Last week Dr. Sears presented the keynote speech at the 2009 Japan Anti-Aging Conference. His lecture, Anti-Inflammatory Medicine: Role of Anti-Inflammatory Diets, described in detail the role of diet in the expression of our genes that control the inflammatory process. Turn those genes off by the Zone Diet, and you are virtually guaranteed a longer and better life. Unfortunately, the same genes can by turned on by the standard American diet leading to obesity and accelerated development of chronic disease.

In addition, he presented one of the research projects recently completed by the Inflammation Research Foundation on the use of high-dose EPA/DHA concentrates to treat brain trauma in both rodents and humans.

He also had numerous discussions with the leading academic researchers in Japan about the application of the concepts of the Zone Diet and high-dose fish oil. One discussion was with some leading researchers on the study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They told Dr. Sears that once they added the levels of EPA and DHA used in Dr. Sears’ published article on this condition that they had almost miraculous improvements in their subjects.

The trip was a quick, but fruitful one as it is clear that the Japanese diet is becoming more pro-inflammatory like the current American diet. Dr. Sears pointed out that everything you see in America soon comes to every other country in the world, including Japan.

Perhaps it is telling that the people of Okinawa (a large island 400 miles south of mainland Japan) were the longest-lived people in the world a generation ago. Now they are the fattest people in Japan. Perhaps the reason might be that the largest American military base in Japan is also located in Okinawa.