HOPE for Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Overweight and More

Do you have a resolution to adopt a healthier lifestyle in 2024? Would you like some inspiration to bolster that resolve? If so, join us for a free screening of the documentary film PlantWise! 

PlantWise follows the inspiring stories of six people struggling with debilitating health conditions caused by unhealthy dietary choices. They learn that the Standard American Diet is the culprit. High in fat, sugar, and salt. Low in fiber and nutrients. It’s wreaking havoc and creating chronic illness in much of our society. With hope, they discover this epidemic of diseases—heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure—is largely reversible.

The solution? Each discovers the benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet and chooses to embrace it. They reverse their chronic conditions and experience a health transformation. They find renewed energy and vitality that they thought they had lost forever. PlantWise features nationally recognized experts in lifestyle medicine who reveal that what we choose to eat every day often determines our health destiny. Stories and science are woven together in an inspiring message of hope!

PlantWise is a timely film exploring the health-transforming benefits behind the growing plant-based lifestyle. The film showcases solutions to chronic health problems and gives both patients and doctors a resource to inspire patients to make dramatic lifestyle changes. This lifestyle is bringing hope to many people diagnosed with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, overweight and many more debilitating conditions that have been shown to dramatically improve and even reverse on this nutritionally superior lifestyle. Another great benefit is that many participants reduce or even stop their reliance on pharmaceuticals to maintain their health. In addition, plant-based foods are becoming increasingly more common and available in grocery stores and restaurants, making it easier than ever to transition to a healthier way of eating.

“The goal of this documentary is to showcase real-life stories of using food as medicine to treat—and even reverse—the chronic, degenerative diseases that are robbing years from lives and life from years. Central to lifestyle medicine is prescribing a whole-food, plant-predominant diet, as PlantWise so compellingly depicts as efficacious for anyone suffering from metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity. The compelling stories of real-life patients who have experienced health restoration will inspire others in knowing that they, too, can take far greater control of their health destinies with each and every bite they take!” said Susan Benigas, Executive Director of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

The film features eighteen leading lifestyle medicine experts from fourteen specialties and disciplines, including Neal Barnard, MD, Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., MD, Angela Fals, MD, Michael Greger, MD, George Guthrie, MD, John McDougall, MD, Amanda E. McKinney, MD, and Dean Ornish, MD.

“It is my hope that PlantWise will inspire millions around the world to adopt a healthier lifestyle and experience the transformation of increased energy and vitality that happens when you give your body the best fuel,” said Paul David Kennamer, Director of PlantWise.

The film will be shown at Umatilla Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1400 N. Central Avenue in Umatilla on Saturday, January 20 at 3 pm. For information, call 352-669-6630.

Come and be inspired to become the best version of yourself in the new year!