The Banfield Talk

Vegetarian Artery

The Heart and the Coronary Arteries

Angina Artery

Ladies and Gentlemen
My name is Max Banfield

My talk is scripted with a brief introduction followed by some repetition in more detail and will go for approximately 40 minutes, leaving 20 minutes available for questions, so if you have any questions please save them until after I have finished and I will be happy to answer them, except if you need me to speak louder please raise your hand.

By way of introduction it is relevant for me to tell you that I have had cancer and heart disease, and will briefly discuss my attempts to cure cancer, before describing my attempt to cure angina, which is, as you know, a form of coronary heart disease. The comparison between treating cancer and heart disease will illustrate my methods of treating health problems more clearly.
In 1994 I had a series of medical tests which indicated the presence of cancer in my blood and bone marrow, and in many of the lymph glands in my chest and abdomen which were close to vital arteries, and near my heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver.
After a small biopsy operation to remove one of the glands a specialist told me that cancer was confirmed in the tissue sample, so I asked him not to be vague about my diagnosis but to be frank with me and he was. He told me that I had a life expectancy of two months, and that I should not have any false hopes of a cure, as there wasn’t one, and that I should tidy up my financial affairs, which I interpreted as advice to bring my will up to date as soon as possible.

However I was still alive two months later and a few more years went by when a small lump began growing on the outside of my neck until it was the size of a golf ball, and I knew that I could start experimenting with alternative treatments by using the size of the lump as a monitoring guide. If I started the treatment and the lump got smaller then the treatment was working, and I would keep going until I achieved a complete cure, and if the lump got larger the diet wasn’t curing it, and I would stop starving myself unnecessarily. I estimated that if the external lump disappeared, then all the internal lumps would as well.

I started experimenting with the Bruess diet on the understanding that it probably wouldn’t do me any harm and might be successful. The diet involved starving the cancer to death by not eating any solid food for six weeks and consuming only a commercially promoted nutrient rich fruit juice.
The idea was that the cancer was weaker than the human body and would die of starvation first, and then I would be able to resume eating and my body would recover without the cancer in it.

After 4 weeks without solid food I was beginning to lose strength, and the lump on my neck was the same size as it was when I started so I abandoned the diet and brought some food and ate it. Unfortunately I was so hungry that I ate my first meal ravenously and got food poisoning and couldn’t eat anything for another week because of nausea and vomiting. Consequently I went without solid food for a total of five weeks but that did not affect the size of the lump in my neck. I concluded that the diet was a unsuccessful.

About two years later the cancerous lump eventually began to grow again very gradually until it was the size of a hens egg and had to be removed by surgery and chemotherapy, and then another lump, about the size of an orange, began blocking my left kidney, and although it wasn’t producing any obvious symptoms it was evident on a CAT scan 18 months later, and was eventually cured by more surgery, chemotherapy, and a stem cell transplant in the year 2000.
That unsuccessful experience with the cancer diet was in contrast to my experience with the angina diet in 1997 (9 years ago). I was getting chest pains every 50 yards as I walked along the street and within three months it was occurring every 10 yards, so I consulted my doctor who diagnosed progressive angina and referred me to a heart specialist who advised me to have a coronary bypass operation as soon as possible and that it could be arranged in two weeks.

I then read a book about Nathan Pritikan who used a vegetarian diet to cure his heart disease and decided to try it with the view that I could use the frequency of pain as a means of monitoring the effectiveness of the treatment, and informed the surgeon that if the pains continued to occur more frequently I would return to see him and have the bypass operation, but if the pains became less frequent I would keep on the diet until I was completely cured.

I am happy to report that the pains did become less frequent and ceased to be a problem after six months and it was not necessary to have the bypass surgery, and I have not taken any medication or had any symptoms in the nine years since.
I will now describe how I achieved those results but before I do I would like you to clearly understand that I do not have any medical qualifications, and that I applied the diet in cooperation with my doctor who diagnosed the condition and provided medication in the early stages, and monitored the condition of my heart, my blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, which provided additional guides to the progress that I was making.
I determined that if the diet was working my cholesterol levels would be going down, and if that was so, then my arteries would stop blocking up and start unblocking. The blood tests confirmed that my cholesterol level was reducing, and that took some of the guesswork and doubt out of what I was doing.
I therefore recommend that any decisions you make are first discussed with your doctor and that, if you proceed, you do so with their cooperation, as the methods which I discuss may not be suitable for everyone. Your particular condition, your confidence in the ideas, and your willingness to read further information about the Pritikin diet, and to apply a disciplined approach to the diet, will influence your success in using it.
Various coronary artery operations are viable treatments which successfully treat the problem in most cases and may be more suitable in your case.
I will now begin my talk in more detail, and hope that you overlook any repetition from this introduction.

In January 1997 when the heart specialist advised me to have bypass surgery I thanked him for his advice and replied that I would consider it and let him know my decision in a further appointment which was arranged about a week later.

However, in addition to the surgeons advice I had to consider the fact that I have had many illnesses and operations and found that my experience with surgery often involves an overlap of those other illnesses and the one being treated and it commonly results in a clash of problems which lead to post operative complications which are more of a problem than the ailment being treated, and often involve lengthy periods of recovery. I therefore wanted to investigate the alternatives before committing myself to another operation.

When I arrived home I searched through my bookshelves until I found a book about the Pritikan Diet which was a type of vegetarian diet which Nathan Pritikan used successfully to treat his own heart disease.

After reading that book I had four good statistical reasons for making a decision to proceed with that approach to the problem
Firstly, the amount of research material presented in the book was extensive and convincing.

Secondly Nathan Pritikin was diagnosed with heart disease in his forties, and he died of a heart attack in his seventies, which meant that the diet kept him alive for more than 20 years.

This needs to be compared to the results of bypass surgery at that time in which it was regarded as being successful if the patient lived for only five years. His diet enabled him to live four times longer than the conventional treatment of that era. (of course I presume that nowadays the surgical results are somewhat better, but 20 years additional life from a diet treatment seemed good enought for me).

Thirdly I knew from my previous studies of health patterns (epidemiology) that nineteenth century explorers who travelled to Southern Africa and examined the health of the primitive vegetarian tribespeople, noted that they could not find any evidence of heart disease in either the young or old members of those tribes. i.e. heart disease did not exist there, which meant that the incidence of heart disease was zero. By contrast I knew that studies of civilised people living in the Western world in the 1950’s revealed that 50% of the population over the age of 50 had some degree of heart disease.
Fourthly in modern society there are groups of people who live on very characteristic diets who have been statistically studied, such as religious groups like the Mormons or the Seventh Day Adventists who adhere to various types of vegetarian diets. They all have a lower incidence of heart disease and live longer than the general population who eat standard modern highly processed foods. More significantly some vegetarian diets include meats such as chicken and fish, others include milk, cheese, and eggs, and some are strictly vegetable, fruit, nuts, and grains only. Those who eat the most pure vegetarian diet live the longest and have the lowest incidence of heart disease, which gives a good indication that diet is probably the major difference between people who have heart disease and those who don’t.

I also found it interesting to find that in times of war or famine the incidence of heart disease drops, and it was suggested that during war the general population are put on rations and meat was a rarer commodity and too expensive to buy, so they ate more of the cheaper vegetable products, and in famine the lack of food equates with the lack of fat in the diet. More relevently, when people lose fat in their diet, they lose fat in their body and hence lose weight, but they also lose fat in their arteries.

After drawing my conclusion about the statistical evidence I wanted to know how modern diets were causing heart disease.
I then found that the heart muscle needs oxygen enriched blood to supply it with oxygen which is the fuel that makes it beat. That blood is supplied by arteries which run along the outside of the heart and are called the coronary arteries. The heart is about the size of a fist and it’s arteries run along the outside like the blood vessesl of the fist, and form a pattern which resembles a crown which is why they are called coronary arteries.

Those arteries are depicted in the diagram on the top of this webpage.

The arteries can be compared to water pipes except that the outer rim is made of muscle instead of galvanized iron, and they become blocked by layers of cholesterol instead of layers of metal oxides, rust, and dirt.

The diagrams on the left show the arteries of vegetarians which are as clean when the person is 40 years old as they were when they were 10 or 20. However the diagram on the right shows the arteries of people who live on modern standard diets of packaged or processed foods, and as they grow older a layer of cholesterol is deposited on the walls and continues to build up each decade until, quite commonly, they are so congested that the symptoms of angina or heart attack occur when they are 40 or 50.

The arteries can also be compared with drinking straws, and if water is poured through them it moves cleanly and swiftly. However if honey is poured through them it is sticky and some of it drags on the wall and sticks to it as it passes. Similarly vegetarian blood is clean and passes through arteries cleanly, whereas cholesterol laden blood can be compared to honey in so far as some of it is deposited on the walls of arteries.
By the time a person is 10 years old there may be some mild build up of sludge on the walls, and by the time they are twenty the layer may be thicker, and by 30 the layers may be thicker and the amount of blood flowing through the coronary arteries is significantly reduced, but there is still enough oxygen rich blood getting through to allow for daily living, or even sport – therefore there are no symptoms to indicate that the narrowing exists.
However by the time some people are 40 years old the lining on the wall may be so thick that there is only a small channel in the middle, and although there may be enough blood passing through for the heart muscle to function at rest, the extra requirements for effort are not met and the person may get a squeezing sensation behind their breastbone occurring approximately every 100 yards as they walk along the street. That symptom occurring in that manner is called “Angina of Effort”, and is the most common form of heart disease. However some people describe it as a pressing pain, a crushing pain, or as a vice like pain, and it may be confined to the chest or it may radiate to the throat, shoulder, elbow or hand and be mistaken for a heart attack because the symptoms are often so similar as to be indistinguishable.

In my case the only symptom I ever got was a squeezing sensation behind my breastbone and it occurred almost exclusively when I was walking. Initially it came on when I walked to the letter box and got halfway across the lawn and had to stop. After that, it happened about every 50 -100 yards. If I stopped walking and stood still for a minute or two the symptom would ease and I could walk another 100 yards, but if I tried to ignore the symptom and keep walking another step the pain would get tighter, and it would be impossible to take a third step because the symptom gave the impression of being serious as if preceding collapse.

Examples of the types of factors which contributed to the symptoms were walking up hills, or carrying heavy groceries, or walking against head winds which would make the symptom occur at shorter distances and therefore more frequently. I developed the practice of zig zagging up slightly inclined 10 foot high hills because I was unable to go straight up and over (For example I would walk on a slight angle for 10 yards to my left and stop, and then walk 10 yards to my right and stop, and then turn again and keep going until I reached the top of the hill – this meant that I had to zig-zag 30 or more yards instead of going straight up for 10 yards. Ultimately I found it difficult to cross roads because the centre is higher than the gutters at the edge to allow for rainfall runoff. I would get the squeezing pain before reaching the centre of the road. I would also have to check for traffic and make sure that there were no cars speeding around the corner 100 yards away because on a previous occasion I had to rush to avoid traffic and rushing intensified the ache and stopped me in my tracks. ( I had to stand still in the centre of the road or walk at a measured pace, and this angered the drivers who didn’t understand why I continued to walk slowly instead of hurrying to get out of their way). Also by the second month I was getting symptoms every 25 yards, and by the third month every 10 yards.

Sometimes if I walked for more than 15 minutes at a brisk pace the symptoms would cease and I could then walk without problems for 2 hours at a time, but this was because exercise can temporarily dilate the arteries and provide temporary relief, and it is a well known feature of angina. However by the third month the distance I could travel without symptoms was significantly reduced and the benefits of exercise no longer occurred and I would have to stop 30 times in a journey which I previously stopped only 3 times.

I was a virtual cripple, and getting worse and thought that it would not be long before I started getting chest pains while sitting in a lounge chair, so I consulted my doctor who diagnosed angina and prescribed a drug called Noten. That drug is an artery dilator which had the effect of reducing the frequency and intensity of the squeezing pain and reducing it to more of a sense of uneasiness in my chest. It was described to me as a treatment, not a cure, because taking it won’t unblock the arteries. The doctor then referred me to the heart specialist who confirmed the diagnosis.
When I first had the symptom it occurred every 50 to 100 yards as I walked, and a month later, every 25 yards, and by the third month, every 10 yards. I therefore reasoned that my arteries were becoming narrower. Therefore I could monitor the effectiveness of the diet, and if my capacity to walk without symptoms increased over a period of weeks or months that would indicate that I was effectively cleaning out my arteries and was on my way to a complete cure. (i.e. the fatty blood of my former diet was leaving a deposit on my artery walls and blocking them, and the clean blood of my vegetarian diet would be sweeping it away and clearing them out.)

There were risks ofcourse because if the diet failed the arteries could continue to silt up resulting in worsening symptoms, or blood clots could form and block an artery which could increase the possibility of a heart attack. In some cases those problems can be treated with blood thinning drugs which dissolve the clot, or a blood vessel from the leg can be used to bypass the blockage, or a small thin hollow inner tube can be inserted into the artery to push through the blockage.

With that knowledge I was then in a position to make a decision about which course of action to take and I had three choices.
Firstly I could have chosen to do nothing, but that was not an option for me considering the worsening nature of the condition.
Secondly, I could have the bypass surgery, but I wanted to avoid any possible post operative complications related to my other health problems.
Thirdly, I could adopt the dietary method of treating the problem.
All of those options presented risks but I had to choose one, and with the objective of minimising the risks in relation to my particular health history, I chose the dietary approach.

I then advised the heart surgeon of my decision and that, if the symptoms became less frequent until they were non-existant I would not need to see him again, but if they continued to become more frequent I could then accept the necessity of surgery. He agreed with that approach with some reservations. Plan A was the diet, Plan B was surgery, if the diet failed.

Having made that decision I then needed a method of approach which gave me the best possible chances of success.
I reasoned that several decades of cholesterol might be solidly adheres to my artery walls and be difficult to remove, but the recent commencement of pain and its increasing frequency might be due to freshly and loosely deposited layers of cholesterol which would possibly be just as quickly washed away by clean vegetarian blood, and hence bring about just as quick a cure (i.e. in three months). In that regard, considering the seriousness of the situation, I set the goal of getting my blood as clean as possible and soon as possible, and started immediately.
I therefore decided to abandon the modern diet, and go beyond the religious diets. This left only the nineteenth century native African tribespeople diet where the incidence of heart disease was zero.

Unfortunately I could not afford the airfare to Africa.

I therefore considered the difference between the food they ate, and modern food, and drew the following conclusions.

The native Africans only had access to berries which grew on bushes, fruits which grew on trees, and vegetables and crops which grew in the ground.
By contrast modern food came in boxes, bottles, cans, and plastic packets, and were mass produced and flavourised and preserved with fats, sugars, pesticides and other material which contributed to heart disease.

I therefore decided to remove all of the foods from my fridge and cupboards which were in boxes or bottles, plastic tubs, tins, or packets, and to make the task easier I brought the rubbish bin into the kitchen.

I opened the fridge and removed the sauce bottle, the bottle of icecream topping, the carton of milk, some eggs, a packet of cheese, two tubs of margarine, a bottle of cordial and soft drink, and several stubbies of beer, leaving some for my visitors. I then opened the freezer and removed the steaks, the liver, the kidneys, the bread, the icecream, etc. I then opened the cupboard and removed a packet of tea, a bottle of coffee, and a plastic bottle of vegetable oil etc.

After I finished this task my rubbish bin was full, and all I had left in the fridge was an apple, and all I had left in the cupboard was some rice, some pearl barley, and some oats.

I then cooked some rice and ate it with diced apple. That was my first vegetarian meal.

My cupboard was then virtually bare so I had to go to the shops to get the appropriate foods that I needed, and as I had been unable to walk the 600 yard distance for the past weeks, I drove my car.

I went to the green grocers and bought anything that was fruit or vegetable and brought it home.

It is necessary for me at this stage to say that I could not follow the African diet precisely because I couldn’t go to Africa, and I couldn’t follow the Pritikin Diet precisely either, because I had other health problems which were aggravated by eating soya beans which is the chief source of protein in the no-meat Pritikin diet. The normal modern diet includes a lot of meat which is a good source of protein but I couldn’t eat that. I therefore tried to get enough protein by eating a lot of rice. I understood that some Chinese live long healthy lives with rice as their staple foodstuff, so it would probably keep me alive until I found something better. I had to make an instant decision and didn’t wish to waste time on minor matters. (I could include other sources of protein and iron at a later stage if that became known to me).

The distinguishing features of the diet that I applied is the prominence of rice instead of soya beans.

Also, three months later I became washed out and pale and decided to include cold water fish, which I learned reduces cholesterol, and kangaroo meat, which I found had no cholesterol in it. I also asked the local baker to make me some wheat based wholemeal bread without using any fat in the ingredients, and a few days later I was provided with six loaves of bread which were approximately half the size of normal loaves and quite firm in their texture. Those features are different from the Pritikin Diet and were designed to suit my interpretation and health requirements.

I am not a good cook and do not read recipe books and have not written one but I proceeded to combine the foods that I bought in a way that was as practical and tasty as possible

Anyone can combine any of the appropriate foodstuffs together in any way they want but I can give an example of my daily intake
For breakfast I had rice and diced apple and pear or banana and or strawberries
For lunch I had salad consisting of diced lettuce, tomato, celery, shredded carrot, beetroot and perhaps a small amount of diced apple or pear, and a small serving of rice

For tea I had boiled or steamed potato carrot, spinach, mushroom, pearl barley, and pumpkin, I drank the liquid as soup and then ate the vegetables.
I sometimes had cooked oats with fruit for breakfast or as a snack or supper. (I noticed that when I was only eating vegetables I was always hungrier than I had ever been before starting the diet, so I had a lot of fruit or rice for snacks in between meals).

Also after 2 or 3 months I started drinking a small glass of pure apple and pear juice with my breakfast, and added some of the juice to my servings of oats or rice.

At the same time as starting the new diet I began to monitor the distance that I could walk without developing symptoms.

In that respect I had become aware of the seriousness of my condition and of the possibility that vigourous effort might lead to a heart attack, so I decided to proceed with due care, and in particular that I would try and walk as far as possible but stop before the squeezing pain occurred. This was possible because that pain was preceded by a lesser sensation in my chest which I used as the indicator for being the time to stop and rest.
The following account is an approximate estimate of what I did as far as I can recall from memory and it will serve as an example.

On the first day I walked around the lounge room, and then went out and walked a distance of about twenty yards along the path in front of my flat. My objective was to assess my capacity to walk distances conservatively and to gradually increase the distance if there were no problems.
On the second day I walked the same distance in the morning, and in the afternoon I walked twice the distance
By the end of the week I had established that I could walk slowly and carefully along the path around the lawn which would have been a distance of about 100 yards, and I would travel it once in the morning and twice in the afternoon.

During the second week I started walking about 100 yards along the street (which was flat) and by the end of the week could go for 200 yards.
By the third week I could get to the end of the street and turn left and walk to the next street, and of course the distance back was the same if I turned around or kept going, so for the first time I walked around the street block, probably six to eight hundred yards.

By the end of the month the improvement in my health was not obvious enough for me to know if I was travelling further distances because I was getting physically better, or if it was because of the drug Noten which was artificially dilating my arteries, or if it was because I walking more slowly and carefully, or simply because I was gaining confidence in my ability to walk the distance, or more likely if it was due to a combination of all of those factors.

However by the end of the second month it was obvious that my health was improving and I started walking along flat paths in the side streets.
I then started walking twenty yards along paths in downhill sidestreets and had to be careful getting back up along the path to home. Ultimately I was walking fifty yards and then one hundred yards downhill and back, until I could walk all the way down to the shops and back. I then started carrying groceries up the hill.

After three months on the diet I had lost twelve kilograms in weight and noticed that my pot belly had gone. I previously thought that the pot belly was just a normal feature of a person of my age and that I would have to look like that for the rest of my life.

In addition to losing weight I was looking pale, which I assumed was related to the lack of meat in my diet and that it was a consequence of the lack of protein and iron in vegetables as compared to meat.

Therefore, as mentioned earlier, I introduced cold water fish, and kangaroo meat to my diet. I learned that eating cold water fish reduced cholesterol, and kangaroo meat has no cholesterol in it, which meant that I could eat such things without compromising the objectives of lowering my blood cholesterol levels to clean out my arteries.

I included fish or roo meat with my evening meals with the vegetables three or four times a week.

I expected to continue losing weight but it actually stabilised, and I also noted the general observation in the literature that all vegetarians are lean.

It may also be of interest to some people to know that I also experienced vaguer chest symptoms in relation to some emotions, so I developed some quick methods of dealing with them.

For example when I was listening to talk back radio shows, some of the comments made by the announcers were designed to shock and to be provocative and extreme in order to create interest in the show and bolster the stations ratings, but such comments often caused me to become angry which made me feel uneasy in the chest, so I solved that problem by changing the channels and turning the radio to easy listening music shows.

I also used to watch AFL football matches when the Crows were in the habit of being six goals up at three quarter time and then getting goals kicked against them in the last quarter until they were only 5 points up and being beaten in the last minutes of the game. The excitement of those close finishes caused chest sensations so I turned the TV off 5 minutes before the end of the game, and then turned it on again 15 minutes later to hear the final score.
Six months after starting the diet and the progressive exercise regime the improvement in my health was very obvious and I was confident enough to stop taking the drug called Noten. I think I reduced it to half a tablet initially, and stopped taking it altogether about a week or two later, and as the symptoms of angina did not return I considered that I was cured of the worst of it.

I then began gradually resuming my normal daily activities, but always monitoring my health and careful not to do anything too vigorous.
I was still being cautious about exercise a year later, but after two years I had forgotten that I ever had angina when one day I suddenly remembered and so I presume the symptoms ceased to be a problem between the first and second year.

I had been having my blood cholesterol level checked and at one stage it was in the lowest one percent of the population.
However some years after recovering from the angina I wasn’t getting problems with symptoms so I became a bit more liberal with my diet and occasionally had biscuits, cakes or chocolates or pizzas etc., and I started drinking coffee again. I also had red wine which I tried to restrict to one or two glasses a day because small amounts of red wine are associated with good cardiac health, but too much alcohol is harmful.(the ol at the end of the word alcohol refers to oil, which is liquid fat). I also included skinless chicken breast in my diet, and had roasts with all visible fat removed and I cleaned away any gravy which came with the meat, and I removed most of the mayonnaise from the salad bar foods.

When I next had my cholesterol checked it was at normal levels, but for a person with a history of angina it is better to be much lower than normal so my doctor prescribed a cholesterol lowering drug called Lipitor. I took it for a few months but soon started getting dry mucous membranes in my nose and mouth and it seemed to be a side-effect so I stopped taking the drug.

I am still predominantly vegetarian. and am still alive 9 years after being diagnosed with angina, but because of the success of the diet, I have not had to return to the heart specialist, and I have not had a bypass operation, and I am not taking any medication..

As an example of my change in diet I can recall that prior to the diagnosis of angina I was eating two loaves of high fibre wholemeal bread per week and I ate each slice with a spread of margarine to improve the taste. I was therefore also consuming up to two 500 gram tubs of margarine per week, or fifty kilograms of margarine per year. Nowadays I eat about 1 loaf of wholemeal bread per week and eat it without margarine. In fact I estimate that in the past nine years I have only purchased two small 250 gram tubs of margarine in that entire time, and do not have any intention of purchasing any again, although I occasionally have bread and butter if I eat out at restaurants. (i.e my margarine consumptom has gone from 50 kilograms per year, to 50 grams per year, or one thousandth of my previous consumption.

My comments in this talk in relation to diet and distances travelled are only approximates and are based on general memory and not on notes because I did not use a tape measure or keep a diary, but the principles which I applied to the treatment have been fairly represented. This will serve to support the results of the Nathan Pritikin Diet, where, from what I have read, better results were sometimes achieved more quickly. Similarly a reading of the Nathan Pritikan results will serve to support my comments about the success and credibility of my experience.

I am not the only person in the world to have treated the problem in this general manner. Millions of people have read about the Pritikin Diet and applied its principles successfully.

I will now answer questions for 10 minutes.