Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (8 page)
Read Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World Online
Authors: Kathy Freston
Tags: #food.cookbooks
Collateral Benefits
My wife Barbara had a heart attack two and a half years ago, had a stent implanted, and went through subsequent cardiac rehabilitation. She was faithful about exercise and stayed close to the doctors’ recommended diet (although, I myself found it perplexing that hamburgers were on the menu in the recovery room). All the previous symptoms had gone; she had no edema in her feet, no shortness of breath, no chest pain.
About four or five months after surgery she had an angina attack. That was only the first. The angina episodes returned with increasing frequency until they were averaging about one per week. She had trouble with weight gain. The edema in her legs and feet started to return.
This was about the time that I was getting involved with Dr. Esselstyn’s program. I explained the concept and benefits of a plant-based diet to her, but she was dubious. She hadn’t read the books, I wasn’t a doctor, and a prophet is rarely accepted in his own land.
A nugget of wisdom in Dr. Esselstyn’s program prerequisites is that you must attend with a partner, preferably your spouse. Barb agreed to come only out of support, as my wife. But God bless Dr. Esselstyn. His thorough but concise explanations of twenty-five years of research won the day, for at the end of the program, during the question-and-answer time, a little hand rose from our corner of the room.
Barb told the group that although I was attending the program, she was the one who had had the heart attack. It was the first time she had ever fully understood the cause of the disease. The cause had finally been explained and the cure thrown in for good measure. On the way home that evening, she turned to me and said, “If we’re going to do this thing right, we have to clean out the pantry.” And we did! The nugget paid off; not only with her initial support, but with the support we continue to give each other.
Barb experienced the following changes in her condition:
- One angina attack a few days after program, and no angina attacks since.
- No further edema.
- She can wrestle on the floor with the grandkids.
- She lost 40-plus pounds and four dress sizes.
Sometimes she seems more excited about losing dress sizes than angina attacks, but after you don’t have them for a while, you don’t think about them anymore. It’s just like how I no longer think about doing the basement stairs three steps at a time—I just do it.
The third part of the story is about my father. At eighty-seven, he has had two bypass surgeries and two pacemakers. As I said, with each of his bypass surgeries I saw a pronounced drop in his strength and cognitive skills. These were never more evident than before and after surgeries. Dad came to live with us after Mom passed away in January 2009. His condition at the time was:
- He’d been diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
- He could hardly get around. He shuffled more than walked. It was an effort to go back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom.
- He didn’t drive.
- He had frequent angina attacks.
- He was thin and very frail.
- He suffered from indigestion.
- He frequently took laxatives for constipation.
- He had type 2 diabetes and was taking oral medication for this.
By default, he ate the same as we did. He didn’t like it and hated the “cow food” we ate. But he ate it. We observed the following changes in his condition:
- He slowly improved. His strength returned and he began a healthy weight gain.
- He could now stand to wash dishes without sit-down breaks.
- Because of consistent good blood sugar indications, his doctor took him off the diabetes medication. His diabetes was now being controlled by diet alone.
- He has fewer problems with constipation and indigestion.
- He began driving again.
- He’s had no recent angina attacks.
I’d like to say that we are all living happily ever after. But there is one glitch. It is an important glitch. Dad improved so much and was feeling so good that he started leaving the house more often. Suddenly he had days when he just wasn’t hungry. He had nausea and diarrhea, and the constipation returned.
It was only when we discovered the empty packages under his bed that we found out about his “departure” from our lifestyle. The dangerous glitch is that you start to feel so good that you go back. Dad had started buying junk food and sneaking it into his room. The good news is that he has sworn off cookie and cheese-curl binges and is feeling better again.
The New Menu
We are still fledgling vegans. I do still miss many of the old foods, but I don’t miss angina, weakness, indigestion, high blood pressure, and 38-inch pants.
We learn more every day. We try new foods, new recipes. Some are miserable failures, many are delicious. We have retasted a couple of our old favorite foods since we switched to plant-based and found them incredibly greasy, full of salt, and almost unpalatable. So while I think I miss them, I know I really don’t.
Barb makes a wonderful lentil soup in the pressure cooker. It’s easy. Just chop up all of the constituent vegetables, throw in the lentils, add vegetable stock, seal the pot, and cook for a half hour. It’s great coming out, but even better the next day.
I was never a lover of vegetables. Munching down a whole bowl of greens is tedious. One of the most effective ways I found to increase my intake of greens has been making green smoothies. My concoctions have a less than stellar aesthetic quality; mixing blueberries in with deep green kale, strawberries, lettuce, and a banana doesn’t yield an eye pleaser. But they are antioxidant rich, loaded with fiber and vital nutrients. They taste good and make a great replacement for sugar-filled soda.
Philosophy
I have approached the whole thing with a two-part philosophy:
- The thought that I can never have a certain food again is depressing, so I compromise and say I’m just not going to have that food today. I can’t do forever, but I can do a day.
- I ask myself, “Am I going to die if I
don’t
eat this steak?” No. But I might die if I do.
The whole thing starts to sound like an AA meeting, and maybe it is; there is certainly an addictive quality about the diet of Western civilization. But I don’t really mind being labeled as recovering fatty-food addicts.
My body tells me that I feel better. The documented studies say that at least some of the damage will heal. So I am encouraged. So it is good. So there is life after hamburger.
I really love Robert’s attitude of willingness and levity; he takes it all seriously, but he has fun and gives himself a break. He has a good sense of humor and adventure, and he’s leaning in to a healthier life—and bringing his family along with him—with gusto.
I highly recommend Dr. Esselstyn’s book
Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
; it’s packed with stories like Robert’s and is thoroughly substantiated by peer-reviewed research and hard science. Considering that the United States contains just 5 percent of the global population, but every year, physicians in American hospitals perform more than 50 percent of all the angioplasties and bypass procedures in the entire world, the information in those pages is highly relevant.
In his book, Dr. Esselstyn writes: “If you eat to save your heart… you gain protection from a host of other ailments that have been linked to dietary factors, including impotence and cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, rectum, uterus, ovaries. And if you are eating for good health in this way, here’s a side benefit you might not have expected: for the rest of your life, you will never again have to count calories or worry about your weight.” Here again, all upside.
Declawing Diabetes
One out of every three children born after the year 2000 will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Can you believe that? One in three! What the heck is going on?
To understand diabetes better, and to learn how to reverse it, I spoke with Dr. Neal Barnard, whom you met earlier. He’s an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, the author of numerous scientific articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, and a frequent lecturer at the American Diabetes Association’s scientific sessions. His diabetes research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. government’s research branch. He is also the author of
Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes
.
Straight from the Source: Neal Barnard, MD, on Diabetes
KF:
Why is type 2 diabetes suddenly so prevalent?
NB:
Diets are changing, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Diabetes seems to follow the spread of meaty, high-fat, high-calorie diets. In Japan, for example, the traditional rice-based diet kept the population generally healthy and thin for many centuries. Up until 1980, only 1 to 5 percent of Japanese adults over age forty had diabetes. Starting around that time, however, the rapid westernization of the diet meant that meat, milk, cheese, and sodas became fashionable. Waist-lines expanded, and, by 1990, diabetes prevalence in Japan had climbed to 11 to 12 percent.
The same sort of trend has occurred in the U.S. Over the last century, per capita meat consumption increased from about 125 pounds per year (which was already very high compared with other countries) in the early 1900s to over 200 pounds today. In other words, the average American now eats 75 pounds more meat every year than the average American of a century ago. In the same interval, cheese intake soared from less than 4 pounds per person per year to about 33 pounds today. Sugar intake has gone up, too, by about 30 pounds per person per year. Where are we putting all that extra meat, cheese, and sugar? It contributes to body fat, of course, and diabetes follows. Today, about 13 percent of the U.S. adult population has type 2 diabetes, although many of them are not yet aware they have it.
KF:
What causes diabetes?
NB:
Normally, the cells of the body use the simple sugar glucose as fuel, the way a car uses gasoline. Glucose comes from starchy or sweet foods we eat, and the hormone insulin escorts it into the muscle cells to power our movements. Glucose also passes into our brain cells to power our thoughts. In type 2 diabetes, the cells resist insulin’s action, so glucose has trouble getting into the cells.
KF:
What happens to the body when a person develops diabetes? What’s the fallout?
NB:
If glucose can’t get into the cells, it builds up in the blood. It is as if gasoline coming out of a gas pump somehow can’t get into your gas tank, and it ends up spilling over the side of your car, coming in through your car windows, and dribbling all over the pavement. It is a dangerous situation. The abnormally high levels of glucose circulating in the bloodstream are toxic to the blood vessels, especially the tiny blood vessels of the eyes, the kidneys, the extremities, and the heart.
KF:
Is it really that serious, or can we just take a drug for it?
NB:
A person with diabetes loses more than a decade of life, on average; about three-quarters will die prematurely of a heart attack. It is also a leading cause of blindness, amputations, and loss of kidney function. Many drugs are available, from insulin to oral medications and an ever-increasing variety of other medications. In order to protect the heart, many patients are also put on medications to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. And yet these medications only slow the progression of the disease; many people have serious complications despite being on medications.
Let me emphasize that this grim scenario does not have to occur. If an unhealthy diet is the cause, a better diet can provide the answer to this problem.
KF:
How can we avoid it?
NB:
The key is to help our body’s insulin to work normally. So long as your body’s insulin can escort glucose into the cells normally, diabetes will not occur. The resistance to insulin that leads to diabetes appears to be caused by a buildup of fat inside the muscle cells and also inside the liver. Let me draw an analogy: I arrive home from work one day and put my key in my front door lock. But I notice the key does not turn properly, and the door does not open. Peering inside the lock, I see that someone has jammed chewing gum into the lock. Now, if the insulin “key” cannot open up the cell to glucose, there is something interfering with it. It’s not chewing gum, of course. The problem is fat. In the same way that chewing gum in a lock makes it hard to open your front door, fat particles inside muscle cells interfere with insulin’s efforts to open the cell to glucose. This fat comes from beef, chicken, fish, cooking oils, dairy products, etc. The answer is to avoid these fatty foods. People who avoid all animal products obviously get no animal fat at all, they appear to have much less fat buildup inside their cells, and their risk of diabetes is extremely low. Minimizing oils helps, too.
And we can go beyond prevention. When people who already have diabetes adopt a low-fat vegan diet, their condition often improves dramatically. In our research, funded by the U.S. government, we found that a vegan diet is more effective than the current traditional diabetes diet, and is much safer than a low-carb diet.
“When people who already have diabetes adopt a low-fat vegan diet, their condition often improves dramatically.”—Dr. Neal Barnard
KF:
What about the claim that a vegetarian diet has too many starches, which raises blood sugar?
NB:
Starchy foods, such as whole grains, beans, and vegetables, are healthful foods, and the body is designed to use the glucose that they hold. In type 2 diabetes, the body has lost some of this ability. But the answer is not to avoid starches but to restore the body’s ability to use them. After all, cultures whose diets are traditionally high in carbohydrate—Japan, China, Latin America—have had very low diabetes rates until meat, cheese, and other fatty foods displace their healthy carbohydrate-rich diets; only then does diabetes become more common.