H E A LT H
Heart-ToHeart with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn How whole food, plantbased nutrition improves our health and saves lives BY NADIA MOHARIB
Above Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, the physician behind a revolutionary, nutrition-based approach to combat coronary and cardiac disease, promotes the proper diet over surgical and pharmaceutical approaches.
82 Inspiration Issue 2021
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he words roll off Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s tongue by rote, as if he’s said them a thousand times. And he has. Bok choy, swiss chard, kale, collard greens, beet greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, Napa cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cilantro, parsley, spinach, arugula and asparagus. A list of vegetables to some, but for the U.S.-based physician and veteran researcher in preventative cardiology, they are key ingredients in a diet he touts to prevent and even reverse cardiac disease. “Of course, exercise is an enormous bonus, but it is worthless without nutrition,” Esselstyn says from his home in Pepper Pike, Ohio. “You can exercise until you are blue in the face, but you are not going to protect yourself from a heart attack if you are eating oil, meat, fish, dairy and sugar.”
“It’s just not going to work,” he adds. “You can swim, jog, walk – nothing is going to trump food.” Esselstyn, who has been healing hearts for more than three decades, says the best tools to keep the cardiovascular system and the rest of your body at its best aren’t found in a pharmacy or by going under the knife but come down to what you put in your belly. It’s been known for years that in certain cultures, cardiovascular disease is nonexistent. And lessons gleaned from those cultures underscore the power of proper nutrition - “eating food as it’s grown” - to keep hearts healthy and avoid chronic illness. “If you try to hang out your cardiac surgical shingle in Okinawa, rural China, Central Africa, Northern Mexico, forget it, you better plan on selling pencils,” he says. “Why don’t they have disease? Wholefood, plant-based nutrition with an essential, minimal amount of oil.” The
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