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Make Yourself Heart Attack Proof
Interview with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr.
 Heart disease is the number one killer in America today. This is an interview between Dr. John Westerdahl, Director of the Castle Wellness Center and host of Tasty and Meatless with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., renowned physician from the Cleveland Clinic, and a pioneer in heart disease reversal research. Dr. Esselstyn talks about his research that shows how people can make themselves heart attack proof.
Dr. Esselstyn: We have over 500,000 people who will die this year of heart disease. There are 1.5 million people who will have been diagnosed with a new heart attack. There will be 3 million so-called “silent heart attacks.” They will have severe ingestion and this will be when the heart attack occurs. The exciting thing is the lesson we learned from World War II, when the powers of Germany occupied Norway. They took away their livestock, their chickens, goats, lamb, and sheep. As a result, from 1939 to 1945, these countries were largely subsisting on a plant-based diet of grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits. There is documentation in Norway on how deaths from cardiovascular disease from stroke and heart attacks during this time plummeted. If we adapt the plant-based nutrition of these countries and if we achieve the same low blood cholesterol and blood fat levels that means we also ought to be able to arrest this disease. That was the basic thesis behind the research that I started in 1985.
Dr. Westerdahl: I’m very excited about the research you’ve been doing because you have conducted the longest running study showing that heart disease is reversible through a healthy meatless diet. Tell us more about that.
Dr. Esselstyn: Back in 1995 after my wife and I had been eating a plant-based diet for a year and our cholesterol levels had plummeted, I went to our cardiology department and proposed a study that would take patients with severe heart disease and see if we can reduce their blood sugar, blood fat, and blood cholesterol. They were enthusiastic and we ended up with a group of 24 patients who were so severely ill with this disease that a number of them were advise to go home and get ready to die. We put them on a plant-based diet with no dairy or meat protein and we experienced exciting results. Their angina began to disappear, their heart pain lessened, and they lost weight. After 5 years, we repeated a number of their angiograms, which shows the outline of their arteries, and we found striking results. There was dramatic reversal of the heart disease and this was so empowering to these patients.
Dr. Westerdahl: So if we have a viewer today that may have heart disease, arteriosclerosis, or high cholesterol, what things do they need to do? What kind of results can they experience on this meatless diet that you recommend?
Dr. Esselstyn: If they are absolutely eating a strict plant based diet then they really can abolish heart disease. They need to check their cholesterol on a regular basis (every 2 to 6 weeks) and make sure that their total cholesterol is under 150 and their LDL, the bad cholesterol, is under 80. I have an example of a young surgeon who replaced me as chairman of the Breast Cancer Task Force. In 1996, at age 44, with cholesterol of 156, he had a heart attack after finishing surgery one day. His angiogram and his coronary arteries were actually quite good, but the lower part of the main artery and the front of the heart was completely diseased and it was too long a segment for those common interventions. He couldn’t have a bypass and he couldn’t have an angioplasty and he was very depressed. My wife and I had him out to the house and we counseled him about changing his diet to a meatless one. He decided to do it and decided not to take any cholesterol lowering drugs. He became the absolute personification of commitment to this program. 30 months later, he got another angiogram and that diseased segment of his coronary artery was completely healed. His disease was gone and now his life is so solid, so empowered because he has absolute zero fear of this disease. He has made himself heart attack proof.
Should people who don’t have heart disease also go on a plant-based diet? Absolutely and this is why. We did autopsies on the deceased bodies of the battle casualties of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. These young men were an average age of 21 years at the time that we examined their coronary arteries and already 80% had gross evidence of coronary artery disease. Of course a doctor had not diagnosed these young men with coronary artery disease but their arteries were already loaded with it. What was going to happen to them 20 or 30 years later?
Another consequence of eating the Standard American Diet is that at the age of 50, most Americans begin developing unidentified white spots in their brain that we now know are tiny little strokes. We see this repeatedly when people come in for MRI tests. Even if someone doesn’t have symptoms of coronary heart disease, these little strokes can begin to develop until the memory goes sour when they reach age 70 and they lose their cognition. These strokes come from too much cholesterol and fat from meat protein and dairy. There are so many other diseases besides heart disease that you are going to encounter if you continue to eat the Standard American Diet. Why do you want to have the opportunity to go into your senior years and not have all your cognition, all your intellect right on top? Why would you want to be someone who has severe personality changes, multiple strokes, in a rest home or nursing home? Eat a plant-based diet so that you can be there to enjoy your family, your children, your grandchildren and ideally your great great grand children!
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