Caldwell B. Esselstyn JR., MD

In my journey as a plant-based health practitioner, it was my privilege to introduce the authors of this book to each other: Scott Stoll, M.D., an established leader in the plant-based movement to improve health and avoid disease, and Dan Purjes, a businessman, philanthropist, and visionary committed to enable public and professional awareness of the healing power of plant-based nutrition.

Since finding each other, they have been on an unrestrained pathway of accomplishment. These endeavors include founding the International Journal of Disease Reversal & Prevention and merging Plant-based Docs and Plant-Based Doctors, the two leading directories of plant-based nutrition practitioners.

It is my privilege to write the Forward for their latest combined effort: DISEASE REVERSAL HOPE! Real People. Real Stories.

These authors have defined an overdue revolution in medicine. Anyone reading this book will recognize in the stories how overwhelmingly powerful and simple it is to protect yourself from chronic disease. Meanwhile pharmaceutical houses and many physicians will nonetheless promote their symptom-treating drugs and interventional therapies, which cannot compete with the curative strength of plants.

While medical entitlements, especially Medicare and Medicaid, are taking this country to the poorhouse, it is chronic illness, the seemingly resistant component to resolution or cure, that is the major culprit.  

For example, cardiovascular disease accounts for 45% of Medicare and is expected to cost the country $800 billion per year by 2030, and yet we have known for over 100 years that there are multiple cultures on the planet where cardiovascular disease is virtually nonexistent. They thrive on whole food plant-based (WFPB) nutrition with minimal oils. Dr. Dean Ornish and I have for over thirty years separately proven through experimental studies, which were reported on multiple occasions in the scientific literature, that patients seriously ill with cardiovascular disease may arrest and reverse their illness with WFPB nutrition.  

Nevertheless, there is little emphasis in teaching this information in medical schools and little enthusiasm for it with those practicing cardiovascular medicine. Consequently, patients are treated with a plethora of expensive drugs, which have significant side effects, as well as the overuse of stents and coronary by-pass surgery. As none of these therapies address the causation of cardiovascular disease, these patients are left with a lifetime of pain, suffering and recurring illness.  

Conversely, for over thirty years, I have enjoyed caring for such patients with WFPB nutrition, avoiding drugs and interventions, making them confident in their own ability to eliminate their disease.  

Authors Stoll and Purjes make a similar case that many chronic illnesses will respond to WFPB nutrition approaches to reverse such diseases as diabetes, hypertension, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, multiple sclerosis, and obesity, to mention a few.  

Purjes and Stoll have identified case reports for multiple chronic diseases where the participants themselves tell their story. Each is a saga of disease development, mismanagement with present day remedies, and finally disease resolution as they embraced plant nutrition.   

The culmination of all these encounters forms the bastion of enlightened nutritional science that will empower persons to eliminate chronic disease.  

This book can become responsible for a seismic revolution in health. It has defined the lifestyle and most specifically the nutritional literacy that can empower the public as the focus of control to annihilate chronic illness.