If You Have a Chronic Disease, You Need to Hear This: Lauren Shares Her Story of Heart Disease Reversal

If you have a chronic health condition or your doctor has told you to take medication for cholesterol or high blood pressure, you must hear today’s podcast. Lauren Bernick, the host of Age Like a Badass Mother, is sharing her very personal story of how she reversed her heart disease, lowered her blood pressure, lost 20 pounds, and has kept it off for ten years. This method works for almost all disease states. She discusses her initial diagnosis, the limitations of conventional medical advice, and the transformative power of dietary changes. Lauren discusses the importance of understanding the root causes of health issues and provides practical tips for adopting a plant-based lifestyle.

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#HeartHealth  #ReverseHeartDisease  #HealthyAging  #ChronicIllness  #WellnessJourney  #CardiovascularHealth  #HealthEmpowerment #NaturalHealing  #AgeLikeABadassMother  #HolisticHealth #Podcast

Transcript

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Hello, friend. If you have a chronic condition, or your doctor has told you that you need to take a medication for cholesterol or high blood pressure, then you need to hear today's podcast. I'm sharing my very personal story of how I reversed my heart disease. This method works for almost all disease states, and I give you very specific details of what you can do to halt and even reverse disease. You can watch this interview on YouTube or Spotify. And please, please comment. I love hearing from you and I will answer you back. You can also email me at Lauren@agelikeabadassmother.com You might have noticed that we have a new look. Let me know what you think of our logo. Thanks for listening, and please share this episode with someone who needs to hear the message that you have more control over your health than you think. Thanks for listening. Hi friends, I'm Lauren Bernick and I'm flipping the script about growing older. My guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing. Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast. Welcome to age like a badass mother. Hi friends. I wanted to share something personal with you this week. I know I've talked a little bit about my heart disease and my journey with reversing my heart disease, but I wanted to go into a little bit more detail because a lot of you have asked about that. And, you know, I know we're at the age where it seems like you go to the doctor and they're like, your cholesterol is really high and you have to take a statin and that's it. That's the end of story. That's all the medical advice you get. But I wanted to dive in a little bit deeper about what really happens. So first of all, at 46 years old, ten years ago, I was diagnosed with cardiovascular, cardiovascular disease, two blocked arteries. And, the way I was diagnosed was my ob gyn, who was really my only doctor that I ever saw with any regularity had been tracking my cholesterol, which was up close to 300 always. And when I was 18 years old, my cholesterol was 330. So this was nothing new. So actually it was down a little below 300. So, you know, I was doing great. But I thought I was eating healthy. I was drinking green juices and smoothies and eating, like, you know, skinless, boneless chicken and fruits and vegetables and low fat dairy and avocados and olive oil and nuts and seeds and, you know, so egg whites, whatever. I mean, like, I just thought I was eating pretty healthy. I wasn't eating, you know, much white flour or sugar. And I just couldn't get my cholesterol down. So she's like, look, you know, you have, a genetic predisposition. I had high LP little a, which is a genetic marker. It's like your LDL on steroids, your bad cholesterol and steroids. And my grandfather died of a heart attack when he was 63. And so she's like, it's best just to know. So let's go send you for, a calcium CT scan, and that measures the amount of calcified, you know, calcifications in your arteries. And it gives you some indication of what's going on. So I did that and it came back that my arteries, like I said, I had two blocked arteries and not all the way, but they were substantially blocked and that my arteries were 75% worse. And every other woman my age. So it was quite alarming to me. And I had to go see a cardiologist. And he sat me down and he said, yeah, you have advanced cardiovascular disease. You'll probably, at this rate, have a heart attack within the next 5 to 10 years. You have a 20% chance of having a heart attack within the next 5 to 10 years. And I just was blown away. I just could not believe this. And I just cried. And, I asked him what I should do to reverse this, and he said, you can't reverse this. What are you talking about? There's I've never seen anybody reverse heart disease. You can manage it. And what you'll have to do is just eat healthy. Eat, you know, skinless, boneless chicken and fish and fruits and vegetables and low fat dairy and, fruits and, you know, fruits and vegetables. And you'll have to eat, like avocados and olive oil and nuts and seeds. And I was like, that's exactly what I'm eating. And he said, well, you'll have to take a statin and you'll have to exercise. And I was like, okay, I already know exactly what you said. I already exercise and I'm not taking a statin because I worked adjacent to the pharmaceutical industry for like 25 years. I was the director of advertising for a pharmaceutical journal, and I had access to every day being on a chat board with all these pharmacists who talked back and forth about, you know, what their challenges were. These are compounding pharmacies who were problem solvers. You know, I have this patient, what should I do? But they regularly shared that they thought that statins are the most overprescribed medication. So I had the inside track and I also am not one to just mask something or use a Band-Aid method. I want to get to the root of the problem. So I just said, are you trying to tell me that I have to be on a statin for the rest of my life, and it's not going to reverse my disease, it's just going to drop my cholesterol? And he said, yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. And I just sat there, I cried. I never did pick up my prescription for my statin. I later that night was recounting this to my dad and he said, oh, my cardiologist, because of course he has heart disease, too. My cardiologist put me on the prevent and reverse heart disease protocol. Doctor Caldwell Esselstyn book. So sure enough, I ordered the book Doctor Caldwell Esselstyn Junior's book, prevent and reverse heart disease. And then I got his wife and daughters cookbook at the time. So that's Jane and Ann Esselstyn. I've actually interviewed them on this podcast. You can listen to that. They had a cookbook out the Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease cookbook, and now they have another cookbook out, plant based women, plant based Woman Warrior Cookbook. And it's phenomenal. So I really didn't know what I was doing. I just read Doctor Esselstyn book about how heart disease is reversible if you eat, whole food plant based diet without oil. So a whole food plant based diet is legumes, which are beans, peas, lentils, whole grains, like, you know, the most popular are probably brown rice and quinoa and oats, fruits, vegetables. And, so he allows some seeds like flax seeds, chia seeds, maybe a little hemp seed. He's not big on nuts or avocado because it's high in fat and absolutely no oil. And so he just says oil is 100% artery clogging. And you know, you might be thinking like, oh, what about the blue zones and Mediterranean diet? And yes, that is a healthy way of eating, even with a little olive oil compared to the way Americans typically eat, like, you know, fast food and burgers and steaks and lots of meat and lots of dairy and yes, that is a healthy diet compared. But he's saying that all oil, all oil, even olive oil is just nothing but 100% fat and it is artery clogging. So I just dove right in. I mean, I didn't have one last goodbye meal, no blast burger for the road or anything like that. I mean, it never really was, a big meat eater, but I just dove right in. I read the book, started cooking out of the cookbook. I didn't really know what to do. Every morning I just ate oatmeal with, berries and and plant milk and just cooked something out of the cookbook for lunch and cook something out of it for dinner. And pretty soon I caught on to what I was supposed to be doing, and almost immediately, you know, I definitely started losing weight. Oh, my blood pressure had been high. I dropped my blood pressure. I had lost 20 pounds within three months. It took me a long time to get my cholesterol down. And I'm going to be honest, I still don't have my cholesterol where it's supposed to be. But that's not because I'm eating cholesterol anymore. I was eating a lot of dairy, and chicken. Not a lot, but I was eating some chicken butt and eggs, and that is all full of cholesterol. So any cholesterol that my body is making now is just cholesterol that my body is making. It's not coming from an outside source. And some people just make a tremendous amount of cholesterol. But I had lost 20 pounds within three months and I've kept it off for ten years. I've been eating this way for ten years and I love it. Lost 3 pounds, lowered my blood pressure, my blood pressure is usually like 105 or 110 over like 60. My blood platelets. I have changed the size and shape of my blood platelets. They used to be small and dense and hard, and, you know, that indicates like they're going to stick to the lining of your arteries. And now they're big and round and fluffy, and they kind of just flow through. So, started eating this way and about, I guess I have been eating this way for about six years. And I thought, you know, I've only gotten my cholesterol tested. I really should get some very extensive testing to find out if I've had any reversal. Maybe I have. And so I went to a different cardiologist this time. I never went back to that cardiologist. He was a nice man, but I just never went back to a doctor after that really, except for my ob gyn for my yearly physicals. Anyway, so I went to a new cardiologist and he looked at my previous diagnosis of heart disease, found out I never took a statin, and he immediately just started kind of grumbling at me. Like, you aren't testing to see if he reverses. This is ridiculous. You haven't done anything. And I'm going to tell you when these tests come back, I am sure your body is going to be riddled with inflammation, and you're probably going to just have all kinds of, you know, after sclerosis and, you know, hardening, hardening of the arteries and oxidized LDL. And, you know, you're going to be sorry you did this. And what I'm telling you you need to do is eat a paleo diet and take a statin. And I said, okay, listen, I you need to look at me. You haven't even really looked at me since I walked in this room. You just started looking at my chart, lecturing me. And I want to tell you, I'm here because I've been eating a whole food plant based diet without oil for six years, and I want to see if I've reverse this disease. And he's like, kind of chuckled. And he's like, well, okay, I'll give you your, you know, your tests. So he administered something called the Cleveland Heart Lab panel, and it tests everything. It primarily tests for, presence of disease, disease risk and, disease activity. And so when and then he gave me, echo stress cardiogram, which came out so good that when I was getting the test, the people who were administering it were like, what are you even doing here? This is like, ridiculous. They're like, your heart is perfect. And then he gave me, he tested my carotid arteries, the arteries in your neck, which, if they're clogged, that's going to mean that you're probably going to have a stroke later. So, actually, you know, when my Cleveland heart Lab panel came back, he was quite shocked. He did not apologize, but he was like, oh, well, I didn't see this coming. And, you know, I, I can't really explain this, but it looks like you don't have any presence of disease, you don't have any disease activity, and you don't. And you're at very low risk for heart disease. It's hard to explain. And I was like, how is that hard to explain? I already told you what I have done. If anybody is watching this on YouTube or Spotify, I'm going to hold up my test results right now. He said that my, my cholesterol and, you know, the blockages in my arteries started here. And for those of you who are not watching it, it's quite blocked. And now it's all the way down here. Very, very low blockage in my arteries of cholesterol. And so really, everything you could see, everything is in the green that's in my control. So, risk for disease, which would be oxidized LDL very low and presence of disease. Adama. Which suggests that I have high levels of nitric oxide. They're all in the right. The they're all in the right, category green. So very low levels of, endothelial dysfunction. And your endothelial, your and your endothelial is the lining of your arteries. So it says that I have high levels of nitric oxide, which is very hard to do when you are 56 years old, because your levels of nitric oxide drop every year and I make new nitric oxide. I learned this from Doctor Esselstyn by eating lots of green leafy vegetables. That's my medicine. Now, he suggests you put a little vinegar on it. It helps convert, what you need into nitric oxide. And HCR p, is in the desirable range. It shows that I have very low inflammation in my body. And that doctor kind of had to eat a little crow. And then, you know, disease activity, results are in the desirable range saying that you have very limited active cholesterol buildup. So this guy kind of had to take a step back and and reevaluate what he said to me. But he had the nerve to still say, you know, it's in the desirable range, but I still stand by my original, diet diagnosis that you should take, a statin for your heart disease and that you should eat the paleo diet. And I said, you know, that doesn't make any sense when what I've been doing is clearly working. My cholesterol is still high because I do have that genetic component. It I'll never going to get it down in that desirable range. And maybe I am actually a candidate for a statin. I might actually be one of the people that it could help, but I don't want to. I just don't want to do it. And, you know, I hope I don't live to regret it, but I would never regret eating this way. And the reason I don't want to take a stand is because a statin affects your liver. It causes a lot of side effects. Which muscle wasting? Muscle pain. And, you know, it affects your blood sugar. So if. Okay, let's just imagine, ten years ago when I got my diagnosis, I just said, okay, I'm going to do what 99.9% of the people who get this diagnosis do. I'm just going to take my statin. Keep eating what I'm eating and be on my merry way. Well, I let's face it, I in ten years probably would have gained a few pounds, so I was already I wouldn't say I was overweight, but I'm certainly at a good weight now. I mean, I guess I was a little, you know, I had some vanity pounds, so I would have that 20 pounds that I still had, plus a few more, because who doesn't gain a few pounds every year when they're in their late 40s to, you know, mid 50s? So I'd probably be up, you know, about 25 pounds, maybe 30 pounds from what I am now, I would be on that stand, which would probably be affecting my liver in my blood sugar. Statins are known to affect your blood sugar. And so now I and I already was at risk for metabolic syndrome. That was in my original testing as well. And so now I'd be on something like metformin for type two diabetes. I'd be on high blood pressure medication because my blood pressure was elevated at that point. And instead of feeling great and sleeping well and having tons of energy and feeling like, you know, at 56 years old, I feel better than when I was 36 years old. I probably feel like crap. And I just so I'd never trade that part. And, you know, I feel like I'm healthy as a horse, knock wood. But I just feel great. And I would love to. I will continue to eat this way for the rest of my life, you know? Does it take some planning? Absolutely. Is it a little bit difficult when I travel and go out to eat? Absolutely. It definitely takes some planning. But like I said, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I feel like I am control of in control of my health now. And, I feel like I just feel confident going into, you know, my 60s and 70s and beyond with all this good information and with low inflammation and, you know, all the things that I've done for my body, I feel like eating, legumes and whole grains and and, well, fruits and vegetables. And I want to say that I have added in nuts and seeds. Now, I think that it is important when you're starting out to reverse your heart disease, to follow Doctor Esselstyn, rules and keep it kind of low fat. And now that I'm more in a maintenance phase of life, and also after hearing all the doctors that I've interviewed on this podcast, I, I kind of have changed my opinion a little bit. And I could be wrong, but I, for me have added nuts into my diet. Not a ton and mostly in the way of I make a salad dressing out of nuts and definitely use seeds in my oatmeal every morning. Hemp seeds, Chia seeds, flax seeds. I use pumpkin seeds to make dressings and sauces. So everybody is going to have to do their own research and do what they think is best. But for me, I think it's much more enjoyable to have some fat. I eat a little bit of avocado, not a lot, but, yeah, I've added fats back in healthy fats in the ways of nuts and seeds and little avocado. Definitely still do not eat oil. So if you've gotten a heart disease diagnosis recently, or if your doctor has said you have to be on a statin, or if you know really any diagnosis, this works for anything. I've had all these doctors on the podcast, and their advice is really just eating a plant based diet, a whole food plant based diet. It reverses everything. Or at least it really goes a long way to making you feel better. And it works for heart disease, and it's the best diet for cancers, and it's the best diet for gastrointestinal problems and autoimmune disease and type two diabetes. Type one any kind of diabetes, gets amazing results with eating a whole food plant based diet. So it's just something that I recommend to everybody. And I feel like it just gives you so much energy and and vibrancy. And you're eating a high vibration diet when you're eating animals, it's really it's low vibration. I hate to say that it's something that did not want to be on your plate. I won't go into that a lot. I don't want to shame anybody. But I do want to tell you that this is the diet for everything. And, you know, if, like I said, if you're just going to get on a stand, it's not going to get to the root of the problem. I'm not telling you not to get on a stand, but I'm just telling you if you want to address the root cause it's diet, it's diet, it's everything. So where would you start? You know, if this is something you want to do, what do you do? It seems a little overwhelming. Of course, I would recommend the prevent reverse heart disease book. Dean Ornish has a bunch of books. You could read the China study, but, you know, read some books and then you can get some cookbooks. You know, I already mentioned Jane and and Esselstyn. I have a free cookbook online. I would love for you to download that. You can go to well, elephant.com. And, I named my company my other company. Well elephant because elephants are strong beautiful herbivores supported by their community. And you are to and I welcome you to download my, free cookbook that I've made for you. And in there it has some salad dressing recipes are pretty low fat. I have like, I do have something with pumpkin seed cilantro sauce in there, but it has like cupcakes and it has spring rolls and it has, I think sloppy joes in there and lasagna and all kinds of wonderful things that you can eat and, you know, just I have this recipe called Home Base, and their home base is my main meal, and that is really just a bowl. And it's something that I have the ingredients to in my house all the time. So I don't have to wonder what I'm going to eat. So, like, for breakfast, you can eat oatmeal every day. You don't have to think about it. Just some oatmeal with some soy milk. Soy milk has a lot of protein in it. You can put some hemp seeds for protein, flax seeds, chia seeds, berries. Doctor Furman's big on berries. All the doctors are. You definitely want to have berries in there. You can put your amla powder in there. That's Indian gooseberry. That's great for bringing down your cholesterol. And you can put if you need something to sweeten it, because the amla powder is a little bit bitter. You can put, a little bit of date sirup on it or a little bit of 100% pure maple sirup, or you can just sweeten it with some dates. And then for lunch every day, you know, you can make a sandwich out of hummus with all kinds of veggies on some Ezekiel bread, or you can have a giant salad. That's what I do. I eat like a I usually eat a big, big salad every day. And I put some tofu cubes in there or some garbanzo beans. I put all kinds of fresh vegetables in there. As many as I can possibly fit, you know. You know the saying eat the rainbow. You just want as many colors in there as you can possibly get. Some red onion, onions. So good for you. Just everything. Asparagus, whatever you can put in there. Broccoli. And it's really important to have a salad dressing that you love. And in my opinion, it can be a salad dressing that's made out of nuts or seeds. And like I said, I have the pumpkin seed cilantro recipe in my cookbook. I have a honey mustard recipe, in my cookbook. I love Darina Burton's house. I think it's just called house dressing recipe. You can Google that. That's a yummy one. It has cashews, a little bit fatty, but it's quite delicious. And, you know, in my opinion, the salad dressing is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. And man, I'm not going to lie, sometimes I eat some French fries on the side of that salad. And you can do that. That's the lovely thing about this. I'll just slice up some potatoes or sweet potatoes. Purple potatoes. I'll stick them in my airfryer and yum, I get to eat French fries. You get to eat everything on this. I don't even want to call it a diet because it's not a diet. It's a way of eating. It's a lifestyle, and you get to eat everything and you don't have to feel guilty, and you're not going to gain weight and you're not going to be sick. And then for dinner, I eat what I was just talking about home base, my main meal. So I'll make a bowl and it'll have a grain like some brown white rice or quinoa and then a legume. It could be, you know, pinto beans. It could be, kidney bean, black beans, just whatever kind of bean you want that day. And some green leafy vegetables. I love kale or bok choy. And I steam those. And then maybe I put some other kinds of vegetables in there. Maybe I sauté or steamed some carrots and onions and zucchini. Who knows? Just whatever I have on here. Broccoli, cauliflower to some, some vegetables. And then I'll put maybe like a quarter of a sweet potato, or I'll cook up some tempeh or some tofu, and then I'll make a delicious, kind of sauce to drizzle over the top that the pumpkin seed cilantro sauce that I just mentioned is a favorite that I drizzle over most of it, but I also like I like to put something it's called coconut aminos on my grain, on my brown rice or my quinoa, and I put a little sirup on it. You could just get creative and you can make your bowl different every day. And so that's my advice to you, and that's where I would start. I also have an online class that I teach at well elephant.com. You can go there for more information. And I teach you how to ace. It's called ace plant based eating AC and it's an anachronism. An acronym and Ace stands for Amend the Recipe. So take anything that you love to eat. I think I use in the class, chicken fried steak, and I make it whole food plant based, oil free with mashed potatoes and gravy. I mean, you can literally take anything you want and amend the recipe and make it something that works for this way of eating. So amend the recipe. C as cook without oil. Learn how to, you know, sauté your vegetables without oil, the substitutes to make salad dressing and what you'll do if you want to bake without oil. So we'll do that. And then E is eat on the go, how to travel, how to go to, you know, socialize, how to go to weddings, how to go to book club, how to go out to eat with your friends, how to I've traveled, you know, to other countries for extended periods of time. I and I, you know, I stick to this way of eating. Once in a while, I'll have to make a sacrifice and have a little oil at a, at a restaurant when I'm traveling for a long time. But I always get a delicious vegan meal. And you'd be surprised, I could stick to this way of eating pretty well so you can find out more about that. And I welcome you to email me. I am literally here to help you because it's my mission for people to know about this. You can email me at. Lauren at age like a badass mother.com or Lauren at, well, elephant.com. I will answer you back. I honestly I, I'm angry that my cardiologist didn't know about this. I'm angry that doctors don't recommend this, that they just want to put you on medication. And it's my mission to let people know that they can age well and that they could be healthy. And you don't have to be on ten medication in your old age. So please let me know how I can help you and just Google whole food plant based recipes. Without oil, there's a million of them. They don't have to be mine. I just want you to have what you need to eat. And I want you to be well. And I want you to be healthy. And I appreciate you listening to this podcast and, if you know somebody that maybe could benefit from this, I'd appreciate it if you shared it with them so I can help them, too. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you not be well. for listening, friend. From my heart to yours. Be well. Until we meet again.