my name is Ellsworth Wareham
I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon and
Practice that is my specialty all my professional life
I'm 98 years of age and I
practiced the cardiothoracic surgery until I was 95
I have first try to be active by working around my yard
Doing my pruning of my bushes, and I mow my own lawn
So I try to get a little exercise doing that
as far as my
Dietary program is concerned.
I happen to be a vegan. I've been a vegan now for about Half my life.
I think that's a healthy form of nutrition
I try to maintain the calm approach to the problems of life and
not worry and fret over problems that come along
I get a good night's sleep
and if I feel like it, I take a nap during the day
So I really try to be caught as careful as I can and
preserving what energy I have
I quit work when I was 95
And because of this of course I attracted some publicity from the national geographic
and incidentally the people I've worked with very much wanted me to continue
but I felt I should spend a little more time at home with my family
I could be working right now.
I could do anything that I did then and now 98
But I picked 95 as an arbitrary time when I would quit
I have always been inclined to be a vegetarian my folks were farmers and
We had quite a bit of meat available
But it never appealed to me to eat animal products
I never did drink milk by the glass
I would use it on my cereal and
Of course my mother and then later on my wife, would use it in cooking
So I was naturally inclined toward a vegetable type of diet
But I was concerned about the adequacy of the nutrition
when I found out that I could get by...by taking a little vitamin B12
of course I then became entirely Vegan
and I think that it has been a very fine form of nutrition.
It's a little extreme to tell a person who is
using flesh foods and that you're going to take everything entirely away from them
But I have...when I was in practice in medicine
I would tell the patients that the veget...
vegetable based diet was the healthy way to go
and as much as possible we keep away from the animal products
it has to be something that the person wants to cooperate in and
people are very sensitive about what they eat
now you can talk to people about exercising
and you can talk to people about relaxation
and good mental attitude and life things like that and
They will accept that
But you talk to them about what they're eating and people are very sensitive about that
if... if an individual is willing to listen
I will try to explain to them on a scientific basis of how I think it's better for them
I read a statement in the wall Street Journal last year.
I think it was in January of last year that
I thought was quite significant, and it was this
That all tastes are acquired except for breast milk
now
this means you see
that
if you as a parent
Will start your child on a healthy nutrition
They'll like it
But an individual let us say who is old even my age
Can change their taste buds
there are a lot of people that take too much salt and
Their food they think is flat unless they have a lot of salt in it,
but if you will diminish the amount of salt gradually
after a while they won't know the difference
and in a matter of three months or so
you can do a great deal to change your taste habits
if you are willing to do it
if a person is willing to go through the change
and give himself time
he will enjoy foods that are healthy for him
as you know
cholesterol is the chief problem you have to be concerned about
as far as development coronary occlusion and coronary disease is concerned
if your cholesterol is under a hundred and forty
Very very seldom that anybody has a heart attack with a cholesterol of 140
now the factors that Influence your cholesterol are things that we should know about
and one of the factors is the amount of saturated fat
and most animal fat is saturated
Whereas the vegetable fat is unsaturated or mono saturated
So you have to avoid the animal fats
Now there are those scientists
including Dr.Colin Campbell of Cornell University
That say that animal proteins will also affect your cholesterol
not just the fat in other words you pour off the cream off your milk and
drink the skim milk even the casein of the milk will raise your cholesterol
and then people say also high intake of sugar will affect your cholesterol
so if you can keep your cholesterol under 140
Your chances of developed coronary disease are very small
exercise is beneficial in reducing cholesterol
But if you're taking in a considerable amount of saturated fat,
you can't exercise enough to lower it as much as it should be lowered
the easiest way to get your cholesterol down is to
watch what you eat
Now you can lower your cholesterol by exercise,
but now I'm talking about no 15 or 20 milligrams something like that,
but if you get on a vegan diet which is a little fat
you can drop it much more
when we went abroad
We had an open heart surgery team that
this would be maybe a dozen to two dozen people that would go with team and
do open heart surgery in overseas countries,
but this was back 50 years ago
You see when open heart surgery is first starting out now
There's no no need to do anything like that
now most of the surgery we did when we went abroad
it was for congenital heart disease that is defects of the heart
With which a person is born
Holes in the heart and malformations the valves fourth
and the other was valvular heart disease due to rheumatic fever
We didn't do very many coronary cases
when we were oversea
coronary disease is a disease of the
more developed countries
That's being a little bit discriminatory I presume
but America undoubtedly in my opinion
has been the leader in the development of coronary disease
I mean in development of treatment of heart disease
and I think has also led out in the research of cause disease
We have a lot of information in this country
Which is not being applied
Which would greatly reduce the incidence we have of coronary disease.
I don't know whether you've been following the news
but Mayor Bloomberg of New York as you know
made certain laws
establishing the size of the soft drinks
which you can buy and so forth so on
and he has other areas in which he is also enforcing by law. Healthful habits
many people question whether you should have your individual freedom limited by laws,
but there's no question about it
that there are certain things that we could implement in this country
to greatly reduce heart disease
you know the Cleveland Clinic is the world's great center for coronary artery disease
Coronary angiography the study of the coronary arteries
was developed at Cleveland Clinic
and you can't diagnose where the stoppages in your coronary arteries
without coronary angiography
now we have some newer methods,
but that's still sort of the gold Standard
and Dr. Esselstyn of The Cleveland Clinic
He says that coronary artery disease does not need to exist
and it doesn't need to progress
and he does it on a low-fat vegan diet
there have been only two people in the world that I know of
they've demonstrated that they can arrest and reverse coronary artery disease
and they are Dr. Dean Ornish of San Francisco
and Dr. Esselstyn of the Cleveland clinic
and they both did it on a low-fat Vegan diet
if you would go on a low fat vegan diet and you exercise
the chances of developing coronary disease will be very low
get that cholesterol under a hundred and forty
and you can
my cholesterol is a hundred and seventeen
If I have some pain in my chest, I know it is not the coronary disease
maybe due to some something in my esophagus
Hiatus Hernia from my stomach or something else,
but it's not coronary disease
because of a hundred and seventeen I'm not going to develop it
Anybody can do those things
very simple