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One Doctor's Prescription for a Healthy Heart

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Pictured Recipe: Southwestern Steak & Peppers

Changing lives

Richard Farnham hit his stride on the treadmill. Farnham, a former university athletic director, had had a career full of all-you-can-eat sports banquets and endless opportunities to snack. He wound up, at 50, “closer to 300 pounds than I would have liked,” with high blood pressure and a blockage in an artery that left him short of breath and required a stent.

“It wasn’t very dramatic; I only missed a day of work,” he says of the cardiac procedure. Nevertheless, it changed his life—because he sought Ades’s help in changing his habits. On Ades’s recommendation, Farnham enlisted the aid of his wife, children and close friends and drastically modified his diet, going heavy on vegetables, poultry and fish and light on red meat. “My biggest realization was that I was eating too many refined carbohydrates,” said Farn­ham. (Consuming processed grains—white breads, pastas and the like—may contribute to heart risk by elevating triglycerides and blood glucose levels.) “Now, I know that I don’t need to have a sandwich on two pieces of white bread for lunch every day and I stay away from regular [white] pasta.” Farnham began exercising—every day, for a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes. In a little less than one year, he lost 50 pounds. Over the same period, he saw his total cholesterol drop nearly 40 percent, from a borderline-high 209 mg/dL to a healthy 131 mg/dL. He lowered his triglycerides from 178 mg/dL (considered borderline high) to 86 mg/dL (well below the 150 mg/dL threshold that defines the upper limit of healthy).

Farnham reduced his blood glucose levels most dramatically. Before his lifestyle overhaul, his fasting blood glucose was 243 mg/dL—anything beyond 126 mg/dL is considered a diagnosis for diabetes. Now, it’s 109 mg/dL. “Making the changes hasn’t been easy,” he said, “but it’s been worthwhile.”

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