#182: John Tanner - In a Heartbeat, from Death to Plants
John Tanner, founder of NuSci.org
Let’s cut right to the chase today. A whole food, plant-based diet CAN save your life.
It sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t, because today’s guest is living proof.
John Tanner was out on a run in 2009 and went into cardiac arrest. He collapsed to the ground and his heart stopped beating. Fortunately, the quick action of others to get help saved his life.
In recovery, John started reading everything he could about the causes of heart disease and how to prevent it. His research, of course, led him to the work of Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr, T. Colin Campbell, and others. He learned what most doctors don’t know:
Heart disease need not exist. It is reversible and, in most cases, preventable.
John tells his harrowing story and discusses the remarkable advocacy work he is doing now with his non-profit NuSci and food delivery company, Little Green Forks.
In fact, he’s offered a generous discount code at Little Green Forks: Rip15New to receive $15 off your order.
A plantstrong diet brought him back to life and it can help you, too.
About John Tanner, PhD
John Tanner earned his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Caltech. John is the Founder and CEO of Tanner Research, Inc., an advanced R&D company that was named to the "LA Fast 50" five years in a row and that develops software, electronics, and robotics.
Dr. Tanner is also the founder and Director of NuSci, The Nutrition Science Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives through education of nutrition science. More recently he founded the healthy meal delivery company, Little Green Forks.
Episode Resources
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
I launched PLANTSTRONG Foods with the goal to prove that it's possible to make great tasting foods that are convenient and satisfying without compromising our health. Case in point, our PLANTSTRONG granola is the perfect pantry staple to grab and go when you want a wholesome breakfast or a satisfying, satiating snack. A fresh batch just arrived and is ready to be discovered by you and then delivered straight to your door. And each flavor is dessert inspired, All-American apple pie, classic oatmeal raisin cookie, crispy berry crumble, and of course, dark chocolate. You can try them by the handful right out of the bag or top your morning oats for a super satisfying crunch. I know you're going to love them as much as I do. Just visit plantstrongfoods.com right now.
John Tanner, PhD:
And one Sunday morning, I'm in the middle of my run and according to people who saw me, because I don't remember any of this, I was running normally, staggered a couple of steps, then hit the ground unconscious. And when they came over to check, my heart was stopped. That's how much warning you have of heart disease. It's a disease of the insides of the arteries. You can't see it from the outside. There's no nerve endings in there. You can't feel that you're in dire straits. I went from thinking I was fine to dead on the street.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you, wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
I'm going to cut right to the chase today. A whole food, plant-based diet can save your life. It may sound like hyperbole, but it isn't because my guest today is officially living proof of just this. John Tanner was out for a run in 2009. He had a massive heart attack and if it wasn't for the firefighters and paramedics that got there lickity split and were able to bring him back to life, and subsequently, after a series of invasive procedures, John would not be alive today. This led John to start reading everything that he could get his hands around about the exact causes of heart disease and how to prevent another heart attack.
His research, of course, led him to my father's groundbreaking work at the Cleveland Clinic and he learned what most doctors don't know, which is that heart disease need not exist. And if it does exist, in many cases it can be reversed and in most cases is preventable in the first place. Now, how do we know all this? Well, that's why we're here, and that's why John is here to tell his story and to discuss the remarkable advocacy work that he is doing with his nonprofit, NuSci, and his food delivery company, Little Green Forks. Be sure to stay tuned to the end of the episode when we're going to share a discount code for everyone listening. In the meantime, enjoy this conversation with John Tanner as he shares how a PLANTSTRONG diet literally brought him back to life.
John, welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. How are you doing? I don't think I've seen you in a couple years.
John Tanner, PhD:
It's been a few years. I'm doing great, thanks to what I've learned from you and your family. I'm so pleased to be here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, so I want to talk to you about what happened to you on October 11th, 2009, and how it really has informed the last 13 years of your life in a really powerful and passionate and dramatic way. But before we jump into that day and what happened and how you pivoted, I'd love to first know a little bit more about you, kind of leading up to that moment in time. So tell me this, John, where did you grow up?
John Tanner, PhD:
Northeast Iowa, Independence, Iowa, little town of 5,000.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. And brothers and sisters?
John Tanner, PhD:
I have one sister, Anne, that's it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And you were there until, what, when you went away to college?
John Tanner, PhD:
I went to college in Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. A small school that a lot of people haven't heard of, a liberal arts school. Then was fortunate enough to get into Caltech in, I came out to California to go there in 1979 and got my Master's in Electrical Engineering. Went on to switch departments to the Computer Science department and got my PhD in 1986.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. And so growing up in Iowa, did you guys eat a particular way?
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah, very unhealthy. We didn't know it at the time, of course. When I was very young, we lived on a farm in Northern Minnesota and we'd kill the chickens and bring them in and eat them and once a year we'd kill one of the cows and butcher it and eat it and every day my dad would milk the cow and bring it in and my mom would say, "Oh, this is good for you. Have your milk." Little did we know.
Rip Esselstyn:
Little did we know is right. And are your parents still alive today?
John Tanner, PhD:
They aren't, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Have they been able to... Did they see what's happened to you over the last couple years or no?
John Tanner, PhD:
Unfortunately they passed before I was able to share what I've learned with them. I sometimes wonder if that could have helped prolong their life, but didn't get that chance.
Rip Esselstyn:
Gotcha. All right. So, let's dive into October 11th, 2009. Set the stage for us, where were you? What were you doing? And what exactly happened?
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah. If I could maybe back up for five years before that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure, yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
In 2004, my wife turns to me and says, "John, do you know that you have the body of a God?" And we've been married for 20 years and she'd never said anything remotely like that to me. Like, "Really, I have a body of a God?" She says, "Yes, unfortunately, the God is Buddha." So if you've seen a statue of Buddha and the Buddha belly, this is not a physique to quest after, but she had a point. I was rounding out in the middle and so I decided I needed to do something about that.
So I started running, doing other exercises every day. I lost some weight. At my peak I was 205 pounds. I'm six foot zero, so all right, I'm really five 11 and three quarters, but I like to round up. But at that height and 205 pounds, body mass index says I was overweight. But as I started exercising, didn't change my diet, but nobody told me I should, but I just started exercise. I did lose some weight, got down to 175 pounds, which puts me in the normal category. You'd say, "Hey, I'm getting healthier." My blood numbers, I was not tracking at the time, but afterwards I went back into my medical record to find out. My glucose peaked at 111, and you know that that's a sort of mid-range pre-diabetic. My doctor never said anything to me about that, but as I lost weight, it got to 104, which is almost normal. So you'd say, "I'm getting healthier."
My cholesterol at its peak was 238, which again, my doctor didn't say anything to me about, but as I lost weight, it got to 188. Again, I didn't know this because I wasn't paying any attention, and some doctors would think that that's okay, but I didn't know. It's certainly better than 238. My LDL, which is one of the prime indicators of heart disease, at its peak was 147, and as I exercised and lost weight, it went down to 113. So again, it's going in the right direction. And you'd say, "I'm healthy. I'm running a mile a day." When I first started in 2004 to run, I got half a block and I had to stop, wheezing, just couldn't run at all. But I finished the mile that first day, mostly walking in 15 minutes and over five years, I got my running time down to seven minutes.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, are you experiencing, you said you were wheezing, you're not experiencing angina though, right?
John Tanner, PhD:
No, no, no, no, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
Just out of shape.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it.
John Tanner, PhD:
But I got in shape and world record time for a mile is three minutes, 43 seconds. So at seven minutes, I'm only twice as long as the world record. So at 40 something years old, I thought that was-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, seven minute miles, John, that's good. That's really good.
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah, so I was doing okay. No warnings for my doctor. So that sets the stage. For five years in a row, I'd run this mile and one Sunday morning, I'm in the middle of my run and according to people who saw me, because I don't remember any of this, I was running normally, staggered a couple of steps, and hit the ground unconscious. And when they came over to check, my heart was stopped. That's how much warning you have of heart disease. It's a disease of the insides of the arteries. You can't see it from the outside. There's no nerve endings in there. You can't feel that you're in dire straits. I went from thinking I was fine to dead on the street.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
Now, I was extremely lucky. The survival rate, according to studies at the time, were about 3%. I read something recently, said maybe it's up to 4% now, but the vast majority of people that have cardiac arrest outside the hospital are gone. They don't make it to the hospital. They're dead. I was so lucky, a family that lived a few blocks from me where I ran past them every day, Dan and Jody Hare, they had a daughter, sorry, son, Mason, who his birthday was on this day as his mother's birthday also, they had double birthday and so grandma and grandpa were out from the East Coast for this double birthday, and grandma saw me go down, called the grandpa who came running out, and he started giving me chest compressions.
The firemen were there in four minutes. They know that because they looked at my watch when they arrived and it said six minutes and I was two minutes into my run when I went down. So they were there right away. They had the defibrillator, gave me a shock, started my heart again. Of course, I still had the problem, but at least it was pumping a little bit. Got me to that hospital that day. They put a stent in. A stent is a small metal mesh tube that they insert through a catheter from the inside of my leg. They cut into the femoral artery there and slide this thing into the position in the heart, little tiny cylindrical balloon inside that they inflate so that the metal mesh jams into the inside the artery.
I'm a curious kind of a guy and so after this whole thing, I asked them if I could get these videos, which they gave to me, and I now put them in my talk. If anybody wants to go and see my hour and a half long presentation, they can go to nusci.org and sign up to see my video. And in there, there's this video that has three different clips. One is my heart as I arrived in the hospital and you can see the clog, as they shoot the dye through the blood vessel, you can tell where the problem was.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's dramatic. Let me just jump in here for a second and say, I watched that presentation and the videos that you got of the vessels in your heart, it is really dramatic, and you do a fantastic job of letting everybody understand what's going on with the stent. You show how it basically inflates and then how they remove it. And then you're left with a steel, or whatever material that is that's there. So I highly recommend people watch that, and we'll be sure to put that in the show notes, John.
John Tanner, PhD:
Great. And when I saw that video, I thought, this amazing technology saved me because you can see right away the blood flow is restored. It's only much later that I found the statistics associated with stent in placements and much less impressive, and I'll get to that in a minute. But that day, they saved me, I guess. Anyway, I survived, let's put it that way. Not necessarily due to the stent, but I survived. It was kind of dicey for a while. I woke up in the hospital and I said, I saw my wife, "Honey, where am I? What happened?" "Oh, you had a heart attack. You're in the hospital." "Oh, okay." And I'd drift off and a few minutes later I'd wake up again and say, "Honey, where am I? What happened?" I couldn't remember the conversation from a few minutes before because of this time where my brain didn't have enough oxygen as my heart was stopped. They weren't sure I was going to come back.
But after a couple of days, I could remember the conversation from a few minutes before and only five days, they sent me home. They said, "Don't go back to work just yet." So I took another week off from work, but two weeks from dead on the street to back to work, I thought that was pretty good. But they said, "Don't go back to running just yet, because we need to test your heart to see if there was permanent damage." And a lot of the people that survive cardiac arrest, even though that's a small percentage, even smaller percent get by without any brain damage or heart muscle damage or both. I seem to be okay in the brain damage part, although when I forget my anniversary or something like that, "Oh, honey, it was the heart attack."
Rip Esselstyn:
Very convenient.
John Tanner, PhD:
It's a great excuse as you're getting old. But they needed to do a test on my heart called a profusion test that involves putting in some radioactivity and getting special imaging and so on. But they came back and they found that my heart muscle didn't have any permanent damage. Yay. So I could go back to running. And somewhere along the line, somebody, one of my doctors said, "The seven minutes at your elevated heart rate isn't quite enough. It needs to be longer to really get the benefit, cardiovascular benefits of your exercise." So I started running two miles.
Now I also, at that time, I started asking my doctors, "Why did this happen to me?" I had a good life. Three kids, they're doing great, wife, job, and I almost lost it all. Why? And they weren't very helpful. They said things like, "Well, heart disease is the leading killer in this country. What do you expect?" Okay. "It just happens to everybody." But I asked other people, and eventually a friend of mine who's a robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and reads on the side, he reads Health Sciences magazine. And I was talking to him and he sent me a copy in late 2009, Health Sciences magazine, that had an article in it by this guy by the name of Caldwell Esselstyn. Have you heard of this guy?
Rip Esselstyn:
Sound like a bit of a joker to me.
John Tanner, PhD:
Oh, your dad. The title of this magazine article was In Cholesterol Lowering, Moderation Kills. And he basically said, doctors, if they get the cholesterol below 200, they might think that that's okay. It's not. And I'm going, at that point, I checked my cholesterol and it was 188 before my cardiac arrest. He's right. Below 200 isn't enough. So I really read that article. And-
Rip Esselstyn:
John, I have read that 30% of heart attacks happen with people that have a total blood cholesterol between 180 and 200, the levels that most physicians would say, "Oh yeah, your cholesterol looks great."
John Tanner, PhD:
Right. They just, sadly our doctors aren't-
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me go back a sec because I want to ask you a couple questions. So the blockage that you had in one of your main coronary arteries, do you know which artery it was?
John Tanner, PhD:
Left anterior descending, otherwise known as the widowmaker.
Rip Esselstyn:
Gotcha. The LAD. And so you said that you were able to survive that without any, no brain or heart muscle damage. Were the doctors able to tell you why that was? Were you just lucky or who knows?
John Tanner, PhD:
I don't know. I like to think maybe it was just because I was actually in pretty good shape, but I'm not sure. Luck.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. All right. Let's pick up where we left off.
John Tanner, PhD:
Right. So in that same magazine, there was a review of your dad's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. So I immediately got that and read it. And so within a few weeks of my cardiac arrest, I started learning this stuff, immediately adopted that diet as best I could. It took another couple of weeks to fine tune, for me to really understand the no oil part, as well as getting rid of all the animal products, but I got on that diet. So I thought I was in pretty good shape, in terms of living a long time perhaps.
Rip Esselstyn:
And is this 2009 or 2010 that you started it?
John Tanner, PhD:
2010. Well, end of 2009.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Okay.
John Tanner, PhD:
October was when I had, and so within a month I was on this diet. So I went back to running two miles a day, increased it, doing fine for a month or so, a month or two. And at about the three-month point, I found that at a mile and a half, I felt like something was wrong. It wasn't a pain that I would say, like muscle pain, it wasn't really chest pain. It was just like, something is wrong. I got to quit running. And the next day it was a shorter distance, a mile, and then it got to a half a mile and then a quarter of a mile, and it's like, "I got to go in." So I went into the doctor and I described the situation and they said, "No, the stent is failing."
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, really?
John Tanner, PhD:
"What? Stents fail?" Yeah, we don't talk about that much, but 20% to 40% of the time, the stent fails and we've got to take you in and put another stent in. And at this point, I tried reaching your dad. I'm a complete stranger, thousands of miles away from him. He returned my call and I explained the situation and he said, "Sorry, John. No amount of diet is going to fix the problem that you have now. The original problem, sorry, that was your fault. You ate meat products, dairy products, and oil so on. But now you've got a problem that is due to the scarring of when they jammed this stent into the insides of your artery." Now the tissue grows through that, the mesh in that stent and for a while, that's a good thing, you want the tissue to completely cover over the metal, so then your blood won't clot.
Immediately after you get a stent, you have to be on blood thinners, anti-clotting medications, which have their own problems, and I was on those, but you want the scarring to happen a little bit. But in 20% to 40% of the cases, it continues to scar and so the blood vessel gets smaller and smaller. It's not an instant problem, like my original cardiac arrest where the degraded inside of my artery burst, so it wasn't that. It was a slow process, but it was clearly a big deal for me because I couldn't even run a quarter of a mile.
So, your dad was so kind to just call me and explain that no amount of diet is going to fix this. Sorry, I got to go back under the knife, get another stent. Now, he was so kind, he explained more things. I was telling them that they wanted to put in three stents this time, one inside the first one, a second one just downstream of that, because it appeared to them that that blood vessel there was starting to contract. And your dad said, "Well, often that's because the restriction upstream of that decreases the pressure, and so it sort of collapses a little bit. And as soon as they open it up, it'll probably open up down below. You won't need the second one." And then they also wanted to put another stent in my right coronary artery, completely unrelated to the clog that caused my cardiac arrest. And-
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that because you had some narrowing going on there?
John Tanner, PhD:
They said that I had some narrowing going on there and they said it had gotten worse in the three months since I first went into the hospital. The problem is the first time I went into the hospital in emergency basis, I went into the closest one, and then later when I was having my problems, I had time to go to the one that I was supposed to go to, which is a different hospital. And so your dad explained that they're taking these pictures of your heart in two different machines, two different people, and so they're comparing small changes from one to the other and they're concluding that it's getting worse. It's a reasonable conclusion because most people that have heart disease, it's because they eat poorly, they continue to eat poorly, and they continue to get worse. But I wasn't getting worse, I was now eating well, and I should have been getting better, but I was not in a good enough position to advocate for myself.
So I went in and they put in three more stents. And that solved my short-term problem, which was I couldn't run even a quarter of a mile, so I'm back to running again, but the bare metal stint, which I got the first time-
Rip Esselstyn:
John, let me finish this. So you got the three stents put in, what month and what year is that?
John Tanner, PhD:
That would've been January of 2010.
Rip Esselstyn:
So it was only a month, a couple months-
John Tanner, PhD:
Three months.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Three after you got the first stent put in.
John Tanner, PhD:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
So that scarring that grew through the cage of that stent happened pretty rapidly.
John Tanner, PhD:
Right. And of the 20% to 40% that fail with a bare metal stent, that's about the average failure time, three months. That's why most of the time they put in drug-eluting stents, which they code it with a drug that kills cancer, basically. And so the idea is they're killing some of the scarring that happens or they're slowing it down. It still happens, the failure rate for a drug-eluting stent is about the same, 20% to 40%, but the failure time is about nine months instead of three months.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did they not have that available when they did your original stent?
John Tanner, PhD:
I have no idea why that choice was made. That was an emergency basis. Maybe it was the one in the drawer. I don't know. But the second three that I got were drug-eluting stents. And so as the nine-month period approaches, I'm biting my nails, I'm carefully keeping my run times because that can indicate to me that I'm starting to degrade. But nine months came, I was fine. Maybe I'll jump way ahead, we'll come back to this time period, but a year went by, two years, five years, nine years went by, and then it started to fail. So at this point, I sought out the expert that I felt I had access to, which is Columbus Batiste.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
I think you know him.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Kaiser. Kaiser Permanente.
John Tanner, PhD:
Kaiser. I was a Kaiser patient. Columbus wasn't the doctor for my locale, but he was close enough to me that I could request him. And I drove out to his place, and of course, he will tell you time and time again, eat plants, don't eat animal stuff, and avoid these heart problems. But he knew, like your dad knows, that the problem that I had was not due to my diet, like the original one way back in 2009, this was caused by the stents. And so there was no other choice but to do some more stents. I elected to be conscious while he operated on me, and as he's going along with the camera on the inside of my arteries, of course at this point, I've been on the Healthy Diet for nine years. And he says, "John, your arteries are like those of a young man."
Rip Esselstyn:
You love hearing that, don't you?
John Tanner, PhD:
I love that. Except when he got to where the stents were. And of course they're scarred, and the scar tissue is thick and rubbery. He's describing it to me. You can push it out of the way, but it comes right back. The only way they could even get a stent in there was for him to surgically cut slices in this rubbery scar tissue and then put the stent in and expand it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. And were you able to witness that since you were conscious?
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah. Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. And were you able to feel it at all, or you said earlier, there's no nerve endings there, so you can't feel it?
John Tanner, PhD:
Can't feel it at all.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So just to let everybody know, Columbus Batiste, Mr. Cardiologist, he's also a huge proponent of a whole food plant-based diet to address cardiovascular disease. He's been on the podcast. He also was in the Game Changers. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful cardiologist.
John Tanner, PhD:
Love him. So let me rewind a little bit. So after my first stent, and then three months later, three more stents, but I got on this path due to your dad's article and then his book. Well his book mentions another book called The China Study by Colin Campbell. So of course I got that and read it. China Study mentions John McDougall. I started following him. He had emailed newsletters, which I read with great interest. And then I started reading medical journals, going to conferences, talking to the experts.
Let's see, eventually this movie came out, Forks Over Knives in 2011, and in it, there's this guy, Rip Esselstyn climbing up the fire pole going, "Real men eat plants." Oh, love that line, Rip. Oh, I love that so much. But then where we first met, I don't know if you remember this, but-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh yeah, absolutely.
John Tanner, PhD:
Somewhere along the line, I had found that John McDougall was having this getaway vacation, this plant-based eating vacation in Costa Rica. And somehow I learned that the Esselstyn family was going to be there and so it's like, "Oh, I got to sign up for this." So I signed up with my wife and my three kids and we went down there and you remember, we're zip lining during the day, we're rafting, and then in the evening, John McDougall's giving lectures, it's like, this is so awesome.
And by this time, I had been telling my family everything I'd learned. I'd come back after reading a book or going to a conference or something, and I'd be telling them all about this stuff. And for a while they took it in, but after a while, I'm getting eye rolls and it's like, "Oh, dad's doing that again." And so they kind of quit listening to me, but when I was able to get them down and listen to John McDougall, a third party, all of a sudden they started really listening. And of my three kids and my wife, this really affected them a lot to differing degrees. One of my kids still, if he's out with his friends, he's going to eat whatever they're eating, but when he's not, he'll try to eat healthy. And the other two are much more on board, as is my wife. So that was a real changer for our family and I really appreciated that.
Of course, your book had come out, I think 2009, earlier, before my heart attack, The Engine 2 Diet, is that the name of it?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
John Tanner, PhD:
And so I eventually got a hold of that and read that. McDougall's book came out in 2012, the Starch Solution, which was awesome. And as I learned this stuff, I would share it with my family and eventually friends. And I started repeating this stuff often enough that I put it into a sort of presentation that I could print on paper and leave with people. And then I realized that it's going to be more efficient if I can talk to a room full of people instead of just one on one. Eventually, I organized that into a nonprofit called the Nutrition Science Foundation. And the mission is to just share everything I can find about what you should do to live a long and healthy life.
And I gave talks, locally for the most part. And there's one key thing that I just want to share with you and your listeners, you know this very well, but part of it comes back to these stents that I got. I found a study that said, what is the mortality rate of people who get stents versus those who are candidates for stents, but they just don't get a stent? And the answer is, according to the study, the death rate goes down by about 3% if you get a stent. In other words, 97% of the people that would die without a stent still die. It's almost useless, but yet it's done over and over again. Okay. Stents, what's better than stents? Well, there's drugs, statin drugs, Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor. If you have high cholesterol, this is what the doctors will recommend for you to take.
Well, how effective are they? You ask the doctors and they'll make comforting noises like this is going to save you. Well, it reduces the death rate by about 9%. It's not nothing, but it's not a lot. And there's a bunch of bad side effects, including cognition issues and muscle soreness, liver damage. So statin drugs aren't the answer. I found a study from the UK that said, if you just eat vegetarian, that means you still might eat eggs and milk, dairy, so on, but you just cut meat out, heart disease goes down by 35%. This is three, four times better than the drugs. If the pharmaceutical company had a drug that was that effective, they would make billions of dollars, but they don't have anything that effective.
Rip Esselstyn:
And that's a vegetarian diet, that's not even a whole food plant-based diet.
John Tanner, PhD:
Right. And then you look at your dad's research and the book is awesome, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, but it only had 18 patients and people criticized him saying, "Well, that's not statistically significant." Sorry, I've studied statistics. That is absolutely statistically significant what he did with those 18 patients. But he went back and he did another study that involved about 200 patients and that came out a few years later in a medical journal. And he compared a group of people that chose not to get on the diet with those who chose to get on the diet. And again, this is a no-oil, whole food, plant-based diet. And what he found is the cardiac event rate for those who switched went down by 99%, plus.
I asked him once about this, why isn't it 100%? What happened there? And he goes, "Well, there was this one guy who was basically on the diet, but then he went on a long trip and he didn't eat well during that trip, and he had a small cardiac event. Didn't die." Okay. So really you could have categorized that as being in the non-compliant group, and you could have said the plant-based diet gets rid of 100% of heart disease, but he didn't do that. But I like to say 99 plus percent.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then to add to that study, there were about 200 people in the study. Of the 200 people, he actually was calling them up to see four years later how many were still compliant, still following the whole food plant-based diet, of those 200, 89%, were still following it. So basically 11% had dropped off, so let's just call that 20 people, and of those 20 people, 67% over the next four years had some sort of cardiac event. In the compliant group, as you just said, there was one. So, pretty powerful.
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah, it's amazing. So as I sort of sucked in all this data that other awesome researchers were producing and putting it into my own talks, I was invited to talk a lot in the Southern California area where I am. And at one of my talks was a lady by the name of Darla Sherman, who at the time lived in Indiana, and she said, "There's this conference coming up, the Heartland Health Conference in September of 2013, and I would like you to be a speaker there. Let me see if I can get you in."
So she did, and this was one of my few talks outside of Southern California, but I flew in there and was on stage with some amazing people, including Michael Gregor and Rip Esselstyn. That was a fun event. Now here's the most fun part, I don't know if you remember this, Rip, but when the conference was over, of course they're trying to keep their costs low and so they had a volunteer who would drive us to the airport, and our flights were about the same time. And so they said, "Well, can we drive you both to the airport at the same time?" Sure. Absolutely. And so we're headed out, but you said, "But can I stop at the Whole Foods store on the way?" And sure we had time, that'd be fun. So you walked into the Whole Foods store, and of course, the employees there knew who you were because at that time you were developing your own line of food products. Is it Engine 2?
Rip Esselstyn:
It was Engine 2, that was exclusive to Whole Food Market stores. Yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
Right. So the employees knew who you were and they were very happy to see you. But what surprised me, as we're walking down the aisle, this guy looks at you and goes, "Are you Rip Esselstyn? Oh, can I take my picture with you? My wife is going to be so thrilled that I met you." And at that time, when you're thrilled, some guy is telling you that his wife is thrilled, this is stardom. At this point I knew what a star you were. So that was a fun part about Indianapolis. I don't know. Do you even remember that at all?
Rip Esselstyn:
You know what? It's funny, I don't. I remember you. I remember watching your talk. I remember the whole event, but I don't remember going to Whole Foods. I don't-
John Tanner, PhD:
Oh, this happens to you all the time. I'm sure it's forgettable, your stardom, but oh, that was fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me ask you this, John. So you started NuSci, a nonprofit, and then you also started a food company that helped people eat this way to make it easier for people called Little Green Forks. And I can remember we did an event in Pasadena, maybe in 2014 or so, and you treated my whole team to some of the Little Green Fork entrees, the tamale pies, the lasagnas. So is that business still up and running and what's going on there?
John Tanner, PhD:
It is. And I appreciate you mentioning that, because that's one of the things I hope to really let your listeners know about is Little Green Forks. It started because I wanted a way for my family to have this healthy food. And so I hired a chef to come into my company. I run a technology company, electronics and robotics, that's my day job. And we had a break room. And so I hired a chef to come in and cook meals for my family, and eventually any employees that wanted this kind of food, and not all of them did, but they knew that I'd had a heart attack and this was the way to avoid it. And so some of the employees were interested in this food too.
And then as I gave talks with NuSci, people would say, "Okay, now you've convinced me that I really should eat this way. Where am I going to get food like that?" It's very hard at restaurants to get healthy food. You go into the grocery store, once you're outside the produce aisle, there's very little that you can buy that's healthy. And so people would ask, "Well, where do you get your food?" Well, I have a chef down the hall in the break room that cooks it for me and my family and my employees. "Well, can we buy it?" Well, we're an electronics and robotics company, we're not a food company. But they kept asking, and my chef said, "Well, why can't we sell it to them?"
Well, as you know in the food business, there's a lot of difficulties getting a food company off the ground. We could no longer cook it in our break room in our kitchen, it wasn't up to all the codes, stainless steel sinks and floor drains and all of this stuff. So we rented some kitchen space and gradually got this off the ground. People that would understand this material from your dad and McDougall and Colin Campbell and all that, they very much were interested in getting this food.
We started offering two or three things a day, two or three choices a day, but gradually that grew. At some point, somebody who came to one of my talks said, "Oh, there's this recipe that you just got to try. It's from Rip's Engine 2 book and it's called the Sweet Potato Bowl." Really? What is that? Okay, so let me say a few words about sweet potatoes. Where I grew up in Iowa, we had sweet potatoes once a year. That's it, for Thanksgiving, it would be in a dish with marshmallows on top. I don't know if you've had sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, but that was the only sweet potato dish that we had. And it was kind of weird, and once a year, I didn't really get used to it.
But so here's this dish from Rip's book, sweet potatoes, mangoes. Well, that's weird. We didn't have those in Iowa, but that's a pretty good food, tasty. Bell peppers, black beans, and this dressing with a balsamic vinegar and lime. And your recipe included avocados as well, which I dearly love, but for what we're trying to do, lower fat, we don't use avocados, we just cut out the avocados. That became our most favorite dish, most ordered dish for many years. When we later added lasagna, that's kind of edged it out a little bit, but the mix of those flavors, I don't know where you came up with that, Rip, but that was inspirational. Those things go together so well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, they do. They do. And I have that dish at least once a week for sure.
John Tanner, PhD:
Nice.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, is that on your menu these days?
John Tanner, PhD:
It is. Our menu has probably 60 or 80 different dishes, but we rotate them. At any given time there's 25 to 35 choices. And so most of the time the Sweet Potato Bowl is on there, not all the time.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's the size of your team that makes Little Green Forks run?
John Tanner, PhD:
We have three cooks, chefs, one full-time and two part-time, and then one part-time person that does the management and buys the materials. And another person we hired recently puts the food in boxes. Now, this is an exciting thing and this is where it makes sense for me to talk about this on your podcast. Until recently, all that we could deliver to, this is fresh food. We make it and people eat it right away. Some things you can freeze, like the lasagna, actually the Sweet Potato Bowl, you can freeze, works pretty well, but freezing a salad and then trying to eat it later, no, and we sell a lot of salads. So we could only sell to people in the Los Angeles area, but we figured we needed to reach further.
And so we started experimenting about a year ago with putting our food in boxes with ice packs and shipping them via FedEx. We use Overnight Express, which is their most expensive part of their service, but it gets it there the next day. We had some failures at the beginning, a box of food where something would burst and you have stuff all over the inside of your box, but we beefed up our packaging, sealing things better and putting bubble wrap around. And the ice packs, we actually freeze water bottles so that after you get the ice pack, you don't throw it away, you let it melt, and then you drink it.
So after maybe six months of experimentation, we have where we think for the most part, we can get the food to people intact. There are still problems. When there's a blizzard in parts of the country and FedEx Overnight turns out takes six days to get there, and the food is gone by then. But for the most part, we can get this healthy food around the country. We did ship you a few things recently.
Rip Esselstyn:
You did.
John Tanner, PhD:
What do you think?
Rip Esselstyn:
You did. I got it two days ago and everything came perfectly intact. There was no explosions anywhere. I've already been drinking the water bottles. We loved the carrot muffins. We toasted those up in the toaster and everybody just gobbled them up, super moist, delicious. That breakfast burrito was humongous and my wife and I shared that one morning. You also gave us the barbecue chickpea salad and the Southwestern salad, my wife ate both of those for lunch, so I didn't get the sample those. The Little Green Soup, which I think is one of your favorites, and then the lasagna and the tamale pie were just killer entrees. So yeah, it was a great assortment that you sent us, a great sampling, and really appreciate it. I can't even tell you, being in the food business myself, the lift that you have made to get to where you're now shipping in all 48 states, that's pretty remarkable.
John Tanner, PhD:
We've got a couple more things that I want to share with you and your listeners. We have what we call a 30-day program. Now, the food business, as you know, is low margin. It is hard to make money, it's so easy to lose money. We don't have a lot of extra margin to play with. But for people that come to us sick with heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, and they want to quickly fix this, and if they're willing to take a set of measurements, their medical measurements beforehand, and then agree to eat nothing but Little Green Forks food for 30 days, and then take their medical measurements again and share those measurements with us, perhaps with a story that goes along with that, we're willing to give them a 10% discount for that 30 days' worth of food.
So this isn't for people who are already on board. This is for people that are really sick and they need a quick change for the publicity that we would get for that success story, we're willing to give a 10% discount on that food. So if you know anybody in that category, please send them our way.
The other thing that we've done just recently was implemented gift coupons. So you can go to our website, and in addition to ordering the Sweet Potato Bowl and the lasagna, you can also buy a gift coupon and hand it to somebody else. So if you have a loved one that you think would, you want them to live a long time and make progress in getting rid of their disease or just make it easier for them to eat healthy, please buy them a gift coupon.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's truly remarkable what you've been doing with Little Green Forks. And how long has that been around now? Over 10 years?
John Tanner, PhD:
Over 10 years, yeah. Just the last year, we've gone nationwide. But yeah. So I wonder if I could just share with you some of my numbers and my life situation now.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would love it. And then I've got a couple questions for you too. Yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
Go ahead.
John Tanner, PhD:
So before my heart attack, I was 205 pounds. I got down to 175 before the heart attack. Now I'm at 160. I'm pretty happy with that. My glucose was 111 at worst case, and just before the heart attack got to 104, it's now 79.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Tanner, PhD:
So I'm not pre-diabetic anymore. My total cholesterol at peak was 238, before my cardiac arrest, 188. It's now, last time was measured 128.
Rip Esselstyn:
And that's no statin drugs?
John Tanner, PhD:
No statin drugs, no drugs. My LDL at worst was 147, before my cardiac arrest, 113, now 65.
Rip Esselstyn:
Gorgeous. Gorgeous.
John Tanner, PhD:
So, pretty happy with that. No meds.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now let me ask you this, because a lot of physicians and cardiologists, after you have a cardiovascular event, will really almost plead you to be on some sort of statin medication. Is that because... So is Columbus your cardiologist or not?
John Tanner, PhD:
He is. And he pleaded with me, as you said, and there is some evidence that I told you that the statin drugs decrease your death rate by only 9%. That is in primary care, that's before you've had a heart attack. There is some evidence, and I've argued with Columbus, I've argued with Kim Williams about this, there is some evidence that after you've had a heart attack, that statin drugs help you a little bit more, but it's still not huge and it still comes with all these problems like cognition issues and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Brain fog. Yeah. John, let me ask you this. So everything that you've been through and everything that you know now, would you still have that original stent or no way?
John Tanner, PhD:
I think I would avoid it if I could. I went to a talk once where a guy was talking not about heart issues, but about stroke. And that's basically the same sort of a problem with your arteries in your brain, going up to your neck instead of in your heart. And they had done a study where they did, instead of when somebody had a stroke, and it's really, really important that they get to the hospital right away and they get some sort of a treatment right away if you're having a stroke, but they found that better than putting in a stint was just giving them massive blood thinners for a short time so that whatever broke loose in their artery doesn't clog up something downstream and some part of your brain dies. So it is really important to get that treatment and the drug is the right thing to do for a limited amount of time. But they found that gave the best survival rate.
Now, when it comes to heart disease, the doctors and a lot of the studies show that if you've had heart disease, you're going to probably have more heart disease. The statistics, and I was just looking this up yesterday in preparation for this, of the 3% or 4% who survive cardiac arrest, they leave the hospital and within a year, 40% of them are dead. And within two to three years, more than half of them are dead. I'm at 13 years, why? Because of the diet.
Most people that have a heart problem and need a stent or the doctors want to put a stent in, they have a problem that they're abusing the insides of their arteries because they're eating meat and dairy and oils. And most of those people will probably continue to eat meat and dairy and oil and in that case, the statin drug may help, the stent may help, but if you're somebody who's willing to make this dietary change, you don't want that stent because that stent causes problems and the drugs cause problems. So I'm not an MD, this does not consist of medical advice, but if I had a choice again, I would not get that stent.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, there's some pretty powerful studies too, and maybe you're aware of, there was one in the Lancet a couple years ago that actually showed that there was no benefit in getting a stent unless it was a lifesaving emergency situation, and in those cases, yes, but otherwise really no benefit.
Yeah, you mentioned at the top of the podcast, John, how there's about a 3% survival rate outside the hospital if you have a heart attack and you basically are flat lined, so you're breathless and pulseless. When I was a firefighter for 12 years, I probably made 100, at least 100 people who were in that state like you were, and of those 100, because when you bring somebody back to life, you get a Phoenix Award, after the phoenix has risen. And I have three of those. So of over 100, I've got three. So it's completely in alignment with that 3% survival rate.
John Tanner, PhD:
Rip, that is awesome, what you do. I went back and found the three firemen who came to save me that day. Again, I don't remember them at all because I was out, but I tracked them down and the chief, the most experienced guy said, "Yeah, a lot of firefighters in their whole career will never get a save." You got three. That's awesome.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Tanner, PhD:
And I was able to give these three guys their save. I'm happy that that happened.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, we wear those very proudly. John, it's just, to me it's really remarkable how much you've given back with your nonprofit, NuSci, with Little Green Forks, going around, sharing this message. What's driving you to do this? Is it just a simple fact that you just want to give back and you feel like you've got a second chance at life? What would you say it's about?
John Tanner, PhD:
Yeah. I just am enjoying my life so much now, maybe even a little more than before my cardiac arrest, because I realize how close I came to dying. And not only do I run 5K every day, I go skiing with my son, we go double black diamonds occasionally. I play ping pong. I play in a softball league. Not too long ago, I treated myself to a aerobatic flight. As a teen, I became a private pilot, but I haven't flown in decades and I decided, I'm going to try to do this stuff that they always told me not to do. So I got in this plane with this guy who said, "Okay, now we're going to stall it, and now we're stalled, we're going to go into a tailspin. Now we're going to dive down and do a loop and do barrel rolls." And it's like, "Oh, this is fun."
I almost didn't... And my three kids, my oldest just got engaged. I mean I almost lost this chance because nobody told me that I should be eating plants and not animals. And so that's, at the face of it it's a fairly simple thing, actually getting somebody to change their behavior, as you know, is challenging. But put the information out there. If people choose to ignore it, that's on them, but if I knew something and didn't tell somebody and then they died and I could have done something. So, I love it when somebody comes to me and says, "John, I wouldn't be alive if I hadn't learned something from you years ago." And I love that, but that isn't really what drives me.
What drives me is the people around me who die because I wasn't able to convince them, maybe I didn't even talk to them about eating plants. So anybody I talk to, sorry, this is going to come into the conversation really quickly, and my wife doesn't appreciate this in social situations. We walked up to some strangers and start talking to them, and before, I'm talking about plant-based diet and she's rolling her eyes and stuff, but how can you not? NuSci, one of the things we do a lot is give out coupons for free books. This costs thousands of dollars and why are we doing that? Well, to give out one book costs about 20 bucks. Isn't it worth 20 bucks for the potential of saving somebody's life? I think so. How can you not do that? Sorry, that's where I am.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, you've become a born again plant-based guy after 2009.
John Tanner, PhD:
For sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Through and through.
John Tanner, PhD:
For sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Through and through. Well, John, I really, really appreciate you coming on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. It's been fantastic to see you again after several years. You look remarkable. Way to walk the walk, talk the talk. You epitomize everything that is PLANTSTRONG. So thank you for that.
John Tanner, PhD:
Well Rip, I'm only here alive because of your family, your dad and you, and John McDougall, Colin Campbell, and all of those guys that if I would've come away from that cardiac arrest without getting this knowledge, the chances are extremely high that I would've died 10 years ago. So I owe it to you and I love what you're doing and the people around you are doing. I can't express that appreciation enough. So thank you, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, you're so welcome. And right back at you. All right, John, give me a fist, a PLANTSTRONG fist bump on the way out. Boom.
John Tanner, PhD:
Boom.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. I hope to see you soon.
John Tanner, PhD:
Likewise.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you, John, for the work that you're doing to educate and inspire people to eat more plants. Little Green Forks, John's meal delivery service provides whole food, plant-based, low-fat meals delivered to you if you live in the Los Angeles area or shipped directly to you throughout the continental United States. And John has been kind enough to offer PLANTSTRONG Podcast listeners an exclusive discount. Just enter the code, RIP15NEW, that's spelled R-I-P-1-5-N-E-W on your checkout for $15 off for all new customers, and we'll be sure to put a link in the show notes as well.
In the meantime, visit more of John's resources at nusci, N-U-S-C-I.org, which is packed with information and research. I want to thank y'all for listening, and keep in mind, heart disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist, especially when you keep it PLANTSTRONG. Thanks.
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori 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.
