Something worth considering!
Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease
Dr. Dwight Lundell
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:58 CST
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated. The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before. Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine. What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation. While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat. What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made with them.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef. Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet
Reader Comments Damage Control Freaks By: bluenorther I hope that within twenty years, coronary bypass surgery will be as discredited as pre-frontal lobotomies.
This article follows exactly what Gary Taubes has written in “Why We Get Fat”.
I had a six-tuple bypass operation to save my useless life, two years ago. It was the worst experience anyone could endure; I would never inflict it on anyone I care about. From what I’ve read, I seem to have got off easy compared to other people’s experiences!
The doctors can’t honestly tell us how bad it will be, because we’d all opt out.
What infuriates me is the total lack of effort made by my doctors to investigate WHY I ended up on their operating table. All of my friends and family are mystified, asking how this happened. In fact, I would have died in a few more days. I don’t smoke, I’m not overweight, and I exercise enough to kill most ordinary people.
All the doctors have done is prescribe meds that don’t work, and then get angry when I won’t take them. I haven’t seen a single blood test result that might give me a clue
Doesn’t it make more sense to figure out in the first place what is the cause of such inflammation instead of attempting to fix it once it has taken place and may become chronic? Well I am not a doctor by any means, I am just attempting to utilize common sense and try to apply it to the problem at hand.
Speaking for myself, I never had much of a sweet tooth to begin with and in latter years been staying away from it altogether, matter of fact I don’t even have any regular sugar at home and for what ever I use a little sweetener for, I only use XYLITOL, you can find an analysis of it by Googling it.
I do not use much fats or oils and what ever I use is virgin olive oil and butter. Along with it very little bread, pasta etc. or products created with flower. Primarily I stick with fruits, vegetables, oatmeal, flax seeds, some yogurt, unprocessed long grain rice, some fish or a little chicken and very little red meat.
As mentioned earlier I have been taking Aspirin for good many year, matter of fact since I was a teen, in varying doses and quantities for problems with my spinal column or problems associated with my joints what appears to be more of a mechanical problem than anything else. From what I have gathered over the years related to Aspirin and what seems to be backed up by medical doctors who have done some serious study regarding Aspirin is that it will subdue inflammation where ever it may find it, and most problems start with some inflammation either here or there.
I only take coated Aspirin which is less likely to cause any stomach problems related to possible bleeding, and yes I am very well aware that it is also a blood thinning agent and in turn causes the platelets of the blood to become less sticky. In other words it prevents them from sticking together and pile up and cause any problem or possible blockage. It is relatively cheap and drug companies can not make a great deal of money from it since it can not be patented and over all it is one of the least damaging pain killers around as it will sub due the inflammation which in turn causes most pains we generally experience.
Instead drug companies as well as most doctors, not that I have anything against them and do appreciate them, will push fancy synthesized expensive drugs, over suggesting a much more healthy life style as well as recommending Aspirin to counteract inflammation where ever it may flare up , including the interior of our arteries.
Be careful if you happen to have a sweet tooth and stay away from pre-fab foods. Also eat to live and not live to eat as sooner than later it is guaranteed to catch up with you and if it does you will be saying “I could have, I should have, why didn’t I” but once the damage is done it will be too late. For the better part of my life my philosophy always has been, don’t invite problems as they can happen all on their own. Most people pay attention to all kinds of things except the most important of all which are Health, Finances and Politics. If either one goes awry you are going to have problems.
To sum it up in a nutshell…Yes exercise can and will do a lot of things for you and it is very beneficial, but you also should understand that you can exercise until you almost drop dead from exhaustion but this still will not prevent you from ending up with clogged arteries. The only way from preventing this is by choosing the right foods and avoiding many others our society appears to be addicted to. Such as animal fats, sweets, cookies, pasta, cakes, ice cream, way too much red meat, fast foods, fried foods, milk etc. If you happen to stick with a little bit of chicken, some fish, long grain rice, plain potatoes, some nuts and many fruits and vegetables along with some olive oil and a small amount of butter you should expect a fairly trouble free life.
As a matter of self defense I started cooking for myself many, many years ago and along with daily exercise it has been very beneficial and so far as I am heading towards eighty, knock on wood my life has been fairly free from trouble, something worth considering.. -
Well once again that’s my take Saintgermaine
/johnny
Well I’m screwed, I guess. Got a sweet tooth and take sugar in my several cups of coffee a day.
Pray for me.
:-)
Very interesting analysis. I also believe that “recreational eating” may be driving up blood sugar by exhausting the insulin-producing areas of the pancreas.
Partially hydrogenating is pumping hydrogen into a fat to make it last longer and make products taste better longer. It turns out it is not good for us.
I am not a diet nut, but Adelle Davis described how bad partially-hydrogenated oils are back in the 1950s. She even said that it is better to eat butter.
Bump for later.
Bttt
Good post.
I’m also reading a book, “The Blood Sugar Solution”, by Mark Hyman, MD, Little Brown press.
I disagree with many of his political statements and finger pointing at Big Food, Big Farming, and Big Pharma, but his book is very well documented with 245 references to medical papers, studies, and resources. They nicely summarize the justification used for many of the healthcare industry’s policies regarding “DIABESITY”.
I’m still looking for something in depth on endocrinology, as I believe that is 50% of the puzzle.