All right, welcome back.

We have what I consider the McDougall team, which is a group of associates,

actually friends that I've had for 20, 30 years.

And our next presenter

is one of those men who's worked with us, worked in conjunction

with the things that we've done, supported each other, had similar crowds.

And one thing really distinct about our next presenter is his ability to communicate.

I understand—I was just shocked that he's given over a thousand lectures,

and sometimes he's given four lectures a day— amazing, what a dedicated person.

So he also finally came out with his first book.

It's "How Not to Die"— what a title—

and it has put him on the New York Times Best Selling list for the last seven weeks.

So because of our long-time friendship and my great respect for him,

he's been a speaker for at least one presentation every year

for who knows how far back it goes,

and I know you're going to enjoy Dr. Michael Greger.

"How Not To Die:

The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers"

I have taken so many great ideas from Dr. John McDougall

that it's only fair that he take my beard.

Allow me to begin on a personal note.

This is a picture of me,

right around the time that my grandma was diagnosed with end-stage heart disease

and sent home to die.

She had already had so many bypass operations—

basically run out of plumbing at some point—

confined to a wheelchair, crushing chest pain.

Nothing more they could do.

Her life was over at age 65.

But then she heard about this guy, Nathan Pritikin,

one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers.

And what happened next is chronicled in Pritikin's biography.

My grandma was one of the "death's door" people.

Frances Greger arrived in one of Pritikin's early sessions

in a wheelchair.

"Mrs. Greger had heart disease, angina, claudication;

her condition was so bad she could no longer walk

without great pain in her chest and legs.

Within three weeks though, she was not only out of her wheelchair

but was walking ten miles a day."

This is my grandma at her grandson's wedding

15 years after she was given her medical death sentence,

and thanks to a healthy diet, she was able to live another 31 years

on this earth until 96, to enjoy her six grandkids, including me.

That is why I went into medicine.

When Dr. Ornish published his Lifestyle Heart trial years later,

proving with quantitative angiography

that coronary heart disease could be reversed—

arteries opened up without drugs, without surgery, just a plant-based diet

and other healthy lifestyle changes, I assumed it was going to be the game changer.

I mean, my family had seen it with their own eyes,

but here it was in black and white,

in some of the most prestigious medical journals on the planet.

But nothing happened, leaving me to wonder if effectively

the cure to our number 1 killer could get lost down some rabbit hole and ignored,

what else was there in the medical literature that could help my patients?

I've made it my life's mission to find out.

For those of you unfamiliar with my work, every year I read through every issue

of every English-language nutrition journal in the world,

so busy folks like you don't have to.

I then compile all the most interesting, the most groundbreaking,

the most practical findings,

new videos and articles I upload every day to my nonprofit site, NutritionFacts.org.

Everything on the website is free.

There are no ads, no corporate sponsorships.

It's strictly noncommercial, not selling anything.

Just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love.

New videos and articles every day on the latest in evidence-based nutrition.

What a concept!

Where did Pritikin get his evidence from?

Well, a network of missionary hospitals set up throughout Sub-Saharan Africa

uncovered what may be the most important advance in health, according to

one of the most famous medical figures of the 20th century, Dr. Denis Burkitt.

The fact that many of our most common and major Western diseases

were universally rare, like heart disease.

"In the African population of Uganda,

coronary heart disease is almost non-existent."

Wait a second.

Our number 1 cause of death almost nonexistent?

What were they eating?

They were eating a lot of starchy vegetables, starchy grains, and greens,

and their protein almost exclusively from plant sources,

and they had the cholesterol levels to prove it.

Actually very similar to what You see down here in the corner

of those eating modern-day plant-based diets.

I said, wait a second.

Maybe the Africans were just dying early from some other kind of disease,

never lived long enough to get heart disease.

No.

Here's age-matched heart attack rates in Uganda versus St. Louis.

Out of 632 autopsies in Uganda, only one myocardial infarction.

Out of 632 age and gender matched autopsies in Missouri, 136 myocardial infarctions:

more than 100 times the rate of our #1 killer.

They were so blown away they went back, did another 800 autopsies in Uganda,

and still just that one small healed infarct, meaning it wasn't even the cause of death,

out of 1,427 patients—less than 1 in a thousand—

whereas here heart disease is an epidemic.

This is a list of diseases commonly found here in places

that eat and live like the US,

but were rare or even nonexistent in populations

centering their diets around whole plant foods.

These are among our most common diseases, like obesity, for example,

or hiatal hernia: one of the most common stomach problems.

Varicose veins and hemorrhoids, two of the most common venous problems,

colorectal cancer, a leading cause of cancer-related death,

diverticulitis, the #1 disease of the intestine,

appendicitis, the #1 cause of emergency abdominal surgery,

gallbladder disease, the #1 cause for non-emergency abdominal surgery,

as well as ischemic heart disease, our commonest cause of death here,

but a rarity among plant-based populations.

And so this suggests that heart disease may be a choice, like cavities.

If you look at the teeth of people who lived over 10,000 years before

the invention of the toothbrush, pretty much no cavities.

Didn't brush a day in their lives, no flossing, yet no cavities.

Why?

Because candy bars hadn't been invented yet.

So why do people continue to get cavities

when we know they're preventable through diet?

Easy.

Probably because, you know, the pleasure of dessert

basically outweighs the cost and discomfort of the dentist chair for many people.

Look, that's fine.

As long as people understand the consequences

of their actions, as a physician what more can I do?

If you think the benefits outweigh the risks for you and your family, then go for it.

I certainly enjoy the occasional indulgence.

I've got a good dental plan.

But what if instead of the plaque in our teeth,

we're talking about the plaque building up inside of our arteries?

All right, this is another disease that can be prevented by changing our diet.

Now what are the consequences for you and your family?

Now we're not just talking about scraping tarter anymore.

Now we're talking life and death.

The most likely reason that most of our loved ones will die is because of heart disease.

So being at a McDougall event is the best Valentine's Day present ever.

It's still up to each of us to make our own decisions as to what to eat and how to live,

but we should make these choices consciously,

educating ourselves about the predictable consequences of our actions.

Coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, hardening of the arteries

begins in childhood.

By age 10, the arteries of nearly all kids raised on the standard American diet

already have fatty streaks, the first stage of the disease.

And then these plaques start forming in our 20s, in our 30s,

and then can start killing us off.

In our hearts, it's called a heart attack;

in our brains, the same disease is called a stroke.

If there is anyone here in the room today older than age 10,

then the question isn't whether or not to eat healthy to prevent heart disease;

it's whether you want to reverse the heart disease that you already have.

Is that even possible?

When researchers took people with heart disease, put them on the kind of diet

followed by populations that did not get heart disease,

their hope was to slow the disease down, maybe even stop it,

but instead something miraculous happened.

The disease started to reverse, to get better.

As soon as patients stopped eating an artery-clogging diet,

their arteries started opening up.

Their bodies were able to start dissolving some of that plaque away,

without drugs, without surgery.

Even some cases severe triple-vessel heart disease, arteries opening up,

suggesting that their bodies wanted to be healthy all along,

but were just never given the chance.

This improvement in blood flow on the left you see up here, if you can see,

this is after just three weeks of eating healthy.

Let me share with you what's been called the best kept secret in medicine.

The best kept secret in medicine is that sometimes, given the right conditions,

our body can heal itself.

If you whack your shin really hard on a coffee table,

it can get all red, hot, swollen, inflamed, right?