosed with cancer, to make lifestyle changes
• wider issues: human and planetary health, social inequalities, the NHS and some of the problems with how our governments and healthcare systems are structured

Find out more!

You can find Dr Shireen Kassam on Instagram here, and on Twitter here. She also writes a weekly nutrition news roundup on Medium you can find here. The website for Plant-Based Health Professionals is here, and you can find the latest free webinars here.

Mentioned in the episode

• Plant-Based Health Professionals factsheets can be found HERE
• Vegan diet vs American Heart Association – research paper found HERE
• Milk and Health – listen to my episode on dairy and health HERE, research paper in NEJM mentioned by Dr Kassam found HERE
• Plant-based Eatwell guide found HERE
• Join PBHP as a member HERE – £15 for students, £25 for general public and from £45 for healthcare professionals
• The new 21-day challenge for transitioning to a plant-based diet with recipes and coaching support found HERE
• Winchester plant-based nutrition course info HERE, 30 CPD credits, contact Shireen Kassam for discount

Further listening

I have covered aspects of healthy eating in several previous podcast episodes.

• Dairy and health – click here
• Legumes and health – click here
• Carbohydrates and insulin resistance – click here
• Dietary advice for PCOS with Dr Nitu Bajekal, consultant gynecologist – click here

Further reading

These are some great papers and further reading to check out to get started.

Shah B, Newman JD, Woolf K, Ganguzza L, Guo Y, Allen N, Zhong J, Fisher EA, Slater J. Anti-Inflammatory Effects of a Vegan Diet Versus the American Heart Association-Recommended Diet in Coronary Artery Disease Trial. J Am Heart Assoc. 2018 Dec 4;7(23):e011367. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.118.011367. PMID: 30571591; PMCID: PMC6405545. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6405545/

Storz MA. Will the plant-based movement redefine physicians’ understanding of chronic disease? New Bioeth. 2020 Jun;26(2):141-157. doi: 10.1080/20502877.2020.1767921. Epub 2020 Jun 27. PMID: 32594898. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20502877.2020.1767921?journalCode=ynbi20

Willett WC, Ludwig DS. Milk and Health. N Engl J Med. 2020 Feb 13;382(7):644-654. doi: 10.1056/NEJMra1903547. PMID: 32053300. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1903547

Weight control on plant-based diets. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/plantbased_weightloss

Song M, Fung TT, Hu FB, et al. Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(10):1453–1463. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.4182 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2540540

EPIC-Oxford study. http://www.epic-oxford.org/introduction/

Lancet commission – planetary health https://eatforum.org/learn-and-discover/the-planetary-health-diet/

Shah B, Newman JD, Woolf K, Ganguzza L, Guo Y, Allen N, Zhong J, Fisher EA, Slater J. Anti-Inflammatory Effects of a Vegan Diet Versus the American Heart Association-Recommended Diet in Coronary Artery Disease Trial. J Am Heart Assoc. 2018 Dec 4;7(23):e011367. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.118.011367. PMID: 30571591; PMCID: PMC6405545. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6405545/