Anyone that has made even the briefest foray into nutrition here on YouTube is likely to
have come across this famous picture from Dr. Esselstyn's paper, 'A way to reverse CAD?'
- and for good reason.
It shows a startling reversal of coronary atherosclerosis not even distantly-rivalled
by any other treatment - but achievable with whole foods, plant-based nutrition.
So unsurprisingly, advocates of the diet like to show it off!
But not many people actually know anything about the story behind these famous angiograms...so
why not hear the story from Dr. Esselstyn himself!
This clip I'm about to show was taken from a video on the channel 'The Real Truth About
Health', on which Dr. Esselstyn regularly features with some other inspiring talks and
interviews like this.
I'll leave a link to the channel and original video in the description box in case you're
interested.
Enjoy the clip, guys!
Now this is a surgical colleague.
A friend of mine.
This is Joe Crowe.
In 1996, Dr. Crowe began to get chest pain.
So Cardiology worked him up and could find nothing in October of '96.
And Joe had a cholesterol of 156, he was not diabetic, he was not hypertensive, did not
have a strong family history, he was not overweight, he exercised regularly, so 4 weeks later,
November of 1996, he finished his surgical schedule and he sat down to write post-operative
orders...the elephant suddenly sitting on his chest, pain in his left jaw, shoulder,
arm...having a heart attack.
Whipped down to the cath lab, start the catheterisation.
Cardiac arrest.
Resuscitate.
Finish the catheterisation, one more cardiac arrest.
Resuscitate.
Then he's sent up to the floors where he stabilises and he's discharged 3 days later, but very
depressed.
He was depressed, why?
He was depressed because at the time of the angiogram, they were able to find that the
entire lower-one-third of his left anterior descending coronary artery, the "widowmaker",
was all moth-eaten and diseased over this segment.
And you cannot just ram in and jam in stent after stent after stent, and it was too far
down the artery to have a bypass.
So Joe was very depressed.
So Anne and I had Joe and his wife out for dinner 2 weeks after his heart attack.
"Ah Joe, come on, you've been eating this typical Western diet, you've got the typical Western
disease, why don't you think about going plant-based?
We've got 10 years of data!"
"Okay yes, I'll give it a shot!
But I'm not taking any of those statin drugs, I don't trust them, too many side-effects."
"Hey, not a problem, that's your call."
He became the absolute personification of commitment to plant-based nutrition and over
the next 30 months his total cholesterol plummeted, his LDL went from 98 to 38, and then he had
another angiogram.
Now up on the surgical suites, my office was 3 doors away from his.
So at noon time I went over to his office, opened the door, and there he was, sitting
behind his desk.
I said "Joe, I understand you had the follow-up angiogram earlier this morning, would you
mind sharing with me how did it go?"
He said "Well...", came around, put his arms around me, a couple of these, and said "I
think we're doing okay."
I said "Well, would there be any chance that I could see the angiogram?"
Yes.
Now, what really...this is not going to happen to everybody.
But when the plaque is young and soft and made up of inflammation, fat and cholesterol,
the body can do a remarkable job of reconstituting itself.
When the plaque has been there for decades and it's filled up with scar and fibrosis
and calcification you're probably not going to budge it much - maybe a little remodelling,
you'll certainly help the vessel wall around it, but it's going to be my job today to make
sure that you understand that even those patients where you will not see this type of dramatic
reversal, even those patients are going to reverse their disease in a manner where they
can return to full activities of daily living without restriction and we'll get to that
in a few moments...
So there you have it guys, the lovely little story behind these famous angiograms and a
reminder that behind all the data, tables, epidemiology and randomised controlled trials,
there are thousands of people with amazing stories like this.
Hope you enjoyed the clip, thanks for watching, and I'll talk to ye next time!