Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

150 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Case Study: Cliff Johnston

Cliff is a chiropractic physician. His father died of heart disease at age forty-

seven. Cliff is now forty-five years old. Guess what he was headed for?

Luckily, he became my patient and was able to get appropriate advice in

time.

8/6/96 9/11/96 % CHANGE

Cholesterol 401 170 -58

Triglycerides 1,985 97 -95

GGT 303 55 -82

Glucose 136 89 -35

The GGT is a parameter of liver function, and the elevated level re-

flected a degree of fatty infiltration in the liver, negatively affecting its func-

tion. The elevated glucose showed the beginning of diabetes. Both were

resolved when I placed him on an appropriate diet.

I had originally asked him to wait two months to have his blood

redrawn, but he was so enthusiastic and feeling so great because his

weight went from 206 to 178 in the one-month period that he came back

four weeks early. Can you imagine losing twenty-eight pounds in one month

while eating as much food as you like? This is a lot of weight to lose in one

month, and is not typical.

more rigorous and takes into account the nutrient-per-calorie den-

sity of foods to devise a plant-based diet that is maximally effective.

Some studies from other parts of the world show fairly impres-

sive results, utilizing what they call "anti-atherogenic" vegetarian diets,

as illustrated by a Russian study where all types of lipid abnormali-

ties were found to improve significantly.^16

Caldwell Esselstyn, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic, offers his pa-

tients dietary programs for reversing coronary artery disease. His diet

may not be as aggressive as the one I offer my heart disease patients,

but he, too, is not satisfied until the total cholesterol is below 150. He

has documented his results with consecutive coronary catherizations.^17

The average patient reversed his coronary narrowing by about 7 per-

cent. All of his patients who remained committed to his recom-

mended diet had no further coronary events in the ten years of

follow-up. Most of the patients who chose not to follow his aggres-

sive dietary interventions had heart attacks within the decade.