Vegan for 30 Years. Two Arteries 100% Blocked.

Some people tell me I'm too strict, or they tell me I'm shaming other vegans. Jesus, one restaurant meal won't kill you, you gotta live! And maybe I should just tell them what they want to hear, that if you eat well most of the time, the rest really doesn't matter. But I don't believe that, and if I stood here and I said I did, I'd be lying to you. Look, when you're young, your body covers for you. You eat rich food, you put on a few pounds, you clean things up a while, and everything is fine. But atherosclerosis is silent. You don't feel plaque building up in an artery, you don't feel your blood pressure or your cholesterol working against you. You feel perfectly healthy, right up until the day you find out you weren't. The bill for what you did in your 30s and 40s usually doesn't come due in your 30s and 40s. Sometimes it shows up at 52, or 61, or 70. I spent two hours on the phone yesterday with a friend I've known for more than 20 years. He was raised in a plant-based family, his grandparents, parents, all of them, and they were very tuned into health, so he knew he was protected. That was just a given, and he was vegan. And it was maybe a little often a rich vegan diet, like restaurant food, concentrated fatty food, oily salad dressing. But hey, it's a salad, so it's healthy, right? The kind of diet a lot of people now call healthy simply because there's no meat and not much obvious junk in it. Well, two years ago, in his late 50s, he had a heart attack. Two arteries, both 100% blocked. He was dizzy and he had to lie down on the floor. He thought he had the flu. He didn't realize it was a heart attack. I mean, you know, that was impossible. So he didn't get to the hospital until six hours after it started. He survived. Two years later, his heart hasn't fully recovered. But thank goodness, he's doing a lot better. Now, his doctor at the time had warned him, sort of softly, that his numbers were getting a little high. Maybe he should look at that. The doctor knew he was the super healthy vegan type, and I think my friend figured he was Superman. A long family line of vegetarians. So he didn't act. And somewhere along the way, he seemed to forget that his own grandfather had died of a heart attack at around age 50, and that some of the men on that side of the family going back had been taken out by heart attacks, too. Now, he knows a vegan diet, even a lifetime of one, doesn't necessarily make you safe from heart disease. I mean, you know, french fries are vegan. Oreos are vegan. A diet loaded with plant fat and sugar can be completely vegan. The label vegan doesn't mean much in and of itself. What matters is what you're actually eating, what your risk factors are, and what's going on inside your arteries. Here's the thing. There are really two ways to approach food. The first way, ask the question, how much can I get away with? How often can I eat out at the yummy vegan restaurants? How loose can I make my diet and still be healthy? My friend, he knew Dr. John McDougal. He sometimes hung out with him. He knew what Dr. McDougal taught, but I guess he figured that that was just for old sick people. Well, it's also for people who don't want to become sick, and he never put that together. And the how much can I get away with is the question most of the internet is happy to answer for you. The second question is different. What gives me the best odds of staying healthy? That is the question that I try to care about, and those two questions don't lead to the same diet. The most enjoyable version of a plant-based diet, the rich one, is obviously not the version that gives you the strongest protection against heart disease. Now, we're all free to choose enjoyment. It's our life. Just don't choose the indulgent version and then tell yourself more or less that it's more or less equivalent to the diets out there that were built to aggressively reduce cardiovascular risk. The tradition of Pritikin, Ornish, McDougal, Esselstyn, whole plant foods, low fat, no added oils, don't make it rich. Telling yourself your diet is probably just as protective as the Pritikin program might be comforting, but it just isn't true. I've gone deeper on those programs in other videos, and maybe I'll make a video, sort of a summary video here at some point. And be honest with yourself about the most of the time diet. That's the one where you eat well at home, but you go out a night or two a week, where you eat clean most of the week and then order a dish that's oozing olive oil on a Friday night. Those meals count. Your arteries don't know that it's your birthday. Your blood pressure doesn't know you're on vacation. And here's the thing about the most of the time, we're terrible judges of it. After I wrote this talk, I showed it to my friend Jeff Novick, the dietician from the Pritikin and McDougal programs. He sent me a link to a forum post about a plant-based blogger who had a stroke. And then to his credit, the guy wrote honestly about what he'd actually been eating. He said he'd been doing it right, quote, 99% of the time. But then he listed what he finally removed from his diet, peanut butter, PBJs were his favorite snack, vegan cheese, always in the fridge, once a week, vegan burritos and margaritas at his favorite Mexican place, store-bought hummus, beer and wine. Read that full list and tell me that's 99%. That's maybe 60% and he wasn't lying to anyone. He actually believed it. That's the trap. Nobody thinks they're the person eating poorly. Everybody's eating well most of the time. Still, people tell me, hey, you know, live a little. You're on vacation in Mexico. But that's exactly what I'm trying to do. This is my living. Running is my living. Getting up off the floor easily is my living. Traveling without wondering whether my body can handle it. That's living. Being here for my wife and my kids is living. I'm not eating this way because I want less life. I'm doing it because I want more of it. I just don't mean tacking extra days onto the end while I'm lying helpless in a bed somewhere. I mean function, freedom, being able to participate in my own life. I just turned 70. My margin for error is smaller than it used to be. And no, I can't control everything. No diet guarantees anything. This is risk reduction, not immortality. But if I'm going to lose, I'd rather lose after giving myself the best odds I could, not after spending decades asking how much could I get away with? So here it is. Why are you eating plant-based? Is it for the animals or the environment? That's fine. Almost any vegan diet accomplishes that. But if it's for your health, if it's for your heart, then ask yourself one question. Am I eating the way I honestly believe gives me the best odds? Or am I eating the way I enjoy most and hoping somebody will tell me it's only slightly less protective? We're all free to pick whichever vegan diet we want, but be honest with yourself about the one you picked and why. I'd rather tell you an uncomfortable truth today than hand you a comforting reassurance that fails you when you need it most. I'm Jeff Nelson. Thanks for watching.