We all tend to think that we are “fairly healthy” because we can usually think of a friend or co-worker who struggles with some severe health problems and by contrast, we feel we are doing pretty well. But do you ever have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that maybe you’re not as healthy as you think?
I used to think my husband and I were “pretty healthy” until Paul came home one day with lab-work showing that he was pre-diabetic. This was a huge wake-up call for me. I’ve been an RN for 27 years, mostly caring for end-stage heart failure patients. I knew that most severe health problems like heart failure start with diabetes or high blood pressure. So I knew it was time to take Massive Action Now. And I had heard that a Plant-Based Diet could reverse Type 2 Diabetes. So we took the plunge, got rid of the meat immediately, slowly weaned off of dairy, learned a whole lot of new recipes including tasty ethnic food I had never tried before, and lo and behold, 4 months later, we repeated the bloodwork and his pre-diabetes had been reversed.
So what I learned from this experience is that sometimes we just need an objective number (easily available with blood work that should be done at your annual physical every year) so we can gauge if we are, in fact, as healthy as we would like to believe. And also that a Plant-Based diet is incredibly easy to stick to long term because unlike “portion control” diets, you are never hungry!
By middle age, many of us have morphed to a chicken, salmon and yogurt diet with some kale here and there thrown in for good measure and what do we have to show for it? Are we free of all chronic disease? Are we at our ideal body weight? We have some pretty good research showing that a Whole Food Plant-Based Diet is far superior to other traditional “heart-healthy” diets (i.e. Mediterranean) in actually reversing heart disease. https://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf. And the same diet that works for heart disease has the same effect of massively improving and frequently reversing Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, gastric reflux, arthritis, enlarged prostate and many other problems that start to afflict us as we get older. And as an added bonus, weight loss with this way of eating is much more successful at becoming a permanent way of life than common “portion control” diets, because you can eat as much as you want of the food your body was designed to run on without being hungry.
After Paul’s massive health transformation, and realizing how easy it is to eat the food that makes us the healthiest, I became certified in Plant-Based Nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies through Cornell University. And now I want to be able to share this life-changing information with everyone that is looking for a way to improve their health. So if you are ready to take Massive Action, please check out my “Plant-Based Transformation for Beginners” program. We will take you through a step-by-step process starting at the very beginning, explaining the research, teaching cooking techniques, giving you exciting new recipes that you will love, and tracking your health progress. Changing your food now can have life-changing effects on the quality of the last 20 or so years of your life. So let’s get started!
Stephanie
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