#64: Dr. Michael Klaper - Looking Through the Lens

 
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I can empathize with Galileo of knowing how when you know a truth and you know it to be true, you can't turn your back on it. It just won't let you sleep with good conscience. You just can't pretend. They say once you look behind the curtain, you can't pretend you don't know what's behind the curtain. And, those of us in plant-based nutrition, we've seen these diseases go away with a plant-based diet. We know. We've looked behind the curtain. So now it's a matter of getting that word out and helping our colleagues wake up. - Dr. Michael Klaper

Season 3 of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast explores those Galileo Moments, when you seek the real truth about your health and dare to see the world through a different lens. This season, we honor those courageous seekers who have paved the way for all of us, which is why there could be no more perfect guest to kick off this season than Dr. Michael Klaper.

Dr. Klaper, of course, went to medical school, but also minored in astronomy, marrying his lifetime fascination with the nighttime sky and the world according to natural law.

His own Galileo moment came in 1981 when he was an anesthesiology resident in Vancouver. He would put patients to sleep so that surgeons could open up their patients' chests. What he saw inside those arteries was unforgettable - yellow gunky atherosclerosis caused by the foods and the high-cholesterol diets they were consuming.

He could no longer deny the truth. He looked through the lens.

Not only did Dr. Klaper change his diet to a whole-foods plant-based diet right away, but he also changed his own area of focus in medicine, from anesthesia to plant-based lifestyle medicine. That was almost 40 years ago and he's been going strong ever since, helping to clear those arteries and get his patients off their meds, rather than performing these massive avoidable surgeries.

His goal now? Help others, including aspiring physicians, to peel back the curtain and seek the truth about the real cause of illness in our society. "It's the food, it's the food, it's the food."

Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:

Dr. Michael Klaper:

And so I in some ways, I'm certainly not his intellectual equal, but I can empathize with Galileo of knowing how when you know a truth and you know it to be true, you can't turn your back on it. It just won't let you sleep with good conscience. You just can't pretend. They say once you look behind the curtain, you can't pretend you don't know what's behind the curtain. And those of us in plant-based nutrition, we've seen these diseases go away with a plant-based diet. We know. We've looked behind the curtain.

Rip Esselstyn:

Season three of the Plant-Strong Podcast explores those Galileo moments where you seek to understand the real truth around your health and dare to see the world through a different lens. This season we honor those courageous seekers who are paving the way for you and me. So grab your telescope, point it towards your future, and let's get Plant-Strong together.

Here we are, Dr. Michael Klaper. I want to welcome you to season three of the Plant-Strong Podcast. You were on season one. You've been on season two, and now you are the lead hitter for season three. I can't think of anybody that I'd like to have more to kick it off. 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Well, thank you, Rip. It's good to be with you and your audience.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. So in season three, what we want to do is we really want to highlight those courageous truth seekers that are paving the way for everybody else, and for example, for myself, the person that really paved the way for me and showed me the light was my father. 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

We both.

Rip Esselstyn:

Right. In preventing and reversing coronary heart disease. So I would love to just kick this off by asking you, is there somebody maybe going back to the early 17th century that was a true courageous truth seeker that inspired you and still does to this day?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Well, to state the obvious in this beautiful season that we're in, I know it's not cool to talk about dates when you're doing a recording because people may be watching this in the summer, but we're getting near Christmas of 2020. And up in the sky something really remarkable is happening. The planet Jupiter is lining up with the planet Saturn. This happens only once every 800 years. It's a beautiful site to see, and Mars is bright orange. It's quite close to us now. So every time I walk outside in the evening, I look up and see these wonderful planets moving around and how beautiful the sky is. 

I can't help but think of one of the heroes of mine in this intellectual pursuit, and that's Galileo Galilei from Italy back in 1610. Back then, people thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. It does not move. Everything moves around the Earth. And it wasn't a crazy observation. The stars appear to rise in the east and set in the west. The sun rising in the east, sets in the west. Everything does look like it's going around the Earth. But Galileo had some ideas that it wasn't. Some things happen in the sky made it very hard to explain that the sun is really the center of the universe. I won't go into it. But every once in a while the planets go backward in retrograde motion. It's hard to explain that if we're at the center of the universe.

The reason why of course is every year as the Earth passes Mars and Jupiter, like you passing a car on the highway, they appear to go backwards for a little bit and that's retrograde motion. Another sign that the Earth is moving. But Galileo didn't focus on that so much. He suspected it. Didn't focus so much on that until that faithful night in 1610 when he made a little telescope and looked up the planet Jupiter and saw these four beautiful pearl like moons going around Jupiter, and he realized at that point that everything that people were saying was wrong. That the Earth's not the center of the universe. Here's four objects clearly not going around the Earth. They're going around Jupiter. Anybody can see that if they bothered to look. 

And he runs down to the local official kingdom constabulary there, and the [inaudible 00:04:47] Palace, sets up his telescope, and says, "Everybody, come and look. The professors, the scientists, the priest, come and look. We're not the center of the universe. There's four objects not going around Earth." Oh, they didn't want to look through the telescope. That would blow their whole hold on power there. But yet he knew he was right, and they inflicted all sorts of punishments. He spent his last years in house arrest. He was forced to sign a recantation. But as he signed the recantation, he mumbled under his breath, "But it does move, the Earth. It does move around the sun." He just knew it in his soul, and he couldn't betray it.

And the same thing now with nutrition and health and disease and the absence of it in medical education. When the reality is the majority of diseases most doctors spend their lives treating, the obesity and diabetes, high blood pressure is from what their patients are eating, and yet our colleagues, they don't want to look through that telescope. It would change a whole lot, everything from the science to the monetary reimbursement. 

So I in some ways, I'm certainly not his intellectual equal, but I can empathize with Galileo of knowing how when you know a truth and you know it to be true, you can't turn your back on it. It just won't let you sleep with good conscience. You just can't pretend. They say once you look behind the curtain, you can't pretend you don't know what's behind the curtain. And those of us in plant-based nutrition, we've seen these diseases go away with a plant-based diet. We know. We've looked behind the curtain. So now it's a matter of getting that word out and helping our colleagues wake up.

But Galileo's example certainly inspires me to this day, including the suffering he went through. But hopefully we'll have a better lot than he had. 

Rip Esselstyn:

So did Galileo end up dying in prison? 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Well, he died in house arrest. He had a house in Pangea I think, and there were a guard station out front. Never left the house. He was under house arrest. They were going to put him in prison, but they knew he'd die in prison. That would make them look bad. So they just put him on house arrest there. But he essentially was in jail for the rest of his life, yes.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, you majored in medicine.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rip Esselstyn:

And you minored in astronomy.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Yes, I did. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rip Esselstyn:

And at all of our medical emergen programs that you attend, especially the one in Sedona. We have a special night where you come out with your magic wand and you put on your great Gandalf hat, and you give us an education on the stars and the galaxies. It is something to behold. But my question to you is what has been your fascination with astronomy and the stars and the planets and galaxies?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Well, since I was a little boy, I've been so fascinated with the natural world. Well, just because of its beauty and its magic and the animals and the power of the ocean and each creature has its own secrets, its own nature. I've just loved things for the way they are. But then when I started my education and realized that not only things are as they are but we can understand they follow natural law. Water always flow downhill, and when you take a breath in, it'll lower the pressure in your lungs, air moves in. Things move in this world according to natural law. 

And then when I was in my pre-med studies at University of Illinois... Well, I've been fascinated with the nighttime sky since I was a little boy in Wisconsin looking up at the summer sky and seeing all these starts. I couldn't imagine you could understand the chaos up there. But during my pre-med days at U of I, I decided to minor in astronomy, and there the two came together. Not only there were the planets up there just where my instructor said they would be, but they moved in, obeys to natural law, Kepler's laws about how things move around their path is so predict. You can predict eclipses hundreds of years in the future or looking in the past.

The beauty of the natural world combined with the logic of natural law, how can I not look up and want to understand more about it? So astronomy's just a great synthesis of those two great loves in my life.

Rip Esselstyn:

I think it was last night or the night before, there was some meteors that were I guess going to be visible. Did you happen to see those at all?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

No, those would probably be the Perseid meteor showers, but no, I was in my computer probably too. I've missed too many meteor showers. The great regrets in my life is meteor showers I missed because I've been working in the evenings, but they're beautiful if you get out and see them.

Rip Esselstyn:

Have you ever seen Halley's Comet?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

I saw Halley's Comet. I sure did. I remember that 1986 or '87. Boy, there was that lovely band just on the horizon. I was down in Florida at the time, and yes, I saw it. I thought myself so privileged. And apparently Mark Twain was born when Halley's Comet came around, lived his whole life, and 76 years later died when Halley's Comet was coming around again. It's just a beautiful, beautiful site to see.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. No, not a bad way to be born and then also to go.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Really.

Rip Esselstyn:

Pretty good.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Pretty good, pretty good.

Rip Esselstyn:

All it could be was lucky. Did you personally have a Galileo moment where you saw the truth in medicine and plant-based nutrition?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Oh my. I sure did. I was working as a resident in aesthesiology 1981 in Vancouver, and I'm on the cardiovascular aesthesia service. Day after day I'm putting people asleep and watching surgeons open their chest and open the arteries in their heart and pulling this yellow yuck out of their arteries called atherosclerosis. And I knew what that stuff was. There were already studies in the literature. Clearly it's the fat and cholesterol people are eating. And my dad died of clogged arteries. I know I've got those genes, and I knew that if I didn't change my diet because there were studies already in the journals saying that if you get on a whole food plant-based diet, these plaques in the arteries melt away. And I knew if I didn't get on that train, I was going to be laying on that operating table with the striker saw going up my sternum. Sure didn't want that. 

So I changed my diet. I had visited some friends who were vegans, ate their food for a week, lost a bunch of weight even though I was stuffing myself on all these wonderful vegan dishes. So I decided at that point to change my diet, and I went whole food plant-based. Within 12 weeks, my body transformed. My 20 pound spare tire around my waist of fat melted away. My high blood pressure went to normal. My high cholesterol went to normal I felt great waking up in a nice lean body, and there was no arguing with this. I wasn't eating more food than ever that's mostly fiber and water in whole plant foods. And you end up nice and lean from this. And this was so powerful to me because my dad, because of what I was seeing in the operating room. And I felt great. Man, it's nice to be 20 pounds lighter. My muscles were strong. Felt wonderful.

Again, there was a curtain moment. There's was no pretending I didn't see this. And so I left aesthesia and went back to general practice and started working my patients to send them to my friends who taught the plant-based cooking. And within two weeks, I had patients with diabetes calling me saying, "My blood sugar's dropping down to 40." And I said those faithful words, "Stop your insulin." When I said that, I thought there'd be a puff of smoke and the ghost of my internal medicine professor would appear saying, "What did you say? Stop his insulin? Don't you know once on insulin, always on insulin? Nobody gets off insulin." But clearly this man no longer had diabetes. He lost 40 pounds. He was feeling great. So off his diabetes medicine. 

Well within a week or two of my high blood pressure patients were calling me saying they're standing up and they're getting lightheaded because their blood pressure's dropping. And I said those faithful words, "Stop your blood pressure medication." And I thought there'd be another puff of smoke. These are lifetime medication. No one gets off.

So when I started having these experience, talk about a Galileo moment, you can't turn your back on these experience. As a physician, this is what you want for your patients to get off these medications. So between what happened in my own life and what was happening with my patients, there's no going back at that point. The book is wide open and the truth is jumping off the pages there. 

So I became a plant-based physician and advocate back in 1981, 40 years ago almost. 

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Happiest doctor I know. My patients get healthy right in front of my eyes, and it's happened now hundreds, hundreds of times in my practice and my colleagues. All of us plant-based docs, we all know the same thing. We see the same thing, and it's a joyous kind of medicine. But we're still in the minority. Our colleagues, they want to just keep doing those bypasses and bypassing the truth of it. So we still got a bit of work to do here to say the least.

Rip Esselstyn:

It is so incredible to me that your colleagues, the other physicians somehow haven't ever looked through the telescope. They haven't see the truth, and they are currently not treating the majority of the chronic Western diseases in an effective, appropriate way. I mean, do you think it's just because they're not willing to look through the telescope, or is there something else going on as well?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Oh, there's a big something else. There's three or four something else's. First, I'll give them credit. I cut them a little slack that we're never taught about nutrition. They just blow right past it in medical school. You just got to learn about physical diagnosis and biochemistry and physiology. Nutrition's barely even mentioned. It's not respected as a science. Nutrition, send them to the dietician. I don't have time for that. I'm up in the emergency room doing real medicine. I'm in the OR doing real medicine. 

So it's not respected as a discipline, which is ironic and sad because they're all in the emergency room and the operating room dealing with the infections and the infractions and the amputations from what their patients are eating. They're all dealing with nutritionally based diseases. They could be reversed in the out-patient clinic before you have to do the amputation and do the vascular procedure. Most of these diseases will reverse with a healthy diet. So that's the second reason, we're not taught about it. We don't respect it. 

Third, doctors eat the same foods themselves. They're eating the burgers in the hospital cafeteria. They get out of practice, they're eating steaks and lobsters. They don't want to tell their patients don't eat meat. So threatening to them that they have to change their own diet. That they don't want to open that book. They don't want to look behind that curtain. 

These are the three-headed hydra that we're trying to slay here to tell our colleagues, "Listen, it's simple. It's the same foods you're already eating." The only sacrifice you're being asked to make is order the bean chili instead of the beef chili. It's not that big a sacrifice. But it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to health and not running that animal fat and the sugars and the oils and all that processed junk through our arteries. We're plant eating hominids, like our gorilla cousins are. And if we just eat a whole plant-based diet, most these diseases go away. That's such good news. We want our colleagues to know about it, but they're still very reluctant because they say, "Listen, I don't know anything about nutrition. I don't have time. I have a waiting room full of patients that I only have six minutes between patients. I don't get paid or it. So why in the world should I spend time on this?" Those are formidable obstacles. 

So we're trying to get nutrition education into medical schools so it's at least discussed. That's what our Moving Medicine Forward Initiative is about is to get the med students to understand that food is primary here. But there are ways to reward the doctor for at least referring to a plant-based dietician. Let her or him do the counseling, and the doctor just needs to see the patient back once a month to make sure they're doing better. So by enlisting colleagues, it takes away one excuse that I don't have time. I don't have the knowledge.

Third, they don't get paid for it. Well, as I said, pay the dietician for her or his counseling. But also there's ways to change the way the cash flows in the reimbursement system so the doctor's paid for keeping the patient healthy and there's value based reimbursement schemes that are being devised now. For every CEO that doesn't go down with a heart attack, his company still stays functional. They're still paying taxes. They're employing people. There's value for keeping people healthy, and the insurance companies are sitting on so much money, they'll be glad to pay the doctor $10,000 for every patient every 10 years who doesn't have a heart attack. There's ways to change. The bean counters have to change the way the beans are flowing, but that could be done. We're working on that as well.

So we're at the coal face slogging away here, chipping away against the resistance. And that's why we're talking to the medical students before pharmaco-sclerosis sets in their brain that drugs are the only treatment. So we're chipping away at it. We're making progress. The good news is that now when I go lecture at medical schools or into these Zoom visitations now, in every medical school, class now, especially the first, second, third year class, there's always 30 or 40 students. They've seen films like Forks Over Knives. They've seen What the Health. They've seen Game Changers. And the lights on. They know something's up with this. So that's such a ray of hope, a ray of light there. We'll get this message done or get the message across. So hopefully in 10 years, no patient sees their doctor without being asked, "By the way, what are you eating these days? Take me through your eating." I want every doctor asking every patient that question, and medicine will change at that time.

Rip Esselstyn:

As we kick off this new season of the Plant-Strong Podcast, we have lots of changes to share with all of you. Over the past 12 months, like so many of you, we have been working to reimagine what it means to move about this new world. In 2020, we transitioned all of our in-person events to online experiences, and as a result, I feel incredibly blessed to have met thousands more of you than I ever would've been able to at our live physical retreats. 

The Engine 2 Food Line has completed its 10 year contract inside Whole Food Market stores as part of their exclusive brands portfolio. So you've likely noticed those products disappearing from store shelves. The good news is now for the first time we are able to relaunch the food line on our own. You'll be hearing more about this exciting transition in the weeks to come. But for now, you can find a handful of our customer favorites at PlantStrongFoods.com, including our 100% whole grain, stone baked pizza crust kits. These now come with perfectly portioned pouches of Plant-Strong pizza sauce and have been insanely popular. They sell out every time we get a new freshly batched, baked shipment, and I think that's because there's nothing like them on the market. They're oil free. They're made from five ingredients that you can pronounce every ingredient, and they are in my opinion the best foundation to build a pizza. 

Living Plant-Strong is not about deprivation. It's about loving food that loves you back. Visit PlantStrongFoods.com to get your pizza kit shipped straight to your door and keep checking back. We have some super great products in the pipeline for you both tried and true items and some new meal solutions as well. Also new for 2020, we are launching the new and improved Plant-Strong Challenge on January 9th. This free seven day experience is designed to help you reset after the holidays or let's face it, after all of 2020. And will give you a streamlined refresher into all the tenants of the lifestyle, plus a community of like-minded folks to share the journey with you. Discover the benefits, find the joy, eat more plants. Join the challenge today at PlantStrong.com. 

Finally, I'm pleased to share that we will be opening the registration window for our first 2021 season of the Rescue 10X Coaching Program. If you don't know, Rescue 10X is our premium 10 week group coaching program designed to help you build and sustain the habits of successful Plant-Strong living. You'll spend 10 weeks with a team of Plant-Strong coaches supporting you on your success path with live weekly calls, at home activities, a robust curriculum, and real life application. We only offer this program at select times during the year. So visit PlantStrong.com today for all the details. 

Thank you for being part of this community. I look forward to sharing more updates with you in the coming weeks.

So you mentioned that you have been in the minority. You still are in the minority with basically trying to say, one of your famous quotes is, "It's the food. It's the food. It's the food." And it's been the food all along, right? There it is. It's the food. It's been the food all along.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Absolutely.

Rip Esselstyn:

Thank you. Thank you. But do you feel like you're still an outlier or do you feel like [crosstalk 00:24:32]-

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Oh, absolutely.

Rip Esselstyn:

Absolutely.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Absolutely. It's a fast food world. Look at the TV commercials, there's a whole set of forces trying to keep people where they are to keep that money flowing. Don't worry about how sick and dead the clients get or the public gets, as long as we keep making our profits there. That's a huge motivator. And the way medicine is set up now, you get paid for doing things to patients, not for talking to them. You get paid for cutting them and reaming them out and doing procedures. Again, that's barn door medicine. The cow's already out of the barn by the time you're repairing, bypassing one little artery in their heart when every artery in their body is clogged up. But you get paid for doing those individual procedures. It's a huge obstacle to overcome. 

Rip Esselstyn:

No, you know what, you are exactly right. I have talked to my father before, and he has told me that he has counseled... This is a particular 47 year old male who came to him had 47 stents. I didn't even know it was possible to have that many stents.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Really?

Rip Esselstyn:

It's just incredible. So these cardiologists are basically playing surgical Whack-A-Mole, right? It's like let's get that one, let's get that one. Getting 50- to 150,000 per procedure. Jeff Nelson has a... I don't know if you saw it, but he has a video that recently came out on veg stores where he talks about the average income of a freshman interventional cardiologist is $640,000. So where's the motivation for them to basically say, "You know what, broccoli, steel cut oats, black beans, quinoa, amaranth, green leafies," or, "Hey, you know what, come back whenever you feel like. Just keep eating what you're eating." 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Exactly. The game is rigged. Their game is tilted in that direction. In Ancient China I'm told that you paid the doctor while you're well, and as soon as you get sick, the money stops. Motivates the doctor to keep you well. And we need some incarnation of that, some iteration of that kind of system because you're right it's so tilted towards disease. Like Dean Warner says, there's a cliff and people are falling off the cliff. You can spend all your money putting the ambulances at the bass of the cliff, but why don't you go up there and put a fence across the cliff so nobody falls? But those ambulances that the spent guys are working on that level. It's bankrupt, and it's going to bankrupt us because nobody's getting healthier.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. Now we need a new paradigm, and that's why I love, and you just touched upon it, but I'd love if you would go into it just a little bit more. You mentioned the nonprofit and the work that you're doing right now with medical school students. You're moving medicine forward that you're doing now kind of in the twilight of your career, which is such a beautiful thing to give back the way you are. Can you tell me how long have you been doing that and how is that going? 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Yes, we're in our third year. For three years, I realized as much as I love treating patients in the clinic one at a time, it's too slow. We got a bigger arena to work in here if we're going to change the entire course of Western medicine. Realized the people I need to be speaking to are the med students before they get all this idea in their brains that you got to treat with medicine or surgery. 

So starting three years ago, we started going around to the medical schools in North America, but I've lectured down in Colombia. I've been in Europe and Poland and England. It's a worldwide effort because all the Western medical paradigms are based on everything but what our patients are eating. So I went forward, two years I was going around to the medical schools and giving a lecture entitled What I Wish I Had Learned In Medical School About Nutrition. And I was telling the students I wish someone had told me this. When I was sitting in those seats where you are now, it would've changed every diagnosis I made, every obese diabetic, hyper tensive, inflamed patient I saw instead of saying, "Eatology unknown," I would know. It's reading. I wish I had known that. 

So I would say now I'm up here telling you it's the food your patients are eating. Start there before you order another $1000 scan, another $500 set of blood tests. Ask them what they ate yesterday. And if it's full of burgers and buffalo wings and pepperoni pizzas, that's why they're sitting in front of you doctors. Send them to the dietician, let him or her do the counseling. You see them back in a month. You'll have a healthier patient. 

By the way, that video is on my website. Everyone's welcome to go to doctorklaper.com and certainly you'll see it there. It's all spelled out. You go to my video section. You can see the video, see the presentation I give to the medical students. 

Well, that's what I was doing until last March, and enter the COVID creature. That changed everything. I had speaking tours lined up in medical schools in University of Texas and UCLA and Seattle and Brazil. I was going down to Sao Paulo. All canceled. So that made us move online, like the rest of the world has, and the message I was giving morphed into a 12 unit masterclass in plant-based clinical nutrition. This is the body of work. Here's how you use plant-based nutrition in your clinic to get your patients healthier.

So the 12 masterclasses. They are available after next Sunday, going to be our last masterclass. Dr. Michael Greger is going to be my guest, and we'll be talking about COVID and how the future looks. And then that 12 unit masterclass will be available for purchase. But very importantly, starting the following month, January, we are launching our plant-based clinical community. And this is for everybody in the health professions, doctors, dentists, nurses, physical therapists, podiatrists, dieticians, everybody. But just interested lay folks, if you got interests, you can join our clinical community. 

And once a month, it'll be a live interactive session. I'll be there. We're going to be talking about some topical issue regarding COVID or obesity or ways to use plant-based nutrition. And then we're going to open it up for discussion from people around the world. Want to know what's happening at your medical school,  what's happening in your clinic. Is anybody even talking about nutrition? What programs are working? Is plant-based nutrition mentioned? And we wanted to call this into existence. We wanted to become a commonplace among physicians and health practitioners. We want them to have heard the idea of plant-based nutrition so often that of course they start using it in their practice and finding out ways to institute it. We really want to change Western medicine and open that door up to what our patients are eating. I don't know any better way than educating the young practitioners and talking about it, making it a reality.

So people can go to doctorklaper.com. D-O-C-T-O-R-K-L-A-P-E-R dot com. Click on Moving Medicine Forward and you'll see the courses and our plant-based clinical community there.

Rip Esselstyn:

That's fantastic stuff. Congratulations on that. 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Thank you.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. And that masterclass, that's really good. That's really good. Good stuff. So you brought up COVID, and how with COVID, you had to basically pivot and change things up some. I'd love to end with COVID-19 because we're in a pretty interesting place right now. As you know, COVID hit us in March, and here we are eight, nine months later, and they're starting to roll out the first wave of vaccines for people. We're in an interesting place right now as far as people's I think trust in the scientific community and whether or not these vaccines are safe has been eroded to a certain degree. And I don't want to get into whether or not people should do vaccines or not right now. I think that that's a very personal opinion. But what can we all do right now to boost our immune system and make it so that if we do get COVID-19, it's just a little glancing blow as opposed to a full down take down?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Oh well, in your question, sir, you really outlined the answer there. We see the huge range of responses in the body from people who either have no symptoms at all or just a day or two of achy, flu-y kind of feeling, and they're fine. That's the majority of people apparently. All the way over to that half percent or 1% that winds up god awful sick with the blood clots and the lung congestion, and they wind up in the ICU and often don't come out.

So what determines where you are in that continuum? Well, it's getting part of a standard litany now. We know those people in ICU on the respirators have some common characteristics. Many or if not most are obese, many or most have type 2 diabetes or they got some other coexisting problem. They got congestive heart failure, chronic lung disease. So the answer is if you're going to attacked by this virus, you want to be as healthy as you can with a vigorous immune system as you can with good lungs and not a lot of extra body fat. You want to be a greyhound, not a Saint Bernard. The dog analogy there. And well, guess what kind of food stream is so effective at making people leaner and perking up their immune system and resolving diabetes and resolving artery disease. Again, this beauty. 

We're started talking about the laws of the universe that so fascinated me about how the planets move, et cetera. Well, here's another beautiful validation of the... We are plant eating creatures, and as long as we've nourished this hominid body out of steady stream of whole plant foods, we wind up lean and healthy with normal immune systems. I'm 73. I've got normal blood pressure, don't take any medicines. I bike 20-30 miles in a day. I feel great. I don't feel much different than I did when I was 40. This is how you're supposed to age. 

So again, coming back to the COVID thing, the best defense is that kale on your plate there and eat lots of it, and be smart. Don't spend time inside people where the air is stagnant and there's strangers who may have the virus breeding it and coughing it. Don't put yourself in that position. Be as much time outside as you can.

Wear your mask. It's really important. They don't help. They do. They certainly muffle the spread. And have some compassion. If you are the cashier at a supermarket and you got this parade of the public walking by you breathing on you all day, ask that cashier, "Would you rather people be wearing masks or not wearing masks?" What do you think she's going to say? Put on your freaking mask already. I got to breathe this air. And that's the reality of it. You don't have to wear it at home. You don't have to wear it in the car. But for that 15 minutes you're in the store, put on the freaking mask and have some compassion for your fellow human beings here.

And yes, wash your hands. It's important, but again, it's an airborne virus. Don't put yourself in compromising positions.

We have a lovely outdoor pizza restaurant. We sit out on this big patio with big tables in front of us eight feet away from everybody, and we go out there. We have our outdoor pizza once a week or so. So it's not that we're totally cloistered, but we sure don't want to be in a small cubicle with someone who's coughing, that's for sure.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dr. Klaper, this has been absolutely perfect. The perfect way to kick off episode one of the Plant-Strong Podcast season three. You are a true seeker. You have kicked off the whole Galileo inspiration for this season. I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for all the great work that you're doing with Moving Medicine Forward and really trying to teach these medical students how to look through that telescope and to see the truth and how their medical careers will hopefully never be the same because they will be getting to the root causation of these chronic Western diseases as opposed to just around the periphery. 

What do you think the chances are that you and I are going to see each other at a medical immersion program in June, in October of 2021? What do you think the chances are?

Dr. Michael Klaper:

For October of next year, I'll give you 50/50. 

Rip Esselstyn:

Okay. In June, you're not liking 50/50.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

20/80. [crosstalk 00:39:18]. But October, 50/50.

Rip Esselstyn:

All right. 

Dr. Michael Klaper:

We'll go for that.

Rip Esselstyn:

All right. Good. Well, Michael, thank you. Let's do it. Ready. Peace.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Let's do it. Peace.

Rip Esselstyn:

Engine 2.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Engine 2.

Rip Esselstyn:

Keep it Plant-Strong.

Dr. Michael Klaper:

Keep it Plant-Strong. Please, people, keep it Plant-Strong. 

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, there it is. The kick off to season three with the ultimate Galileo groupie, Dr. Michael Klaper. Every time I hear him speak about the night sky, I'm inspired to learn more and I hope that you are too. Come along for the journey this season as we explore some of these new truths, meet new thought leaders, and uncover facts about health and nutrition that you may not have known or may not have been willing to accept until now. Let's do this together the Plant-Strong way.

Thank you for listening to the Plant-Strong Podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to subscribe, rate, and review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sharing a show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the great news about plants. 

Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything to me. 

Have you had your own Galileo moment that you'd like to share? What happened when you stepped into the arena and shed the beliefs that you thought to be true? I'd love to hear about it. Visit PlantStrongPodcast.com to submit your story and to learn more about today's guest and sponsors.

The Plant-Strong Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening. 

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