 Welcome to Lillian's Vegan World. I'm your host Lillian Cumick, coming to you live from downtown Honolulu, part of the Think Tech Hawaii team of citizen journalists. Welcome to our show, today's episode is called Preventing Disease with Plants, the power of a plant-based diet. It is with great honor that I welcome today's guest all the way from Monterey, California, Dr. Stephen Lone, Doctor of Cardiovascular Disease, Lifestyle Medicine from the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Dr. Lone, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure and an honor to be invited on the show. The pleasure is all mine and may I first start by saying thank you so much for all that you do. I can imagine this has been an incredible journey through the pandemic and what you do and the time that you take to share the other part of your passion, which is the vegan lifestyle, is incredible. So thank you so much. Absolutely. It's my passion as with many people. Dr. Lone, may I ask you to please introduce yourself and your affiliations, what you do apart from being an amazing cardiologist? Yeah, well absolutely. I am a cardiologist and I'm board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and more recently lifestyle medicine using a diet and other lifestyle approaches as the primary treatment for prevention and reversal of chronic diseases. So I practice out here in Monterey, California, a general cardiology practice with a strong, strong focus on prevention and lifestyle medicine. Fantastic. So today we are going to go through some studies that you've been promoting, you've been working on stuff, and honestly I think today's episode of the show is going to blow people away. The one thing that popped out since I've been following you, and we will mention to the viewers how they can make sure they can see what you're getting up to and follow you, was that you mentioned something like exercise is only 20% of the jigsaw puzzle and 80% being what we eat. So let's start from the beginning. What is your take on the plant-based diet in regards to health? Well, that's absolutely true, and my whole journey is I think a journey that many people can potentially connect with because I got into lifestyle medicine and healthy eating personally because I was nearly 100 pounds heavier about five or six years ago. My health was starting to fall apart. I was a cardiologist and a busy practice and developing high blood pressure, sleep apnea, back pain, fatigue, acid reflux, all these different things, and I kind of had my aha moment that I had to do something about my own health. Growing up on a standard American diet, my parents both being close to 300 pounds, my sister being 450 pounds in high school, I quickly learned as I was trying to recapture my own health that, hey, the most important aspect of it is actually diet because I made a lot of mistakes like many people do when they try to recapture their health. A lot of times, their focus is on exercise, exercise, exercise, and so Selimi made quite the mistake of first thing I did when I was trying to get healthy because I signed up for a marathon, 260-pound guy, and I think to myself, hey, look, all these marathon runners are thin, they look great, they look healthy, right? Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll just start running like crazy and I'll lose some weight, and that's great, but the saying is you can never out-exercise an unhealthy diet because if you think about one donut is 300 calories, you have to run three miles just to burn off that donut. It's better just to eat an apple, which is only 100 calories, and then it saves yourself 200 calories or two miles of exercise. So it was a big mistake and really focusing on the healthy eating is by far the most important aspect of lifestyle medicine. So what do you say to people who talk about their illnesses coming from their genes or because it's in their DNA? That is an excellent question. I get that all the time. My dad had heart disease, my uncle had heart disease. I'm going to get heart disease, right? And the same thing is true for high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. What we always say is the genes might load the gun, but your diet and your lifestyle pulls the trigger. So there are certain types of genes that you can control and certain types you can't. You cannot control things like eye color, hair color, skin color, how tall you are, are you male or female? For the most part, you can't control those. However, genes for obesity, for high blood pressure, for type 2 diabetes, if you do all the right things, you don't need to manifest those genes. You don't need to express them. So the great example that I personally have been through is knowing that growing up on a stated American diet, very unhealthy, all my family became obese and morbidly obese, but our neighbors next to us, they were thin, yet they ate the same unhealthy diet as us. So we just kind of thought, oh, we're a genetically obese family, right? But now that we've all changed our diet, we're all plant-based, we've all lost weight, that kind of shows that your lifestyle choices are way more important than the genes that you're born with, essentially all the time. That truly does make sense to me. And I think, as human beings, we try to come up with excuses as to why we are the way we are, when actually there is what we're going to talk about today. There are ways to prevent these illnesses in the first place. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the biggest concept in lifestyle medicine that the biggest, honestly, the biggest secret in all of medicine is that the default state of the human body is simply to be healthy. The human body doesn't want to develop disease. It doesn't want you to gain weight. It doesn't want diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease. Those things only develop if we actively do something to harm our body, if we consume processed foods, animal-based foods for sedentary, if we smoke cigarettes. And the key to good health is actually removing the thing that's causing the harm. And the body has an absolute amazing way of healing itself up. And the great analogy for that is, if you just took a knife and cut your skin and sat back into nothing, your body stops the bleeding, forms a scab, and eventually forms a scar in two, three, or four weeks. But if you kept cutting your skin in the same place over and over again, three times a day, you never give the body the opportunity to heal. Well, our arteries on the inside and many other systems are really no different than the skin on the outside. But we continuously injure our arteries and other parts of our body, breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the food that we eat and other unhealthy activities, just stop causing the injury and let the body heal itself up. And that's true for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, many autoimmune disorders, neurologic disorders, a very long list of different chronic diseases. The best-kept secret in all of medicine, no question. That is a great analogy of, yes, how people think. I agree. I wonder if the inside of our bodies were visible, would we be more prone to take care of these fantastic engines that we're blessed with rather than abuse them, I guess? Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, one of the great ways that we get people to stop smoking is showing them scarred lungs and lung tumors. And they look at that and they go, oh geez, that doesn't look good and really funny. In the vegan world, I actually have heard some vegan doctors say that when they know a patient needs a plant-based diet and wants to do a plant-based diet, they show them slaughterhouse videos. What's the expression if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everybody would be vegetarian, right? Not just seeing what's going on the inside in your lungs and your arteries, but seeing what's going on the outside also can help people follow a more plant-based diet. Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Lohm, we do have some slides and graphics that I do want to go through that you've been, you have prepared for us. Let's take a look at the first one. So basically, this is just an introduction slide, which kind of shows the general concept in a great picture. You really have two roads you can take. One road you go off to the left and you eat your fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds, a healthy plant-based diet, and you should be healthy. You not develop these chronic diseases, but the other way is the way Western medicine is. There's a pill for everything. It doesn't treat the cause of the problem. That is when pills accumulate, side effects accumulate, and bad things can happen, heart attacks, strokes, many types of cancers, etc. People really do have that choice, one way or the other. That's interesting. I don't know if you know, but I actually lived in Japan for 30 years. Yes, I'm originally from Australia. Australia being unfortunately on par with America in terms of the percentage of people with obesity, diabetes, etc. But Japan, on the other hand, the country where they eat a lot of whole foods, incorporate a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables into their diet, are quite clearly doing something better. I'm interested to hear about, yes. Yeah, no question. Well, the Okinawan diet historically is considered arguably the healthiest diet ever, which is very interesting. It's 97% plant-based historically. Now, of course, it's westernized a little bit, but if you look back, about 65% of calories in the traditional Okinawan diet were sweet potatoes, just plain sweet potatoes, not with marshmallow and butter all over, like Americans tend to do, just sweet potatoes. And then 25% was rice, 7%, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, and only 3% animal-based. And what's really interesting is the rice that they ate was actually white rice, which we usually don't consider very healthy, but I guess there's worse things. And they had the lowest protein diet ever described in any culture, the lowest protein diet. But America has this huge fixation on protein, protein, protein, when really we are all over protein and there's such a big concern because most people are getting their protein from animal-based sources, which carries baggage of cholesterol, saturated fat increases other harmful components such as TMAO and insulin-like growth factor, which can promote cancer growth. We don't want to be getting our protein from animal foods, we want to be just like those Okinawans and be as plain-based as we possibly can be. Oh, absolutely. You know, as a vegan, you can imagine and yourself, Dr. Lone, probably get asked all the time. The question that never disappears, where do you get your protein from? Yes, all the time. Yeah, I think exactly what you said, it's kind of a misconception that people who eat meat get their protein from meat. I think it's clear people don't understand that protein comes from plants. Yeah, absolutely. Animals get it from the same source that vegans do. Yeah, all protein initially comes from plants as strong as animals in the world are elephants, gorillas, rhinos, buffaloes. They're all 100% plant eaters and to think that you need to eat the muscle of an animal to build your muscle and make proteins is kind of like they can need to eat the brain of a smart person to get smart. It doesn't make sense. You don't need somebody's eyeballs to improve your vision. You don't need to eat an animal's muscle to build your muscle. You can actually get protein from, you know, beans and legumes. And if you ever want to see a lot of the science behind it and some great examples of elite athletes that eat 100% plant-based, the documentary you're watching, of course, is the game changers. It's on Netflix. It's very powerful. Yes, that's an awesome documentary for people to see, to learn about, more about how it actually works. And another documentary that you do recommend is Forks Over Knives. Yeah, Forks Over Knives actually is the initial plant-based documentary that opened my eyes when I was trying to lose weight, focusing on exercise and then following the USDA dietary guidelines, food pyramid, you know, with chicken, fish, low fat dairy products, olive oil. I was kind of blinded by the fact that all those USDA dietary guidelines are very much politically influenced, money influenced. And Forks Over Knives really opened it up for me to realize you don't need to eat animal-based foods to live. When you do eat them, you get the baggage of the cholesterol and saturated fat. They're higher in calorie density in general and always higher at that. Even the leanest meats is way higher in fat than any bean or any lentil that you could possibly find. And just simply the fact that, you know, you don't need to eat animal-based foods to live. The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a statement on that that says 100% plant-based diet, as long as it's well balanced, is nutritionally adequate for all stages of life, including pregnancy. My wife has had two pregnancies, 100% vegan with two children, 100% vegan. It's fine for breastfeeding, adolescence, childhood, elderly, athletes, everybody. So Forks Over Knives really did change my life. No question. Yeah, definitely. I remember seeing that as well and thinking the same thing. It still blows my mind that people are not making the connection and understanding how simple the answer to this is. When you go plant-based, you can really fix a lot of things or prevent a lot of things. Absolutely. We are going to really delve into this with Dr. Stephen Lone. Please stay tuned. We're going to have a quick break and be back with more about preventing disease with plants. Aloha. Welcome back everyone again to Lillian's Vegan World. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick, vegan chef and cookbook author. My recently released cookbook is called Hawaii, A Vegan Paradise. It's available in stores all around Hawaii, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, with free shipping for members. So do grab a copy if you come across it. I've veganized Hawaiian favorites and there are over 120 plant-based recipes in the book. So do check it out. I'd like to welcome back to the show again my awesome guest from California, Dr. Stephen Lone. Welcome back, doctor. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. There's so much to learn from you and your studies and what you have to share with us today. So I do want to go straight into the next slide. Let's have a look at it. So I'm a cardiologist and what this slide really emphasizes is the huge burden of cardiovascular disease. That yellow circle is on average per year the number of people who die from heart disease and stroke, which is the same mechanism, clogging of arteries. And would you compare that to the amount of people who die from other things like murder, war, suicide, pregnancy, birth complications? That's a very small number. Yet the crazy thing about cardiovascular disease is we have essentially a cure for it. A healthy lifestyle with a plant-based diet, regular physical activity, don't smoke cigarettes, etc. We could annihilate the number one killer in America. It's been the number one killer for more than 100 consecutive years. Why is it if we can prevent nearly all heart disease and even treat it with a lifestyle medicine approach? Why haven't we done it? Why is heart disease still the number one cause of death? And you're going to share with us your thoughts about why that is. Let's take a look at the next slide. And this is pretty much why. Culture and money. Our American culture is very much into processed foods, way too many animal-based foods. You know, any barbecue is ribs and potato chips and soda pop. And that's just the way our culture is. We're very much in unhealthy food. And honestly, money might actually be the bigger driving force because the food industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry in America. The pharmaceutical industry is almost a trillion dollar industry in the healthcare system. It's a four trillion dollar industry in America. And if you think about a healthcare system that's based on making money, you go back 100 years and say, let's develop a capitalistic healthcare system. There's only going to be two rules. Number one, you don't want healthy people because if everybody's healthy, you can't make money, right? Number two, you don't want dead people because if they're dead, you can't make money. So it's just naturally resulted in the system where we don't cure disease. We don't reverse it. We maintain it. And how do we maintain it? With expensive therapies like pills, surgeries, we order a lot of tests. We need to see the doctor a lot. So really, culture and money are the two main reasons why a lifestyle medicine approach, a plant-based diet, has not been emphasized in our healthcare system. And people's eyes are opening up, but we need to really come together and make this change, make a complete paradigm shift. The truth is quite shocking, isn't it? When you think about it, why do you think people are not jumping on board the plant-based wagon and going for it? Knowing all this information is out there, it's very clear to all of us. What is stopping people from moving ahead? Well, it really confuses me as well. I think a lot of it is misinformation. Again, a lot of money influence is because the other industries, the animal-based foods dairy, the industry that publish their research are trying to confuse people. The politicians take money from industry sponsors, and so we don't change government policy. You look at the USDA dietary guidelines, which still has significant animal-based foods of dairy. Unlike Canada, which removed dairy as a food group and emphasizes plant-based protein sources over animal-based protein sources. Of course, again, our culture fights it, and honestly, our brain fights it, right? Because unhealthy food tastes great, sugar, salt, and fat. That's just the way we evolve to get out of hotelery, so we wouldn't starve and die. But now, those mechanisms that we have are working so much against it. It makes it very hard to change. Yeah, I agree. It's crazy how these industries, the meat dairy industry, have so much influence over what we eat. In a sense, it's bizarre to think that people actually consume cow milk, for example, something so simple as that. Yet, if you were to ask someone, then why don't you go for a milk that has more calcium, like a monkey milk or, I don't know, rat milk or something, and you can just see their faces. They're just disgusted by the thought. But at the same time, it's like, how is it that an adult human being goes to a different animal to drink milk? That's like an adult human going to the breast of a woman to try and take her breast milk as an adult. It just doesn't add up. It's quite frustrating, at times, to see how people are not getting what we're getting, like it's not clicking. There's many things that don't click. From the other perspective, we love dogs and cats. We eat pigs and chickens, and yet, they're still sentient beings. Why not eat your dog and eat your cat, which some cultures do, right? It's a big disconnect that we have. Let's take a look at the next slide. This actually just emphasizes some of those points. In America, the economy is about 20% health care spending, and we tower over every other country in regards to the percentage of our gross domestic product that we spend on health care. What's crazy is despite all this money that we spend, America has the lowest life expectancy of all industrialized nations, despite spending this much money. It's just completely wrong. The lowest paid doctor in America is a preventative medicine specialist. You get paid less for preventing disease. We get paid more for fixing it with surgeries and maintaining it with drugs. The top paid doctor in America is actually a cosmetic surgeon, kind of a backed up, screwed up system. It shouldn't really be that way. That is very screwed up. Now that you point that out, yes, I see what you mean. Plastic surgeons are just some of the richest people in the world. How did it come to this point where we've become so easily sucked in to continue on like this? What do you say to parents who are bringing up their children in this day and age and still feeding them dairy and meat and encouraging them to enjoy those burgers or the fast food? How do you even start to educate people? It's a challenge, and I think you just first of all, it is all just education. You need to say look at the rates of obesity and overweight, especially in children. About 80% of adult Americans are overweight or obese. Almost half of adult Americans are pre-diabetic and diabetic. 70% of adult Americans over the age of 50 have high blood pressure. The foundation for heart disease and all these other disorders starts in childhood. Plaque starts in three-year-olds. They can have baddie streak cholesterol plaques in their arteries. The sooner you start, the better they're going to be health-wise, but also developing those healthy habits. It's just so critically important, and it is real hard to get the kids to eat their vegetables, but we need to remember as parents, we decide what the kids eat. They don't decide. Just like you don't let your kid decide whether or not they're going to go out and drive the car or play with a knife or something like that. No, you decide for them. Well, you know what? You need to decide what they eat too, and if they give a little tantrum too bad, they need to eat their vegetables. They shouldn't be eating their chicken nuggets, and you need to make that decision for them. I have six children that are all 100% plaid-based. They're healthy, they're thriving, they're doing great. That's interesting, and yeah, it is quite crazy when you think that adults or parents, I should say, are supposed to be leading by example, yet the example that they're leading is often not a healthy one. You have six children. Yes, between the ages of two and 14. Oh my gosh, and all vegan you mentioned. All vegan, 100%. My wife as well. My wife is family medicine physician. Fantastic. May I ask how your children interact with other kids at their schools? Well, recently it's been online and not in person, but honestly, it's becoming much more accepted. My oldest 14-year-old daughter actually has multiple friends that are vegetarian and vegan, and honestly, the kids have been fine with it. I've asked the older two who are in middle school many times. Have you ever been made fun of? Has anybody ever said anything to you about the lunch that you bring? No, they never have, and my daughter's actually given multiple presentations on why you should meet pigs and things like that, and she has a YouTube channel where she does cooking and stuff as well. She's been a strong advocate and never once had any harsh criticism from peers, although I'm sure it's possible so far so good. I think it's becoming a lot more accepted. That's fantastic. Please tell her I'd love to have her as a guest on my show, from one chef to another up-and-coming one. Thank you. She loved to bake. Oh, awesome. I did notice on your Facebook page, speaking of your Facebook page, Dr. Lohm, how can people find you? Yeah, so Facebook, it should be facebook.com backslash Dr. Steven Lohm. I'm also active on Twitter, and you can always send me a message through heartstrong.com, which is a free website that's up there in order to kind of educate people about heart disease prevention and get them on a good path. You also have a YouTube channel? Yeah, just search Steven Lohm on YouTube. I haven't been as active with it recently, but I put a lot of videos up on prevention and reversal of heart disease and my takes on other different topics that have popped up over time, and I hope to become more and more active on that. Fantastic. Let's take another look at or another slide. So yeah, basically this slide is just emphasized in the paradigm shift that we really need. Right now we have an acute care model in our medical system where you see a doctor, you have 10 or 15 minutes with a doctor, they only have time really to prescribe medications. They can't ask you, what are you eating for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. That just takes too much time. And that was a great model when the main thing that was going on when people got infections, need antibiotic, they had a laceration. That's awesome. But for chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, an acute care model with 10 or 15 minute appointments really, it just doesn't work. What we need to do is shift to a different system, a chronic care model, a lifestyle medicine model, where you not only see a doctor, but a nutritionist, an exercise specialist, a psychologist to help you with food addiction and stress relief and get you good sleep, a whole care team. We need to get paid for prevention. Actually get a bonus every year. My patient doesn't have a heart attack or a stroke. If I get them off medicines, if I get them to lose weight, that's what I should get paid for. Instead, as we said before, I get paid more. The sicker my patient is and the more they need to see me for medicines, tests, surgeries, et cetera. But it's just backwards. Yeah, it's very, it's very messed up and bizarre indeed. Yeah, let's take a look at another slide. So this actually just shows the dismal state of nutrition in the United States. This is according to the USDA, the green portion of this pie graph is the 12% of calories in America that come from unprocessed plant-based foods. And half of that is tomatoes from french fries and potatoes from french fries and tomatoes from ketchup. Half of that is. And so only 6% of calories come from fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains like we should be eating. And so 63% of calories come from processed oils, refined carbohydrates like white flour and sugar. It's ridiculous and 25% animal-based foods. Really, in the ideal situation, we should have 100% of calories from unprocessed plant-based foods, zero from processed foods, zero from animal-based foods. It's crazy. Honestly, I recommend anyone who's watching the show to start thinking about what you're putting into your body and stop focusing on the obsession with protein. Because every time we start bringing up the topic of the plant-based diet, it's like, oh, you know, that protein, where they get, where you get your protein from. And looking at the statistics that you showed just now, over 60% of the calories coming from processed food, it's no wonder we are so sick. Absolutely, it's very true. Dr. Lohm, it has been honestly a pleasure having you on this time, has flown by at some stage in the future. I would be honored if you could come back and talk more about, you know, about how it all works and give us your medical advice and expertise. It's been fantastic meeting you and listening to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I'd love to come back. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lohm. And to everyone else out there, please consider everything Dr. Lohm shared with us about, you know, a plant-based diet. I am genuinely passionate about sharing more topics, more information like this. So do take care, stay safe, stay healthy, regain your health, and watch some documentaries like The Game Changer or Forks Overnight. Thank you so much from the team at ThinkTech Hawaii as well. Aloha.