Stats Say You Likely Have Heart Plaque
Numbers point you to the truth
Getting to 100 Years
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.
A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh)
We just celebrated my father’s 90th birthday. He grew up for 22 years in a small town in the countryside of Korea, with a population of just under 1400 people. He dreamed of getting an education and making a decent living, so he went to the nearest big town and became a miner. He won the ‘lottery’ by being exported as a miner to Germany in 1965 and then found his way to Toronto, Canada, with $100 borrowed dollars. He quickly found a place for $5 a month and got a job at Ford in London, Ontario.
How grateful and thankful I am to my father for all his hard work, and to both him and my mother for giving me the opportunity to grow up in Canada, get a proper education, and encourage me to be the best I can be. I can never live up to all the sacrifices they made for our families, so I try my very best to pay it forward to my family, my friends, and my colleagues. I have a strong prayer to be a healer and help others heal and grow into the fullness of their human potential.
May my father continue to grow and improve in his twilight years.
As I started my YouTube channel to reach and help more people. I received many comments saying I was AI or that it was unbelievable, with no proof.
It is unbelievable! So I decided to dedicate the next few newsletters to showing my reversal and why I believe this will also reverse the plaque in my heart arteries.
Critical Insights
Many times we are told but we don’t really understand what is truly being said until we fall or fail.
Dr. Kevin Ham
Human nature does not believe what it cannot see. Only those who believe the unseen can make the unseen a miracle from the impossible.
Dr. Kevin Ham
I gained some very critical insights as I watched my son compete in his power-lifting competition. He’s lifting 446 lbs squat, 342 bench and 535 lbs deadlift. To do that, he keeps track of all his calories and macros (carbs, fat, protein). I realized it was almost like a scientific formula. Nutrition, power, muscles. Powerlifts.
Why wouldn’t the biology and physics of arterial health and plaque be the same? I wondered just how many calories and macros I was eating. I downloaded the food app he used. MacroFactor (I’m sure there are many more), and he taught me how to use it. I had the thought that morning, I was eating too much fat on my ‘10% low fat vegan diet’.
I had been looking up the fat content of the previous day’s meal and was shocked to see that I was consuming 60-90g of fat daily instead of Esselstyn’s diet, which allotted: <18g or 10% of calories as fat.
In my first three months, my meals were simple:
Steelcut oatmeal (↓ LDL 10%) with chia seeds and flax seeds (for fibre and omega 3s). Berries. With 2 tbsp of natto (Vit K2 & nattokinase). Spirulina (↓ LDL 10%). (already 28g fat)
Red grapefruit (↓ LDL 5%).
2 Ancient grain sourdough bread, sliced apple/pear, arugula, balsamic vinegar.
Green tea tablet.
50 ml pomegranate juice
Salad, beans, veggies.
Whole wheat chickpea or lentil pasta, beans, tomato sauce, onions, garlic
Or whole wheat ancient grain (einkorn crust) pizza, green peppers, mushrooms, olives, pineapple, low-fat tomato sauce, caramelized onions
About 45g fat, including meals.
But then I started
Doubling my chia (16g fat), flaxseed (16g fat), and natto (16g fat).
Swapped my green tea tablet for 1-2 oat milk matchas (8-16g fat)
Edamame (8g fat)
Just this totalled 64g-72g of fat not even including my meals.
No wonder my LDL went from 61, ApoB 45 in Aug 2025 to LDL 79 and ApoB 70 Jan 8, 2026.
Esselstyn only saw major reversal on his diet when LDL and ApoB were less than 50. I had a reversal in my carotids at LDL 61 and ApoB 45. The key here is that my ApoB was less than 50. If I had continued this, I would have made more progress in my heart vessels. At ApoB 70, it is merely the arrest of plaque. But I want a reversal.
I adjusted my diet to target precisely a 10% low fat vegan diet. <18g fat daily. (see the Appendix).
The 4 Grim Reapers:
You think you are safe but each Grim Reaper visits you with stealth, silence, innocence, but hidden and then all of a sudden reveals himself.
Dr. Kevin Ham
I read a study that said that if you eliminate four diseases from your life, your life expectancy and health rise drastically.
Eliminate heart disease and cancer, and your healthspan improves from ~80 to 89 years.
Eliminate diabetes and hypertension, and your healthspan increases to 97 years.
Only 2.5% of people in a developed nation reach the age of 100. But the healthspan is much lower than the lifespan in today’s age.
I want to address each of these Grim Reapers this month. I have been helping a few of my close friends rapidly reverse their Grim Reapers and run far from them. It’s quite remarkable how quickly the body remembers what normal is when you restore the right conditions. It then quickly forgets what led to progressive disease.
First, Heart Disease or more specifically, heart attacks and strokes. It is quite shocking to me just how prevalent this is. Dr. William Osler, a prominent physician who passed away in 1919, had never seen a heart attack. Isn’t that unfathomable? He practiced and taught at top hospitals in Toronto, founded Johns Hopkins and taught in London.
The first documented case of heart attacks was published in 1912 by Dr. Herrick. Of course, there were heart attacks, but the point is that they were extremely rare. One of my mentors was a young doctor at the biggest hospital in Seoul, Korea, in 1975, and he saw one or two heart attacks a year. Now heart attacks are the #1 killer worldwide. What happened?
You Likely Have Plaque in Your Arteries
Don’t be like the ostrich which buries its head to any thought of danger. Look inside of you and seek the truth.
Dr. Kevin Ham
Look at the study below. Look at the prevalence of plaque in the coronary (heart) arteries at the different ages. Let’s just look at the higher threshold of 0.5mm of plaque. Remember that the coronary arteries are just 3-7 mm and narrow to 1.2 mm.
17% of 13-19 year olds
37% of 20-29 year olds
60% of 30-39 year olds
71% of 40-49 year olds
85% of >50 year olds
I cannot unsee this image as I see people all around me. How do I warn them? That they don’t suffer the same fate that my beloved friend Rob did last Feb 10, 2025?
Recently, my good female friend in her early 70s heeded my advice and got a calcium heart scan, and her score was 100. She thought she was safe, but was shocked by the high amount of calcified plaque in her heart.
A doctor friend in Germany, a decade younger than me, in his 40s, had a calcium score of 100.
My brother had a score of 7. Low at 52 years old, but any score >0 means you have calcified plaque in your arteries, which means you also have soft plaque, which has not yet calcified.
My wife had a score of 0, and I advised her to wait to do a CT angiogram (the scan that shows soft plaque) because her carotid ultrasound was 0.
Your Health:
I’ve just started a YouTube channel to educate others about the first principles of health and our most common diseases.
Subscribe, like and share with your friends and family. I believe that through this, we can save many lives and prevent a lot of suffering through health education.
Why Heart Attacks and Strokes Attack Us
Silent, soft, unseen continuous waves of disease whisper quietly at first but when unheard and unheeded, it announces its presence with a bang. Listen and heed.
Dr. Kevin Ham
Look at my Left Carotid artery. See that plaque inside? It’s about 25% of the artery! This is from August 1, 2024. The ultrasonographer said I had more than usual for my age. I thought, “Yes, I knew I would have plaque.” Concerning. But what could I do? It was because of all the junk food I ate for decades when I was younger. I would just live a healthy life from now on, so it wouldn’t progress. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem until 20-30 years later, and functionally, it didn’t limit me at all. Boy, was I foolish!
We are mistaken when we think that a heart attack or stroke arises suddenly out of the blue, causing death in 25% of first time evidence of plaque in arteries and suffering and disability with ongoing progression for the rest of one’s life.
Silently, stealthily, this plaque has been invading for decades and strikes in the late 40s to 70s. Atherosclerosis is not a sudden ambush, but a continuous infiltration of the vessel wall by the diet and lifestyle we lead. It starts in our early teenage years, or even in childhood, and progresses like the waves that chip away at the rocks. Its onslaught continues unabated, and we don’t see its face until this Grim Reaper decides it's time to reveal himself to you and the world.
As arteries harden, blood vessels have a harder time dilating and expanding. The endothelial cells of blood vessels no longer produce nitric oxide, which expands the blood vessels. This leads to high blood pressure.
More than 50% of Americans have high blood pressure. But this is a relatively easy fix. If you know how.
Reversing My Clogged Neck Arteries
What goes up must come down. What infiltrates us can also be driven out if the natural healing process of the body is enhanced and unimpeded.
Dr. Kevin Ham
This is a cross-section of my left common carotid artery. See the plaque in the middle of the photo? August 1, 2024. A year later, I reversed all this plaque and the thickening in my carotid artery wall, which you can see is marked at L 0.14 cm (1.4 mm), as measured by the Carotid Intima Media Thickness (CIMT) test.
Here is my carotid ultrasound on August 19, 2025. No more plaque! And CIMT is 0.86mm.
25% plaque → 0% plaque
CIMT 1.4mm → 0.86 mm (38% reduction) in 3 months
This is almost miraculous. Why do I say 3 months instead of a year, as the previous ultrasound was a year ago? It’s because I started my reversal protocol on May 9, 2026 (3 months prior to this US), when I discovered I had such a high calcium score.
My doctor friends were very skeptical, and so I repeated my Carotid ultrasound 5 weeks later on September 23, 2025.
Still no visible plaque in both carotids
CIMT 0.86mm → 0.84 mm (2.3% reduction) in 1 month
Most drug studies show a 0.04mm change in a year at best, and that’s considered great for heart disease. The food studies I’ve found are astounding in their ability to reverse plaque in the carotids. I talk about them a lot (read this blog post).
Since my CIMT is normal now, my body doesn’t need to repair and heal it as drastically as it did when it was diseased and full of plaque and inflammation.
Here’s what my full report says:
Note that for my age of 55, a CIMT > 0.837mm is abnormal. I went from 1.4mm (worse than an 85 year old) to high normal for my age. I was so happy to be average.
And still no plaque visualized in both carotid vessels!
Reversal Proof
Human nature is to believe on sight but not on first principles. Only the passage of time with visible evidence can turn doubters into believers. Oh how faith requires miracles sight unseen. That is the power of the human spirit, to see what others do not, believe what others cannot and yet do what is seemingly impossible because of belief. It has been thus all throughout the ages.
Dr. Kevin Ham
Figure 1 Coronary angiograms of the distal left anterior descending artery before (left) and after (right) 32 months of a plant-based diet without cholesterol-lowering medication, showing profound improvement.
I don’t understand why all doctors have not read the esteemed Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.’s book, Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease. Why isn’t he world famous? He has a book, published his findings in medical journals, has spoken at many conferences, is currently in his 90s, and follows his low-fat vegan diet. He has cured many of his worst patients with his protocol, and many others who have followed his advice. It certainly requires 2-3 years of discipline and consistency.
I wish I had him as my health coach and doctor, but I have the benefit of his documented process and studies as well as his talks, which I have studied extensively. Some things I only start to understand with the passage of time. I learn much of it through my own personal experience and by helping others in their health journey. I feel so fortunate and blessed to have read this book in 2014. I had found it in the sale section of a Bible college bookstore. It was truly an answer to a prayer to God to make me a healer. I was a medical doctor but I didn’t know how to heal today’s killer diseases. But I would forget about this book until the results of my CT Calcium scan revealed I had a lot of calcified heart plaque on May 5, 2025.
One of my goals is to write a book in a few years about my insights and learnings to carry on Dr. Esselstyn’s work. I wish I could speak to him. My good friend Dr. Azra Raza asked me to call her today, as I am flying to NY to attend her charity Jazz concert for cancer. She said she wanted to introduce me to the Head of Surgery and Cardiac Surgery at Columbia University. She wanted to hopefully collaborate with them about my miraculous results and protocols. I am so busy with my AI company, but I’ve learned that health, wealth and meaning are three threads that intertwine in life, and we must advance all three to live our fullest lives. I will let God lead my path and feet.
My Amazing Protocol for my Eye & Heart
Sometimes we have to improvise and pioneer a new path for our own personal journey, as we are each unique special beings travelling our own path.
Dr. Kevin Ham
My recent amazing news is two-fold:
When I first started treatment for macular degeneration, I used to get a shot in each of my eyes every month. Imagine a large needle in both your eyeballs every month! That was me up until three years ago at age 53.
I received my first eye shot in 3 years on Feb 2 and had been thinking, “What if I need only to get eye shots every 3 years from now on...? Or maybe never again?”
While I was waiting for my second eye shot, my eye doctor looked at my eye scans and said I was healing remarkably well and that we should monitor it over the next three months. She asked me what I was doing. I briefly told her my eye protocol. “Ok, see you in 3 months,” she said. What? No eye shot today? She said that I didn’t need it. Wow! I was thrilled.
The new protocol that I had devised to treat both my heart reversal and eye reversal was radical yet simple. I knew how to do my eye protocol, which is a high-fat diet, and my heart protocol, which is a low-fat diet, but how do I do both? I had an idea and implemented it mid January. It’s premature to talk about it, so maybe in 6 months, when I get my next heart scans and eye scans. Please wish me luck.
Reversing Obstructed Heart Blood Flow:
The second great news (see the first one below in the Appendix) for me is that my heart flow past my largest plaque obstruction is now in the normal zone, instead of being risky.
In August 2025, I underwent a CT Heartflow, which uses a contrast dye injected into the veins to visualize my arteries. My FEF (Functional Effective Flow) or FFR was 75%, meaning 75% of the blood flowed past the obstruction. This is quite good considering that the artery is obstructed 77%. It’s why I have no symptoms and can ride up mountains while still placing in the top 10% of 5000 riders in the hilly 122 km Gran Fondo rides I do annually.
I repeated the CT Heartflow on Jan 8, 2026, 4.5 months later, and my FEF increased from 75% to 80% (the yellow vessel, my D1), the lower zone of normal. If I can get 5% more blood flow every 4-5 months, then within a year at 90% blood flow, I will be fantastic.
Anatomical plaque changes in the heart take about 12-18 months and accelerate after 18 months when the body chemistry is right. The carotids are much faster to reverse because they are straighter and larger in diameter.
I imagine it’s like waiting for water to boil. It takes a while to boil, but once it starts, it can boil rapidly. The first year is plaque remodelling. I’ve noticed that most of my calcified plaque is thinner and more spread out, rather than like a big mountain in my previous scans.
My next CT scan will be at month 14, so I should start seeing anatomical changes. I also believe that since my ApoB and LDL were too high for reversal from months 4 to 8, I didn’t make as much progress as I could have had I been more vigilant and thoughtful in implementing the essentials of the protocol. I had thought that if it was good, it would be better to eat more of that particular food. But I was wrong.
I am still learning what each food does and why, and that, like a recipe, timing, quality and quantity of ingredients matter much. The body is biological and adheres to the scientific laws of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. I seek to discover these basic health laws of the body, and of each organ, in this amazing journey I am blessed to be on.
If you wish to reverse most of your diseases, read Esselstyn’s book. I’ve found ways to enhance and accelerate some parts of healing and reversal. I’ve seen remarkable results with the few friends I'm coaching on my Reversal protocols. In due time, I will write about them as I realize that people need to ‘see the proof’ to believe and even then, it’s hard to believe.
Save the Life of a Loved One and Friends
Forward my newsletter and Youtube channel to your friends and family.
Based on statistics, you can help save many of your friends and family from today’s Grim Reapers, the top killer diseases.
You’ll find these articles insightful and helpful as well:
Life-Changing Question
Are the 4 Grim Reapers Silently Progressing in Me?
Don’t just think about it, take the steps to get a baseline and see if you have these 4 Grim Reapers silently invading you, until it’s too late. That way you can take action early, before it is too late. Prevention and proactive is key to today’s chronic (takes a long time) diseases and killers.
Next issue:
Reversing High Blood Pressure in a Week
What Most Doctors Don’t Know
Appendix
I adjusted my diet to target precisely a 10% low fat vegan diet. <18g fat daily.
Fat < 18g/day
Cut chia and flax seed (will only take flax when I have space for my daily fat allotment)
Revert back to green tea tablets (save 8-16g fat of oat milk lattes)
Reduce soy drastically (tofu, edamame) - too much fat
Lower LDL: Added 5g of psyllium husk (10g total) before meals (or after) - lowers LDL 10%
Nitric Oxide: Primarily salads, greens every meal
Antioxidant/antiinflammatory: green tea, pomegranate juice 50ml, ginger/tumeric shots daily
HbA1c 5.0% by March 31 to reduce glycation
Protein: Lentils, black beans (chickpeas sparingly) for protein 85-100g/day.
Fruits: berries, apple and
adjust based on Feb labs
Get my TG 107 back to 47 (norm for me) but I was consuming too much fruit (went overboard)
Healing:
2 meals a day to do Intermittent fasting 18 hours and eat in a 6-7 hour window
Continue weekly one day fast for autophagy and healing
Bloodflow:
Start weight lifting in addition to pullups on weekdays. Start core exercises: situps, wide pushups and squats.
Exercise 4-5 times a week with HIIT 3x/week. I reduced exercise in Oct-Dec as was so busy.
Focus on no sleep debt. My sleep requirements are 6h 47m with 1h+ of deep sleep and 1h+ of REM.
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