To Live Longer

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65.

For many children, it’s seeing a beloved relative ill and in pain that leads them to want to become doctors. But, for me, it was watching my grandma get better. Soon after she came home, she saw a report on TV about Nathan Pritikin, an early lifestyle-medicine pioneer who’d been gaining a reputation for reversing terminal heart disease.

He’d just opened a new clinic — and, in desperation, my grandmother booked in for a supervised plant-based diet and exercise programme. They wheeled my grandmother in — and she walked out on her own.

I’ll never forget that. Within three weeks, she was actually walking ten miles a day. When I was a child that was all that mattered: I got to play with Grandma again. But over the years, I grew up to understand the significance of what had happened.

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