Joel Fuhrman, MD, The End of Heart Disease

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

 

Joel Fuhrman, MD is a board-certified family physician, New York Times best-selling author and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. Dr. Fuhrman is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows including The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Live with Kelly and Michael. Dr. Fuhrman’s own hugely successful PBS television shows, 3 Steps to Incredible Health and Dr. Fuhrman’s Immunity Solution, and his latest show, End Dieting Forever, bring nutritional science to homes all across America.

Dr. Fuhrman’s #1 New York Times best-selling book, Eat to Live, originally published in 2003 (Little Brown) has sold over 1,000,000 copies and has been published in multiple foreign language editions. In October 2012, Super Immunity (HarperOne) reached the New York Times best seller’s list and in January 2013, The End of Diabetes (HarperOne) became his third New York Times best seller. Dr. Fuhrman’s most recent books, The Eat to Live Cookbook (Harper One) reached #1 on the New York Times best sellers list during its debut week in October 2013 and The End of Dieting (HarperOne), released in March 2014, was #2 on the list for its debut. In addition, Dr. Fuhrman has written several other popular books on nutritional science which include: Eat for Health (Gift of Health Press), Disease Proof Your Child (St. Martin’s Griffin), Fasting and Eating for Health (St. Martin’s Griffin) and the Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutritarian Handbook and ANDI Food Scoring Guide (Gift of Health Press).

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn: Hello everybody! How are you today? I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. We talk about many, many different things on this program and if you’re not convinced yet, I know you will be today. The title of this program, It’s All About Food, it truly is all about food, especially when it comes to our health and preventing and reversing disease. It is truly all about food. So let’s just get started. I’m so excited because I’m having one of my favorite people on the program to talk about a brand new book. Dr. Joel Fuhrman is a board certified family physician and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. He is the research director of the Nutritional Research Foundation and the author of several books including the New York Times best sellers, Eat to Live: Super Immunity, Eat to Live Cookbook: The End of Dieting and the End of Diabetes. And now we’ve got The End of Heart Disease. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, how are you?

Dr. Fuhrman: How are you doing?

Caryn: Good. I’m good. How are you?

Dr. Fuhrman: Fantastic. Excited to be talking to you today.

Caryn: Thank you! Okay, number 1: The End of Heart Disease, the Eat to Live: Plan to Prevent Heart Disease. Why is this your best book ever?

Dr. Fuhrman: You know, today’s the day it’s released.

Caryn: It’s released!

Dr. Fuhrman: Yeah, it’s really exciting. It’s like, you know, it’s certainly my longest book ever. But I hope it doesn’t scare people off that it’s 430 pages. But I felt it’s so important not just to describe the nutritional plan that will traumatically lower your blood pressure and then studied. And then of course, the nutritarian diet spells and study to lower blood pressure in a study with 443 people, it drops systolic blood pressure 26 points on the average, which is much more than drugs and any other diet ever tested. But you know, besides dropping blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, dropping body weight and reversing heart disease aggressively and giving the people a program to do that, you know, I although thought it was very important to describe the – the myth and the fallacies associated with drug use an angioplasty stem placement. Especially the fact that high blood pressure medications do not offer significant protection against heart disease and stroke and many of them are associated with high rates of cancer. For example, the link between calcium channel blockers and breast cancer. You know, calcium channel blockers were used for more than 10 years can double the risk of breast cancer. We’re talking about statin use more than 10 years and breast cancer. We’re talking about – in other words, here’s my point: Is that when people go through all the real futilities and dangers associated with medications, like blood pressure medications and statins and diabetic drugs, it becomes a no brainer that they can’t rely on drugs to get well. They don’t work, they don’t make you live significantly longer, they don’t stop heart attacks from occurring and they put you with significant risks for other diseases like we’re talking about now, such as cancer. And then if people really had what I call “comprehensive informed consent,” if they knew the futility of conventional cardiovascular care, getting stent placements perhaps for extensions that shorten your life span instead of lengthening it, then they would recognize. Whether it’s statin, whether it’s diabetic medications or drugs. Then they would recognize that they had no other choice. If they really want to stop their disease cold, reverse it and not die prematurely of heart disease, they have to make these changes that are taught – discussed in this book. And then I go into all of the controversies with saturated fats, good or bad, what’s the stuff about hoopla about salt. I go into every issue in human nutrition and of course, analyzing all the popular and proven dietary programs that have been shown to assist, help or reverse heart disease by giving the pros and cons of each one and giving people a copy and some look at the available options out there. And so I think this is the most comprehensive book available for late population and highly referenced. And I just think every American has to read this.

Caryn: I agree. And I read it.

Dr. Fuhrman: You did?

Caryn: And I enjoyed it.

Dr. Fuhrman: Oh wow! How’d you read it so fast? It was out today for the first time.

Caryn: Well, someone sent it to me a few days ago. Actually, I got two copies of it. I thought I’d read it twice, but I only read it once.

Dr. Fuhrman: Well, I’m glad you read it already. That’s great.

Caryn: So I’m going to hit on some points that you brought up in the book. One of things that I like about all of your books is they’re intelligent. You don’t dumb down the reader, but you present everything in terms that we can understand. It’s all very digestible, very understandable and that’s really important.

Dr. Fuhrman: Thank you. And you know that was my fear. I felt this book had to get out there. But part of me felt that too people felt we won’t want to know all this information, but felt it’s so important for people to get the complete picture here. That’s why I had to make this book so lengthy. You know what I mean?

Caryn: I do know what you mean. And you know it really isn’t. I don’t think it’s that lengthy. There’s a lot of pages, but some of it’s filled with delicious recipes, which I want to bring up towards the end. I don’t want to get to the delicious stuff just yet. But some of it is very light and lovely.

Dr. Fuhrman: Thank you.

Caryn: Okay, excuse me Joel. This is my birthday month. I’m turning 58 later on this month and as I age and as my friends and my family age, I hear more about what you were talking about when you started. Some of my friends who are my age or maybe a little older, they’re on blood pressure medication, statins I had a teacher who was only 69 years old die of a heart attack two months ago. Everybody that I know has some sort of a coronary heart disease in one way or another and it doesn’t have to happen.

Dr. Fuhrman: That’s right. Totally. Totally preventable and avoidable. And you’re right about what you just said. High blood pressure is the first sign of heart disease. It means you have cardiovascular disease if you have high blood pressure and taking drugs doesn’t remove it. And that over the age of 65, almost everybody is taking medications for their high blood pressure. It’s just amazing. The whole American population just has pathological cardiovascular disease and atheroschlerosis.

Caryn: Now you – in your press release for this book, it says that you assert that conventional treatments for heart disease are often ineffective and dangerous and withholding proven effective dietary interventions as medical options should be considered malpractice. And that’s a big mouthful. I wanted to mention that recently, a family member of mine was in the hospital and the cardiologist was recommending putting in a stent. He didn’t even have any symptoms, but he did have a blocked LAD artery. I was doing all kinds of reading and I actually did speak to one of the cardiologist on the patient’s team along with one of the cardiologists in my family circle of family friends. And they both – after I talked to them and shared what I knew from your articles, they agreed with me and they said, “Yes, there is no data that show that stents prolong life.” They agreed. And yet they figured, we have a blocked artery so we’re just going to unblock it. We have to fix it.

Dr. Fuhrman: Well it’s really so sad that you know, they’re doing something. It’s like people expect antibiotics with a viral infection. The doctor knows that there’s no – it’s not going to help them, but because people want it and expect it, they write a prescription for an antibiotic when the person just has a cold or flu, which they know is not going to work. And of course, the antibiotic is then going to increase the risk of shortening their life and the antibiotic is going to go into breast cancer and dangerous infections later in life, but doctors give it anyways. And here we have this going on with angioplasties and stent placements. Because you know, first of all, there’s an opportunity for the physician. He’s in a position of power and the person is in a position of weakness that has a medical condition. And here’s where the doctor can take them by the throat, you know, and say, “Look, you’re going to die of heart disease if you don’t do something and change the way you live” or I’ll see you back in my office in 8 weeks, three pounds lighter and we’ll eat mostly vegetables. Do this and then we could beat this thing and make this, but instead he just sends him in for a stent. First of all, we want to say that heart disease is spread by whole heart, like peanut butter. It’s spread over a whole sandwich. Millions of areas of your heart. It’s not the one area that’s obstructed. And the areas that are not obstructed are the areas much more likely to cause heart attacks, not the one that’s most obstructed. The one that’s oldest, the areas that have been there the longest that are most obstructer have the most thickest, calcified cap that have been infiltrated with smooth muscle. The inflammation is gone. Those are not the spots that cause heart attacks, leading all the other spots unaddressed. And they can address the other spots. There’s no way to do so. But here’s my point: Is that once you put that stent in, you expose this person to risk of death from the procedure itself or complications, and then you have a foreign body in the heart, which creates inflammation and a propensity to cause clots. And the doctor has to put you on an anticlotting drug and maybe two of them or three of them for the rest of your life. Thus increasing your risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke or a gastrointestinal bleeding. And it’s just that there’s no evidence that stents prolong – make people live longer or reduce risks of future heart attacks. That’s only half of it. It increases your risk of death. They don’t just not add years to your life, but they actually put you at an increased risk of death and take years away from your life. And so we’re not of course – I’m not saying that’s true for a person with an acute emergency, like having an unstable heart attack at the moment and a doctor has to put a stent in to possible save their life because their heart’s infarcting. That’s a different story. We’re talking about patients that are stable and having chest pain or having symptoms or having or they’re not undergoing a heart attack at the moment, then they’re of course lobbying for people having fully informed consent. The doctor must discuss with them the proven approaches that can reverse this, extend their life and not dangerously and thoughtlessly put a stent in there.

Caryn: It’s very sad and very scary because a lot of people they go in for medical health and they’re told that’s what they need.

Dr. Fuhrman: Yes, unfortunately that’s happening a lot.

Caryn: All the time.

Dr. Fuhrman: It’s just as bad with the use of medication. Because people go in there, the doctors, and what about – stents of course happen a lot, but look at almost everybody gets put on a blood pressure medication, that’s a statin without informed consent. Never being told of those risks, like you know, here’s one thing here: If you’re a woman and a calcium channel blocker after 10 years double the risk of breast cancer, and if the studies show being on a statin more than 10 years doubles your risk of breast cancer, what about people put on a statin and a calcium channel blocker? What about those millions of people? And the point is, are those people warned of this risk? Are they told that if they eat healthy that they don’t need these medications? Are they told that the risk of dropping their risk of heart attack or stroke is minimal to the medications and it’s a 100 times greater if they change their diet? In other words, we just have to change the way medicine is practiced.

Caryn: Yes, and it’s happening in little pockets but we need some major breakthrough and I hope your book is going to be the domino effect to get it going.

Dr. Fuhrman: On the bright side I did have the book reviewed by about a hundred physicians before I accepted it for the final publication. Dozens of cardiologists…have reviewed and had just an incredible enthusiastic response, that doctors not only viewed it but they all wanted to order cases and cases of them to inform their patients of all this information. So on an individual basis, maybe this is a – how should I say this, a slanted sample because I’m sending it to doctors and cardiologists that I know about in practice and maybe half of them maybe have some nutritionally oriented. They’re people that are already somewhat aware of nutrition. But even my local cardiologists and local hospitals, every person I sent it to, gave me a very, very excited about the use of – utilizing this book to give people comprehensive informed consent, but can convince them not to take the drugs or the procedures, but to change their diets. So many of these doctors said: Boy, I wish I had this book to give to my patients to read before I prescribed them medications. I’d much rather them do this than go on all these medications. So they all agreed, but they were all complaining though that they can’t convince their patients to do it. And that’s my point that if you give people enough information, it becomes a no-brainer. But you have to give people enough information – comprehensive informed consent, because that’s why people aren’t choosing to change their diet, because they don’t really understand the real risks involved in medication and procedures. And they don’t really see the benefits, the incredible, tremendous benefits out of diet plan modifications.

Caryn: And another thing you mentioned earlier about the studies that are confusing and this adds to everyone being muddled about what to do because last year we heard that butter was okay and that cholesterol doesn’t matter anymore and that saturated fat was okay. I have a friend who was a raw vegan and now a vegan. And now she’s into the buttered coffee and minerals in her bone broth and eating tons of meat, and what do we do?

Dr. Fuhrman: You know, these fads go in and out. And over time you could say what’s right or what’s where the evidence lies, it comes through eventually. And I try to say in the book that the preponderance of evidence is overwhelming. In spite of these you know, studies that are industry sponsored. These fads that come and go and people jumping on the bandwagon, you know, what’s popular in America. In spite of that, we – you know, move forward in a steady pace showing that heart disease can be predictably reversed, halted, stopped dead in its tracks and reversed even in advanced cases when you have diets where animal products are dramatically reduced or eliminated. And every study that showed long term affects with heart attacks. And we’re talking about soft endpoints versus hard endpoints. And your soft endpoints might be losing some weight and your cholesterol goes down or your triglyceride drops or your glucose goes down. And we could set up these studies to show anything we want now that people are fed and the foods we’re feeding them. But hard endpoints are things like heart attacks over a 10-year period or death, which is the best hard endpoint obviously. And now we have – those long term studies done, 10 to 20 years are conclusive and not controversial. And then I go through that in the book. I show one study after another that as the percent of the animal products were increased in a diet, heart attack rates and cancer rates both go up. And as animal product rates are decreased accordingly, we see those diseases go down. And we have to really look at studies that have hundreds and thousands of people and go on for 10 years or more to really see this affect and how idramatically it is — when we do look at those, it’s quite startling and concerning that these people are advocating these diets high in animal products are, you know, it’s very irresponsible and there are people with motives and agendas out there to prove something and I think I am unique I think. You could tell me what you think, Caryn, but I’m not advocating you know – my specialty isn’t ethics, it’s not animal rights, it’s not the environment. I don’t advocate – I’m not pressing people to be vegan, I’m just – I do my job, which is to be an expert in human nutrition and give people the gold standard, the ideal of what is to extending the life span in a way that I try to intentionally and intellectually not include any agenda, or predetermines bias or personal ego that’s going to have me slanted to prove one way or the other. I just want to present the facts for people so they can make the most informed decision possible. And I’m not saying that those things aren’t important – the ethics, environment, philosophies and all those things aren’t important, but it’s just not my field of expertise and I can let other people attack those things and I can stick to what I do best, which is really an in-depth analysis of this side of literature in an unbiased fashion.

Caryn: Yes, I agree with everything you just said and that’s why you’re my favorite medical doctor because I know that you focus on just those things and you’re an expert in those areas. And I – I am so grateful to know that there’s one place I can go to get the best information.

Dr. Fuhrman: Well thank you.

Caryn: Now I am a vegan, an ethical vegan, and I have been for 28 years and in your book, you mention that it’s okay to eat animal products, but you’re very specific and it’s really a very small amount that you allow.

Dr. Fuhrman: That’s right. Do you see that graph which I’ve showed you for the varying amounts of animal products?

Caryn: Yes, like 5 percent of calories in some instances.

Dr. Fuhrman: Yes, because you know what it is? There’s a bell shaped curve of genetic predisposition and you know, we could say, let’s just say for example: You know the American diet is 30 percent of calories from animal products and that’s the perceived range of animal products almost every meal. If you look at all the blue zones, all the areas around the world where people have much longer life span, they all have less than 10 percent of calories from animal products. We look at studies where we’re actually looking to see cholesterol and blood pressure drop. You have to move people you know below 20, below 15 percent, under that 10 percent range as well. However, when we’re looking at trying to guarantee reversal of the patient with heart disease in predictable fashion, then we start to see for most people, we need to drop it even lower than that below that 5 percent figure. And there’s other doctors as you know, like Dr. Dean Ornish and you know, others, who have the Dash Diet, The Pritikin Diet, I went through all the other diets for a proven sign of documentation to cause reversal of heart disease demonstrating that for predictable reversal, for not just reversing you know, a small part of the population or protect a small part, to protect a vast majority of people you have to push animal products relatively low. So then the question is that’s for prevention, well then what if you have a person that has advanced heart disease and you’re looking to reverse it? Well then where do you have to go? And then that’s where I’m saying that you would have to get below that 5 percent figure or we’re not going to see heart disease predictably reverse in a vast majority of cases. Not that some won’t reverse in the 10 percent figure, but I don’t want to – I want to make sure that everybody reverses. And the data we have today, what we have available – the studies available – show that predictable reversal, why not go below that 5 percent because that’s what the data shows. So that 0 to 5, and that’s what Ornish has done, for example, and that’s what I’m doing. And as you know, what’s kind of interesting in the book is to see that all the evidence that including nuts and seeds in the diet promotes reversal and you don’t have to exclude all fat from the diet to have reversal occur that we can do so while still eating an adequate amount from whole fats from foods like nuts and seeds, which you know you can make food taste great and we can make this diet taste fantastic as well. Well it’s interesting that you brought up the other doctors that have preventable and reversible heart disease plans and the issue of nuts and seeds. I’m just wondering. What I like about your approach is that you tell it like it is and you don’t dumb anybody down and assume anything. You just say, “This is what you need to do” and that’s what I appreciate most. But I know that when some people they see: Oh I can have some of this, some of these animal products, a little fish or a little milk or whatever, for them they may not realize what 5 or 10 percent is and what 3 ounces is versus 6 ounces, and it might open the floodgates. But at least you’re telling them what they need to do and they can make a choice. I had talked to…

Dr. Fuhrman: You’re right. You can eat too many dates too. You can eat too many dates and raisins. You know what I mean?

Caryn: True.

Dr. Fuhrman: So people can make all kinds of mistakes, but I want to give them specific guidelines. And if they can follow those, then if they don’t – in other words, I’m not expecting all of America to eat like this or change like this, but I think that all of America needs to know it and then they – it’s like smoking cigarettes. You don’t want to think that smoking cigarettes is okay and then have it kill you. You at least want to know it would kill you if you would choose to do it. You know what I mean?

Caryn: Yup. In order to get everybody moving to a better place, we need to move that curve and have the information out there on what the ideal is, what the best is, what the most powerful is.

Dr. Fuhrman: Exactly. You’ve got to know what the ideal is and people can choose to follow it or not. That’s my – that’s exactly my points.

Caryn: Okay. Cholesterol. As I mentioned before, I’m a long term vegan and I’ve always had high cholesterol. And you talk about fluffy LDL and OX LDL.

Dr. Fuhrman: Right.

Caryn: And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and should I be worried?

Dr. Fuhrman: I just had someone question me on that the other – a patient a couple days ago. You know, they had a total cholesterol of a 120. No, a LDL cholesterol of 120, 130. And their oxidized LDL was like 30. In other words, their LDL’s not oxidized. It’s the oxidized LDL that’s dangerous. And we’re just getting – we’re getting LDL concentration numbers that’s just – you know – don’t tell us how much of that HDL is bad HDL or good HDL. In other words, we’re just getting numbers which are you know, somewhat of an indicator. And you know, lower is better than higher on the LDL. But you know, when you eat a diet high in phytochemicals, phytonutrients, you don’t have free radicals and your LDL’s not oxidized. So what I’m saying is that your LDL on a healthy diet is much more, even if it’s double or even if it’s 30, 40 points higher is much healthier than pushing your LDL down with drugs when your LDL’s oxidized. In other words, the most accurate determinant of your risks is your oxidized LDL more than your total LDL. So and when you – and the point is that when you need to eat the green vegetables, the berries, the G-bombs I refer to the onions, the mushrooms, the berries, the seeds, but particularly the green vegetables. But the green vegetables and also berries have tremendous and powerful antioxidant effects to prevent cancer and also to prevent atherosclerosis and to reverse heart disease. We can see that if we measure the lutein in a person’s blood stream. It correlates with atherosclerosis. Higher levels of lutein, higher rates of atherosclerosis. Lower levels of lutein, higher rates of atherosclerosis. Perfect correlation, so then people would say: Well, lutein must be the magical nutrient because this has a direct correlation with heart disease. And people with higher lutein reverse their atherosclerosis, but see lutein is like the flag that marks a diet high in green vegetables, because green vegetables have thousands of nutrients in them, but the carotenoid that makes their color green is called lutein and you can measure this person’s green vegetable volume in their diet by measuring their lutein in their blood. It’s not that lutein did all the work, but of course we’re measuring the person’s green vegetable intake through that blood level.

Caryn: Well I’m sure I’m ringing all the bells on my green level, so I’m not going to be concerned about it. There was an article in the New York Times about a new drug that’s supposed to lower LDL cholesterol and the results were very disappointing and it was tested on 12,000 patients. And Dr. Steven Nichols, the principal investigator, he said it’s the most mind boggling question: How can a drug that lowers something that is associated with benefit not show any benefit? Did you find that mind boggling?

Dr. Fuhrman: I didn’t mind the study as mind boggling as others would, but I – you know – I thought it was kind of interesting – that’s what my whole book’s about. I thought it was kind of interesting the timeliness of my book coming out the same day as this article, this op-ed in the New York Times comes out showing these drugs have no benefit even though they lower LDL and raise HDL. You know what I mean? So I think that it’s funny that the whole point we’re talking about is that these cholesterol numbers are just a small part of the heart attack and heart disease equation. And people run around thinking they’re protected because they’re LDL is favorable, but they don’t realize that’s just a very small part of contributing risks: your waist measurement, your body fat, your blood pressure, you know you have the quality of your diet, your fitness level. You know, all of these things are more important than your cholesterol level or equally important and there’s multifactorial diseases. You have one – one favorable, and of course the statin drug pushes it down and pushes down your LDL total and you could still have a lot of oxidized LDL in there even though your LDL is normal. And that’s just one risk. You can ask people and recognize that most people under care of their doctor and cardiologist for high blood pressure still got heart disease. The drugs don’t protect them. They don’t protect them at all. Those risks – most studies, depending on which studies you look at from 10, 20 reduction risk, and we’re talking here about nutrition being able to give people close to a 99 percent reduction. And in my 25 years of practice, even people with the most advanced cases who couldn’t even get out of a wheelchair or housebound on 10 medications, even these people made recoveries. You know, we’re talking about even the most severe cases have hope to better and drugs and procedures don’t give it to them. It’s the change in diet that’s going to give people hope and has the proven efficacy to reverse disease that drugs and procedures can’t do.

Caryn: And that’s where the second part of your book comes in where you offer a meal plan and some really luscious looking recipes. I dog-eared some pages because I want to try some of them. And my first question is: You were – it’s in the book, you were 15 when you started cooking. And I wanted to learn a little bit about that and how you learned to cook.

Dr. Fuhrman: Huh, that’s *laughing*

You know my father was a very sick guy. An overweight and sick guy. I remember all of my childhood driving him around in the back of the station wagon lying on the mat because he couldn’t sit up. From doctor to doctor. But we – but he changed his diet and got healthier and starting running and getting in to – and I read those books he brought into the house. And so kind of did it as a family and I started reading all these books you know, from Natural Hygiene and you know from The Vegan Movement. I started learning recipes when I really young. So my point is, now that I’m in my sixties, I’ve been doing these recipes and doing food – making healthy food taste good, all these tricks for so many years. And you cultivate and you meet people, and you cultivate a diet that’s really pleasurable and satisfying and delicious and healthy at the same time. And if people knew that they could marry together all those features, I think they would feel more comfortable. This is not about giving up or feeling deprived, it’s about actually feeling more pleasured about the way you eat because when you intellectually know you’re doing what’s good for your body and you feel great and it tastes good too, you enjoy eating more. It’s like you enjoy eating and you enjoy eating with freedom. And you know what, living your life in fear of disease can’t be that great and can’t be that good for your health. To always worry about if you’re going to get some disease or be stricken dead with a heart attack if you run for a bus or something. You know what I mean? It’s nice to know that you can protect yourself.

Caryn: Absolutely. I’m just thumbing through. We’ve got Maui-Wow Wok Sauce, which looks a really tasty sauce to put on vegetables and all kinds of wonderful dressings. A Russian fig dressing, baked eggplant fries that looks amazing. And all of these foods are nutritious, nutrient-dense, plant-rich and you don’t miss anything. So the bottom line is you can prevent and reverse heart disease and eat better than you’ve ever eaten before and love your food. That’s about it, right?

Dr. Fuhrman: Yes, I guess that’s the whole point.

Caryn: *laughing*

Dr. Fuhrman: The whole point is to get people to get off their drugs. And let me just make this one quick point is that: Your risk of heart disease is proportional to the number of medications you’re taking. If I want to give people that guarantee, never have a heart attack or a stroke, they have to earn it. And the way they earn it is by having a normal blood pressure without medication, a normal cholesterol without medication, a normal glucose without medication and a normal body weight. It’s not – they’ve got to do it themselves. Nobody can do it for them and they can’t buy it in a bottle. They can’t buy protection in a bottle. They’ve got to do it themselves because the more drugs they’re on, the more higher the risk they have.

Caryn: *clapping* Thank you. I’m applauding you. And thank you for another great book and I hope this truly is the end of heart disease for many, many people.

Dr. Fuhrman: Thanks Caryn.

Caryn: And here’s to your next book on the New York Times best seller list. Whoo!

Dr. Fuhrman: *laughing* I hope so. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Caryn: Of course. Okay, take care. Thank you so much for joining me Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

Transcribed by Toni-Ann Hall, 4/24/2016