Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

If you have high cholesterol, you really have no other options than to go whole food plant based. It’s really the only way to healthfully bring your cholesterol under control.

Recently, I had routine lab work done for a physical. As expected, my cholesterol was awesome! My doctor said it was optimal. According to Dr. Greger, you want a total cholesterol under 150. Most conventional doctors think anything under 200 is OK but I trust Dr. Greger, Dr. Ornish, Dr. Esselstyn and others who advise people to achieve the optimal level.

In a few weeks, it will be exactly ten years since I had my first physical since before college. That one physical altered my life from that moment on.

Many of you know my story, but it seems appropriate to remind my readers of why this appointment was so critical. I was morbidly obese, weighing in at well over 350 pounds. i was not taking care of myself, having neuropathy in my feet, feeing exhausted, having headaches, etc. I knew the doctor would tell me I had health issues and I did not want to know. I was pushed into this physical because the state of Connecticut was requiring it for workers who wanted to have cheaper premiums. I decided to finally face my fears and do the physical.

Recently, I made some black bean brownies at work. This was from a recipe I got from the Physician’s Committee For Responsible Medicine website. I had heard Chuck Carroll, host of one of my favorite podcasts, Exam Room, brag how good these were and thought they would be perfect for work. I typically make some kind of holiday dessert for work each holiday season.

They were really easy to make. The only thing I substituted was the raspberry jam, as I only had a guava jelly available. The guava jelly was unsweetened. I quickly mixed the ingredients, baked them in the oven and had everything done and cleaned up within an hour. I don’t waste any time!

I still remember my last meal, Chicken Marsala, at a small dinner party celebrating my friend’s birthday. My plan was to start Robert Cheeke’s workout journal, a 13 week workout challenge where you are completely vegan for 13 weeks, the next day. I had done week long challenges before and always thought about how great I felt. I thought 13 weeks would be the ultimate test. Little did I know I would never go back to animal products after that!

I was plant based since 2012, having first started my healthy lifestyle through the work of Dr. Fuhrman. His advice about GBOMBS foods (greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds) is still an important part of my diet. Over the years, I’ve picked up advice from Dr. McDougall, Dr. Gregor and countless others. I think all plant based doctors have something to offer.

142/90. For some reason, that blood pressure reading stood out. There were others that were high around that time, over nine years ago, but this is the one that confirmed to my doctor that I was pre-hypertensive. I was a walking time bomb, also being most likely pre-diabetic. It was only a matter of time that I would have full blown hypertension and diabetes if I didn’t make some changes.

As many of you know, my doctor initially wanted me on blood pressure pills. I was fortunate to have a doctor that worked with me as I did not want to go on medication. He agreed to let me lose the weight and hope that the blood pressure would go down as the weight went down. It worked, as 6 months later, my blood pressure was normal and I never took a single pill.