Dr. John Day is President-Elect of the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS, 2014-2015) and was program director for the Society’s 2014 Scientific Sessions in May of this year.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common abnormal heart rhythm, affecting ~2.3 million adults in the US. About 9% of people over the age of 80 are thought to have it. AF increases the risk for stroke fivefold.

Dr. Day caused a stir at the HRS conference by stating, “Does AF even need to happen?” He thinks it can be prevented by a change in diet (to predominantly plant-based) and lifestyle.

Is Atrial Fibrillation Necessary? The Most Important Study Presented at the Heart Rhythm Society 2014 Scientific Sessions, John M. Mandrola, MD, Medscape, 11 May 2014

During a session entitled “How to prevent and reverse AF,” Dr Day gave one of the most unusual talks I have ever heard at a medical meeting. He started with a personal confession:

“Until a few years ago, my life was about ablating AF, thousands of ablations, three per day. In the process of this, I didn’t give a whole lot of thought as to how the patient got AF or what was happening to my life.”

Next, as he showed images of his diet at the time—doughnuts, pizza, and soda—he told the audience:

“At age 44, my health had hit rock bottom. I was overweight. I had developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, palpitations, insomnia, and even an autoimmune disease. And I was taking five medications. Something had to change.”

He described trying the usual diets and solutions, even the “gluten-free thing.” Not much happened. Then he got interested in the famous book The China Study:

“I became fascinated with some of these rural Chinese villages where people lived long lives, free of heart disease and cancer. I speak Chinese, and we visited these places multiple times.

What I learned has taken my life in a whole new direction.

My entire perspective of AF has changed from one of ablation to one of … does AF even need to happen?”

Let me remind you that Dr Day is about to lead the world’s most influential electrophysiology society.

Then he showed an incredibly professional four-minute video of a Chinese village. [I’ve embedded that video below.] Alongside rolling streams were smiling 100-year-old Chinese women. A calm female voice narrates …

“They have such a sense of peace about them.”

Then this, in Dr Day’s voice:

“Whether you are 40, or 50, or 60, or 70, it’s never too late to make changes.”

The video stops, but Dr. Day continues:

“I began to slow down. I started looking at the big picture, eating real food, sleeping. My extra weight came off without trying; my cholesterol fell nearly 100 points; my BP dropped 30 to 40 points and my CRP went below 1.

“I now take no medications. I feel good.”

In an interview with me the next day, Dr Day said he thinks (in most cases) AF may be unnecessary.

Dr. Day is writing a book about his experiences in rural China. In the video below, he documents some of those experiences. I love the interviews at the end where people who have obviously lived long lives say they are happy and do appear to be happy. There are aspects to life in a rural Chinese village that just don’t translate to life in a big American city. We live and work by the clock, in climate-controlled buildings. We eat industrially-produced food. But I think there are still lessons here. In calling this a trailer, it sounds like Dr. Day has a documentary up his sleeve. I hope so!

The American College of Cardiology¹ and the Heart Rhythm Society are not wacky, fringe groups. They are mainstream medical establishments. And their upcoming Presidents have respectively come out in favor of plant-based diets. Not low-carb diets, not Paleo diets, not even the diets recommended by the American Heart Association or the American Diabetes Association. These respected, credentialed physicians are advising the consumption of plants. I’m beside myself.

¹ President-Elect Of American College of Cardiology Promotes Vegan Diet After Lowering His LDL From 170 To 90 In 6 Weeks

Dr. Kim Williams is a cardiologist and professor at Rush University in Chicago. He’s the incoming president of the American College of Cardiology. In the following article, the most-read cardiovascular article on MedPage Today for 2 weeks running, Williams explains why he is promoting a plant-based diet:

CardioBuzz: Vegan Diet, Healthy Heart?, MedPageToday, 21 July 2014

It was a patient’s success reversing an alarming condition that motivated me to investigate a vegan diet.

Just before the American College of Cardiology’s (ACC) annual meeting in 2003 I learned that my LDL cholesterol level was 170. It was clear that I needed to change something. Six months earlier, I had read a nuclear scan on a patient with very-high-risk findings — a severe three-vessel disease pattern of reversible ischemia.

The patient came back to the nuclear lab just before that 2003 ACC meeting. She had been following Dean Ornish, MD’s program for “Reversing Heart Disease,” which includes a plant-based diet, exercise, and meditation. She said that her chest pain had resolved in about 6 weeks, and her scan had become essentially normalized on this program.

When I got that LDL result, I looked up the details of the plant-based diet in Ornish’s publications — 1- and 5-year angiographic outcomes and marked improvement on PET perfusion scanning — small numbers of patients, but outcomes that reached statistical significance.

I thought I had a healthy diet — no red meat, no fried foods, little dairy, just chicken breast and fish. But a simple Web search informed me that my chicken-breast meals had more cholesterol content (84 mg/100 g) than pork (62 mg/100 g). So I changed that day to a cholesterol-free diet, using “meat substitutes” commonly available in stores and restaurants for protein. Within 6 weeks my LDL cholesterol level was down to 90.

Interestingly, our ACC/American Heart Association (AHA) prevention guidelines do not specifically recommend a vegan diet, as the studies are very large and observational or small and randomized, such as those on Ornish’s whole food, plant-based diet intervention reversing coronary artery stenosis. The data are very compelling, but larger randomized trials are needed to pass muster with our rigorous guideline methodology.

Wouldn’t it be a laudable goal of the American College of Cardiology to put ourselves out of business within a generation or two?

Look at what he was eating before he changed his diet, “no red meat, no fried foods, little dairy, just chicken breast and fish.” He thought that was healthy. Just about everyone I know thinks that’s healthy. Just about everyone I know has high cholesterol.

Dr. Williams is courageous coming out in favor of plant-based diets. Not only is he going against the profit-driven medical industrial complex (of which he is a part!) but there is a powerful meat-eating and meat-producing contingent in this country that will, I’m afraid, succeed in shutting down or at least marginalizing Williams’ message.

Dr. Dean Ornish is not as cynical as I am. He responded to Williams’ article with these encouraging words:

CardioBuzz: ‘Lifestyle Medicine’, MedPageToday, 31 July 2014

“The most influential trend in medicine today, growing exponentially, is the emerging field of what is known as “lifestyle medicine” — lifestyle as treatment, not just prevention. … We tend to think of advances in medicine as a new drug, laser, or surgical device, something high-tech and expensive. Yet, the simple choices we make in what we eat and how we live have a powerful influence on our health and well-being.”

He went on to summarize his research of the last 37 years – research that contributed to my belief that a whole food, plant-based diet is the way to go.

Before I end, I want to pass on this claim by Ornish that low-carb diets have yet to show good for primary outcomes:

“I am not aware of any study published in a peer-reviewed journal, even an uncontrolled study, showing that a high-fat, high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet can reverse the progression of coronary atherosclerosis or improve blood to the heart as measured directly using cardiac PET scans or even thallium scans.”