WINNING: This Meat-Loving Cardiologist Transformed His Life With a Vegan Diet

WINNING: This Meat-Loving Cardiologist Transformed His Life With a Vegan Diet

  • Sarah Von Alt
  • Sarah Von Alt

An inspiring story comes out of New York, where a local cardiologist (and chief of cardiology at Highland Hospital), Dr. John Teeters, has transformed his own life, and the lives of his patients, with a vegan diet.
A North Carolina native, his “typical Southern diet,” which included abundant smoked meats and other animal products, eventually got the best of Dr. Teeters. Once very athletic and a regular triathlete, he began suffering daily headaches, low energy, and chronic reflux symptoms.

Democrat and Chronicle explains, “In spring 2016, a geriatrician at Highland Hospital asked Dr. Teeters to participate in a six-week introduction to the whole–food, plant-based diet for disease prevention offered by Rochester Lifestyle Medicine.”
An admitted skeptic, Dr. Teeter said his attitude had changed within two weeks. He felt dramatically better, no longer suffering from regular headaches or decreased energy. Healthier (and lighter!), he now passionately advocates a plant-based diet, believing that diet can compete with—and even beat—common medical interventions, according to Democrat and Chronicle:

“The best data available shows that with the most optimal medical management plan, doctors can achieve a 27 to 31 percent reduction in the lifetime risk of heart attack and stroke.” With the plant-based diet, [Dr. Teeter] said, “data that goes back decades shows a 70 to 73 percent reduction in lifetime risk of heart attack and stroke, not to mention risk reduction in Alzheimer’s, renal disease, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.”

Countless studies have proved that a plant-based diet not only reduces risk of heart disease but helps stave off other top killers, including diabetes and cancer.
But a vegan diet isn’t just great for humans; it’s great for the billions of farmed animals who are treated as commodities and subjected to extreme confinement, mutilations without painkillers, and merciless slaughter.
You can take a stand for your health and the billions of animals suffering at factory farms by ditching meat and other animal products for good. Click here for easy vegan recipes, meal ideas, and tips on making the switch.
Want more? Click here for five more people who completely changed their lives with a vegan diet.