Bouncing Back from Heart Disease with Ray Martin: PYP 339

Plant Yourself - Embracing a Plant-based Lifestyle

Ray Martin, aka "Old Man Skin and Bones," is on a mission to save others from what he went through: heart disease, expensive and unnecessary and potentially harmful medical care, and a bad case of the "If only I'd knowns."

I met Ray through the Missing Chins Run Club (first rule of the Missing Chins Run Club: tell everybody in the Missing Chins Run Club how much you ran today), and was instantly charmed by his energy, passion, sense of humor, and fierce determination to spare others from his fate.

The before and after photos accompanying this podcast says it all. In October, 2015, Ray came out of triple bypass surgery, alive and ready to change his life.

After discovering Drs Esselstyn, McDougall, et al, and making a serious commitment to dietary change, he dropped weight, improved his heart function, and ended up with so much excess energy that he had to find something productive to do with it.

Hence the "after" photo, showing Ray having finished the second leg of a 100-mile relay at 3am, almost exactly three years to the day after his surgery. Down from 240 to 158 pounds, grinning, and full of life.

If Ray's story of "chunky kid" from Lubbock turning into a plant-based athlete and crusader doesn't get you off the couch and into the crudité, I don't know what will :)