Ann Crile Esselstyn and Jane Esselstyn - The Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook: Over 125 Delicious, Life-Changing, Plant-Based Recipes

J ust imagine that you and all of your loved ones could enjoy the treasured gift of lifelong health and wellness. This is not only possible, but it is at your fingertips this very moment through the recipes in The Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook.

In 2007, I published Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. I was driven to write this book because my research had shown that patients who had significant coronary artery heart disease could halt and reverse their illness simply by avoiding any oil, meat, and dairy products and eating whole food, plant-based nutrition.

My research, and the science behind whole food, plant-based nutrition, indicates that the endothelial cells, which line our blood vessels and are the life jacket and guardian of blood vessel health, are repeatedly injured from eating oils and animal-based foods.

I published the results of my original study in the Journal of Family Practice in 1995 and a twelve-year follow-up study in the American Journal of Cardiology in 1998. I wrote Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease in 2007 to share my groundbreaking findings more widely and to spread the message that by changing our nutrition, we can make ourselves heart-attack-proof.

It was gratifying when the book became a bestseller, reflecting the thirst for this breakthrough information. People rejoice when they become aware that they are empowered as the locus of control to halt and reverse a disease that has been destroying them.

There is broad evidence that plant-based nutrition is the key to abolishing chronic disease. Epidemiological studies of cultures that have traditionally plant-based diets confirm an absence of the common chronic diseases that kill so many Americans, such as heart disease, strokes, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. These diseases and the drugs, procedures, and surgical interventions used for their treatment simply do not need to exist.

The strength of whole food, plant-based nutrition is further identified by studies of wartime deprivation. The 1951 study by Strom and Jansen [Mortality from circulatory diseases in Norway 19401945, Lancet (1951) 1: 126129] highlighted the decrease in deaths from heart attacks and stroke in Norway during World War II, when the Axis powers of Germany confiscated Norwegian livestock and when Norwegians were, by necessity, consuming plant-based nutrition.

Naysayers state that patients will not follow or adhere to a major nutritional transition. On the contraryour groups review of two hundred patients with significant cardiovascular disease, published in May 2014 by the Journal of Family Practice, found that nearly 90 percent of participants adhered to plant-based nutrition during the nearly four years of follow-up. We have found that the failure of other health professionals to achieve these results is not that the message is wrong but rather how the message is articulated.

There is nothing radical about a diet that most of the world follows by culture, heritage, and tradition, and that prevents the mortality, morbidity, and expense of treatment that accompanies common killing diseases. Economists estimate that eliminating heart disease would save the United States $40 trillion.

Recently, Cleveland Clinic cell biologist researchers discovered an additional way animal- and dairy-based foods injure arteries. Omnivores possess intestinal bacteria that convert ingested animal-based foods into trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). This molecule promotes vascular injury. People who consume plant-based foods simply do not possess the intestinal bacteria capable of making TMAO. These findings are yet another strong validation of the miraculous benefits of plant-based nutrition.