Hallo, blessed viewers, and welcome to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television. On this week’s program we’ll explore how the vegan lifestyle can prevent and cure cardiovascular ailments and other chronic conditions.

Cardiovascular disease is known as a “lifestyle” disease because it is preventable. Its primary causes are smoking, lack of exercise and most importantly unhealthy dietary choices. According to the World Health Organization, each year an estimated 16.7 million or 29.2% of all deaths are caused by this disease.

Today we’ll meet Dr. Marc Katz, a vegan cardiothoracic surgeon and medical director of Bon Secours Heart & Vascular Institute in Richmond, Virginia, USA, who strongly believes the vegan diet is the answer to preventing and treating this deadly health condition and others.

Dr. Katz is a leading expert in the field of robotic heart surgery, specializing in mitral valve repairs, heart transplants and other cardiothoracic procedures. He performed the first dual heart-kidney transplant in the eastern United States. At present, he is the only physician doing robotic heart surgery in Virginia. Now let’s hear from the knowledgeable Dr. Katz about one of the most common and severe health conditions of recent times.

Cardiovascular disease has been described by some people, especially Dr. Campbell, T. Colin Campbell, who did “The China Study,” as a disease of affluence, in that a lot of the cardiac diseases, especially coronary artery diseases, are very much related to diet and lifestyle.

I know specifically in “The China Study” when he studied 65 counties in rural China, and these were working class people, farming, quite active from that standpoint, and they ate basically a vegan diet, and the incidence of coronary artery disease was very little, the incidence of diabetes, of breast cancer, colon cancer, all of these diseases was very low.

And during the study, if he followed any of these people’s children, that may have moved away, and moved to big cities, and moved to areas where their diets changed to a more western diet, they then did develop these things.

Atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries means a buildup of plaque in the blood vessels, which can eventually lead to blockages and a whole host of serious health conditions. Animal products are high in saturated fats and cholesterol and are the main source of this dangerous substance.

certain things, like leaking mitral valves, those we can repair, and that hopefully is the final issue for patients with that problem. Patients with coronary artery disease, that’s a different entity. Whereas the valvular problem is not related to diet, the development of blockages in people’s arteries, and not just the arteries to the heart, but the arteries to the brain that cause strokes, the arteries to the legs that cause people to have pains in their legs when they walk, or lead to amputations and other problems, those clearly are related to diet.

And although surgery can help when these things have hit a critical state, it doesn’t cure what caused the disease to develop in the initial stages. And that’s a metabolic process, and that clearly is related to diet. And if we could help convince more and more patients to proactively change their diets, change their lifestyles, it would take care of a lot of these problems.

Dr. (Caldwell) Esselstyn and Dr. (Dean) Ornish have both published studies showing that patients who follow a very low fat, whole food, plant-based, vegan diet can not only halt the progression of their disease, but in many cases reverse it.

And in Dr. Esselstyn’s book, “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” is the title of it, he showed some angiograms, which are pictures of the arteries to the heart in patients who, at their introduction to the study, had tight blockages, and then I think one it was a year or two later had a repeat angiogram and the vessel had changed remarkably. And again, to me that was really remarkable news. Now in addition, these diets, in a much more rapid fashion, decrease a lot of the inflammation on the lining of vessels.

And in some ways that’s even more important because that inflammation leads some of these plaques to rupture and cause a vessel that isn’t necessarily tightly blocked, to suddenly become blocked. And in those situations that can frequently lead to a massive heart attack, that’s a more acute scenario. So there’s a very rapid early benefit to switching the diet to a whole foods, plant-based diet, and then there’s a long term benefit as well.

In fact, we’ve applied to the American Heart Association for a grant to institute our own study here in patients with end-stage coronary disease, to replicate some of the work that’s been done by Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Campbell, and to help these people go on a whole foods, plant-based diet, and study them a little bit further with things like coronary CT (computerized tomography) angiograms, to see the effect that those diets have on the progression, and hopefully reversal of many of those diseases.

And if we could help convince more and more patients to proactively change their diets, change their lifestyles, it would take care of a lot of these problems. The World Health Organization estimated that 400,000 Americans would die this year from cardiovascular disease. They also mentioned that half of these could be prevented, 200,000 deaths by changing people’s diets.

When we return, Dr. Katz will talk more about the advantages of a vegan lifestyle and his own experience in changing to a plant based diet. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Healthy Living where we’re speaking with esteemed cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Marc Katz, medical director of Bon Secours Heart & Vascular Institute in Richmond, Virginia, USA. What prompted Dr. Katz to choose the healthy vegan lifestyle?

I always considered coronary artery disease to basically be a terminal disease, and that we could slow things down, and with bypass surgery we could help protect patients from some of the imminent problems, but I always told my patients that we weren’t curing the underlying problem that caused their disease to develop, I was doing fancy plumbing, but if they wanted to really affect this they had to change their diet.

And so in reading Dr. Esselstyn’s and Dr. Campbell’s works, especially, as well as people like Dr. Ornish, I decided about a year ago that if I was going to recommend this to my patients I had to do it myself.

I lost 35 pounds and reduced my cholesterol by over 30%. And I’ve basically decided to adopt that as my lifestyle. I just made the transition literally overnight.

How does the good doctor encourage his patients and others to follow a plant based diet?

I try to just give people the facts and give them the data and refer them to some of the sources of information that I’ve read and there are multiple studies, there are multiple books, and there are many doctors. I try to enlighten my patients and friends who’ve asked about it and help just guide them down the avenue that I traveled and show them where to get information about this. I think it’s not something that you can convince someone about. I think they’ve got to be able to read the information and recognize what the data is.

However to me, being able to simply change your diet and have the opportunity to change your health overall versus having to take daily medicines or having to undergo surgeries or suffer the ravages of many of these diseases, it should be an easy decision.

The vegan diet prevents and treats many serious ailments beyond just cardiovascular disease.

You can clearly have a significant beneficial effect for these patients, depending on the cause of their diabetes, Type 1 versus Type 2. People can clearly reduce their dependence upon insulin, and then even in some cases, potentially eliminate it.

Dr. Campbell in his studies has really shown that the average American diet is too protein laden and he actually did some very elegant studies showing that excess animal protein can actually help promote tumor growth. There’s a lot of evidence that a diet that’s only about 10 percent protein is more than adequate and that a whole foods, plant based diet can absolutely provide all the protein that you need to be healthy.

We asked Dr. Katz for his opinion about instituting Meatless Monday programs in public schools.

I think that’s a great idea. And there was a town in Belgium, I believe, that did this a number of years ago and had great success with it, and had a vegetarian day that most of the town’s people adopted and they saw great benefits from it.

So I think especially teaching children about these is the correct place to start, because there are also studies that show that cardiovascular disease doesn’t start when you’re an adult, it starts when you’re a child. I mean there’s currently a problem of obesity in children that’s getting worse. It doesn’t start when you’re 50, 60, or 70 years old.

In the United States, spending on healthcare alone amounted to a staggering US$2.3 trillion in 2008. Dr. Katz believes that government should play an active role in promoting a plant-based lifestyle for the benefit of all.

Interestingly, at a time when our government is looking at health reform it would make a lot of sense if they looked at diet reform, and I think there’s a tremendous amount of money that could be saved in the entire system of healthcare by promoting a more healthful diet; if we could reduce the incidence of coronary disease, reduce the incidence of diabetes, of some of the cancers that are clearly diet related, that would have a tremendously beneficial financial effect not just on our healthcare system, but on the economy as a whole.

We asked Dr. Katz to recommend some inspiring materials about the vegan lifestyle and he gave the following suggestions.

Well the ones I mentioned, certainly, Dr. Campbell’s book “The China Study,” Dr. Esselstyn’s book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” Dean Ornish has a number of books, and there are multiple other authors that have books on this. And then I saw a trailer recently about a film that’s being made about Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn, “Forks over Knives” which I’ve only seen the trailer but the movie should be interesting.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Marc Katz for speaking with us about how a plant-based diet can stop or prevent some of the most dangerous diseases of our times. He and other members of the medical profession who are spreading the good news on how to stay well by avoiding animal products are to be applauded.

For more information on Dr. Marc Katz, please visit www.RoboticHeartSurgery.info

Compassionate viewers, thank you for joining us on this edition of Healthy Living. Up next is Science and Spirituality after Noteworthy News. May we all be embraced by Heaven’s love and light forever.