12 years ago I had a little high BP requiring higher doses of drugs over the years until 5 years ago , same on cholesterol.

I gave the Plant diet a try, in 3 weeks my BP started to drop dramatically, had to cut down little by little over several months, then it it 115-120 over 70-75.
BP pills gone for ever.

The cholesterol took a few months to get to 135 or so, again no meds

Lost about 35-40lbs

How do we (my wife also is on it but for the sake of the animals no med issues) do it

We do it because the results give us inspiration to continue, was it hard, well not easy, takes a few months to lose the graving.

Our Dr here has 1200 patients, we are the only two that he never writes a script for. :shrug:

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I doubt Dr. Ornish would be happy about being mentioned in the same sentence as Dr. Oz. :laugh:

You bring up a very interesting point. As you and Dr Ornish have said, this diet can be difficult. I would imagine it gets easier as time goes by. But what if your spouse and/or children aren't willing to go along with the plan? What happens when your wife wants to go to Longhorn Steak house? How does one deal with making two separate meals three times a day?

The short answer is yes it would be more difficult with more cooking.

Well, why wouldn't your spouse want you to live healthier & hopefully longer life without meds.

I assume ones spouse would or he/she will be making two meals at a time.
Or maybe the spouse just don't get it.

If the meals are cooked right they are very tasty, don't think for a minute they bland like eating cardboard.

There are numerous cook books with plant based diets that are great.

If all that fails Longhorn has something I can eat, I'm going out to eat to socialize not because I'm starving. Have a drink and relax.

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Dr. Dean Ornish's lifestyle solution to coronary artery disease.
 

Good for you. I'm pleased to hear that it has had such a positive impact on your health. I looked back but could not tell whether you did Pritikan or Ornish.

Primarily Dr Esseltyn, some Ornish & McDougal

I respect you for staying with it. :eclipsee_gold_cup:

Jimbo, I admire your commitment to your plant-based lifestyle.
Serious question.
Do you think your improvement in blood pressure and cholesterol happened because you lost 40 lbs, or because of your plant-based diet?
I realize that your diet was a key factor in your weight loss, but if you had lost 40 lbs on a different type of diet, do you think your numbers would still have significantly improved?

I agree. I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who are able to maintain any kind of diet over a long period of time.

For the same reason that 99.9% of all of the people in the developed world don't do it. People like various foods. People enjoy eating meat, nuts, eggs, milk and everything else that people on this diet don't eat. In addition people don't want to be bothered with learning a new way to cook and shop.

Like I said, I have all the respect in the world for people who are able to do this, but the fact is that very few people are willing to make the sacrifices necessary.

That in addition to the fact that it hasn't been scientifically proven that this diet will work for everyone. There are some examples like yourself of where it has worked well, but there haven't been enough appropriate studies to prove it efficacy.

Most people either don't believe that one has to be so extreme. They feel that by simply cutting back on fats or sugars or by eating a few less calories, they are eating healthily. Or they don't think that it will work, or they don't want to give up eating the foods that they love. Some simply feel that they'd rather live a few years less and enjoy the things they like.

The bottom line is that if a diet requires too much of people, they won't go for it or they won't stay on it. Any diet that is too difficult won't be helping very many people.

No absolutely not, the BP started a big drop in less than 30 days, at that point I may have lost 4lbs.

There were other tests done to monitor all that was going on, but to detailed to get into here

Yes they want to be bothered taking meds it's easier.

You and I had this dialog before I'm not going to repeat all the data,

but it has been proven many times worldwide, I know you tried it and couldn't stick with unfortunately.

Some need a serious visit to ER to find the will power.

But one must pray they make it out of ER.

Jimbo, thanks for the reply. You have impressive willpower.

Glad to hear that you know about it and are convinced. You don't have to follow it exactly as long as you are doing well. The strictest diet is for those who are trying to reverse their disease. Once that's accomplished, I believe Ornish has a somewhat less strict diet for maintenance.

Seems like many agree with me. If it were easy, it wouldn't require will power