I am delighted to let all my patients, readers and friends know that I have completed the eCornell online six week intensive training program in Whole Food Plant Based Nutrition.

The course was fantastic! It was led by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and it was based on his tremendous research from his book The China Study. I learned in the course that a whole food plant based diet is able to  prevent as well as to treat the two most common diseases in America, heart disease and cancer.

Aside from Dr. Campbell's excellent lectures, there were many other speakers as well. One of my favorite lectures was by Douglas Lisle Ph.D. who spoke on "The Pleasure Trap". This lecture was about how our own biochemistry and neurochemistry get stimulated by street drugs and junk foods into a persistent cycle that keeps us trapped in our addictive drug or food behavior. Of course he talked about how to get out of this painful cycle that SO many Americans are stuck in. I recommend his book The Pleasure Trap to you. Or you can get the DVD.

My other favorite lecture was by Caldwell Esselstyn, M.D. His lecture was on how to prevent and reverse heart disease using the Whole Food Plant Based Diet. He is a prominent surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and after many years of working as a breast cancer surgeon he wanted to look into how to prevent the chronic diseases of America. He focused on heart disease and in his amazing lecture in the course he showed us before and after photographs of coronary angiograms showing how advanced heart disease had completely reversed when people followed a Whole Food Plant Based diet for a few years.

I was truly impressed, and I am already speaking with my patients who have coronary artery disease about using this diet as a treatment. In recent days the most prominent individual to adopt this diet is President Bill Clinton. President Clinton was interviewed about this diet by Wolf Blitzer of CNN and you can watch his interview at this site:

President Clinton lost weight back to his High School weight and looks forward to seeing the diet bring him benefit for his heart disease. He had to have coronary by-pass surgery and some years later the newly implanted arteries clogged again and he need a stent put in to keep the new artery open. That was the stimulus for him to go on this diet.

If you or your family has heart disease, please do consider reading Dr Esselstyn’s  book and trying the diet !

To learn more about this course go to this site for the course.

and you can watch the intro video here

Also a wonderful new movie about the Whole Food Plant Based Diet just came out starting Dr Campbell and Esselstyn and others. I highly recommend it ! It is called Forks over Knives.

I look forward to writing more articles on my blog about the benefits of a Whole Food Plant Based Diet.
Please let me know your thoughts!