The Aftermath. What to do?

The events referred to in my previous blogs transpired some two and a half years ago now. Happily, for me at least, I have survived this initial stage and even find myself in reasonably good health at the time of writing. Unfortunately, a fair percentage of heart attack victims never make it this far, particularly those who choose to continue the lifestyle that was, to a certain extent at least, responsible for them suffering a heart attack in the first place. Factors such as smoking, drinking to excess, lack of exercise and stressful lifestyles are obvious enough but perhaps the biggest single change that people such as I need to consider is their diet.

My own personal history in this matter seemed, at the surface level at least, to be relatively good. I had been a vegetarian for 27 years, had only smoked during my distant youth and I barely drank alcohol, only indulging in the odd glass of wine or beer once or twice a month. Unfortunately, all was not as it seemed though. My diet, although lacking meat and many of the problems related to the ingestion of it, was still not good. I had an ongoing weakness for cakes, biscuits and many other mass-produced, high in sugar, confections. Added to this, I had also spent many years in a high stress occupation that necessitated working long hours on shifts, often having to work with some degree of intensity late at night. During that period of my life I faced several health challenges and although that was long in my past now the ongoing effects were not so easily eradicated.

So it was that I found myself in middle age having to deal with the reality of suffering a heart attack and the somewhat disconcerting feeling that it could all so easily happen again. I had thought that the current, relatively low stress lifestyle that I adopted at the time would protect me. My exercise options were somewhat more limited than most due to the impact of a long-term back injury but I still managed to swim three times a week. The heart attack had proved me wrong though. Whatever it was that I was doing it was clearly not working. At this stage I have to admit to a certain feeling of helplessness, of being a passive victim of circumstances. This was not a good feeling...

The after-care advice that I received from my health provider basically told me to do all the things I had previously been doing anyway: exercise, avoid fast food, de-stress, don't smoke. There seemed also to be an unwritten and unspoken assumption in all this too, a sense that all a patient could do was forestall the inevitable, to put the dreaded event back in time but not to heal, not to actually get permanently better.

So it was that I found myself feeling like a ship without a rudder, sailing to who knows where but with the certainty that eventually it would not be a good place. I recalled from my earlier studies in psychology a group of experiments conducted by Martin Seligman into learned helplessness. Basically the results of these were that when you put an animal into a no-win situation it acquired a habit of not looking for other options even when these were in fact open to it. The animal 'learned' to be helpless. This now felt much like the situation I found myself in.

This continued for some months after the initial heart attack. There was a certain wariness to everything I was doing, as if I was at some level expecting another 'event' at some stage. When and how it would happen I had no idea, but there was a persistent feeling of inevitability that tended to take much of the fun out of life. The feeling of no longer being in control, of no longer having choice, is not a good one in this situation.

During this time of drift, through sheer serendipity, and through a mutual interest in psyhology, I had met a certain Russell Monsurate on Facebook. His posts interested me and he seemed to have a very positive attitude to life in general, which I greatly appreciated at this stage. In particular, he often seemed to post articles relating to cardiac health. It was one of these that was to change both my psychological and, if my current well-being is anything to go by, my physiological state. 

The article itself referred to the changes in former president of the US Bill Clinton. This piece originally caught my attention as I had long been an admirer, although not an entirely uncritical one. Despite his shortcomings, one always had a feeling that his heart was in the right place, even when that heart appeared to be ailing as he reached his fifties.

At the age of fifty eight Bill Clinton had undergone a bypass procedure. Such drastic occurrences in one's life do tend to focus one's attention. In Bill Clinton's case, despite making some changes, he did not fundamentally address the problem of his famously indulgent diet. The former president had always been known for his appetite and, despite the warning, his excesses in this area still remained relatively uncurbed. Three years later he suffered another 'event', this time calling for the insertion of a couple of stents.

At this stage his former medical adviser, Dean Ornish, wrote a letter to Clinton pointing out the inevitable result of continuing down the path he was taking and a way that he could, with patience and persistence, avoid this apparent inevitability. What Ornish suggested was a drastic change of diet. He advised the avoidance of meat, fish, dairy products and any processed so-called 'fast foods'. He also advised a minimal reliance on oils.

Ornish's view was further supported by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Clinton reviewed the evidence and his own parlous state of being and decided that he needed to take the plunge. What followed was an immediate improvement in the state of his health. He began to lose weight, going down some 20 lbs in the first year alone. Blood tests started to show, and continued to show, a great improvement in all the classic markers related to coronary health. The former president, on seeing the obvious success of the diet in his own case, became not only a follower but a keen advocate of this vegan, plant-based diet.

From my personal point of view, if Dr. Esselstyn's book was to be believed, the really good news in all this was that cardiac problems of this sort could not only be slowed down but the process can actually be reversed. It seems that the body's remarkable ability to heal itself applies to this area too. Not that surprising really, but having subconsciously assimilated the assumptions of many in this area, I had believed that all that was left to me was delaying the inevitable. Now, for the first time, I realised that one has a lot more choice, a lot more control than that. One can not only slow down the progress of heart disease but, if one remains disciplined, one can actually reverse the process.

 This was good news indeed.