Dr. Zafar Mirza at Neerob

On October 5th, there will be a Lifestyle Medicine Lunch at Neerob Restaurant, 2096 Starling Avenue, Bronx, NY 10462.

Dr. Mirza was formerly Minister of health in Pakistan, and is currently taaching as a professor of health systems & population health at Shifa Tameer-i-Millat University. Recently, he was elected as President of Pakistan Association of Lifestyle Medicine (PALM).

Here are some of Dr. Mirza’s articles on Lifestyle Medicine:

We will focus on Lifestyle Medicine as an opportunity for everyone, but especially for the SE Asian population, since it is known that our friends from the region are at a genetic disadvantage, because they have smaller blood vessels, and the average age of the first heart attacks is some twenty years below the general population (ca. 40 versus ca. 63).

We learned of this because of questions of a Bangladeshi nurse from Queens, who asked the question of Dr. Kim Williams at the 2nd Montefiore Conference on preventive cardiology in 2019, here. The relevant passage follows:

At the end, Dr. Williams was also on the panel, and an important question came up from a Bangladeshi man, who is a nurse at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, but came to the Bronx to become a patient of Dr. Robert Ostfeld, because he could not find a plant-based cardiologist at the time when he had his first heart-attack at age 36. In Dr. Williams’ answer we learned that the American College of Cardiology recently visited Bangladesh, where the average age of heart attack patients is 43, apparently in part because genetically blood vessels are narrower in that population than is typically the case with Westerners, so that blockages develop earlier. In short, the Bangladeshi population should be extremely interested in the opportunity to drastically improve their quality of life and life-expectancy by switching to a Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet. It is also well known that diabetes is explosive in the South East Asian population, with white rice, animal protein and cooking oil being a leading causes. In the Western world in particular, food is the leading cause of death, but some populations are just genetically more prone to this form of suffering. Fortunately, it is reversible and the Southeast Asian cuisine offers a very good starting point for brown rice, lentils and chick peas as well as many of the traditional vegetables and spices can create endless variations of healthy food with very little effort.

In short, the hopeful message is that research has established that with Lifestyle Medicine, we can largely erase that 20-year disadvantage, purely through nutrition, exercise and all the dimensions of a #WPPB lifestyle.

RSVP Visit bit.ly/48aSKej bit.ly/48aSKej to register
Online Ticket: $20
At the door – limited availability: $25