I was raised in the South, where food is part of the
culture. Southerners eat at weddings, at
funerals, on holidays, for birthdays; and truly we eat because we’re
awake. There’s breakfast with bacon,
eggs, grits, toast with butter and jam, biscuits with butter and jam, and
sometimes even breakfast steak; and it’s not complete without coffee loaded
with cream and sugar. Our lunch might include fried chicken, country fried
steak, fried catfish, or fried green tomatoes; and of course Coca-Cola or sweet
tea. Then there is dinner (or supper) with steak and potatoes, roast beef, and
even a few vegetables on occasion like fried okra, brown sugar glazed yams
beans cooked with bacon fat, corn bread with butter or dinner rolls with
butter, and more and more sweet tea. In the end, it was not very different from
the kind of fare seen all over the country, just our own (mostly fried)
variations. It’s called the Western diet; as opposed to other fare around the
world that consist of more plant-based and whole foods. I have dabbled in eating healthier foods at
times in my life, the smoothies with spinach blended in to drown out the taste,
or iceberg based salads with little or no nutritional value; but more or less I
have spent much of my life caught up in the convenience of processed and
packaged foods without paying very close attention to the amount of fats, oils,
sugar and salt present in these easy to make foods. And once I had a career, eating out became a
real convenience; being able to go into a restaurant and have a meal without
the effort of preparing it was just too easy to pass up with my emphasis on
work and spending time getting ahead in career pursuits. The pinnacle of this convenience was fast
foods, and going through a drive-thru for a burger and fries allowed even more
time for pursuing other activities, often in a frenetic whirlwind.
This mostly Western diet for over six decades had an effect
on me, however. It was a silent effect, even if very obvious. I weighed 50-60
pounds more than was healthy for my height and body frame, and I developed Type
2 Diabetes. Even being diagnosed with
diabetes only slowed down my conspicuous consumption of unhealthy foods. All those decades, my body was accumulating
cholesterol and impeding the ability of my organs to process the amounts and
types of foods I was ingesting, especially my pancreas, which could not
regulate the sugars I poured in on a daily basis. Even more silently, the arteries around my
heart were laboring hard to hide the fats, oils and cholesterol in my diet, but
it was a losing battle. At 63 years of
age, I had a heart attack.
My right coronary artery was blocked, nearly 100%. I had just given the message at a Sunday
church service, when I felt a bit “under the weather.” I had been feeling fatigued, but I put that
off to a stomach virus I had a few days before (on Thanksgiving Day). I began to sweat profusely, and I began to
feel a tightness in my chest, as if the muscles in my chest were beginning to
spasm. I excused myself to try to relax
and “walk it off” but my chest progressively got tighter and tighter, with some
pain beginning. Breathing became a bit
more difficult, and I went back to the group I had been talking with.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
A church member with a history of heart disease diagnosed
the situation, and a member trained as an EMT was called over. Together they hurried me off to a car and to
the nearest hospital emergency room as my thoughts became clouded and
unfocused.
Timely response by the people around me that day put the
timeline of the unfolding events in my arteries in my favor, and I quickly
found myself in a Heart Catheterization Lab where the Cardiologist on call
placed 4 stents in my right coronary artery.
In the aftermath of the procedure, I felt better with more energy than I
had in months! Two good friends visited
me the next day in the intensive care unit, one of whom had experienced a heart
attack a few months earlier. The other friend,
a medical doctor, handed me a book titled “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease”
by Caldwell B. Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic. The book explained how a whole foods,
plant-based diet with no meats, no dairy, no oils and no fats could reverse
heart disease. Esselstyn stated that the diet, including six serving of dark
leafy greens daily, could make one “heart attack proof.” The book was not just conjecture. Esselstyn had done his research, and had real
life case studies that illustrated the power of the diet.
Later that day, my Cardiologist made his rounds, and told me
that I had two other arteries that were highly blocked, the left anterior
descending (LAD), known as the “widow maker” and the circumflex. He said each
of these arteries were blocked at about 70% and he urged me to remain in the
hospital to have elective stents placed in those arteries. I devoured
Esselstyn’s book and learned that elective stents can be problematic, often
causing as many problems as they solve. But in order to decline the
Cardiologist’s advice to stent those two arteries, I had to make a full
commitment to Esselstyn’s diet. It was a
scary decision, and one I don’t wish on anyone.
The next day, I told the Cardiologist that I would not be doing the
elective stents. The day I left the
hospital, I went to the grocery store, shopped in very selective aisles, and
began the Esselstyn diet that I continue to follow.
The diet had some quick effects. I began to notice some improvements in blood
sugar readings. I began to lose
weight. These were not the reasons I
started the diet, but merely positive side effects of making the change in my
eating habits. I cut out all meat and
dairy, all added fats and oils, along with foods high in fats and oils. I searched diligently through labels to find
foods without added fats or oils, and I ate dark leafy greens such as kale, Swiss
chard, arugula, and spinach in salads. I
had to get creative, making my own salad dressings without oil. One of the most difficult things to adjust to
was to cut down dramatically on salt. I
scoured labels to find tomato sauce with no added salt. I quit adding salt to foods. This was a dramatic change for me, as I had
been a chronic “salt-aholic,” putting salt in every dish and even adding salt
after cooking.
After two months, my blood sugars, weight, and blood
pressure (with help of medications) had improved a great deal. But it happened again. I was at a health expo, marketing my
practice, when I began to sweat profusely.
After a few minutes, I knew what was happening; the constellation of
symptoms was the same as before, and my chest tightened, my breath
shortened. I began to feel light headed
this time, and after a few more minutes (angry minutes, this could not be happening again after all the changes I made) I
knew I was about to lose consciousness.
I put my head on our display table and told a colleague next to me, “I’m
going to lose consciousness.” And I did.
I was discouraged, disappointed, and even angry. How could I have another heart attack? I was doing everything I knew how to do to
reverse my heart disease! Two more
stents were placed in the same artery, the right coronary artery, and I was
sent on my way. Though discouraged, I knew what the research showed about
Esselstyn’s diet, and I continued to believe that this diet was my best hope to
stay alive. But I really wanted to know
if what I had committed to was working. The test was to come just a few weeks
after my second heart attack. After the first heart attack, my cardiologist had
scheduled me for a cardiac stress test, a chemically induced version of the old
treadmill test. We kept that test scheduled. About ten days after the stress test, I went
to see the cardiologist to get the results. He noted that the “bad news” was
that there were signs of damage in the right coronary artery (which had now six
stents from two different events), but that he couldn’t tell if this result was
from the stents or new damage, but that there was no indication to go in and do
anything. But the news about the other two arteries he had wanted me to get
elective stents in right after my first heart attack, well, that news just made
my whole week! He indicated that he
could still detect reduced flow in those arteries, but this time he told me
that there was no indication that we should go in and place stents! This was what I needed! Finally, some evidence that the heart disease
might be reversing. The diet was working!
Heart disease is a silent killer. The first indication that I had heart disease
was my first heart attack. And the most common first symptom of heart disease
is… death. But it doesn’t have to be
that way! It took a heart attack to wake
me up to the dramatic diet changes I needed to make. But making changes in diet doesn’t have to
wait for a life-threatening event, no more than one has to touch a burning
stove to avoid getting burned. Take a
look at these resources and decide for yourself how much risk you want to take
with your life.
http://www.forksoverknives.com/ (go to NetFlix and watch this documentary)
And join in locally in Northwest Florida:
