New Normal Project: Dr Caldwell Esselstyn - Eating the right foods to reverse heart disease (NNP #48)

Dr Caldwell Esselstyn - Eating the right foods to reverse heart disease (NNP #48)

Feb 7, 2019

Is heart disease from clogged arteries a food-borne disease?

Can eating the right foods really reverse heart disease?

Which foods have a powerful antioxidant effect in your blood vessels?

Dr Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr is a superhero in our family. And this American surgeon who turned his career on a head to become a provider, researcher, advocate and international expert of a wholefoods, plant-based nutrition to prevent and reverse heart disease, is this week’s special guest.

Dr Esselstyn grew up on a beef farm, won a Gold medal at the Olympics with the United States rowing crew as a university student and began his medical life as a surgeon. He then had an important mid-career epiphany, realizing that cutting out the cancer of an individual person was less valuable than understanding why some populations had extremely low rates of both cancer and heart disease. When he learned these healthier populations ate a predominance of plant-based wholefoods he began eating that way himself. He then took a group of patients with very severe heart disease and taught them to eat a wholefoods plant-based diet without oils as part of a formal research study. These patients had dramatic reversal of their heart disease symptoms, lived longer than they were expected to, and a powerful nutritional intervention for heart disease was launched. Caldwell then published this research, wrote the book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” and has since devoted his life to directly helping hundreds of patients with heart disease, and to indirectly influencing thousands of patients (and doctors like me) to adopt the same way of eating.

One of those people is Claire’s aunt, Dulcie, who after adopting the diet in “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” had a near overnight cessation of the frequent chest pain her blocked heart arteries was causing. This inspired Claire and I to adopt a plant-based diet which we haven’t looked back from.

Many of you may have heard Dr Esselstyn on a different podcast or in a documentary. You may have read his book too. The reason I think you should listen to this is that you’ll hear very specifically: