Hey there modern vegans and vegan curious.
It's Margaret.
And welcome back to ModVegan.
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Today I want to share with you my experience
attending Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's discussion
of how to prevent and reverse heart disease
here in Calgary, Alberta.
He was here last Friday,
and I had just an amazing time at his talk.
It was put on by Fork Smart, which is run by
my friend Kate McGoey-Smith, and she was able to get
Dr. Esselstyn here to Calgary, and that was just an amazing
thing.
He and his wife both spoke at the event,
and it was a great experience and really nice to get the chance to see him in person,
even though I've seen plenty of his videos online,
and of course watched "Forks Over Knives" and things like that.
But a very different experience to see him in person.
I attended the event with my husband,
and we were both very interested in the event,
mostly because, although we're already vegan,
we've been interested in the benefits of eating less oil,
eating more plant-based foods that are whole.
We try to eat as healthfully as we can,
we try to eat whole foods,
but we of course are not perfect.
As Dr. Esselstyn would say,
we were most definitely not "plant perfect"
and we do eat things with oil in them, and we do eat,
of course, processed foods as well.
And I know that they're not as healthy,
but it was really beneficial to go to the event
and hear Dr. Esselstyn talk about why it's so important
to actually eat whole foods.
I first heard about Dr. Esselstyn before I went vegan,
when he started - I think he was treating Bill Clinton for
a short period of time, and we did hear some really
great things about Dr. Esselstyn from former President
of the United States, Bill Clinton.
And that's where I first heard about Dr. Esselstyn.
And I also watched "Forks Over Knives" and that was also
before I became vegan.
I was just very interested in the information,
and although I enjoyed the film, I must say that seeing
Dr. Esselstyn in person had more of an impact on me,
and it was really neat to get to hear him speak -
primarily because it really drove home to me
how much this man cared about his patients.
I think that was what was most immediately evident
when you're listening to him speak.
You realize the kind of personal relationship that he's tried
to build with his patients, and how much he really cares
about the health of human beings.
And that was very refreshing, it was so nice to see a doctor
that cared that much about people.
Even with most of the studies that he's done,
he's tried to do them in a way that he's been able to have
a personal connection with each and every patient.
So that he can get compliance from them.
Because of course, if you're trying to introduce people
to a whole foods, plant-based diet, with no oil,
that's not an easy thing to do.
God knows that it would be hard for me to follow that diet,
let alone for someone whose brand new to this kind of thing.
And so having that personal relationship with their doctor
makes them much more likely to comply with the diet.
And that was very evident hearing him speak.
And it was also very impressive to hear about
the proportion of his patients that actually did manage
to stay compliant with the diet.
Now Kate McGoey-Smith, the woman that organized
this event, I met her at one of the meet-ups that we had
here in Calgary a few months ago - gosh, nearly a year ago
now - and that was when she was just beginning
to plan this event.
And she told me about her own story, in her own words,
and it was really nice to get to hear her telling me about it,
and of course great to hear it again the night of the event.
But Kate has a very rare disease, called pulmonary hypertension.
And it's an idiopathic, chronic, deadly disease.
And it's very rare.
Only 3 or four out of a million people
will get it.
It's very unusual.
And it is a disease that is helped
by a whole foods, plant based diet.
And when she was diagnosed, she was told she only had
a few years to live.
She was diagnosed as stage three,
she needed oxygen all the time, she was also on insulin,
she was overweight, she could only walk a few steps,
she was nearly blind.
She said that at one point she couldn't even brush her teeth in the morning and see her
teeth.
So that kind of tells you how bad it was.
And if you were to meet her now, it's hard to even believe that.
I know the first time that I met her, I was really taken aback
to hear her say that she had ever been that ill,
because when you meet her, she just seems like a normal
mom - you would never have any idea that she'd ever been that ill.
And of course, she still has this condition, but for all intents
and purposes, she's able to live a normal life, thanks to
whole foods, plant-based nutrition.
And she really credits that with her ability to lead a normal life,
to be able to enjoy her life with her husband and her children.
And it's just a really great story, extremely impactful,
and it certainly made me interested in hearing more
from Dr. Esselstyn.
Because it's one thing to hear a story from someone in a film,
like "Forks Over Knives," but it is very different if you have
that person sitting right in front of you telling you
about the kind of impact that it's made on their life.
And so, I was extremely impacted by just her story,
and I knew I had to attend this event, and I was very excited.
I told everybody I could in the area that they had to attend this event.
And I was very excited to go and see it.
And Dr. Esselstyn gave his presentation - he talked about
heart disease - particularly about the endothelial cells -
and why oil is such a difficult thing - why plant based foods
are so good for the endothelial cells - and the endothelial cells
are just these tiny little cells that are kind of like the defenders
of your hearts' arteries.
And that's basically what they do,
is they really protect your heart, they help to move things
like cholesterol along, let them not stay there too long.
They don't let anything build up inside the walls of those
arteries.
But when they become damaged - then you start
to get plaque build up, you can end up with heart disease -
all sorts of problems.
And the things that are hardest on them are animal products,
especially anything containing cholesterol, of course,
but oil is especially difficult because it causes inflammation
on those arterial walls.
And unfortunately, it's not just animal fats hat you need to be avoiding,
if you're someone with this kind of a chronic illness,
if you're developing heart disease or anything like that,
if you're going to want to improve and reverse your condition,
then you are going to need to pretty much eat no oil at all.
And Dr. Esselstyn does a great job of explaining this,
he's very emphatic about it and very passionate about it.
And I think that one of the challenges -
if you're just an average person, and you hear that you shouldn't eat oil, because someone
says so,
it's not that impactful.
It's very easy to make up excuses
and reasons why you think that it might actually be good
to eat oils - especially those heart healthy oils,
like olive oil, like coconut oil -
and I'm going to include a clip here, where Dr. Esselstyn talks about why those kinds
of oils
really do cause damage and are worth avoiding.
Let's just take a moment here,
because some people still are not clear about the fact that
"no oil!"
Alright, why?
Because, the data.
Olive oil is terribly seductive.
Scott Grundy did some studies that are very short term,
that showed that it increases your good cholesterol,
lowers your bad cholesterol, improves your ratio.
It got a huge amount of press, doctors heard about it,
therefore it must be wonderful.
Right?
Wrong.
Because you look at longer term studies,
Blankenhorn, right in California.
Two groups of patients.
One saturated fat, the other one
monounsaturated fat like olive oil, baseline angiogram
at the end of the year - the angiogram disease of coronary
disease had progressed just as much in each group.
Lawrence Rudel, and the research triangle
took the African Green Monkey, similar lipid metabolism
to man, saturated, unsaturated -
five years.
In the monounsaturated olive oil group, higher HDL, lower LDL,
better ratio.
Autopsy: just as much coronary disease.
The oil companies didn't like that, so Lawrence Rudel
repeated the study with rodents.
And the result?
The same.
Dr. Vogel has gone on and shown us indeed,
that olive oil activates clotting factor seven just as much
as butter.
And Vogel, in a separate study, and Ong, in a separate study,
have shown how it impairs flow mediated dilatation
that I just talked to you about, the brachial artery
tourniquet test.
And last month, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute,
olive oil, along with meat, and dairy, is implicated
in a risk factor for breast cancer.
While olive oil may seem beneficial in the short term,
long-term, if you were to take someone with heart disease,
and expose them to olive oil for a year, say,
if they were eating olive oil in their food for a year,
it really doesn't have much of a different impact on them than butter.
And that's really important, because I see that it's easy,
as a vegan, to feel like you're already doing all that you could do.
And I don't want to be too dogmatic, about this, because I realize
that many of us are lucky enough to be in extremely good health.
And I appreciate that his wife, did mention
that for people who are healthy, eating nuts, eating avocados
are probably fine.
And you'll find if you're someone in that camp,
someone like me, probably, who is trying to be
as athletic as possible, leading a healthy life,
has no chronic health conditions - something like Rip Esselstyn's
Engine 2 Diet, which I will also be leaving a link to down below,
something like that might be very beneficial for you.
But again, if you are dying from a serious chronic health condition,
it makes sense why you might want to remove all oils from your diet.
And it also makes sense that you'll want to be more attentive
to this kind of thing than most people.
And I think this is where you do have a bit of a difference
between what it means to be vegan, and what it means
to be whole food plant-based, oil free kind a thing.
Veganism is about ethics.
The reason that we avoid consuming
animals and things like that is partly for our health, of course,
but mostly it's about treating other beings with kindness
and compassion.
And Dr. Esselstyn's approach is meant
to help human beings to address their health issues.
So that's why it's a bit more than just a vegan diet.
It's not just about the ethics of course, for other animals
and other species, it's about your own health, and your own
ethics, being kind to yourself.
And it's very clear when you're looking
at people with these chronic illnesses, that are so dangerous,
that it's important to be compassionate about your own health,
and that's kind of what you're doing there.
The reason why someone would follow a whole foods plant-based oil-free diet,
is because they want to address their own health,
and they want to be around, to be there for their children
and their grandchildren, to be able to give back to their communities.
And if you're dying of a health condition, you can't really
do those things.
And Dr. Esselstyn shared a lot of stories with us
about people he'd known in his own life, including a fellow surgeon,
who nearly died from a cardiac event, even though he didn't
know that he had heart disease.
A man that seemed extremely healthful.
But he nearly collapsed and died of a heart attack at 44,
working as a cardiologist - because he was not aware
of the kind of impact that eating animal foods had on his health.
He didn't really recognize it and he didn't really address it
until it was almost too late.
And fortunately in the case of Dr. Esselstyn's friend,
whose health information he shared with us,
this man really was able to turn his condition around
and especially because he was young, he was able
to reverse the symptoms of his heart disease.
And seeing the pictures of the changes in his arterial walls
between before he went on a plant-based diet and afterwards,
no comparison whatsoever.
It's just amazing - there's a vessel
that seems like it's completely closed off, and then the artery
is just clear and beautiful afterwards.
It was amazing.
But those kinds of changes can't be accomplished on a vegan diet alone.
You need to be eating whole foods, you need to be doing things
that are really good for your cells and things like that.
And it requires a bit more if you have that kind of an illness.
Dr. Esselstyn also addressed a few things that we can
all do, that are going to improve our health a lot.
Of course, eating whole foods is very important,
because those whole foods have all sorts of amazing
nutrients that are really good for your body, and help you
to fight disease, and they also help to make your heart healthier.
And one of the ways that they do that is by helping your body to produce more nitric oxide.
And this is this great gas that basically gets in there into your
arteries in your heart and helps to widen them a bit, because it's this gas that kind
of puffs it up and lets things flow through.
It's kind of like a little pump thing.
I don't know exactly how to describe it, I'm going to butcher it here, but it's basically
this great thing that makes your arteries function much better.
And there's a few ways that you can improve that and help your arteries to function better.
But one of them is eating lots of dark leafy greens.
Six servings a day, if you're someone who is suffering
from cardiovascular disease.
And it's probably a good idea for anyone.
He wants you to eat about a cup of cooked greens, six times a day,
with some kind of acetic acid on it, or vinegar.
And I'm not sure if I'd be able to eat six cups,
but still, it's a great recommendation, and I think
it would be for everyone if you tried to eat a little bit more.
So trying to eat around six servings a day of dark, leafy greens, amazing for your heart,
helps it to be better off.
He mentioned things like, in terms of those dark greens,
of course, kale, collards, swiss chard and other things like that.
And just kind of blanching them and serving them with some vinegar.
Which is actually very tasty and it's a delicious dish.
And it's also super good for you.
So I would say, at least try and do it maybe once a day, if you can't do it six times a
day.
But it's a great thing that you can do that's really good for your heart,
and good for your body in general.
It was an amazing event, and I'm so glad I attended,
and I learned so much.
Again, I will have some links to some more videos from Dr. Esselstyn down below,
and also a link to his book, "How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease"
because I think it would be extremely valuable for anyone who's dealing with a disease like
heart disease,
and it's just such good information, and one of the things that you're really going to
appreciate about Dr. Esselstyn
is that he doesn't - at least that I appreciated about him -
is that he doesn't oversell anything.
He is completely honest about the research that he's done,
and he doesn't try to pretend that his research shows anything that it doesn't.
He's not going to make claims that are out-stated, and wrong - it's really important to him to
be honest,
and to be a good researcher and to be a reliable person,
and I just found that so refreshing in an era of snake-oil,
when people will tell you that they have the cure-all for everything.
He doesn't do that.
And I really appreciated that, and I can see why so many really admire him, because he
really doesn't do that.
But one of the things that I also thought was interesting was,
that as we were leaving, there were a couple of women behind us as we were just heading
out the doors,
and one of them turned to the other one, and she was saying
"oh, this sounded so good!"
But her friend responded back to her,
"well, it sounds pretty good for heart disease, but I think that's all it's really good for.
It's pretty much only good for heart disease, you heard what he said."
So, first of all, they discounted any additional health benefits just from the fact that he
didn't make any extraordinary claims.
So - and also, I just thought it was fascinating that he had told us in one evening,
how to make sure that we never had a cardiovascular health event.
If you followed his advice, the number one killer of people in the global north could
be solved.
We could completely get rid of heart disease, and he has the research to show that.
That we could completely neutralize our number one killer.
And it was very interesting to me that people could hear that, and then be disappointed,
or just discount the entire thing, because, well, it only affects our number one killer.
It really only prevents that, so why would you do it?
And I just thought that was really fascinating, that apparently solving the number one health
issue for people living in the developed world - is just not worth it.
It's a little bit too much work.
If that's really all it helps with, what's the point?
I thought that was really funny, and not just funny,
but kind of sad, because it really says a lot about the way that people view their health.
And it really speaks to what Dr. Esselstyn was saying as well.
That so many people are willing to take drugs that have horrible side-effects,
they're willing to go through open heart surgery that may not even be able to deal with their
problem -
because some of the patients that he had, in fact a lot of them,
were people that were beyond the point where they could even receive stents,
where they could even benefit from bypass surgery.
Because, for example, some of them just had small arteries that were so clogged that there
was nothing that doctors could do, they were beyond help.
And with those people he was able to prevent them from having additional heart attacks.
I think that is absolutely incredible, and if you really know much at all about cardiovascular
disease,
you'll recognize how truly revolutionary that is,
and how helpful it is.
Here this is a lifesaving cure that is for people who are beyond the reach of traditional
medicine,
who cannot be helped by surgical intervention -
who perhaps might not be able to take statins,
simply because of other health problems that they have.
Because there are people who unfortunately are not even able to take statin drugs.
So it really is revolutionary, and can save so many people's lives,
and I found that so amazing, and so wonderful.
It's such good news to hear.
And if you can live simply by removing oil and animal products from your diet,
and eating as many whole foods as possible,
isn't that worth it?
I mean, I think it is.
I really do enjoy living!
And if I can prevent diseases like that by doing those things,
I think it's really well worth it.
And it kind of comes back to, as a society,
the mentality that we have.
I think it's far too easy to develop a mentality where you just - you wait for doctors to come
along with a drug.
And I'm not against that at all - I really do believe in medicine and everything like
that,
but the idea that you just wait for that to happen,
and that you rely on that - if you can do something so much better - it's just -
if there's something that is a much better solution,
a more wholistic solution that's going to make you feel better,
and keep you from dying, I can't think of anything much better.
And I hope you guys feel the same way too.
I strongly encourage you to check out his information,
and I hope this was helpful to you guys.
If you do get the chance to see him in person,
do go for it, because I would definitely - now I really want to see his son Rip in person,
I think it would be amazing to see him,
because I'm interested in that because I'm more interested in athletics and things like
that,
so I would love to know about the benefits of a whole foods diet for athletes and stuff
lie that.
But just seeing Dr. Esselstyn speak, it was so inspiring to see him and his wife speak,
to see people in such vibrant health in their old age,
who are out there trying to spread this message of good health to other people.
When it came time to ask a question, I asked Dr. Esselstyn
about what we can do, as people who are aware of the benefits of whole foods plant-based
nutrition -
what we can do to influence public policy.
And he really responded that the main thing that we can do
is to become involved in whatever capacity that we can,
and I agree with him whole-heartedly about that.
We need to be involved.
People who are in the position of being researchers need to make sure that they're out there doing
their research, trying to get grants so that they can show the evidence of these things
further.
There have been plenty of doctors who have published fairly large studies on some of
these things.
Including, of course, I know Dean Ornish also produced a study on the effects of whole foods
diets on heart disease as well,
but it's important to have as many of those kind of studies as we can.
It's important to get these people into positions where they're able to tell people things with
more authority.
Getting people to become more involved in politics and things like that,
there's so many ways that we can do that, but it's really just about taking that first
step.
And so, I think before you can even take any other steps,
please do learn about this.
There's some very good information out there.
I think it's also important - one woman asked a question about olive oil,
and about whether olive oil is good for your health,
and things like that, because her husband said it was,
I think one of the things that I really appreciated about Dr. Esselstyn is that he's very honest
and thorough in his research.
And the reason that he says not to have oil is because
he's really examined all of the research.
And while in short term studies, it shows that plant-based oils are healthier than non-plant
based oils (and of course,
you've got the omega 3s are better than the omega 6s, and things like that)
- it really doesn't compare to the benefits of oil when it's involved in a whole food.
And it also shows that over time, when you look at the research over time,
those oils really are not as beneficial as they seem.
So it's not the same to run a study on someone immediately after drinking olive oil, vs.
someone eating olive oil for a year and then seeing what the effect is on their cardiovascular
health.
So I appreciate his thoroughness.
And I think he really is someone who shows us how important it is to be thorough,
how important it is not to make grand claims that we can't support, those kinds of things.
And I really see the great value in that, and I think that's one of the things that
he represents more than anything else.
Finally, I found a little clip of Bill Clinton talking about Dr. Esselstyn.
And I thought this was really funny, because when Dr. Esselstyn talks about what he eats,
he does say absolutely no oil ever,
and I found this little clip and I thought it was really funny,
because Bill Clinton explains that Dr. Esselstyn isn't always perfect.
Clinton: You can fudge, just not too much.
Even, you know, Dr. Esselstyn, who has the most, probably,
militant position.
I mean, he doesn't even eat things made with olive oil.
And he looks great.
He's about ten years older than we are.
But he has a piece of chocolate every New Years' Eve.
So, he fudges!
Okay, so maybe a square of dark chocolate on New Years' Eve is less than most of us
would be able to get away with in a year,
I think I'd have a hard time keeping limited to that,
but I admire Dr. Esselstyn's discipline.
I hope that you guys benefitted this, that it was a good discussion.
I'd like to know what you guys think about it.
Do you think it's really possible to live in the modern world without oil?
I know for me, personally, I will try and avoid cooking with oil as much as I can at
home.
Although, when it comes to eating things like that, I'm not quite ready to give it up yet.
It's not so much that I want to oil,
it's just that I really enjoy being able to go and eat and it's nice.
It's hard enough being vegan, but if I was going to try and make sure that none of my
food was cooked with oil,
it might be a little bit too difficult for me,
but if you guys think that I should try and do it anyway,
let me know, I would love to know what you have to say about it.
And if you've benefitted from a whole food plant based diet,
and it's really made a difference in your life, I'd really love to hear about that as
well.
It's very interesting to me as well.
I'd just love to hear your story if it's something that's helped you out as well.
Thank you so much for joining me here today,
and taking some of your time out to watch this video.
If you enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you liked what you saw.
And I will see you in my next video.
Take care,
bye.
For more infomation >> Het racismedebat is gevaarlijk terrein | Poldernomaden | De Nieuwe Maan 28 april 2017 - Duration: 1:58. 
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