Heart Disease Made Simple

Heart disease rarely strikes from nowhere. It brews quietly for years, injuring blood vessels until it shows up as chest pain, clots, strokes, leg cramps while walking, or erectile dysfunction. 

We unpack that bigger picture and share a practical path to protect your arteries long before emergencies happen, using the most powerful daily lever you control: what’s on your plate.

We walk through the evidence linking whole, minimally processed plant foods to lower inflammation, improved endothelial function, and reduced cardiovascular events. No silver bullets here, just beans, lentils, chickpeas, soy, nuts, seeds, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables supported by decades of cohort studies and meta‑analyses. We also get honest about the limits of procedures and pills: stents and medications save lives, but they don’t re‑engineer the environment that created plaque. Diet can, especially with an 80/20 approach that favors plants without demanding perfection.

If labels confuse you, we clear them up: vegan is an ethical stance; “plant‑based” in research means food patterns, and health outcomes depend on quality. We outline how to plan for protein, iron, calcium, vitamin D, and B12 with simple swaps like fortified soy milk and diverse legumes, and why dose matters, more whole plants usually means better biomarkers. 

You’ll hear a stepwise method to change habits with less friction, from instant oats to steel‑cut to sprouted, while your palate and microbiome recalibrate over six to eight weeks. Along the way, we connect personal choices to bigger systems, urging thoughtful policy yet focusing on the kitchen‑table decisions you control today.

If you’re ready to turn small steps into artery‑level change, subscribe, share this with someone you love, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s the one plant‑forward swap you’ll make this week?

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting  the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

Don't forget to check out my blog at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/blog 

You can also watch my educational videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpkQRXb7G-StAotV0dmahQ

Check out my upcoming live events and free eCourse, where you'll learn more about how to create delicious plant-based recipes: https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/

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Last but not least, the best way to show your support and to help me spread my message is to subscribe to my podcast and to leave a 5 star review on Apple and Spotify!
Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yo, Plan Based buddies, welcome back to season three of the podcast. This year's gonna be amazing. We'll be talking about all of the different pillars of lifestyle medicine, from nutrition to exercise to stress to sleep and everything in between. Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about cardiovascular disease. Cardio means heart, vascular means vessel. So atherosclerotic disease of the heart and of the vessels. If artery gets plugged in your heart, you have a heart attack. If it happens in your brain, it's a stroke. If it happens in your leg, it's vascular cloudication. If it happens in your penis, it's erectile dysfunction. Cardiovascular disease is the medical condition the most likely to kill you on this planet. Not cancer, not infections, not accidents, heart disease and stroke still sit at the top. Now the other day I did a conference, we had about 300 people there. I looked at everyone and said, look to your left, look to your right, one of you three will die from heart disease. And if we factor in the one out of five that will die from cancer, 50% of people will die from one of these two top killers, cardiovascular disease or cancer. And as a doctor, one of the hardest things that I have to witness is seeing people suffer from something that is so preventable. Now it's preventable through lifestyle medicine and supported by modern pharmacology when needed. It is not one or the other. It doesn't need to be pills, procedures, or lifestyle medicine. It can be all of them. When most people hear cardiovascular disease, people picture heart attacks and strokes as something sudden, like a sudden death or something dramatic, something that feels random or spontaneous. But doctors see a much broader picture. Now cardiovascular disease doesn't show up in four or five minutes. It looks like that, but it actually shows up over many years. And it shows up in many different ways. Erectile dysfunction, leg pain when you're walking, we call claudication, chest pain, exertion, exercise that we call angina. It can manifest through blood clots and embolisms. And yes, also heart attacks and strokes are top killers. For patients, these conditions they feel like different things, different symptoms, you see different specialists, you take different medications, but from a vascular perspective, zoomed out, they all share the same root cause. And that's damage to your blood vessels. And that actually surprises many people. That these events they almost never appear out of nowhere. Cardiovascular disease actually is something that builds up quietly and slowly and often over decades. Now, autopsies from World War soldiers have shown early signs of atherosclerosis when they are looked at in their early twenties. Fat builds up inside of the arteries. And these were very young men, often late teens, early twenties, getting studied by science and showing early stage cardiovascular disease in young adults. Now, studies that were done later just confirmed these same findings. And even more concerning, some studies they've identified early fatty streaks, the precursor to atherosclerosis in children. Now, these streaks, they're the first visible sign of artery damage in kids. So the whole cardiovascular disease story often doesn't begin at 60. It often starts very earlier. And it's worth talking about. In regions where diets are centered around whole plant foods, cardiovascular disease is actually rare. But modern societies that are filled with ultra-processed foods, chronic stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyles, in these societies, heart disease is one of the leading causes of death. And that contrast that we see between highly developed countries and other countries where they're just centering their diet around whole foods, that matters. It tells us that the condition is not an unavoidable part of aging or a bad hand of genetic cards. In many cases, cardiovascular disease is actually driven by what surrounds us, uh what we eat, how we move, how we sleep, and how inflamed our bodies and our arteries are year after year. Now, most medical treatments they target the effects of cardiovascular disease. In some medications, stabilize plaque, they lower risk of having further heart attacks, and they do save lives. But they don't remove plaque. In other treatments or procedures, they involve placing stents or catheters or even open heart surgery to perform bypasses. Now, these interventions, they play a critical role in acute care, they save lives, and they matter when people's lives are on the line. But they don't do anything for the environment that caused the disease to develop in the first place. And that's what leads to an important question: what if there were a better solution, an upstream approach that we could have put into place decades earlier? And we know that cardiovascular disease responds strongly to diet. Certain foods will promote inflammation and endothelial damage and dysfunction over time. But we know that whole minimally processed plant foods they actually protect blood vessels. They reduce inflammation and they support repair mechanisms that already exist inside of the arteries. Who would have known eating in a way that's in line with our physiology and biology would help arteries heal. Now, this is important because even the best medications we have cannot do this. They cannot reproduce the biological effects of food. And the scientific evidence that supports plant forward eating patterns for health and for heart health continues to grow. Now, the body of research includes many different types of high-quality studies, large cohort studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis that involve millions of people. So saying that plant-predominant diets help prevent heart disease is not a matter of opinion. It's reproducible science. And additional research linked higher intake of these foods with lower death rates. Now, legumes like beans, chickpeas, lentils, and soy products and soy foods, they show reductions in cardiovascular risk, blood pressure, obesity, and heart-related mortality. And the same thing goes for nuts and seeds, which consistently show a lower risk of heart disease, of coronary heart disease, and of mortality from stroke. Now we're not talking about magical, miracle, tropical, exotic foods here. We're talking about beans and chickpeas and lentils and nuts and seeds. Just so happens that all of these foods are rich in nutrients, in fiber, and they also support satiety, which helps you feel fuller for longer and helps regulate body weight. But the part that most people miss is you don't need to be perfect. The average Canadian gets almost 60% of their calories coming from ultra-processed foods, with about 30% coming from animal products, and 5 to 10% maybe coming from whole or minimally processed plants. An evidence-based ratio would probably be about 80% of your calories and of your plate are whole food, like whole minimally processed plants. With the other 20% being whatever you want. When you have so many plants on your plate, it makes the overall plate healthy, even if you have 20% of your calories coming from something else. Now you don't need to fully commit to a plant-based lifestyle. Just adding more whole plant foods to your plate will lead to measurable improvements. Now I wanna promote plant-based diets, and I do consume a 100% whole food plant-based diet, but you do not need the full dose to see benefit. You don't need to run marathons to be fit. Vegan tells me what you don't eat, whereas plant-based has now been hijacked by either marketing strategists or by the vegan community to describe plants in general, regardless if they're refined or not. Now, Oreos and French fry and soda can be considered plant-based, but that's not the plant-based that I'm talking about. Plant-based for me describes, and even more saying whole food plant-based describes a diet that is centered around minimally processed plant foods. Fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds, whole grains, legumes, herbs, spices, foods that grow in the ground from a tree or from a plant in a state as close to the way that Mother Nature created them. Now, when you compare healthy plant-based diets to unhealthy plant-based diets, the difference is striking. Whole food patterns always reduce risk and refined plant-based patterns increase risk. So being healthy is not about removing animal foods alone. It is not what you take away, but very often what you add on. And when 60% of your daily calories come from ultra-processed foods with 30% coming from animal products, it is not simply about removing animal products, it's about adding quality, nutrient-dense foods to your plate. So whole foods they matter more than labels. And this is why I prefer terms like plant forward or plant predominant. They kind of align better with the scientific literature. You do not need to be 100% plant-based, although I am, to be healthier. Much like many medical interventions or medications, the magic is in the dosage. Now, if you go further down that dose spectrum to higher and higher doses, meaning higher and higher percent of your daily calories coming from whole foods, medical outcomes they just get better. Now, I understand that it's not everyone's goal to eat a 100% whole food plant-based diet, and most people that are here that would cause a lot of friction with their lives. And whole food plant-based, if it's not done, planned the right way, could actually probably cause more issues than benefits. I can imagine people not hitting their protein goals. I can imagine people using a very limited or restricted diet where they don't include plant variety and they maybe get deficient on minerals like iodine and selenium and magnesium. I can also imagine someone that needs a very high dose of protein because of a medical emergency or a fracture or immobilization or recovering from surgery. Maybe in these people, we would need to increase to 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kilograms of protein per day. And for people that are feeling sick or have nausea or don't have a lot of appetite, or the elderly, this can be a challenge, even for patients that have trouble chewing. Now, but but in much in the same way, you don't need to run marathons to improve fitness, you don't need dietary perfection to support heart health. You just need a variety of whole foods and you need to pre-plan your diet. Because when in 2019 the Canadian Food Guide came out with new guidelines and remove the meat and dairy food groups, it did create some controversy. Because if people are getting most of their iron from red meat and you just take away red meat from your diet because you feel it's not healthy, you put your you set yourself up for iron deficiency. You need to plan ahead. If you're not going to get red meat as your primary source of iron, you need to find another source. And the same thing would go for dairy. There's been this movement towards reducing the amount of dairy in your diet, but people not planning to get calcium from plant sources. Now, dairy is a specifically simple uh transition because most people can just go to soy milk, which has about the same protein, has a little bit of fiber, has more unsaturated fats instead of the saturated fats seen in dairy, but it's still fortified in vitamin D and calcium and contains B12. We still need to be planning our diets if we want to make them healthier. But still, there's a lot of confusion on what a healthy diet looks like. Now, this one randomized study looked at patients with confirmed heart disease. Half of them followed a whole food plant-based diet, and half of them followed a standard heart-healthy diet. A diet that was actually in the medical guidelines. We can check that in your blood through blood tests. And in just eight weeks, the whole food plant-based group showed a meaningful reduction in inflammation. These patients already had received medical treatment, and dietary changes still produced additional benefit. And that matters because plant-based diets or plant-predominant diets, it's not the same as veganism. Veganism represents an ethical stance that's focused on reducing harms to animals. And plant-based describes a dietary pattern that's used in scientific research. And several heart-healthy dietary patterns fall under this plant-based umbrella. The Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, the portfolio diet, even Canada's food guide shifted away from meat-centered messaging towards plant-based protein sources. Now, regardless if you have different cultures or different cuisines or different countries, the same common themes and the same underlying principles guide and determine whether or not these dyes are going to be healthy or not. And if you center your meals around whole, minimally processed plant foods, regardless if you call it a Mediterranean, a dash, or a portfolio diet, these diets improve cardiovascular disease risk. It's because they contain fruits, veggies, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices. And these foods, they reduce inflammation, they support vascular health, and they reduce your risk of future cardiovascular events. People don't need to be extreme if they don't want to be extreme. If we're talking about health here, it's simple. Start by adding more plants to what you already eat. And over time, these foods are going to crowd out the less healthy choices. Small steps that are repeated consistently, they will reshape your biology. Now, I transitioned over about a 12 to 18 month period. At the beginning, it was really my help that was shaping my journey and pushing me towards plant predominance. Slowly but surely, every single month, I had one pre-planned behavior. Now I teach behavior change science, and I love the science surrounding how people, what makes people tick and how people change, right? So I did do my fair share of research when I decided to transition towards a whole food plant-based diet. I just divided different types of behaviors according to the friction that they would cause in my life, almost like putting them or prioritizing them in terms of difficulty level. So I had a box where I had all of the low friction behaviors, some that were medium friction, and some that were high friction. So for example, switching from processed cereal to oatmeal every morning was for me a simple choice. At the beginning, I was eating instant oats, like the Quaker oats that like cinnamon spice or whatever, they're full of sugar and they're not the best. But for me, they were transitioning towards a stepping stone food that was healthy than the food before. Remember, what determines a food's healthfulness is what it replaces, right? So if you, for example, go from eating bacon to eating chicken, you're probably gonna experience an improvement in health. And if you go from chicken To eating low low-fat dairy or eating eggs, that's probably gonna improve your health as well. But if you go from eating eggs and you go to eating beans and soy products, that's gonna probably even be better. So but so if you go in the opposite direction, if you go from eating a wide variety of whole plants and switch towards more dairy and eggs, metabolic parameters may actually worsen. So the most important thing is simply transitioning. For example, after a few months of eating that highly processed packaged oats, I switched towards whole oats and then rolled oats and then steel-cut oats, and now I eat sprouted oats because that's what I like the most, and that's what kind of fits in my routine. At the beginning that I was eating uh sprouted oats, I still needed a little bit of maple syrup, but over time I just wanted to get rid of excess calories coming from foods that are low in nutrient density. Someone could say, Well, I really like maple syrup, so I really it can fit in my diet. It absolutely can, and I still use maple syrup here and there when I want extra calories after a workout or in preparation for a run later that day. Food can be fuel, it can be emotional comfort, it can be culture, it can be taste. It's okay to enjoy the foods that you want to eat every day, but you also must understand that ultra-processed foods in the modern world have been scientifically created to hijack your senses and to make you overeat nutrient-poor foods. And if you go too quickly, it'll create friction. It'll create friction with your social life, with your taste buds. Some people report not sleeping well when they changed their diet too quickly. So I transitioned over almost a year to a year and a half, making small incremental changes that added up over time. And yes, I did start with highly processed oats, but I ended up with whole sprouted oats where I sprinkle hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds. I put granola, I I cook it in soy milk and use spices and cinnamon to make it healthier. I have a ton of berries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries and strawberries and bananas that I cut into it. Don't you don't need to do it all at once. You just need to start, and maybe at the beginning you'll sprinkle three blueberries in it, and maybe in a year or two from now, you'll be eating a half cup of blueberries, adjusting the portions of the other foods that you combine with it. I'm on year 12 or 13 of this journey of eating an evidence-based, whole food, plant-based diet. And I've never felt better. And I enjoy eating. I enjoy eating this way. People need to understand that when you first transition, it's normal that berries don't taste sweet. When your diet has been centered around 60% of your calories that are ultra-processed and pre-digested and scientifically engineered to taste that way, right? So give your taste buds typically about six to eight weeks as so your microbiome adjusts, your taste buds adjust, and your expectations adjust. No one is going to switch from a highly processed diet to eating fruits and veggies and just love it. Some people can willpower it out for six to eight weeks until these shifts in your biology occur. But for most people, willpower is a finite resource. Now, if you find inspiration anywhere in this podcast or in a post, or sometimes people find it in very dark places, like the passing of a dear family member or friend that got diagnosed with a condition that you want to avoid. For some people, this creates an induction phase or honeymoon phase where willpower is so strong and the external motivator is so strong that people can absolutely change quickly. Then the benefits appear and they self-sustain. Some people have aha moments, some people shift because of external things that just trigger that change, and other people just kind of reflect on it and that conviction that changing will benefit them. It just appears slowly but surely over time. Whatever fuels your desire to change, just know that it's worth it. No one has ever gotten healthier and regretted it. Your brain chemistry changes, your taste bud change, your microbiome changes, your values change, and your appreciation for living a life where your behaviors are aligned with your values is that probably could be a seventh pillar of health. Definitely reduces stress, helps one sleep better at night, and connect with the future person that you project yourself to be. And this over the last 10 years has helped me get surrounded with people that are on the same wavelength as I am. It's helped me fuel a journey where my following has opened doors for me. And in a few months from now, we'll be starting the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic and Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum, where I'll be the director, surrounded by an amazing group of doctors who believe in the mission that healthcare has become so great at zooming in and seeing microscopic biochemical reactions happen, but has forgotten to zoom out and realize that our environments are making us sick. Our policies are making us sick, and that people have stopped taking accountability or have stopped caring about health. Our environments are constantly nudging us towards the convenient and unhealthy choices. And if we really want change to happen, it needs to happen on multiple levels. Not just you, the listener, listening to this podcast, it's not just about you taking hold of your health, it's also about changing policy and changing our communities and our environments and how people we can legislate health into our daily lives. But unfortunately, before that happens, there's only you. Keep asking yourself if your behaviors and your values align. Keep projecting yourself into the past, thinking on whether or not your younger self would be in the shoes you are today, or projecting yourself in the future, seeing if your current life, your current behaviors, are putting you on a path to live the future life that you hope to live, free of chronic disease and suffering. Right on. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks for being here. Thanks for caring and sharing my content. Thanks for putting yourself first. 31 minutes of podcasts is longer than I typically go. But this subject and top killers that are completely preventable really impacts me deeply seeing these patients suffer on a daily basis in the clinic with things that we could have absolutely intervened decades earlier. Right on. Well, thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. We'll see you at the next episode.

unknown 31:32

Peace!

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Hey everyone, go check out my website, plantbasedrjewels.com, to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr. Jewels Cormier and on YouTube at Plantbase Dr. Jewels.