I arrived at the conference a few days early to attend a pre-workshop on Saturday with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn on Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease—aptly named after his popular book. Afterward, I went to the hotel gym to get in a workout. My weekday bike rides are usually 90 minutes and Saturday’s are often 4 hours. But since my coach knows the challenge of hotel gym equipment, he’ll typically schedule one hour only.
I was on the bike for about 30 minutes when 90-year-old “Opa,” as he likes to be called, hopped on the bike next to me. He brought with him a pair of bright red dumbbells, as he wants to work his arms while he is spinning his legs on the bike, he later told me. Makes sense.
We rode next to each other for about 20 minutes in silence before his granddaughter came up to let him know she was headed to another room with different equipment, just around the corner.
Before she walked off, I asked if she would take a picture of me with him because he is a celebrity. She smiled and enthusiastically said “Yes!” So I handed her my mobile phone and she snapped a photo and that started one of the richest 40-minute conversations I’ve had in my life.
You see, Opa, which means grandpa in German, is the oldest person to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He did it when he was 88 years old. I’d learned this initially during Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s workshop earlier that day.
Opa started sharing with me that his granddaughter roped him into climbing to an elevation of over 19,300 feet. He said it took him 4 days to get to the top and 2 days to come down. Getting to the top was “easier” than coming down.
He described the bitterly cold nights when the water they were using to wash their hands had frozen solid. He said that the climb “wasn’t that hard” and he did it without assistance, except for this one part that was very steep, where someone pushed him a bit by his butt cheeks to help him get up. Other than that, no one carried him or anything like that.
He found it fascinating to notice that as he went further up the mountain, there was less and less greenery (trees, plants) and no birds flying. When he got to the top, it was stunning yet scary: there was an edge that was so steep and so deep that any slip would have resulted in a fatal fall into the volcano.
After sharing his fascinating adventure, accomplished at 88 years old, he stopped pedaling and turned to me and said, “The best part of the trip was the people I met.” He explained that the Tanzanian people were so warm and friendly. His eyes sparkled when he shared that one of the younger men gave him a big hug and affectionately called him Babu, which means grandpa in Swahili.
We talked about his professional career as an orthodontist, as well as his family, and then we got on the topic of plant-based nutrition. When he told me that he’d been following a plant-based diet for seven years, I lit up because that is how long I’ve been doing it, too!
He told me about a physician friend named Grady in Huntsville, Alabama, who’d suffered a heart attack. Grady told Opa about the book “Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease” by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. He picked up a copy, read it, and it changed his life.
Since adopting a plant-based diet, not only has Opa climbed the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, he has also met with 43 physicians to inquire about whether they know the health benefits of using food, namely whole-food, plant-based nutrition, to prevent and reverse heart disease. He told me that of the physicians he has met with, only about 6 or 7 knew about using food as medicine.
When he meets with physicians and others, he gives them a book on plant-based nutrition to read and learn more.
At the age of 90, Opa is a man with a purpose. He has made it his mission to, as he put it, “spread the word” about a plant-based diet. He wants patients to know that there is way other than the needless pain and anguish, prescriptions and procedures that often accompany traditional medical management.
As we wrapped up our 40-minute conversation, we smiled at each other and got off our bikes at the same time. He said, “It was nice talking to you. I’ll see you later,” and proceeded to get on the floor to do a series of crunches on the mat. I walked away awestruck by his badassery and grateful he chose to work out on the bike next to me.