US surgeon brings healthy heart message to New Zealand

If we turned to a plant-based diet and stopped eating diary, processed foods and meat we’d not only be living longer, but feeling better.

That’s the message from Dr Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., the man credited with slimming down former US President Bill Clinton. On Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room current affairs programme on CNN, it wasn’t world affairs or economic policy that was big news but Clinton’s 10kg weight loss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoHt9cSWJVI

The 64-year old statesman’s  new look was the by-product of a diet he embarked on after undergoing a heart procedure earlier this year. The man he turned to for treatment was Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top four hospitals in the US, who recommended a plant-based diet.

Dr Esselstyn is bringing his healthy heart message to New Zealand in November when he speaks at the biennial CHIP summit in Rotorua. He says it’s time doctors started telling their patients the truth.

“We tend to think that treatment for heart disease has to be about new drugs or new surgical procedures but research shows it’s the simple things like what we eat that can not only cure heart disease but actually also reverse the damage.”

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of two of every five deaths in New Zealand and Dr Esselstyn says oil, dairy and meat are the main culprits that exacerbate the thickening of the walls of arteries triggering heart disease.

Dr Esselstyn recently published Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, a guide to making yourself heart-attack proof.

“If we want a seismic revolution in health the major behaviour we have to change is what eat,” says Dr Esselstyn. “We already know that diet can reverse heart disease, lower elevated cholesterol levels and make us feel better but why wait until people have heart disease. We know these foods are injuring people so we should be advocating plant-based nutrition and encouraging our children to take a healthy lifestyle seriously.

“The problem is that doctors practice palliative cardiology. There is drama to bypass surgery and stents but none when you are talking about broccoli. Diet is proven to be linked to chronic degenerative diseases but it isn’t sexy.

“If we stopped eating diary, processed foods and meat we’d not only be living longer, but feeling better.”

Among his vast professional qualifications, Dr Esselstyn won a gold medal rowing in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne and a Bronze star for his actions as an army surgeon in Vietnam.