In August of 1996, we bought our second house. From the day we moved in, Maria got sick. She lost 50 pounds, was tired all the time, had insomnia, was weak, depressed, was in bed most of the time, and started to lose her vision.
In February of 1997, she was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes. Actually, the doctor suspected coronary heart disease, and scheduled her for a stress test. As an afterthought, he had blood tests run, and that is how we discovered that her blood sugar was elevated. Many people become depressed when they receive such a diagnosis, but for us it was good news.
During the previous year, I had become interested in coronary heart disease, and had been studying it. My reading had led me to rediscover Nathan Pritikin, and the diet he devised to reverse coronary heart disease. (Much to his own surprise, he also found out that the same diet helped reverse diabetes, as well.) In the course of my study, I had devised a meal which followed his guidelines, and I named it PLORB (because it is made of Peas, Lentils, Oats, Rice and Barley.)
So, when Maria was diagnosed with type II diabetes, I told her, "Don't worry about it. We can fix this."
So, she ate PLORB exclusively for six months. This is actually quite an accomplishment--you get tired of PLORB pretty quick. She also started exercising regularly on a treadmill. The only medicine she took was Glucotrol, but that was just in the beginning. She later used Guereque for about a week, and took a herbal mixture called Diabetina for a couple of months. Vitamin and mineral supplements were taken regularly. During this time, she underwent cataract surgery and recovered her sight.
At the end of six months, her test results were all normal, so we thought we were done. We figured that her diabetes had been cured. Although she stopped eating PLORB, she continued to eliminate as much fat and sugar as possible from her diet. She no longer used any kind of medication, but continued to take chromium picolinate and vanadyl sulfate, as well as vitamin supplements on a daily basis.
On February 26, 2000, I had a heart attack. They told me that it was a small one. I remember lying in the hospital bed, considering my options. When I remembered what I had personally witnessed of the Pritikin diet's power, I said to myself, "Heart disease... Shucks, that should be easy!" , and determined to use the Pritikin program for its intended purpose: reversing Coronary Heart Disease. It wasn't a difficult decision for me to make. At the time, bare stents were still being used with angioplasty, resulting in restenosis within three to six months. Bypass surgery offered immediate relief, but was quite risky, required about a year for recovery, and would only last for about five years. At the time, I had good health insurance, but the options that mainstream medicine had to offer were not very attractive. The doctors wanted to perform an angiogram on me before my release. I wasn't interested in having an angiogram, but agreed to a low-speed stress test.
The treadmill was set to 1 mile per hour, and I was only able to complete a minute or so before I experienced chest pain. In addition, the EKG showed evidence of coronary artery blockage. This was supposed to convince me that the doctors knew best, but it didn't
I signed myself out of the hospital against medical advice and began the nextstage of our adventure,
The first thing I did was to change my diet. No fat, no sugar. no salt (and not too much fun, either!) Actually, it was closer to 18% fat, 15% protein, 67% complex carbohydrates, and traces of salt. (Actually, I expanded the diet somewhat by adding oatmeal for breakfast and vegi-burgers for lunch--you get tired of PLORB pretty quick.)
I limited my exercise for the first month to walking from the bed to the dining room and back, from the bed to the restroom and back. It would take me from five to ten minutes to recover from the exertion. I couldn't even think about going upstairs. At this time. I was using five to six doses of nitroglycerin per day.
During the second month, I began using the treadmill, but not for exercise. The idea was just to use it as a way to measure my progress. I would continue (at .9 miles per hour) until I began to feel discomfort. Then I would stop, and record my time, distance, and pulse rate, as well as recovery time.
Within about a month, my duration increased to ten minutes. At that time, I began using the treadmill for exercise. I began to increase the speed and duration. I began to use less nitroglycerin, and was starting to feel much better. By now, I could go upstairs, again. At this time, my blood lipids were: LDL 51, HDL 28, Total Cholesterol 79.
In July, I took another stress test, with pretty good results. I was able to continue for 13 minutes, at speeds from2 1/2 to 3 1/2 miles per hour. There were no arrhythmias, and no abnormal wave forms. The term the cardiologist used was"non-diagnostic", and that sounded pretty good to me. They would have liked the pulse rate to have reached 168, but it didn't get over 126. At the time, my blood lipids were: LDL 27, HDL 100, Total Cholesterol 127.
In August, I was ready to return to work. My primary healthcare provider was ready to certify me as fit to work. But my wife mentioned that she was worried about me driving 160 miles per day without the use of my left eye (an unrelated health problem). He thought I should take some more time off, to attend to this problem. I didn't agree, but he threatened to write tthe DMV so they would pull my driver's license. I didn't go back to work, and the next day myemployer terminated me.
I underwent the cataract surgery for the left eye. It didn't fix the problem,but, apparently my doctor thought I had jumped through enough hoops, because he gave me a letter saying that I was able to work without medical restrictions. Eventually, I found another job. It involved taking a 40% cut in pay, but life goes on
One year after the heart attack, I had not used nitroglycerin for over a month
In August of 2004, Maria consulted with our family physician about numbness and tingling of her feet. He ordered tests, and these revealed that type II diabetes had returned.
Well, Maria would no longer even consider eating PLORB, so we maintained a more or less normal diet without fruit and with as little sugar and fat as possible. We bought a treadmill and started with the exercise routine, again. We settled on Metformin as our drug of choice, but(without the strict diet) her response was not as vigorous as it had been before. To take up the slack, we started trying various herbs.
It took us about 3 months to get Maria's test results more or less into the normal range. After another 3 months, everything was normal, again. What we had learned from our first experience was to continue daily fasting blood sugar testing. We had managed to get the glucose and triglycerides down, and the HDL up. We had succeeded in stopping the damage, but the cause had not gone away. Because of this, we now realized that we must not turn our back on the condition again, but must continue to monitor the situation, and address any changes as they occur. Actually, if you look over the daily blood sugar test results for the last six months, you will see that our control has been somewhat sloppy. We have experienced difficulty in lowering the fasting blood sugar below 100 micrograms per milliliter. But, as with the overweight person who loses only a part of their excess poundage, there is definite benefit --as the final test results bear witness.
Coronary Heart Disease Returns
On May 18, 2010, after 10 years and 3 months of excellent quality of life, (virtually free of chest pain), I began to experience unstable angina, upon very little exertion, At the same time, I ran out of nitroglycerine pills. This is a bad combination of events. The next day, I went to the drug store to see if I could get some more. I was used to carrying a bottle of 100 doses with me. Imagine my surprise when the drug store re-filled the prescription for 25 doses. I immediately resumed the PLORB diet and started walking around the block for exercise, but wasn't sure how the exercise was going to work out, because I needed the nitroglycerin to control the angina so I could perform the exercise. The 25 doses lasted five days. At the end of this time, again out of nitroglycerin and still experiencing angina, I asked our doctor for a refill. He authourized a 100-dose refill, and set up an appointment to evaluate my condition. On Sunday, May 28. 2010, I had a heart attack and went to the local emergency room. The team there very efficiently prepared me and transported me to a better-equipped hospital, where I was offered bypass surgery. I declined, and angioplasty was performed on me. The surgical teams wert unable to proceed with bypass surgery without a "yes" from somebody, so they tried to persuade me or my family that failure to approve the surgery would inevitably have dire consequences. They claimed that there was no alternative. But Dr. Amer Jangali came to offer an alternative. He said that his angioplasty team would like to have a try at it. He said that one-third of my coronary arteries looked like they would not be amenable to angioplasty. One-third had already been done with some degree of success. They were hopeful about the remaining one-third. I was already feeling quite a bit better, and decided to let them try. Well, they did it, and their results were better than they had expected. Dr. Jangali said that they had achieved bypass functionality with the angioplasty procedure. This is a marvelous, and unexpected outcome. I rescheduled the appointment with my primary care physician, and he did a follow-up examination. In his opinion, what I have experienced is the goal, target, and aim of healthcare ptoviders in such cases. I am now continuing with the PLORB diet and exercise program. The angioplasty resolved my bloodflow deficit issues, but did not stop the process of atherosclerosis. I reversed atherosclerosis once with diet and exercise. I plan to do it again. And now I should have time to accomplish it. I think that I have learned not to turn my back on the condition, again. The move from bare to medicated stents seems to have resolved the earlierproblem of rapid restenosis. In its place, there is likelihood of another heart attack, caused by the formation of atherosclerotic plaque on the stents. Because of this, I intend to make another break with the Pritikin program. I will supplement the low-fat diet with linoleic acid and lecithin. The melting point of cholesterol is 300 degrees Fahrenheit when it sticks to the walls of blood vessels. It is not soluble at normal body temperatures. The melting point drops to 32 degrees Fahrenheit when there is enough linoleate and lecithin circulating in the blood, making it soluble at normal body temperatures.
