PLANTSTRONG Podcast

You may have heard that high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a “silent killer.” Today, Rip unpacks what that means and how ingesting too much sodium leads to serious problems.

High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is known as a “silent killer” because in most cases it has no symptoms. People with elevated blood pressure are straining their hearts by making them work harder to move blood around. Their hearts sweat and pound and gasp away, but they’re none the wiser. For this reason, the Global Burden of Disease Study, which involved more than 300 institutions in 50 countries, concluded that high blood pressure is the number-one world-wide risk factor for death, resulting in fatal heart attacks, strokes, and other catastrophic organ failures.

Learn why in this short minisode.

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We know that many of you around the world are exploring and embracing the goodness of whole, plant-based foods. Perhaps you’re motivated by the many health benefits, or you’re eating more plants for social or environmental reasons. Regardless, we at PLANTSTRONG welcome you wherever you are on your journey and hope to provide you with plenty of resources to help.

Today, Rip explains why you should run, not walk, away from milk and dairy products.

Join the FREE PLANTSTRONG 7-Day Challenge: https://plantstrongfoods.com/pages/plantstrong-seven-day-challenge

Welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast with Rip Esselstyn.

We know that many of you around the world are exploring and embracing the goodness of whole, plant-based foods. Perhaps you’re motivated by the many health benefits, or you’re eating more plants for social or environmental reasons. Regardless, we at PLANTSTRONG welcome you wherever you are on your journey and hope to provide you with plenty of resources to help.

Today, Rip addresses the elephant in the room - PROTEIN.

• What is it?
• How much do we need?
• Which plant foods have the most protein?
• Why is plant-based protein superior to animal-based protein?

When you're eating whole food, plant foods, you’re also consuming all their other beneficial ingredients, such as fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. These are the superheroes you want coursing through your body when it comes to fighting off oxidative stress, building healthy cells, strengthening your immune system, and reversing disease.

Here’s the simple truth: Plants have protein, they have plenty of it, and it’s 100 percent healthy. Since you have a choice, why not choose the healthiest option?

Join the FREE PLANTSTRONG 7-Day Challenge: https://plantstrongfoods.com/pages/plantstrong-seven-day-challenge

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

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COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

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Rip welcomes Dr. Gemma Newman, the Plant-Powered Doctor, to discuss her new book, Get Well Stay Well - The Six Healing Health Habits You Need to Know.

Inspired by a real patient story, Gemma introduces her GLOVES acronym, which serves as the framework for her six healing habits.

• Gratitude
• Love
• Outside
• Veggies
• Exercise
• Sleep

This uplifting and approachable book is the antidote to pills and prescriptions. Dr. Newman’s holistic prescriptions found in the book are accessible, evidence-based, and have profound impacts on mental and physical health.

Get Well, Stay Well: The Six Healing Health Habits You Need to Know is being released in the US in hardback on March 7th, so you’ll want to pre-order it now. Inside, you’ll find pages for journaling and personal reflection, along with follow-along exercises. 

This year, let’s all put on our GLOVES and practice these six healing habits - gratitude, love, being outside, eating our vegetables, exercising, and getting great sleep. 

That sounds like the perfect prescription for happiness and health this year from the plant-powered doctor, Gemma Newman.

Watch the Episode on YouTube

Episode Webpage

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

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COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

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Welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast with Rip Esselstyn.

We know that many of you around the world are exploring and embracing the goodness of whole, plant-based foods. Perhaps you’re motivated by the many health benefits, or you’re eating more plants for social or environmental reasons. Regardless, we at PLANTSTRONG welcome you wherever you are on your journey and hope to provide you with plenty of resources to help.

We also know making profound changes can be hard and overwhelming. That’s why we're talking today about focusing on small changes, which will lead to big results.

So many of us when we want to make changes or improvements in anything that we do in our life, we think that the improvements have to be grand or enormous to actually have an effect. The opposite is actually true (and way more sustainable).

So don’t be caught up by the glitz and glitter of the big change. Small meaningful steps done over time with a goal in mind will lead to the big results that you want for your future self.

Small changes net big results. Remember that.

Join the FREE PLANTSTRONG 7-Day Challenge: https://plantstrongfoods.com/pages/plantstrong-seven-day-challenge

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

Learn More About Our Corporate Wellness Program: https://liveplantstrong.com/corporate-wellness/

COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

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At age 49, Rip's guest, Robert Band, had a stent because he had 95% blockage in his carotid. Surgery "fixed" him, but at age 60, he discovered that the blockage was returning. Four years ago, through the recommendation of a Lifestyle Medicine physician, he found the work of the Esselstyn family, including PLANTSTRONG.

Today, thanks to a radical change in his diet and lifestyle, he now has 0% blockage and lives a vibrant, active life in Colorado. In this live session with Rip, we'll learn a thing or two from Robert's personal "Plantstrong Playbook." (and why he loves salsa dancing!)

Watch the Original Episode on YouTube

Episode Webpage

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

Learn More About Our Corporate Wellness Program: https://liveplantstrong.com/corporate-wellness/

COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

https://plantstrong.com/

https://www.facebook.com/GoPlantstrong

https://www.instagram.com/goplantstrong/

https://www.instagram.com/ripesselstyn/

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Plant-based physician, Dr. Laurie Marbas, joins Rip LIVE to answer your health questions!

Dr. Marbas is a renowned board-certified Lifestyle and Family Medicine physician. She is licensed to practice in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Questions and highlights from this Q&A include:

• Is it bad to combine berries with bananas?
• Should we wait to shower for optimum vitamin D absorption?
• Is there anything that can help with COPD?
• Is vital wheat gluten (used to make seitan) too processed?
• How can I get more protein and collagen after surgery?
• What are your thoughts on plant sterols to get cholesterol down?
• Can you address hair loss on a transition to whole food, plant-based?
• Recommendations for osteoporosis?
• Thoughts on coffee and green tea?
• Is it best to take B-12 with or without food?
• Does intermittent fasting with whole-food plant-based eating help with weight loss?
• Do all sugars affect your body in the same way? (stevia, maple syrup, etc.)
• Is a plant-based diet making my legs hurt?
• What is the best way to get rid of visceral fat?
• With the weather starting to change, what dishes are you looking forward to?
• Thoughts on supplementing EPA and DHA?
• Any thoughts on what can help with tinnitus?
• Does roasting sweet potatoes affect their nutrition?
• What are the benefits of wearing continuous glucose monitors (if you’re not diabetic)?

Watch the Original Episode on YouTube

Episode Webpage

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

Learn More About Our Corporate Wellness Program: https://liveplantstrong.com/corporate-wellness/

COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

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https://www.facebook.com/GoPlantstrong

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In this episode of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, Rip Esselstyn speaks with Dr. Chris Miller, a former emergency room physician who shares her journey with autoimmune disease and her commitment to a whole food plant-based diet.

Imagine being a young and rising emergency room physician when you start to notice alarming changes in your own body- including chest pains and stiff, painful joints.

At the age of 36, Dr. Chris Miller started experiencing these and other symptoms and her subsequent bloodwork lit up with many autoimmune markers, including systemic lupus.

Dr. Miller discusses the challenges she faced and why some individuals may not experience immediate improvement on a plant-based diet. She emphasizes the importance of individualizing the diet and eliminating pro-inflammatory foods. Dr. Miller also highlights the role of stress management, mind-body work, and incorporating micronutrient-rich foods like leafy greens and sprouts. She provides insights into gut health and the importance of addressing triggers and making necessary changes to heal the gut.

As challenging and frustrating as it was, Dr. Miller played the long game with her health. She knew that a whole food plant-based diet was the best path, but it took time to figure out what worked best for her and her healing journey certainly wasn't linear.

Today, she practices telemedicine where she is well equipped to uncover the many nuances of autoimmune disease and get her patients on their own paths back to health.

As she says, "There is hope! Even though that path may not be easy, it’s always worth it."

Watch the Episode on YouTube

Episode Webpage

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

Learn More About Our Corporate Wellness Program: https://liveplantstrong.com/corporate-wellness/

COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

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Dr. Michael Greger is back with a barnburner of a new book, How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older.

None of us loves the idea of feeling older, but it doesn’t mean getting sicker.

As we say here at PLANTSTRONG, we do have a powerful influence on our aging process with what we eat – and the 13,000 studies that Dr. Greger cites in his new book show us that, once again, it’s plants for the win!

Today, Dr. Greger shares some of this research and a slew of great advice to improve your longevity and healthspan, and keep you feeling vibrant for years to come.

Dr. Greger's book covers multiple strategies for slowing the aging process and offers practical advice based on the overwhelming evidence and research. With so much misinformation in the anti-aging industry, his goal is to separate fact from farce and provide readers with reliable information.

Rip and Dr. Greger discuss the details of preserving various aspects of our health, including bones, teeth, circulation, hair, vision, immune function, and more. They also touch on Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging 8 -foods like nuts, greens, and berries that can improve your longevity.

As he says, this new book will not only add years to your life, but life to your years.

We hear the phrase, “metabolic health” a lot, but do we really know what that means? And, more importantly, how much do we understand the massive impact that metabolic health has on literally every system of our body?

Today, we explore that line of thinking with Dr. Casey Means.

Casey was trained as an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, but in recent years, she has become a self-proclaimed “Food as Medicine” evangelist.

Why would she make such a drastic change in a successful budding career? Well, as you’ll hear today, Dr. Means (like most doctors) pursued medicine in order to help people, but started realizing that most illnesses - even those she was treating as an ENT surgeon– came back to a person’s level of inflammation and poor metabolic health. So, as a surgeon, she was playing the proverbial “whack-a-mole” with the problems but never identifying the root causation.

Now, she’s on a mission to create a healthier world through her company, LEVELS Health - a continuous glucose monitor company - along with her upcoming book, Good Energy.

Today, we focus our conversation on exactly what metabolic health really means, as well as the Nine Elements of Metabolic Health. Casey also discusses the importance of metabolic health as it relates to exercise and sexual health.

About Casey Means, MD

Casey Means, MD is a Stanford-trained physician and Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder of metabolic health company Levels. Her mission is to maximize human potential and reverse the epidemic of preventable chronic disease by empowering individuals with tech-enabled tools that can inform smart, personalized, and sustainable dietary and lifestyle choices. Dr. Means’s perspective has been recently featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The New Yorker, Men's Health, Women's Health, and more.

Episode Resources

Watch the Episode on YouTube

Episode Webpage

Learn More About our 2026 Live PLANTSTRONG Events: https://plantstrongevents.com/

Let Us Help Your PLANTSTRONG Journey

Learn More About Our Corporate Wellness Program: https://liveplantstrong.com/corporate-wellness/

COMPLEMENT: Use code PLANTSTRONG for 30% off at https://lovecomplement.com/pages/plantstrong-special-offer

Follow PLANTSTRONG and Rip Esselstyn

https://plantstrong.com/

https://www.facebook.com/GoPlantstrong

https://www.instagram.com/goplantstrong/

https://www.instagram.com/ripesselstyn/

Follow the PLANTSTRONG Podcast and Give the Show a 5-star Rating

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Dr. Casey Means Instagram

Levels Health