It started four years ago when my doctor told me I needed to start taking a cholesterol lowering drug, I was 46. I have had high cholesterol since my 20's and thought because I was at a healthy weight and athletic that my cholesterol numbers didn't matter that much. Wrong!
I knew about Dr. Ornish's work reversing heart disease with a low fat vegetarian diet so I gave up all meat except for fish for the first year and my numbers dropped enough that my doctor commented on them. I then became a vegetarian for two years and my number dropped a little bit more. Finally a year and half ago I became vegan and that is when I had a BIG drop and my doctor's jaw dropped and could not believe that diet alone caused such results. I should mention that I focus on a vegan diet that is a whole foods diet,
I don't eat allot of processed foods.
Along the way I did a fair amount of research on where our meat, dairy and eggs came from it broke my heart. I could not in good conscious be apart of it by paying money and consuming animal products. I understand that there are so called "humanely raised" meat available but I decided that even though it had that label (what does that really mean anyway??) I didn't need to have something killed or kept in confinement in order to be nourished. I feel great about my decision.