In his book Eat to Live, Dr. Fuhrman explains that research and first-hand experience show heart
disease is reversible:
Two things are essential to predictably reverse heart disease: the first is to become thin and
superbly nourished, and the other is to get your LDL below 100. Reversal of heart disease then
occurs.
In studies, patients eating certain kinds of diets have demonstrated modest reduction in plaque. Dr.
Fuhrman has found that with the aggressive high nutrient density diet he advocates, greater
reductions in plaque are common. "My patients demonstrate much more dramatic cholesterol
lowering since the advised dietary program is based on nutrient density," he explains, "and reversals
from 20 to 40 percent per year are typical in my experience. I even have a patient who reversed his
carotid blockage from 80 percent to undetectable in one year on carotid ultrasound."
Dr. Fuhrman's book Cholesterol Protection for Life covers a lot of this in depth, here is an excerpt:
Studies performed by Dean Ornish and other investigators have documented the effects of a low-fat
vegetarian (vegan) diet on patients with heart disease and found reversal of the condition occurred
in the majority of patients. The reversal was modest, but nevertheless, no study previously showed
diet could be so effective at preventing and reversing heart disease.
Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., M.D. of the Cleveland Clinic put together a program utilizing a vegetarian
plant-based diet with the addition of cholesterol-lowering medication in 18 patients who had
severe angiographically demonstrated coronary artery disease. All of these high-risk patients with
advanced heart disease were noted to have no coronary events during the following 12 years, and
on repeat angiogram, 70% were found to have regression of their disease and none had
progression.1
When you consider these 18 patients had experienced 50 coronary events during the 8 years before
this study, you have to agree on the effectiveness of combining plant-based nutrition with
cholesterol lowering. Dr. Esselstyn tracked these patients for 17 years, which is the longest ongoing
research project of this kind, and not one of these people, who years ago had severe heart disease,
has had any further cardiac complaints or heart attacks.
Dr. Esselstyn also tracked the long-term results in six of his patients that did not want to adhere to
the diet and returned to the standard care of their cardiologists. They experienced 13 new cardiac
events during the first 12 years.
Although Ornish and Esselstyn studied vegetarian diets, Dr. Fuhrman has found that when
reversing heart disease is the goal, eliminating meat is hardly the only important step. The nutrient-
rich diet Dr. Fuhrman recommends in Cholesterol Protection for Life is more specific, and more
aggressively heart-healthy. (In addition, Dr. Fuhrman's book advocates natural supplements--
including delta tocotrienol, plant sterols, policosanol, and pomegranate extracts that can be helpful.
High nutrient density makes a measurable difference^105.
(^105) DiseaseProof.com, January 30th, Reversing Heart Disease with a nutrient dense diet