How To Survive After Open Heart Surgery For a Meat and Potatoes Guy.

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Now 33 years after the surgery, I am one of the longest-lived bypass survivors in the country. My current biometric measurements—cholesterol, weight, and blood pressure—show that I'm in better health now than in As a result, I have experienced the joy of seeing my daughter and son graduate from high school, college, law school, and graduate school; of walking my daughter down the aisle and making a toast at my son's wedding; of celebrating 42 years of marriage; of gathering with family at my 65th birthday; of holding our grandchildren; and of experiencing a year career of writing and speaking on cardiac health.

None of this would have happened without practicing healthier lifestyle habits. No one has the ability to influence patient behavior more than physicians do. So, while it is easy to become enthralled with the science of cardiac health—new medications, robotic surgery, and coronary inflammation, for instance—helping the patient create a healthier lifestyle is the core issue. The science of healthy living needs practical application for it to help patients.

If I were a doctor counseling patients on primary or secondary prevention of CHD, here is what I would advise based on my 33 years of managing my heart disease successfully. Responsible for more than , deaths annually, smoking has historically been the single most preventable cause of death in the United States. According to the American Lung Association, if a person starts smoking before age 20, each cigarette costs about 20 seconds of life.

For a two-packs-a-day smoker, this means throwing away more than 8 years of life. Most people assume that the greatest health risk from smoking is cancer. And while it is true that smoking leads to more than , cancer deaths each year, the impact of smoking on the risk of heart disease is much greater. Smokers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to have a heart attack and are five times more likely to die from sudden cardiac death. But I would stress to my patients that there is hope for those who give it up.

Research shows that within 2 to 3 years of quitting, former smokers reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke to levels similar to those of people who never smoked. The bottom line is that if you are not a smoker, don't start. If you are a smoker, get into a smoking cessation program. There is considerable evidence that chronic stress may directly penalize cardiovascular health by raising cholesterol and blood pressure, promoting coronary inflammation, and triggering sudden cardiac death.

While much more study needs to take place, there is great consensus about the indirect impact of daily stress: Instead, most chronic stress comes from the fact that we are out of time. We simply do not have the time to do all the things we need or want to do. I do a lot of different things during the day, but because I'm always short of time, I don't feel that I do any of them well.

When people are stressed like this, it makes no difference how much they know about healthy living—and we know a lot! If we have learned anything in the past 20 years of health messaging, it is this: If it did, we would be a nation of nonsmokers. If I were a doctor, I would drive home the point that while stress cannot be reduced, it can be managed successfully with techniques such as deep breathing, regular exercise, and meditation.

Stress management is a key to dietary and exercise compliance. If you judged us by our appearance—jogging shoes, biking pants, and warm-up suits—you would think the country was in the middle of a fitness boom. The reality is that Americans do not exercise. This is a tragedy for heart health, as regular physical activity confers so many benefits. It strengthens the heart, boosts high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, reduces blood clotting, lowers blood pressure, aids in weight loss, maintains muscle strength, and helps to manage stress.

Brisk walking, jogging, aerobic dance, swimming, stair stepping—it doesn't matter what the exercise is as long as it is done regularly. If I were a doctor, I'd spend less time with patients on the formula of exercise—such as taking an exercise pulse, determining training rate, debating duration, and such—and more time preaching regularity.

Getting patients to do something every day trumps what specific exercise is practiced. A key point is to encourage the patient to exercise with a partner. Most people are much more faithful to regular exercise with a partner than when on their own. Perhaps nothing is more important for cardiac health than eating a healthy, balanced diet. But the American diet is the antithesis of healthy eating. There are also problems with what we do not eat: Actually, the vegetable number is worse, as it seems that half of those claiming to eat vegetables list French fries as the only vegetable eaten!

CHD, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, cirrhosis of the liver, and the nation's leading ailment, obesity. There are many reasons behind such an unhealthy dietary pattern. Our fast-paced, out-of-time lifestyle has moved people away from shopping and cooking. Instead, they often eat on the run and settle for what is available, quickly, from restaurants, take-out places, and food stores. Many people have simply traded nutrition for convenience.

We live in a toxic environment for making healthy food choices. If I were a doctor, I would keep the nutrition message simple: From a practical standpoint, this can be accomplished with three actions.

Bill Clinton Explains Why He Became a Vegan

First, don't crash diet. It is a game for fools. Fads such as high-protein diets might help you lose a few pounds in the short run, but they are ineffective for a lifetime. If any one had worked—if the cabbage soup diet had worked! Second, eat real foods. We struggled in our house to eat healthy foods after my surgery, but these foods were often bland and tasteless. So we began to drift back to tastier, but unhealthier, foods. Then I came upon a piece of information that changed our thinking. So, if you can identify your 12 favorites and learn how to reduce their fat, sugar, and salt—but only to the point that taste remains—you get the best of both worlds: Let's suppose that it is Sunday morning and your family likes French toast.

The traditional recipes call for mixing whole milk with salt and four whole eggs, dipping in the bread, and frying in bacon fat. Instead, use fat-free milk, skip the salt, and use one whole egg and three egg whites. Then fry in a nonstick pan. Top with a little tub-margarine and maple syrup, and your family will love it, yet it is healthier than the original version. Finally, talk to the patient about portion size.

It is also about how much is eaten. Unfortunately, we are eating a lot more than in the past. Most people have little understanding of portion size.

A simple way to estimate healthy portions is to use your palm, fist, and thumb as a guide:. In this fast-paced society, the day can get away from you. Under time pressure, the best-intended plans for healthy eating can go awry.

What I have found, however, is that by eating a healthy breakfast, I can meet a good part of my nutritional needs even if the rest of the day gets derailed. I eat oatmeal topped with berries strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries , chopped almonds or walnuts, and nonfat milk. Helping the patient create a positive mindset is critical to long-term success. Patients who approach lifestyle change with hope and optimism do much better than those with a negative outlook.

That is why my latest book— Positive Mind, Healthy Heart— was written. It is a collection of motivational stories, quotes, and anecdotes to help inspire patients to stick with the program. One morning I was still in bed, trying to decide if I was going to exercise that day. I just didn't feel like it. But a read a simple quote: Making healthy changes to benefit cardiovascular health is simple—not easy, but simple.

The Meat and Potatoes of Life

Many patients can become discouraged, particularly if they have a lot to change or feel pressure to do it all at once. Advise them to make changes just for today.

Don't fret about yesterday; it's over and you can't call it back. Don't be concerned with tomorrow, as it is not yet here. Instead, make a commitment to live healthy just for today. Pretty soon, the days will add up to weeks, months, and years, and changes will become habits. That's what I've done for 33 years … one day at a time. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Proc Bayl Univ Med Cent. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

From the Institute for Fitness and Health, Inc. Piscatella, Institute for Fitness and Health, Inc. What I didn't know was that CHD usually develops silently, insidiously, over a long period of time, generally 20 to 40 years. Once it surfaces, however, the primary result, a heart attack, is often immediately devastating. What I didn't know was that for about one third of heart attack victims, the first heart attack was the only one, resulting in sudden cardiac death.

Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. Find a part-time job that fits your schedule. Bill Clinton shows off an all-veggie lunch spread representing the foods he now eats, and enjoys.

The former president is now a devoted vegan , meaning no meat, fish or dairy products, and he has pursued a healthier way of life for more than three years. While I figured our lunch menu might be bland, that would be a small price to pay for private time with a world leader who is anything but. As it happens, the fit, trim and sharply attired Clinton, whom I've come to know well during more than two decades covering his career, is his usual gregarious, charismatic self.

But a bland menu? Hummus with raw vegetable batons. Dine like Bill Clinton does. Check out great recipes for hummus, quinoa, beets, cauliflower, snow peas, beans and more. As we enter a private room overlooking Manhattan's busy Rockefeller Center, I'm struck with a dazzling kaleidoscope of a dozen delicious dishes: As I gawk, he smiles.

It looks better than good. We sit down and with great relish start passing plates back and forth. He favored the quinoa; I loved the roasted cauliflower and snow peas; and we both liked the beans. At age 66, Bill Clinton still travels and works at a pace that completely exhausts staffers who are two or three decades younger.

Yet, while coping with heart disease and the usual complaints of aging, he has managed to change his diet drastically, lose more than 30 pounds and keep the weight off. If he can do all that, then maybe there's hope for the rest of us baby boomers — and Americans of all ages — whose eating and exercise habits and medical expenses worry him a lot. I first noticed a change in Clinton's eating habits when we were in Capetown, South Africa, back in July I have been covering his extraordinary postpresidential career since , interviewing him frequently and traveling with him across Africa, Europe and the Mideast, as well as the United States.

We were all preparing to dig into a tempting dinner sent up to the former president's suite from a very fine restaurant in the hotel. Sitting down next to him, I glanced at his plate and saw none of the steak, shrimp, fish or chicken on the buffet — just a tangle of green lo mein noodles and a pile of broccoli. No dairy at all. And I have so much more energy now! Clinton traces his decision to change back to the morning in February when he woke up looking pale and feeling tired.

His cardiologist quickly brought him into New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to insert a pair of stents. One of his veins had given out, a frequent complication following the quadruple- bypass surgery he had undergone in At a subsequent press conference, Clinton recalls, his doctors tried "to reassure the public that I wasn't on the verge of death, and so they said, you know, this is actually fairly normal. Prodded into action, Clinton started by rereading Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease , which urges a strict, low-fat, plant-based regimen, along with two books that were, if possible, even more militantly vegan: When I suffered a heart attack in late November , Clinton sent me all three books.

And I wanted to live to be a grandfather," says Clinton. As we talk, Clinton is clearly enjoying every virtuous bite, helping himself to seconds of both the quinoa and the beans. He still has a hearty appetite, but what he loves to eat now is obviously good for him. It's a testament to his discipline that he pulled off a degree pivot overnight — motivated not only by his own urge to live but by the goals he has set for his foundation.

To most Americans of Clinton's generation — especially those, like him, who grew up in places like Arkansas, where barbecued pork and cornmeal-crusted catfish dominate the local cuisine — cutting out meat, fish and dairy would seem a radical deprivation. But Clinton quickly adapted. He no longer craves steaks, but bread is a potential pitfall. When Caldwell Esselstyn spotted a picture of him on the Internet, eating a dinner roll at a banquet, the renowned doctor dispatched a sharply worded email message: These days at the Clinton residence in suburban Chappaqua, New York, house manager Oscar Flores prepares simple meals for Clinton and Hillary, who vowed to start eating healthier after she stopped globe-trotting as President Obama's secretary of state.

For Bill Clinton, breakfast is almost always an almond-milk smoothie, blended with fresh berries, nondairy protein powder and a chunk of ice.

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