Back in July I wrote about The China Study, a book written by a PhD named T. Colin Campbell who advocates our switching to a plant-based diet. Both Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn have extended Campbell's work into the clinical arena. Their diet and lifestyle programs are being followed by many who've wished to reverse deleterious effects of the typical Western diet they'd followed for years.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend asking if I'd write a blog post on the subject and mentioning that former President Bill Clinton was now on the plan. This afternoon I Googled "Bill Clinton's Diet" and found articles and a video interview of Mr. Clinton with Wolf Blitzer. Clinton had coronary artery surgery and his stent had begun to clog up with new deposits of lipid-rich material. He wants to live to see grandchildren, so he's adopted the plant-based diet fully.

Mr. Clinton is eating veggies and fruit, drinking almond milk instead of anything dairy. He occasionally eats fish, but no other meat; he does add a protein powder to a fruit shake daily. Thus far he's lost twenty-four pounds and his image on the video I watched was clearly that of a much slimmer man than before.

I have to admit I'm impressed. Mr. Clinton stated that 82% of those who've followed a similar diet have "begun to heal." Those figures go as far back as 1986.

I think if I had coronary artery disease I'd be tempted to change my eating habits completely, as has the former President. At the moment I'm about 80 to 90% of the way there. I drink soy milk (in my  case because of lactose intolerance) and eat a lot more veggies and fruit and much less meat than I did up to May of 2009 when I went back on the diet and lifestyle plan I came up with in 1996. I did so primarily to lose more weight and I'm roughly 25 pounds lighter today.

But, in the absence of any clinical atherosclerotic artery disease, I haven't gone the next step. I still occasionally eat red meat, though much smaller portions than in past years (a quarter the size of the steaks I used to love). I had some Swiss cheese at lunchtime (about 2 ounces) and I do eat chicken and fish.

As more evidence turns up I may further alter my dietary pattern. For now, since I'm lean with a Body Mass Index (BMI )of 20.5 and haven't been pushed by chest pain or any other signs of blood vessels being clogged, I'll settle for my part-way-there status.

I do think all of us in the US and much of Europe, plus some in other parts of the world, need to move away from the Western Diet and need to get our BMIs down below 25. Now two-thirds of us in America are above this figure which marks the boundary of being overweight (anyone with a BMI over 30 is obese).

Thanks, Mr. President, for setting an example for us to follow.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 24th, 2010 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Complications of Obesity, Life Expectancy, medically-oriented background info, Obesity, Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.