Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [27]
Blood Pressure: resting, 115/65.
Cholesterol: 127.
I was no longer stopping halfway through parking lots.
I walked around the block with my grandkids without discomfort, and I wasn’t counting driveways.
I walked at my old fast pace again.
I could wrestle with the grandkids again.
Emotional and work stress did not trigger angina.
I lost about 35 pounds, back into a 32-inch waist.
I stopped taking acid reducers. No indigestion.
My morning stiffness and joint aches almost completely stopped.
My acne has cleared up beyond what I could ever have imagined.
I’ve experienced a perceptible reduction in the volume of the tinnitus.
As far as I am concerned, the results are nothing short of miraculous. That’s my story, but my story is really three stories.
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.