Health & Nutrition
Dr. Joel Kahn, America's Healthy Heart Doc, on Reversing Heart Disease with a Plant-Based Diet
Practicing cardiologist Dr. Joel Kahn, known as America's Healthy Heart Doc, has been plant-based since 1977. He breaks down heart anatomy, the widow-maker artery, why erectile dysfunction is often an early warning sign of heart disease, and why the landmark ISCHEMIA trial suggests lifestyle change can rival stents and bypass surgery.
Topics Covered
- Dr. Kahn's decades-long plant-based journey beginning with a college salad bar and cemented by Dr. Dean Ornish's landmark 1990 heart-disease-reversal study
- Heart anatomy explained: the right coronary, circumflex, and left anterior descending ('widow maker') arteries, and how plaque begins forming as early as age 18-22
- Genetics versus lifestyle in heart disease risk, including the underappreciated lipoprotein(a) genetic cholesterol marker
- The connection between erectile dysfunction and heart disease as a multi-year-early warning sign due to smaller penile arteries
- How the 2019 ISCHEMIA trial (5,179 patients) found that lifestyle and medication performed as well as stents or bypass for stable heart disease
- Why saturated fat (cheese, marbled meat, coconut and palm oil) is the primary dietary driver of clogged arteries, more so than dietary cholesterol
- The Ornish and Pritikin cardiac rehab programs, Medicare-approved since 2010, as intensive lifestyle alternatives to surgery
- Critiquing the carnivore diet trend (including a viral Doctors TV segment) and hospital food culture that still serves bacon and fast food to cardiac patients
About the Guest
Dr. Joel Kahn is a practicing cardiologist, clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine, and author known as 'America's Healthy Heart Doc' after his longtime Reader's Digest column. Plant-based since 1977, he has authored multiple books including The Plant-Based Solution and a forthcoming book on lipoprotein(a).