Rush Limbaugh was rushed to Honolulu's Queen's Medical Center yesterday, reportedly suffering from severe chest pains. Today, according to hospital sources, he is undergoing appropriate tests and resting. The symptoms of heart disease can be terrifying, and I wish Rush a speedy and uneventful recovery.
As a doctor, I would like to offer one bit of advice, not just to Rush, but to anyone in a similar predicament: It is important to be conservative. As conservative as possible, in fact.
With your diet, that is.
Many Americans are far too liberal with their servings of meat, dairy products, eggs, and other less-than-healthy foods. And they are getting more so with each passing year. Per capita annual meat intake has risen roughly 70 pounds in the last century, and cheese intake has jumped by nearly 30 pounds in the same time period. That is a huge load of cholesterol, fat, and calories, and it has fueled epidemics of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems.
In our grandparents' day, people knew the value of humble beans, vegetables, and fruits, often growing them in their own family gardens. These foods have essentially no cholesterol and very little saturated fat. It pays to give them renewed respect. Indeed, people who stick to an entirely plant-based diet, as part of an overall healthy lifestyle, can do more than just prevent heart disease; they can actually reverse it, as was demonstrated in the now-classic studies of Dean Ornish, MD.
A plant-based diet can also help you slim down, improve diabetes and hypertension, and feel like yourself again.
Today, I invite everyone who could use a bit of encouragement and support to join PCRM's online program that helps people prevent and reverse heart disease and lose weight. The program, called the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart, begins on New Year's Day, and includes daily recipes and messages of encouragement from doctors and celebrities. To sign up, please visit www.21DayKickstart.org.
It's a way to start the New Year off right.
http://theceliachusband.blogspot.com/2009/07/ultimate-gf-pizza-bash.html
Why pick up a good habit now?
Eggs, dairy and meat are perfectly healthy foods, provided that they are produced properly (on pasture).
In our grandparents day, people ate 18 pounds of butter per year, plus lots of beef tallow and lard. That was before the days of hydrogenated oils, vegetable oils and the idiotic low fat crazies (and veganism).
But, anyway, it's great that you corrected the obviously misguided and uninformed MD who wrote this article.
Now all we need is the food police...
A mediterranean diet isn't just using more olive oil. It's also smaller meat portions. You don't miss the huge steak because you've already had soup, salad (olive oil/vinegar dressing) and even an antipasto. And you eat at a leisurely pace. Another thing Americans don't do. By the time the entree comes it's been an hour since you've started your meal and you're pretty full. So a little steak is quite enough.
Ever tried a plain baked potato? Skip the sour cream and chives. Skip the butter. Try it just the way it is, with maybe the slightest sprinkling of salt. If it's a good potato, it doesn't need anything to mask the flavor; it's fine as it is.
Try olive oil instead of butter on your vegetables.
For desert....try fruit.
And if you can...grow your own. Grape tomatoes from your yard can be as sweet as candy. Anything you grow, including lettuce, can taste a lot better than anything you can buy in a store. If you can't grow your own, join a coop that will provide you with seasonal crops from local organic farmers. Everyone wins.
We started looking online for vegan recipes that sounded good. Now we have one serving of meat a week. Some days we eat vegan. Some days we eat vegetarian. Once a week we cook a little pastured chicken or cook a small piece of beef that has been grass fed and grass finished.
We now shop for organic fruits and vegies at the farmer's market in downtown Phoenix. Freshly harvested, organic vegetables are not even in the same league as the produce in the grocery store.
Butter is a healthy food that should not be avoided. Especially if the butter was from grassfed cows.
Words have so many meanings! Arghhhhff!
I was skeptical at first until I started reading and would suspect that even the biggest vegan skeptic out there would take something away from Esselstyns study and the outcomes of it. To debate this issue fairly, both sides need to know and understand the science behind the research, not just base your opinions from the latest fads that show up. Why eat yourself into heart problems if you don't have to?
Esselstein and Campbell are wrong.
Also, with less sludge in the blood (animal fats and proteins), you feel lighter, cleaner and it actually translates into moving with more ease, quicker and being more agile because there is less toxins from the meat settling into your joints and muscles. I am told I move like a bird. : )
We are SO LUCKY to live in a time with tons of cookbooks, tons of different kinds of beans, grains, vegetables, spices, herbs, meat analogs, tofu, nuts....every kind of food imaginable at our finger tips to make this diet both delicious, fun, interesting, satisfying and healthy. You can make it anyway you want...hearty, rich, light, spicy or not, whatever you want. It's all there for us. We are so lucky and it's truly a luxury.
And you'll not only look and feel your best (or regain your lost looks) but you'll visit the doctor much less. Totally worth it.
I tried being a vegetarian, and it actually made me sick. And heavier. And anemic. It took me about a decade to finally get better, stop being anemic and achieve a normal weight, instead of being underweight.
I'll never go back.
Neither a vegan nor a vegetarian diet is guaranteed to work for every metabolic type.