Did your super diet get your medical back?
Not yet. The trouble is, if you get denied you can't even legally fly a sport plane (not that it would do me a lot of good). So it has to be a slam dunk. With the way the FAA regards stenoses, about 20 years in arrears, it would be too great a risk to apply now. I've been eating my way back toward the cockpit for 30 months now, hoping to undo the damage enough to get below the unpublished screening limit. It would help for the FAA to come into the 21st century before I apply. I guess they're content to leave things be.
Current knowledge, and Gary can correct me if this isn't so, is that larger stenoses are more stable, less likely to burst. Calcium scans have shown that, for a given calcium volume, the denser the calcium the more stable. Calcium density correlates with degree of stenosis, IIRC. The science is there for the FAA to get off their collective duffs and do the peoples' work.
I might have to go through another angiogram to satisfy the FAA, something I cannot afford and something insurance may not cover, since I'm now just the picture of health! It would help if the FAA conceded that lifestyle changes, if done well enough, can toughen the caps over the stenoses they are fearful of. Dr. Esselstyn has made the claim that after just three weeks on his diet, "You're heart attack proof." I Believe that! Considering the tests I've put my heart through, including almost 13 minutes on the Bruce Protocol stress test six months after my stent, such as sprinting up hills on my daily walks through the woods with my dog--if there's a plaque ready to rupture it would have done so long ago.
It doesn't help when people poison the waters the FAA swims in with mocking comments belittling the science this man (Esselstyn) brings to us. It does the mockers no good in the future either, if they should need to eat their way back to the cockpit like me. All I'm asking is to not reject his studies so you meat eaters can continue to eat guilt-free, if that's how they make you feel.
Now to wrap my unairworthy heart in a down-filled ski jacket, at the age of 66, and get back out in the below-zero weather for the umpteenth time and shovel the drive again--by hand!
dtuuri