Dwight I only now started reading this thread so keep up the good work on your health.
I will give some of my experiences on health over the many years to my now 80 age.
I started working with weights at 16 and carried that till now when I can work around injuries that happen quite frequently now. I built a workout room onto my house 30 years ago. So I have always been serious about health. Picture. So I should have been pretty healthy I thought. In a stress test I passed with flying colors, the Doctor said, but why don't you take a Calcium Coronary Scan. I did and flunked badly. This test shows how clogged the 4 heart arteries are but not specifically where they are clogged. The test is only $60 without insurance. I had my brother in law take the test and he was worse then I was and he was 6 years younger and played basket ball once a week with the guys. So he also was getting lots of exercise. So my point is exercise is important but what you eat is even more so.
My cholesterol numbers weren't that good and neither were my blood pressure numbers. My numbers are all really good now. My brother in law and I went on a really strict vegan life stile following Dr. Esselstyn's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. I followed this for three years then added grilled chicken breast and salmon once a week, and one to two drinks daily. I also walk 3 miles cross country 365 for the last 5 years.
Dr. Esselstyn took 17 people who were very sick. They had had heart attacks, bypass operations, angioplasty, pills, you name it. These people had by and large been sent home to die by their cardiologists, their heart disease so severe nothing further could be done. Doctors told several they would be dead in "less than a year."
But they didn't die. Instead, each agreed to become part of Dr. Esselstyn's study, and adopted a low-fat plant-based diet as their medicine. 12 years later every one of these patients was alive, free of heart disease, and living full, active lives. Even those originally given a death sentence of "one year to live" are alive today 21 years later.
