How I Came to Eat This Way

It is 2009, and I work at a small company headed by a man named John Tanner. John is three months younger than me. We are 52. In October, he is out jogging on a Sunday when he suddenly falls over with a heart attack. His heart had stopped. I’m told that only 3% of such heart attacks outside of hospitals are survived. John was saved by an amazing stroke of luck. Someone saw him fall, and was in reach of both a phone to call paramedics and another person. The other person had just seen on Oprah the day before how to resuscitate a heart attack victim with chest compressions.

John later found out that of the three paramedics who responded, one had been on the job for twenty years and John was his second save. Another had been on the job for ten years and John was his first save. The third was a relative newcomer.

John had none of the traditional risk factors: no family history of heart disease, no drinking or smoking, cholesterol 188, not overweight, having lost a lot of weight on the Atkin’s diet. He was given a stent, which got blocked again in a matter of months. He had to return to surgery and have more stents put in. Despite all this, he has recovered and is back at work.

When he returned, he offered to give anyone who wanted a copy of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. MD. I was the first to take a copy, read it and really try to practice its nutritional plan.

Like most of us, I thought I knew what a healthy diet was, and I thought my diet was pretty healthy. Our cultural milieu bombards us with urgent calls to yield to various temptations. I resisted more than most, perhaps. At least I ate salads, even though they included processed meats, cheeses, and tuna smothered in mayo. Most of us have no idea of what a truly healthy diet is, and will not admit, even to ourselves, that we don’t follow it. Government nutritional advice is not very healthy, being highly influenced by large industrial interests, such as the meat lobby and the sugar shills such as Coca-Cola. As my Uncle Les used to say, people drink a Diet Coke to compensate for eating an entire banana cream pie.

Most people can’t conceive of giving up all meat and dairy, and nuts and oil besides. I was just in a place in my life where I was ready to take it on as a challenge, largely because it seemed impossible. I found it got easier as I discovered compliant meals that I loved and could eat unlimited amounts of. Seeing the pounds come off and belts becoming too large was very reinforcing. After about three weeks, it was my new lifestyle.

It worked for me. I lost fifty pounds, bringing my body-mass index into the normal range, and got my high blood pressure under control. My total cholesterol has come down from 218 to 165.

Possibly the most amazing thing in this whole story is something John told me. Throughout the whole experience and all the doctor visits and hospital stays, not one professional mentioned nutrition as a factor in his problem. Not even once.

John has started a non-profit organization to get the word out about healthy lifestyle. Its website is http://www.nusci.org/.

Anyway, this has become a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine. I try not to be a pest about it.