A CLOSER LOOK AT THE HEART
The presenter was Dean Ornish, the founding father of a nutrition-based
approach to heart disease. Dr. Ornish was really the first person to quantify the
effect of a low-fat, plant-based diet on the reduction of heart disease. And other
doctors were eating it up, so to speak.
His stats were staggering: 91 percent of the time, patients’ symptoms of chest
pain went away when they followed his programme, which had a strong
emphasis on eating the right foods. Remember, this presentation was given at a
time when surgery and medication were the standard fix-its. And it wasn’t too
far removed from the era in which my father-in-law began his career as a heart
surgeon. The protocol at the time? Patients were green-lighted to have
cheeseburgers post-op and even given cigarettes at discharge to help them relax.