This winter we farmers have been reading a book with a catchy title: How Not to Die, by Michael Greger, M.D. This excerpt from the Preface shows why the book captured our imagination:
“It all started with my grandmother.
I was only a kid when the doctors sent her home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she had already had so many bypass operations that the surgeons essentially ran out of plumbing… there was nothing else they could do. Her life was over at sixty-five.
Soon after she was discharged from the hospital to spend her last days at home, a segment aired on 60 Minutes about Nathan Pritikin, an early lifestyle medicine pioneer who had been gaining a reputation for reversing terminal heart disease. He had just opened a new center in California, and my grandmother, in desperation, somehow made the cross-country trek to become one of his first patients….
My grandma was described as one of the ‘death’s door people’:
‘Frances Greger, from North Miami, Florida, arrived … in a wheelchair. Mrs. Greger had heart disease, angina, and claudication; her condition was so bad she could no longer walk without great pain in her chest and legs. Within three weeks, though, she was not only out of her wheelchair, but was walking ten miles a day.'”
From wheelchair-bound to ten miles a day in three weeks? What miracle drug was responsible for that?
A whole-food, plant-based diet.
Some of us have decided to eat that way for a while and record our experience here. We invite you to follow along — or better yet: join in! Add your comments to these posts, or email us at CSA@greatcountryfarms.com, and we’ll post your experiences. With a CSA membership, you’re already half-way there.
