Plant Power Challenge Day 15      

The Last Heart Attack

“It’s the #1 killer in America, yet heart disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist; and, if it does exist, it need never progress.”     
~ Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD

“The High-fat American diet is responsible for an epidemic or coronary artery disease. A plant-based diet with less than 10% fat will prevent coronary artery disease from developing, halt the progress of existing disease, and even reverse the disease in many patients. Given proper support and education, motivated patients with a history of coronary disease can follow this diet and prevent future cardiac events.”          
~ Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD

Plants are naturally low in fat, sugar and salt, are cholesterol free (only animals make cholesterol - beef, chicken, fish and pork), plus high in fiber, phytochemicals and antioxidants. Because of these attributes, a Whole Food Plant-based diet can prevent or reverse chronic disease –obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn both demonstrated in their groundbreaking studies the reversal of coronary artery disease in patients with known heart blockages by placing them on predominately plant-based diets.

“Here are the facts. Coronary artery disease is the leading killer of men and women in Western civilization. In the United States alone, more than half a million people die of it every single year. Three times that number suffer known heart attacks. And approximately three million more have “silent heart attacks”, experiencing minimal symptoms and having no idea, until well after the damage is done that they are in mortal danger. In the course of a lifetime, one out of every two American men and one out of every three American women will have some form of this disease.

The cost of this epidemic is enormous –greater by far, than that of any other disease. The United States spends more than $250 billion a year. That’s about the same amount the nation spent on the first two and a half years of its military venture in Iraq, and fully twice as much as the federal government allocates annually for all research and development-including R&D for defense and national security.

But here is the truly shocking statistic: nearly all of that money is devoted to treating symptoms. It pays for cardiac drugs, for clot-dissolving medications, and for costly mechanical techniques that bypass clogged arteries or widen them with balloons, tiny rotating knives, lasers and stents. All of these approaches carry significant risk of serious complications, including death. And even if they are successful, they provide only temporary relief from the symptoms. They do nothing at all to cure the underlying disease or to prevent its development in other potential victims.

I believe that coronary artery disease is preventable, and that even after it is under way, its progress can be stopped, its insidious effects reversed. I believe, and my work over the past twenty years has demonstrated, that all this can be accomplished without expensive mechanical intervention and with minimal use of drugs. The key lies in nutrition –specifically, in abandoning the toxic American diet and maintaining cholesterol levels well below those historically recommended by health policy experts.”

Excerpt from Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.