Original subtitles

than to your heart and that's what why

we typically see those symptoms develop first.

Most people don't realize

that cardiovascular disease is a systemic disease process

that means if you have a heart attack

you're at risk for ED and peripheral arterial disease

and stroke and dementia

and so in short people need to realize that

when they have a stent and they fix one little area,

it does not cure the problem.

It simply solves one little spot

and so ED is no different.

It's kind of a warning signal that

well, that's not working well.

And if that's not working well

we know you're not getting the oxygen supply

to your brain and to your heart.

Where cardiovascular disease has its inception

is when we progressively destroy

the capacity of our lifejacket and our guardian

which is the inner most layer of the artery,

the endothelium.

The damage to the endothelium begins

when an excess LDL cholesterol is absorbed

The resulting inflammatory response

triggers immune cells called macrophages.

They enter the vessel wall

and begin to gobble up the excess cholesterol

creating these foam cells.

Now, these large cholesterol laden foam cells accumulate

resulting in plaque build up from the inside out

causing a pimple like area

to bulge into our artery passage ways.

Over time, the covering of these pimples can rupture

triggering a blood clot

that can block normal blood flow

to an area resulting in a heart attack or a stroke.

Back in 1900, we consumed about 4 pounds of oil

per person per year, currently 74 pounds.

So, we have added a tremendous amount of oil to our lives.

All oil is a 120 calories a table spoon,

and most Americans consuming

between 250 and 700 calories of oil a day.

You're taking the oil,

removing it from the original item

whether it be an olive, whether it be a Soy bean,

whether it be a coconut

and you're isolating that oil out.

When you isolate that oil, you have 100 percent fat.

Fats in oils are a major contributor

to blocked heart arteries,

high blood pressure, high cholesterol,

heart attacks, heart failure.

Oil injures endothelial cells.

Olive oil, corn oil, Soy bean oil, safflower oil,

sunflower oil, coconut oil, palm oil, oil in a cracker,

oil in bread, oil in a salad dressing.

So I have a number of people even on a plant based diet,

that will come in and say

Dr. Stoll, I'm eating really well

but I'm still gaining weight.

And my first question to them

is well, how much olive oil, coconut oil etc

are you using in your diet?

When they start to add it up,

sometimes they're adding five, six, tablespoons a day.

So, here we are, you know, 600, 700 calories

they're adding to their diet and they don't realize it

because they're adding in oils that they assume are healthy.

There aren't some special oils you can buy

that are health promoting.

They're all processed foods

with almost no levels of micronutrients

and phytochemicals in them, with no fiber.

Coconut oil is 90 percent saturated fat.

Lard is 43 percent saturated fat.

The coconut oil miracle

is that it's still on the market.

And so when we just

hear little clips on the news,

maybe on the internet, it says olive oil is the way to go.

We grab on to that

and unfortunately it's bad information.

Here I am, I'm just out of recovery

from my heart catheter

and he looks at me and says, you know,

"I think I'd like you to meet Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn,

he was my mentor at medical school.

Sure enough the next morning, he gave me a call,

he said, "I want you to read this book,

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease

and call me back."

There is hard science out there

that you can halt and reverse this disease with nutrition.

There is a common feeling

that, oh well patients won't do that.

Well, nothing is further from the truth.

I read it, within a few days I called him back

and I said, "I'm in.

I'll do whatever you want me to do."

When folks are willing to change their,

you know, 50, 60, 70 year old worth of habits,

it's amazing watching cure

for the first time in my career.

I really believe that diet is the primary way

that we need to change things.

I've been now plant based for almost three years.

What it's done is at that time my cholesterol was 310,

today it's at 143.

Plant based nutrition

has allowed me to have more energy

than I've ever felt in my life.

The body is a natural self healing machine

and disease in unnatural, avoidable

and in most cases reversible with superior nutrition.

What I thought I knew about healthy eating

almost killed me.

One moment, I was eating meat with every meal.

The next moment, whole food, plant based.

A very drastic change overnight.

Within six months my cholesterol was down to 115,

my LDL was 15, which was as low as they can measure.

My triglycerides had fallen to a 175.

The last time I had my cholesterol checked,

it was 96 and my triglycerides were 97.

And there's not a drug on the planet that can do that.

That is solely through diet and I'm just utterly amazed

that the human body has the ability

to heal itself so quickly.

You know I abused my body for 53 years,

I'm currently 59 and I feel better now

than I felt when I was 35.

Genetics is not our destiny.

Our genes can be directly affected by the food we eat.

We know that you can reverse heart disease

with plant based diet, we know this,

you cannot do with medication,

but you can do it with a plant based diet.

And when they ask doctors,

"Why don't you teach people this?"

They say, "They don't think

people are going to want to do it,

it's too difficult" Well,

let them be the judge of that.

I think it's too difficult to go under the knife

and have my chest cracked open,

you know, but give people the chance,

the opportunity.

Two weeks after starting

the whole food plant based diet with no oil,

my angina had all of a sudden stopped.

By the time I went back to my internist,

my hemoglobin A1C was coming down.

They took me off the shots,

they took me off of the starlix pills.

Within a couple months later I went off the metformin.

The doctor said, I don't think you're diabetic.

I don't have any arthritis anymore.

I'm enjoying life,

I love the food that I'm eating,

I would say the bottom-line to all of my health issues

is you don't have to suffer

with heart disease and diabetes,

because it's food borne illnesses,

and if food is what got you into this mess,

food can get you out of it.

By definition, a mammal makes milk for its young,

and so a horse makes milk perfect for its foal,

and a human being makes milk perfect for the infant,

and a cow makes milk perfect for her calf.

The thing is that we have different nutritional needs

when we're young than a calf has.

They grow real fast.

A little baby calf grows from 60 pounds to 600 pounds

drinking milk.

If you fed a baby calf human milk,

the animal would starve to death.

So when people eat baby calf food

designed to accelerated growth

they grow, people get fat.

We know the protein from dairy casein

is a cancer promoter on the DNA level.

It actually tells your DNA go ahead and make some cancer.

The earlier you introduce young children to dairy,

the higher their risk, about 14 fold higher

to develop a devastating disease

called diabetes type 1, which is an autoimmune disease

that destroys the pancreas irreversibly.

Dairy calcium is kind have been made into a myth

that if I eat cheese or I drink milk

and have a good calcium intake from dairy

that I'll have strong bones

and that's actually not been proven

in the literature at all.

When I look at people,

and they're drinking all this milk to try to combat

the osteopenia and osteoporosis,

I tell them that the countries

that consume the most dairy have the weakest bones.

And they're like, what do you mean,

I say "Well, most of Asia didn't have osteoporosis

up until recent times

and they didn't drink milk at all."

If you don't drink milk,

where are you going to get your calcium?

Where do you think the cow gets their calcium, right?

They have a thousand pound skeleton, that's a lot it,

they get it from plants, right.

Start everyday

with milks' protein and milk life.

The dairy industry says, oh, milk does the body good.

We're believing advertising, we're not believing truths.

In 1999, I had that wake up call.

I was diagnosed with both breast and cervical cancer.

So the doctor said

you've got to have a mastectomy next week,

you got to have a hysterectomy immediately,

you got to have chemo, you got to have radiation.

And I was like a deer in headlights

and I was like, there's no way.

All of the doctors were pretty clear

that they felt that

I probably wouldn't live longer than a few months,

because I had cancerous fluid

that had metastasized from my ovaries,

all the way up the pleural cavity,

on my right lung.

Until you've seen

a loved one get sick and die in a hospital

or walk through the halls

or been to an intensive care unit,

people don't know. I mean, you drown death,

when you die with lung cancer,

I mean horrific, horrific deaths.

The war on cancer under President Nixon

started in 1971.

The incidents rate that is the number of people

that get cancer was one in eight.

The survival rate was about 27 percent, 28 percent

which means a little more than

70 percent of the patients died.

Just a couple of years ago,

the National Cancer Institute published their latest figures,

the incidents as much higher and the survival rates

are basically unchanged around 31, 32 percent.

It's a travesty

that people continue to suffer and die

when we have the tools, we have the knowledge,

we just the system is such,

it just doesn't reward that kind of behavior.

It doesn't make anybody money.

I think that the assumption there

is that there is a rational helpful benign process

that's running the show in government

and there isn't so what's running the show

is a vicious free for all

and that nobody is really interested

in helping Americans get healthy.

Nobody makes any money sending you home

to eat your vegetables and drink your water.

And I think that's probably

the base root of the whole problem.

In our morning rounds, how where you live

affects your odds of surviving cancer.

New government data shows people in the south

have the highest risk of dying from cancer.

Kentucky ranks number one.

Cancer defined by modern medicine

is essentially a wild, erratic cells

that's growing without control.

And it's very active metabolically.

First up, chemotherapy is standard

for most breast cancer patients.

I think the whole chemotherapy industry

is very sad.

It's based on an assumption that I find to be flawed.

The way that cancer is assumed to work

is once started progressively gets worse

because of certain events to come along like mutations.

Therefore, that leads to the idea,

well, how do we treat people with cancer.

We can't get those cancer cells to go back to being normal.

What are we going to do?

We're going to kill them.

And how best to kill them

except to have created some chemical

that can zap those tumors.

That's called chemotherapy,

but chemotherapy is not working for the most part.

The focus on cancer seems to be

early detection, early detection

and we have breast cancer awareness month.

I would like to see, breast cancer prevention month.

And that could be for all types of cancer,

not just breast cancer.

My mom and aunts had had breast, cervical,

uterine or ovarian cancer.

They did the surgery,

the mastectomies and the hysterectomies.

They did the chemo.

They did the radiation, and I really saw what that did.

I saw that not only did it not heal,

but it made the situation worse

and I was convinced that many of the people

that I loved the most in the world

had actually died

not as a result of being diagnosed with cancer,

but as a result of all of those treatments.

Why do chemo surgery and radiation

not do well for the most part?

because they do nothing to change the root cause,

the biological terrain

the culture medium if you will that,

any disease will grow in as not functioning properly

it's conducive to growing a cancer cell for example,

conventional medicine looks at the tumor and says,

okay, that's the disease.

I don't, I look at the tumor and say,

that's the symptom of the disease.

In our research, for example, we showed 40 years ago,

we could have a model

and we could turn cancer on and off.

And it doesn't have anything to do with mutations.

I went to see Dr. Joel Fuhrman who...

to my good fortune was my primary care physician.

And he examined me

and we talked and I just decided,

well it's not gonna hurt to ask another person,

you know, if there is a chance that I'm gonna get through this

and I said, "Do you think I'm going to survive this?"

And he said, "Yes, I do."

And I said, "That's wonderful,

because you are the only one who has said that."

You don't have to be sick.

You don't have to wait in line for a terminal illness.

There is something you can do about it,

and the time to start is now.

The motivating factor for me

to adopt a whole food plant based diet

was I didn't want to die.

My wife had adopted the whole food plant based ideology

for at least two to three years.

And I did it really purely as for health,

I had dragged family along fairly successfully,

my husband was good when he was at home,

and I was cooking for him.

We hear the term always committing,

committing to something 100 percent.

And I think for me

adopting a whole food plant based diet,

I wasn't fully committed.

He was diagnosed in November of 2013 with kidney cancer,

turned out to be stage four cancer.

I think at that moment

I never had to nag at him again,

I never had to convince him, he was completely onboard.

We were told that given what it was

and the type of the cancer, renal cell carcinoma

in a fairly aggressive one as to what they were seeing

on the tests taken.

That it would be probably a matter of months

that I had to live.

He went through a major surgery to have the kidney removed

and many of the lymph nodes around it

and you know, they were pretty brutal

and they said that, you know,

that he might not even survive the surgery

because it has gone up his venae cavae

and they had to clamp that off and he could bleed out

and so that was devastating in itself.

And they explained that

chemotherapy and radiation was not effective

in controlling or healing

or working with renal cell carcinoma

and they said there was current research being done

with respect to immunotherapy drugs.

He recovered really well from this surgery,

rather quickly,

he was accepted into a trail study

and it was an immune boosting therapy

and we went down to Vancouver for that,

and after the third treatment, it attacked his liver.

So they explained to us that this liver attack,

the side effect from the drugs

and the rates that my liver was battling right now,

it could be a fatal episode.

So he was dismissed from the study

because it doesn't look good to kill your trial patient.

So they basically sent us home to recover from that.

There is no way. I'm not gonna do surgery,

chemo or radiation.

He said to me, "What do you mean, no,

you don't have a choice?"

He said, "You'll be dead in six months."

I said, "Well, I'll tell you what,

if I'm not dead in six months, I'll come back to see you."

Conventional medicine uses

the term a five year survival of a cancer

without a recurrence of the same cancer,

you might have another one.

But, without a recurrence of the same cancer,

is considered a cure.

For me, it really isn't.

For me, a cure is

when a patient lives the rest of their life,

as along as they don't mess up

and start doing the bad lifestyle choices

that they had.

We did a national wide survey of a total of 6,500 families

and what came out of that

was supporting what we had done initially.

And that was the moment, in that process

we turned away from vegetables, and fruits, and grains

which we learned how to be the whole form,

the entire kind of form.

And we put in all the animal foods

and all the processed foods.

We're making a big mistake.

Animal protein can turn on cancer

and the protein that we were using primarily

was the main protein in cow's milk.

When you are eating super inflammatory foods,

you're eating dairy products, you're eating meat,

you're eating eggs,

you're eating all this inflammatory foods,

processed foods,

all these oils you shouldn't be eating

and then you add to that pesticides

and all these chemicals

that we know can potentially cause cancer.

Now you're in the perfect storm.

So, I continued on

with our whole food plant based diet

and he just got better and better

and with each scan things were reducing,

lymph nodes were shrinking in size.

And initially they had said it would be naive

to think that this would not spread,

and it didn't spread and it reduced.

And it kept reducing to the point

where it was radiologically undetectable.

At this two year period,

where you're told plain and simple that

you're probably gonna die, if you make that outset date,

you're probably got to get sicker and sicker.

And I didn't.

And I got healthier and healthier and healthier.

And at two years, when he should have died

according to them,

he went back to work, full-time.

I've never been this healthy in my whole life and I just,

I'm carrying on,

what has brought me here this far, this healthy

and the way I am,

has been adopting whole food plant based,

there's no two ways about it.

My friends and family didn't believe me,

they didn't approve.

My doctor didn't like it.

But when that six month mark came,

I made that phone call.

I want an appointment.

When they ran all the tests

and I was completely cancer free.

Some of the things that I found

from those tests he ran, not only did I not have cancer,

but rheumatoid arthritis

that I was diagnosed at the age of 27 with,

that the doctors had told me then,

"You could be crippled by this,

you could end up in a wheel chair,

you're going to have to take drugs

for pain management on this."

It was gone.

I had always had these problems with eczema, psoriasis.

My skin looked better than ever and from a little girl

I was diagnosed with all kinds of allergies.

For the first time in my life

that I could remember I had no allergy.

Like this is really something.

I realized that this lifestyle had healed my body completely

from the inside out.

I'm Pamela Swallow, I just turned 70 this summer,

but I've been 18 years cancer free.

I was diagnosed in 1997

with metastatic stage four ovarian cancer.

My prognosis was horrible,

but not everybody is right all the time

and I was determined to live and I have and so could you.

I have a major blockage in my right thigh.

I have a lot of plaque in, I guess in major artery.

I was trying to find solutions.

When I was shooting Captain America in Cleveland,

I was going to the Cleveland Clinic

and while I was there

the doctor asked me about the blockage,

she started telling me about this doctor

that could possibly help me

and we went to have lunch with Essie and Ann

they're just such enthusiastic and healthy people.

I had already read his book.

I was convinced that I need to try this

and I decided I was gonna jump right in.

I was little daunted by the okay, no oil, no dairy,

no nuts, no sugar, no, the nos.

But I got to it and I started it,

I was getting along fine with the diet.

I was doing great.

In the middle of all this,

the movie that I was preparing to do

in the spring, the director wanted to see me,

because he heard I was back in town,

and he wanted to talk to me about the film.

When I left, I got a call later on that evening

from my agent.

He was like, you know,

director was very concerned about you, and they said,

"If you don't gain like, 20 pounds

between now and the time that movie starts,

they're gonna fire you."

So, contrary to my health needs,

I went back to flesh and not just plant based diet.

I gained weight by like wham,

it just came right back just the way, I lost it.

My leg cramps came back. I started to snore again.

I don't pop up out of bed

as energetically as I used to,

my regularity changed,

my susceptibility for catching things

changed drastically.

I get tired after I eat which is really trippy,

you know, it's the food supposed to give you energy.

I eat now and it's kinda like, I need a nap.

So my digestive process is very different.

I know that at some point, I'm gonna go back to it,

because I know how to do it,

and I know how I felt when I was doing it.

Mainly because I know, I could do better from myself.

Everything that I was ever taught,

everything I'd ever read, basically it was telling me,

"Hey Hispanics have a high percentage of diabetes."

I was also lead to believe it's in your genes,

it's just part of who you are.

I was a fast food junky.

My body was telling me, you need that sugar,

you need that fat, you need that salt

and so I was going

through the drive-through all the time.

My family has been devastated by chronic disease.

My mother was diabetic.

She had a kidney transplant. She was legally blind.

Many, many years of dialysis, many, many years of shots,

injections and pills and ultimately passed away

at the young age of 61 years old.

My oldest brother,

he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,

he passed in 2002.

My twin brother Joe,

he's been diabetic over a decade

and just about four months ago he had a heart attack.

And then the youngest brother is Martin,

he was diagnosed with diabetes at a young age,

in his early teens 13 or 14 years old.

He has had his right leg amputated.

He has had a kidney and pancreas transplant.

He's legally blind.

He does dialysis three times a week,

and he takes 25 medications every single day.

I was headed down that same path,

at the age of 43 taking two insulin shots,

two oral medications for diabetes,

a high blood pressure medication

as well as a high cholesterol medication.

I even asked my doctor, I said

"Will I ever get off this insulin."

And he flat out told me,

"No, you're gonna be on insulin

the rest of your life."

I was very upset,

I was actually quite pissed off,

because I'd seen what this had done to my family

and now here I was.

Up until fairly recently,

people had a completely wrong view of diabetes.

They thought diabetes is caused by eating sugar

or eating starch and eating bread.

And that was somewhat logical,

because the carbohydrate in the bread

does release glucose, it releases sugar.

And so it will make the blood sugar rise,

but it turns out that was never the cause of it.

Type two diabetes is caused by the build up

of tiny microscopic fat particles

in the muscle cells, and what happens is

as the fat builds up in the cell,

the insulin can no longer bring the glucose inside.

So what's the answer,

the answer is get that fat out of the cells,

the diabetes will improve.

Most of us have no idea, where our food comes from.

I started to question, where that food was coming from

and how that food was raised.

I never made the connection

really between what was on my plate

and then that was once a living, breathing animal.

Once I made that connection

I didn't want to have any part of it.

I don't see animals as food anymore,

I see it has complete suffering and I want people to know that,

that animal didn't just naturally die,

and then they package it, and it becomes food.

That's not how it is,

the animal suffered everyday of its life,

it was beaten, it was tortured,

and then it became food for you.

The plight of farm animals is more than ever something

that really matters to me.

But what also surprised me

was how many basic human rights violations exist,

with humans in addition to what's happening

to the animals.

A lot of milk that we drink actually has a lot of puss

or white blood cells in it.

Largely because a lot of these animals

are not treated as well as they ought to be.

You don't have to take a life in order to sustain yours.

Every time we're purchasing something,

we're voting with our dollar.

So, if you choose to eat animal products

and you choose to take your dollar

and vote for cruelty,

and harmfulness and death you're part of the problem,

then you're not part of the solution.

I knew right then, and the other day

I didn't want to be part of anything

that promoted cruelty.

Informing the public to the truth

about what humans are suppose to eat

is going to be vital for the future of our health,

the future of the environment, the future of animal welfare

and the future of the finances of this country.

Sustainability is becoming more and more an issue.

So it's not just the health of people,

not just cruelty to animals and what not.

It's actually an issue of survival.

People are not making the connection

that what they're eating

is really affecting the environment.

Over a third of the landmass in the world

is taken up by livestock, agriculture.

If you look at all of the animals

that are being raised for consumption,

it totals around 70 billion.

Livestock are basically

black boxes of inefficiency, right?

You pour in huge amounts

of feed, of protein, of energy, water,

and these animals have the audacity to breathe

and move around and waste energy

and like, you know, live their lives

and then only about half of them

you can eat the rest is the skeleton and skin.

I mean it's just like, huge amount of resources

to get these tiny kind of scraps from them

when we could just be eating the food directly,

you know, cut out the middle moo.

We're having a big water shortage in California,

now they're rationing water.

Long showers 40 gallons of water,

short showers 20 gallons.

One burger is 4,000 to 18,000 gallons of water

to make a third of a pound burger.

75% of the deforestation taking place in the Amazon,

is because of animal agriculture.

We're raping the land,

is really what we are doing.

We are taking everything out of the dirt

that we want to have in the dirt,

the microbes, the organic matter.

We are headed towards our dirt not being viable

to grow anything.

Most people don't understand that,

the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases

more than all transportation combined

planes, trains, boats, automobiles

is animal agriculture.

We need to do something right now

to start reversing global warming.

Well I can do something about that right now

I can just stop eating, stop eating animals.

So, when he start thinking of world hunger,

and you start thinking about

all the water that's being wasted,

and transportation, not to mention the cruelty.

You start looking at it from a bigger picture

and realizing that your dollar

that you're voting with doesn't just affect you,

it affects not only your fellow human beings,

but also your planet.

So when you start to educate yourself

not just about the way that you feel,

and about the way the people around you feel,

but when you really start to take it all in,

and you've just started to lean in,

oh, you're in all the way.

The formula is clear,

you want to eat the foods that promote good health,

you want to avoid the foods that contribute to poor health.

Basically we don't eat anything with the mother or a face.

Like most people like, kind of walked away,

from there going, what do you eat? you know.

So what is whole food plant based?

It's a food that comes from the ground,

it's less altered by man, it's less processed by man.

Like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans

you know, and nuts and seeds to a lesser extent.

We're not talking about unhealthy plant based eating.

We're talking about whole foods.

I take away all their meat, and all their dairy,

and all their oil, and they look at me,

they go "Dr. McDougall, I got nothing to eat,

there is nothing for me to eat at all, nothing."

I say, "Yes, there is."

And then I show them the key which

you have to know, or you'll fail."

I show them the starch.

I say, "Well, do you like potatoes?"

"Oh, I love potatoes."

Beans, and lentils, and vegetables

you didn't even know existed

and even fruits from other countries.

Turnip, collard, mustard, kale...

Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds.

Black beans, brown rice, salsa, avocados, quinoa.

Bok choy, swiss chard, kale, collards, collard green,

beet greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, napa cabbage,

brussels sprouts, broccoli,

cauliflowers, cilantro parsley,

spinach, and arugula, and asparagus.

You got it.

Always eat too much,

stuff yourself on those berries.

They feel good, they feel good in you,

they give you energy,

you don't have to drink anything,

they got so much liquid in them, they feel great.

That's one food I love.

Spinach or collard greens, you ever think

you'd ever say collard greens? I say collard greens.

Mustard greens.

Where's Jeb? Where's granny?

All of a sudden, Elly May Clampett.

You start saying things like that, Clampetts,

when you eat like this, you know,

I'll have some mustard greens, some collard greens,

three pounds of those steamed

and then like this much apple cider vinegar.

The first thing people say is, I don't have time.

When somebody says to me, I don't have time,

what I really hear is, I don't want to.

If tomorrow I'm going to be diagnosed with cancer,

I don't have time for that,

but I will have time to do chemo, radiation,

surgery, recuperation.

The hardest part about changing your diet and your health

is just deciding to do it.

Oh, plant based diet, I don't think I'd like that.

Well, you think that long enough,

you probably won't try it.

Don't you remember when you were little

and mom put something on your plate

and said, well just try it, "No, I don't want to try it."

Well, just try it.

It's like riding a bike, you know, you like the idea,

you want the outcome,

you can read about the technique

all day long but at some point you just got to get on the bike

and find your balance.

And once you find your balance

you just glide and it's so freeing.

So, I started and I started very seriously.

I started every meal, three meals a day,

which consisted mainly of fruits and vegetables,

some nuts and seeds, and it just worked.

And in about six months I lost 120 pounds

and then over the course of maybe another six months,

I lost another 100 pounds, so I lost 220 pounds.

The diabetes went away within weeks

and the hypertension also went away.

I started to feel great.

I can't she's got so much energy today,

I can't really keep up with her, to be honest with you.

Recently I was lucky enough to have an echo

done by my coworkers,

and she was overwhelmed

by what she saw on my echocardiogram.

There were no blockages, there is no plaque,

the elasticity in my heart is excellent and she said,

"We don't really see hearts like this."

The number one thing that she said was,

"Susan, I'm convinced.

I see what you eat everyday,

but this for me as a echocardiogram sonographer

this is what sells me."

I have reversed disease,

the damage that hypertension does to your heart,

and type two diabetes,

it was reversed in the last five years from eating this way.

The first thing I noticed was

that I didn't have all those greasy dishes,

and then I noticed that my food bill was lower,

and then I noticed that I felt better.

After all if you have all those greasy dishes,

think what the inside of your intestine must look like.

The vast majority of the world subsists on rice and beans

for fractions of what we pay for food.

The thing people have to understand

is that it is not expensive

to eat a healthy whole food plant based diet.

Sure if you go out to restaurants

or buy vegan processed food, it is

but where I live in the ethnic markets,

in the area of Los Angeles a pound of beans are $0.49.

And you get it, put it, cook it in your pressure cooker,

you're done in 10 minutes.

For me I'm not buying meat anymore,

I'm not buying dairy anymore.

When in season, I can go to my local farmer's market.

And when I explained to them they asked for like,

how can I do this really.

And I say well, you can actually buy a 25 pound bag

of brown rice for 25 bucks.

You can buy a 20 pound bag of whatever your favorite bean

is for 20 bucks, and a bunch of fresh frozen vegetables

for $0.99 a bag and you have meals for a month

for two people for 60-70 bucks.

And they look at me like, "Oh, I never thought of that."

You're not eating the cheeses, and the meats, and the eggs

and so the average family is gonna save a lot of money,

plus you're not gonna be in the line

at the pharmacy counter as much,

and if diet changes can start to cut that down,

you're saving serious money.

We went in and ransacked our pantries,

our refrigerators, our freezers. Started emptying things out,

taking out all the things with the oils, the sugars,

the processed foods, got rid of the meats.

From one day to the other,

our lifestyle changed completely.

We threw away everything we had,

and we went to the store

and bought new food and we started.

By the time we got

from the TV room into the kitchen, he said,

"We shouldn't have anymore animal products in our house."

I was like yay.

We just switched like that and then there was a moment

where we said, "Well what about the children?"

I said, "It's not a democracy."

They're just along for the ride.

I want to feel better.

Looking back at where I was just 11 months ago,

I don't even recognize that person.

I could not imagine the drastic changes

that we've seen in less than a year,

not only the physical changes

of the weight loss, but coming off medication,

I feel good on the inside, I don't hurt anymore,

my knees don't hurt.

I feel better now than I did when I was in high school.

Making this lifestyle change

to a whole food plant based way of eating

is the absolute best decision I've ever made in my life.

It's not so much about trying to invent a new way of life,

but rather discovering the foods that are right here

in front of you.

So it's about shopping in the produce department.

It's literally about knowing which aisles to walk down

in your supermarket,

which stuff to grab and which stuff to just keep

walking right past.

The first priority is to eat whole unrefined plants

and to avoid animal sourced foods

and foods that are processed.

A fresh roasted beet,

I get really excited about produce.

The foods that don't require a label tend to be the highest

in nutrients and most beneficial for your health.

Things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, lentils.

However there are a lot of foods

that do have labels,

I'm talking about your frozen pizza

that's got a dozen ingredients in the crust

and a dozen more in the toppings.

My God, there are paragraphs of ingredients.

You don't want that, especially you don't want the mono

and diglycerides, you don't want the added oil,

and there are usually four or five or six different ways

that they're stuffing sugar at you.

For example, we'll pickup raisin bran,

and I'll show folks,

okay, "Tell me how sugar is in that per serving?

And how much fiber is in that per serving?"

They very quickly realize that often they may be eating

for breakfast something that is a bowl full of sugar.

You can pick up a jar of spaghetti sauce

and it will have sugar in it.

Now that being said, there are a plenty of packaged foods

that can be a part of a healthy diet,

for example canned vegetables, frozen fruits and vegetables.

However, the way they're packaged

matters a great deal,

and the way they're processed matters.

So in teaching people about label reading, I tell them,

if it has a package,

turn it over and look at the label.

So let's take a look at this one,

'cause it looks really promising,

it says 100 percent whole grain,

it also says heart healthy, and good source of fiber.

So let's take a look at the ingredients

just to make sure.

Whole wheat flour, water, sugar,

sugar is the third ingredient.

It's also got soybean oil in it, and those mono

and diglycerides that we don't want.

So again, it's so important to read those labels.

With nothing to lose, we decided to just try it out

and see how things went,

and so we decided to do it for a month

and the pounds just started to fall away,

I think I lost 14 pounds that first month.

So over the course of the next 18 months,

I proceeded to lose half of my body weight

for a total of about 130 pounds.

It's never too late to feel young, to lose weight,

to feel energetic, to enjoy your family, your children,

your grandchildren, your great grandchildren

and be able to help heal yourself with food.

I eat amazing food that tastes, smell, and look amazing.

I'm not eating grass.

I am so satisfied, I love my food.

I just, I eat so many different things now,

and I try new things

like I never would have tried Indian,

or Ethiopian, or Thai, and they're my favorite.

And I would have missed those had I not become plant based.

With plant based cuisine, we can create all the flavors,

textures, satisfying, feelings

that you always want from a meal.

Let's demystify this notion

that if you are a plant based eater,

you are giving up everything.

If food tastes good, food tastes good.

It's because of what it's made of.

Hi, good morning. Hey, doc.

Good to see you, welcome back.

- Hi, how are you, Yvonne? - Good.

When I first heard about this,

I thought it was a bunch of malarkey, you know.

And then the challenge was made, you know, try it,

what does it hurt?

So I tried it.

Without medication your cholesterol was 300 range.

Yes, previously.

Okay, and now, without medications

and making some changes in your diet,

your cholesterol is at 171.

- Really? - Yeah.

So it's almost half of what it was before

on no medication.

Your triglycerides have dropped another 20 points.

Both your cholesterol and your triglycerides

are safely in the normal range.

Sweet.

On no medication.

That is proof to me.

You can't lie in the numbers

and you can't lie with shedding the weight,

and I felt great.

So we kept on going with it and it's working.

I was told, and I was convinced by my doctor,

you're gonna be on this for the rest of your life,

cause you're just genetically predisposed to be this way.

And it took this to prove to me that's not true.

I'm eating plant based whole foods

and my cholesterol is no longer an issue.

I feel as good as I did when I was 20.

A lot people think that when they go plant based,

it's gonna be really difficult

and the cooking is going to be really involved

and involve 15 to 20 ingredients, but it's not.

One of my favorite things to make

is my garlic alfredo sauce.

It's just seven ingredients,

basically just start out with chopping some onions,

chopping some garlic,

throw it in a little bit of vegetable broth

on a pan,

sauté it for about eight minutes

until all the broth is evaporated

and then you just add it to your blender.

And you're gonna want to add the cooked vegetables...

the remaining broth which is another cup.

I have a half cup of cashews.

Now if you don't have a high powered blender,

you're gonna have to soak your cashews

for about five to six hours,

otherwise, they're gonna turn out gritty,

and you don't want that in your sauce,

you're gonna want it thick, and creamy, and smooth.

A quarter cup of nutritional yeast,

that's gonna give it a depth of flavor

and a little bit of cheesy undertone,

quarter teaspoon of black pepper,

a half a teaspoon of salt

and one tablespoon of lemon juice.

Blend it up and you got some delicious alfredo sauce.

You can pour it over some cooked pasta,

and everybody is gonna be shocked

that there is no dairy,

and there is no butter or cheese in it.

It's really, really delicious,

it's just as rich as traditional alfredo sauce,

but it's actually good for you.

It's about just being creative,

it's about not so much seeing road blocks,

but rather seeing the opportunities

that come with these new aspirations

that you may have.

There are three reasons to eat out.

One, you don't have to do the dishes, two, the ambience,

three, companionship.

You never go out to eat

to further destroy endothelial cells, okay.

Everybody says, well, gosh doctor,

Dr Esselson it's so hard.

Aren't they gonna have,

some of these places, have oil?

Yeah, all of them.

When the waiter or the waitress comes to your table,

you turn in your seat, take your glasses off,

look them squarely in the eye.

You must understand

that I'm deathly allergic to a single drop of any oil.

Now you get creative.

Can I have part of this item on the menu

mixed with part of this and put it together?

Then the chefs are really actually,

if you just ask the question,

they're very excited to create something for you.

We have to be that change, we have to be the ones to ask,

and hopefully soon enough demand that we have organic,

plant based foods in restaurants

across the country.

We'd adopted this lifestyle on December 3rd of 2011.

Within days, three to four days

I start to see my sugars plummet

and I'm seeing my weight drop anywhere

between five to seven pounds per week.

My psoriasis went away, my heart burn,

I've not had heart burns since I adopted this lifestyle

and I'm Mexican, I love spicy food,

I eat jalapeños and spices, Indian food.

And lo and behold, by the end of January 2012

so not quite 60 days later,

I was off all five of my medications.

Four to five months in,

my erectile dysfunction went away,

so here we are three and half going on four years later,

my health continues to be normal.

My A1c levels, my cholesterol levels,

my blood pressures,

I'm healthier than I was even 20 years ago.

So when my wife and I adopted

a whole foods plant based lifestyle,

we basically changed

the trajectory of my family's future.

So we're gonna make the cauliflower hot wings,

which you're just gonna love, they're really easy.

So you start with a head of cauliflower,

or you can cheat like me and buy pre-cut florets.

Just set those aside and whisk together

one half cup of plant based milk,

such as soy milk or almond milk,

one half cup of flour, I'm using chickpea flour today,

but you can use any flour that you happen to have,

whisk in some garlic powder or some onion powder

or even cayenne if you want it to be hotter,

or little nutritional yeast,

then pour your almond milk into your flour

and mix it so it forms a batter.

Take each floret and dip it into the batter

and shake it off just to coat it.

Put it on your baking sheet, bake it for about 12 minutes

at 450 degrees, just until it's golden and fork tender,

and then when you're done, toss it with some hot sauce,

or teriyaki sauce, or barbecue sauce.

Just mix it together

and then you have your hot wings ready to go.

When we're looking at this plant based nutrition data,

it's more than heart disease and risk factors,

it's actually a lot of cancer, lot of inflammatory diseases,

such as lupus and Sjogren's syndrome,

and rheumatoid arthritis

and so you know plant based nutrition

and good lifestyle are good for a variety of things,

not just heart disease.

At the time my husband was working for MTV,

and he was helping recording artist,

get really fit for videos, you know,

and I said I want to look like one of them.

It was purely vanity. We're gonna go to Maui,

we're gonna get married and I just want,

I want to look as good as I feel emotionally.

And I want to do it in a healthy way

and that's what he did.

It wasn't about starvation,

it wasn't about hurting your body,

it was about learning how to take care of your body,

learning how to nourish my body in a way that would

cause me to have a fast metabolism.

And most people think about fuel in terms of,

these big building blocks

like protein and carbohydrates and fat,

but that's not what it's about.

It's about vitamins, and minerals,

and phytonutrients, and enzymes,

and things that your cells actually need.

I had to eat so much food, more than I'd ever eaten before

and drink all this water and take, you know,

do all this, eat more than I ever had before,

and he told me that was going to make me

actually lose weight.

So even though I was skeptical I did it,

and in the four months not only did I go

from the size 10 to a size 3 but I was really fit

and I felt the best I'd ever felt in my entire life.

I had no more aches and pains, my joints felt great,

I was energetic.

When it was time to get my blood test and everything,

I didn't really think it was going to affect them,

because that was impossible,

I just, you know I thought this was just something

that improved how I felt.

And so I told my husband, well, whatever this is that you did,

I'm gonna eat this way from now on,

because I feel so good.

When I got my next round of blood test a few months later,

all the lupus indicators were negative.

The doctor had a medical student with him and he said,

this woman alleges to have lupus,

but we are not finding any evidence of it.

Maybe there is just an error in the test.

Go have your wedding, come back and we'll test again.

And we tested again few months later

and now even the antibodies

for the clots were completely negative.

And my blood pressure was coming down

to that of an athlete, and my "genetically high cholesterol"

that I was told that I could do nothing,

but blame my parents,

that's what my doctor told me as a kid,

that was completely normal and in fact optimal.

And that's what's happened ever since then

and right now I'm sitting here

and it's been 10 years since that first negative blood test,

and there has been no sign of lupus coming back,

in spite of me continuing to go on and not only expose myself

to those things they said I shouldn't like

going out in the sunshine but also having two children.

I have continued to actually get healthier and stronger

as the years have gone by.

You know, I think we all love process food

for their convenience.

But what if you could have the convenience

without the processed food part.

You know, one of my favorites is macaroni and cheese in a box

which I grew up with like everybody else

and used to love.

So I've come up with a vegan version that's whole foods.

It's something you can keep in your pantry in a jar,

pull it out and take a little cup of it

and just mix it up with some non-dairy milk

and just pour it over some noodles

and you got an instant easy dish.

Comes together in about 30 seconds,

so you better watch carefully or you'll miss it.

All right, first I've got a cup of cashews,

they go right into my food processor,

along with some nutritional yeast,

and some herbs and spices.

Put it in your food processor,

you just let it whirr for about three minutes

and that's it, that mix is ready,

good to go in your pantry,

ready for you anytime you want it.

Free.

At 43 years old, I am free.

I spent a decade and half trapped.

My body I thought was my tomb, this is where I'm gonna be.

I have no way out, there's no escape. And then to find out

that not only can I escape

but I can come out on the other side,

like a whole different person.

This doesn't take a lifetime.

You can fix you.

In the first three months, I lost 70 pounds.

I was too big to do any kind of rigorous exercise,

I was 15 minutes on a flat slow treadmill,

because that was all I could do.

By the six month mark, I was down 107 pounds.

If you'd told me from 60 plus inch waist to 30 inch waist

in less than two years.

I had to say no way.

I didn't just lose weight, I'm not just thinner,

I'm healthier, completely healthy.

The thing about Dr. Stoll that set him apart

from every other doctor, he sat me down and said,

"Let me write you some recipes"

and him writing those recipes,

he was more willing to write the recipes first

before the prescriptions

and it changed everything.

There are doctors that are waking up,

because you can't deny

the result, I'm just one person,

but there's millions of me out there,

that are experiencing the same results

that we didn't receive on meds.

I look in the mirror now and I think that

we're not talking ten years ago.

We're talking 20 months ago.

And I don't even know that person,

when I see those pictures.

It's a lifestyle. And that's the key thing.

People ask me all the time, so how long are you gonna do this.

And I tell them, planning on living to about

Because I'm never going back, I'm never going back.

After about two weeks the things I noticed was I had

a lot more energy, I could walk a lot further

and I could walk a lot faster.

I dropped a bunch of weight.

My cholesterol dropped like a rock.

Everything seemed to come back into line.

He now rides a bike.

I mean we go for long bike rides.

When I got out of the hospital,

I don't know how many medications I had,

and I'm off all that now.

He walks miles and it's giving Greg back to me.

There's all kinds of diets, but this is a way of life.

Most wives take for granted what a gift a husband is,

and to be able to do those things with their husband,

and I'm telling you, I'm so thankful.

Doctor called me at home

and he says, "Hey, I just got your blood work

back from the lab and I was reviewing your results,

and you are no longer diabetic."

That was really good.

Sorry.

We've had this astonishing experience

that we've lived through

and it's kind of shaken us awake

as far as what's important in life.

That's what so many of us in healthcare want

is to make these changes in peoples' lives.

It's the most effective and powerful way

to treat the broad range of illness

that a primary care doctor confronts.

It's just a easiest thing you can do to have better health.

It's low hanging fruit literally and figuratively.

I did not know how bad I felt, until I felt good.

I'm sure there are times in my life

when I was younger that I felt better,

but there is no time I remember feeling better.

You will lose weight,

you will lose your high blood pressure,

you will lose your diabetes, you will feel better,

you will lose your risk for stroke,

you will lose your risk for dementia,

so there are side effects.

Dr. Esselstyn entered in my life

at the worst time in my life.

And I felt like he was a God send.

My life changed,

it's the single best thing I've ever done, by far.

I believe that my chance

of getting coronary artery disease is zero.

Whole food plant based nutrition

is indeed the answer

to the healthcare crisis in America.

It's all about sustainability of the mind, of the body

and of the planet.

Change doesn't come from the leadership down,

leadership only changes

when people wake up and demand it. Demand that change.

You know today is a different day,

today is a new opportunity

to live the life that you want to live.

Not just the one that you're living,

but the one that you truly really want to live.

Two weeks, three weeks, all you got to do is try it.

There are people in the world that do it for ethical reasons.

There are people that do it for health reasons,

and there are people that do it for environmental reasons.

And ultimately it doesn't matter

why you do it, because it's a win, win, win.

Finding the plant based diet gave me freedom.

Freedom that all the other fad diets and gadgets

and even my doctor didn't give me.

I've been on medicine for over 30 years,

and for the very first time,

I can truly look someone in the eye

and I can say, I can heal you.

Realize that there are people who love you,

who need you to do this,

because they need you in their life as well.

It's the best thing that ever happened to me,

it saved my life, it saved my marriage.

I am very proud of her.

This is progressive medicine, this is correct medicine.

This is where medicine should be.

The vegetables, and the fruits, and the whole grains,

and the beans,

those foods have power that you never imagined.

And It's time to put it to work.

Come on, what's on your plate?