American Heart Association Quotes

You are a terrible liar. You do want this. Just as badly as I do.” My mouth opened, but no words came out. “You want this as badly as you want to go to ALA this winter.” Now my jaw was on the floor. “You don’t even know what ALA is!” “American Library Association midwinter event,” he said, grinning proudly. “Saw you obsessing over it on your blog before you got sick. I’m pretty sure you said you’d give up your firstborn child to go.” Yeah, I kind of did say that. Daemon eyes flashed. “Anyway, back to the whole you wanting me part.” I shook my head, dumbfounded. “You do want me.” Taking a deep breath, I struggled with my temper… and my amusement. “You are way too confident.” “I’m confident enough to wager a bet.” “You can’t be serious.” He grinned. “I bet that by New Year’s Day, you will have admitted that you’re madly, deeply, and irrevocably—” “Wow. Want to throw another adverb out there?” My cheeks were burning. “How about irresistibly?” I rolled my eyes and muttered, “I’m surprised you know what an adverb is.” “Stop distracting me, Kitten. Back to my bet—by New Year’s Day, you’ll have admitted that you’re madly, deeply, irrevocably, and irresistibly in love with me.” Stunned, I choked on my laugh. “And that you dream about me.” He released my arm and folded his, cocking an eyebrow. “I bet you’ll even admit that. Probably even show me your notebook with my name circled in hearts—” “Oh, for the love of God…” Daemon winked. “It’s on.

Severe isn't a word normally associated with a cold. Severe is for weather or third-degree burns...No one responds 'severe' when someone asks how her cold is. In fact, nine out of ten Americans respond to 'How's your cold' with 'It sucks.' So there should be an It Sucks cold formula.

By 1991, for instance, epidemiologist surverys in populations had revealed that high cholesterol was NOT associated with heart disease or premature death in women. Rather, the higher the cholesterol in women, the longer they lived, a finding that was so consistent across populations and surveys that it prompted an editorial in the American Heart Associations journal, Circulation: "We are coming to realize," the three authors, led by UC San Francisco epidemiologist Stephen Hulley, wrote, "the the results of cardiovascular research in men, which represents the great majority of the effort thus far, may not apply to women.

Associated with this weight gain are increased risks in adulthood for joint problems, angina, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes and, ultimately, premature death. Outside of the human costs, health experts estimate that treating adult obesity-related ailments will cost the American economy nearly $150 billion in 2009.

Side effects of those very same prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. That’s right! Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents. According to Dr. Barbara Starfield, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000, “adverse effects of medications” (from drugs that were correctly prescribed and taken) kill 106,000 people per year.5 And that doesn’t include accidental overdoses.

In the January 12, 1998, issue of U.S. News and World Report, the head of the Harvard School of Public Health's department of nutrition, a very fickle man, Walter Willet, was queried about a low-fat diet's failure to cure any diseases or save any lives. His weak reply, “It was just a hypothesis to begin with,” showed no shame. That hypothesis has cost more lives than the last two world wars and the Vietnam conflict put together. Just check the American Cancer Society's and American Heart Association's statistics for the last three decades.

Intermittent fasting was associated with more than a 40 percent reduction in heart disease risk in a study of 448 people published in the American Journal of Cardiology reporting that “most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forestalled” by caloric reduction.

A striking marker of just how confused nutrition advice can be was a finding by an advisory committee for the American Heart Association that 37 percent of American nutritionists rate coconut oil—which is essentially nothing but saturated fat in liquid form—as a “healthy food.” Coconut oil may be tasty, but it is no better for you than a big scoop of deep-fried butter.

Giving up animal fats has also meant shifting over to vegetable oils, and over the past century the share of these oils has grown from zero to almost 8 percent of all calories consumed by Americans, by far the biggest change in our eating patterns during that time. In this period, the health of America has become strikingly worse. When the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet was first officially recommended to the public by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 1961, roughly one in seven adult Americans was obese. Forty years later, that number was one in three. (It’s heartbreaking to realize that the federal government’s “Healthy People” goal for 2010, a project begun in the mid-1990s, for instance, was simply to return the public back to levels of obesity seen in 1960, and even that goal was unreachable.)

Heart disease is the Jeffrey Dahmer of modern ailments. It kills more than 25 percent of us. That’s one person in the United States dying of it every 37 seconds. Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.

For the early U.S. astronauts, having a low heart rate, which is associated with low reactivity, was a status symbol. Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth and would later run for president, was admired by his comrades for his supercool pulse rate during liftoff (only 110 beats per minute).

If you want to live long, sleep more and eat less. ... Intermittent fasting was associated with more than a 40 percent reduction in heart disease risk in a study of 448 people published in the American Journal of Cardiology reporting that 'most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forstalled' by caloric reduction.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), included a recent article by Barbara Starfield, M.D., stating that physician error, medication error and adverse events from drugs or surgery kill 225,400 people per year (Chart 1.5).11 That makes our health care system the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind only cancer and heart disease

When the American Dietetic Association (ADA) surveyed all the studies on food and health, they concluded not just that a vegetarian or vegan diet is as healthy as one that includes meat, but that “vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at all the best randomized clinical trials evaluating the effects of omega-3 fats on life span, cardiac death, sudden death, heart attack, and stroke. These included studies not only on fish oil supplements but also studies on the effects of advising people to eat more oily fish. What did they find? Overall, the researchers found no protective benefit for overall mortality, heart disease mortality, sudden cardiac death, heart attack, or stroke.12

For nearly a decade, their secret remained safe. Rumors of a lab study devoted to sex, operating in the heart of St. Louis, never appeared on television or radio or in print. As a personal favor to Masters, St. Louis Globe-Democrat publisher Richard Amberg vowed his daily newspaper wouldn’t breathe a word to its readers. The city’s other competing paper, owned by Pulitzer, stayed mum. Reporters for the Associated Press and United Press International, the two wire services beaming scoops across the world, also knew of this sensational human experiment but refused to say anything to the American public.

The reality of government disruption of the free market cannot be overemphasized, for it is at the heart of our present and future crisis. We have savings institutions that are controlled by government at every step of the way. Federal agencies provide protection against losses and lay down rigid guidelines for capitalization levels, number of branches, territories covered, management policies, services rendered, and interest rates charged. The additional cost to S&Ls of compliance with this regulation has been estimated by the American Bankers Association at about $11 billion per year, which represents a whopping 60% of all their profits.

Let’s take a quick look at what a psychopath is. Although the American Psychiatric Association (APA) no longer uses this term, much of the rest of the world does. The APA has incorporated the term psychopath and sociopath within a broader definition designated as antisocial personality disorder. Even within the APA, there is wide disagreement as to what these terms actually mean. The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) is an American handbook for mental health professionals. It lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them, according to the publishing organization, the American Psychiatric Association. The APA defines antisocial personality disorder, which would include Lobaczewski’s psychopathic personality disorder, as a pervasive pattern of disregard for the violation of the rights of others occurring since age fifteen years, as indicated by three or more of the following:   1.     Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. 2.     Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure. 3.     Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead. 4.     Aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults. 5.     Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others. 6.     Consistent irresponsibility. 7.     Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Like Manhattan? Yes, precisely! And that was one of the reasons why for me moving to New York felt- so unexpectedly- like coming home. But there were other reasons as well: the fact that Urdu was spoken by taxi cab drivers; the presence, only two blocks from my East Village apartment, of a samosa-and china-serving establishment called the Pak-Punjab Deli; the coincidence of crossing Fifth Avenue during a parade and hearing, from loudspeakers mounted on the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Association float, a song to which I had danced at my cousin's wedding. In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker. What? My voice is rising? You are right; I tend to become sentimental when I think of that city. It still occupies a place of great fondness in my heart, which is quite something, I must say, given the circumstances under which, after only eight months of residence, I would later depart.

ethanol may actually make some kinds of air pollution worse. It evaporates faster than pure gasoline, contributing to ozone problems in hot temperatures. A 2006 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that ethanol does reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent relative to gasoline, but it calculated that devoting the entire U.S. corn crop to make ethanol would replace only a small fraction of American gasoline consumption. Corn farming also contributes to environmental degradation due to runoff from fertilizer and pesticides. But to dwell on the science is to miss the point. As the New York Times noted in the throes of the 2000 presidential race, ―Regardless of whether ethanol is a great fuel for cars, it certainly works wonders in Iowa campaigns. The ethanol tax subsidy increases the demand for corn, which puts money in farmers‘ pockets. Just before the Iowa caucuses, corn farmer Marvin Flier told the Times, ―Sometimes I think [the candidates] just come out and pander to us, he said. Then he added, ―Of course, that may not be the worst thing. The National Corn Growers Association figures that the ethanol program increases the demand for corn, which adds 30 cents to the price of every bushel sold. Bill Bradley opposed the ethanol subsidy during his three terms as a senator from New Jersey (not a big corn-growing state). Indeed, some of his most important accomplishments as a senator involved purging the tax code of subsidies and loopholes that collectively do more harm than good. But when Bill Bradley arrived in Iowa as a Democratic presidential candidate back in 1992, he ―spoke to some farmers‖ and suddenly found it in his heart to support tax breaks for ethanol. In short, he realized that ethanol is crucial to Iowa voters, and Iowa is crucial to the presidential race.

The Negro had never really been patient in the pure sense of the word. The posture of silent waiting was forced upon him psychologically because he was shackled physically. In the days of slavery, this suppression was openly, scientifically and consistently applied. Sheer physical force kept the Negro captive at every point. He was prevented from learning to read and write, prevented by laws actually inscribed in the statute books. He was forbidden to associate with other Negroes living on the same plantation, except when weddings or funerals took place. Punishment for any form of resistance or complaint about his condition could range from mutilation to death. Families were torn apart, friends separated, cooperation to improve their condition carefully thwarted. Fathers and mothers were sold from their children and children were bargained away from their parents. Young girls were, in many cases, sold to become the breeders of fresh generations of slaves. The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically. With the ending of physical slavery after the Civil War, new devices were found to "keep the Negro in his place." It would take volumes to describe these methods, extending from birth in jim-crow hospitals through burial in jim-crow sections of cemeteries. They are too well known to require a catalogue here. Yet one of the revelations during the past few years is the fact that the straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South. The result has been a demeanor that passed for patience in the eyes of the white man, but covered a powerful impatience in the heart of the Negro.

have no idea how delicate and beautiful a thing a real feathered courtship is. To tell the truth, these foreigners have associated too long and too intimately with men, and have fallen far away from their primal innocence. There is no need to describe their actions. The vociferous and most unmannerly importunity of the suitor, and the correspondingly spiteful rejection of his overtures by the little vixen on whom his affections are for the moment placed,—these we have all seen to our hearts' discontent. The sparrow will not have been brought over the sea for nothing, however, if his bad behavior serves to heighten our appreciation of our own native songsters, with their "perfect virtues" and "manners for the heart's delight." The American robin, for instance, is far from being a bird of exceptional refinement. His nest is rude, not to say slovenly, and his general deportment is unmistakably common.

The American Heart Association reports: There are numerous benefits of daily physical activity: reduces the risk of heart disease by improving blood circulation throughout the body; keeps weight under control; improves blood cholesterol levels; prevents and reduces high blood pressure; prevents bone loss; boosts energy levels; helps manage stress; releases tension; improves the ability to fall asleep quickly and sleep well; improves self-image; counters anxiety and depression and increases enthusiasm and optimism; increases muscle strength; gives greater capacity for other physical activities; provides a way to share an activity with family and friends; establishes good heart-healthy habits in children and counters the conditions

While rare, suffering a lethal heart attack during sex is certainly not unique. According to research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, a man’s risk of suffering a lethal heart attack increases during the two hours after having sex.

Heart Disease Starts in Childhood In 1953, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association radically changed our understanding of the development of heart disease. Researchers conducted a series of three hundred autopsies on American casualties of the Korean War, with an average age of around twenty-two. Shockingly, 77 percent of soldiers already had visible evidence of coronary atherosclerosis. Some even had arteries that were blocked off 90 percent or more.20 The study “dramatically showed that atherosclerotic changes appear in the coronary arteries years and decades before the age at which coronary heart disease (CHD) becomes a clinically recognized problem.”21 Later studies of accidental death victims between the ages of three and twenty-six found that fatty streaks—the first stage of atherosclerosis—were found in nearly all American children by age ten.22 By the time we reach our twenties and thirties, these fatty streaks can turn into full-blown plaques like those seen in the young American GIs of the Korean War. And by the time we’re forty or fifty, they can start killing us off. If there’s anyone reading this over the age of ten, the question isn’t whether or not you want to eat healthier to prevent heart disease but whether or not you want to reverse the heart disease you very likely already have. Just how early do these fatty streaks start to appear? Atherosclerosis may start even before birth. Italian researchers looked inside arteries taken from miscarriages and premature newborns who died shortly after birth. It turns out that the arteries of fetuses whose mothers had high LDL cholesterol levels were more likely to contain arterial lesions.23 This finding suggests that atherosclerosis may not just start as a nutritional disease of childhood but one during pregnancy. It’s become commonplace for pregnant women to avoid smoking and drinking alcohol. It’s also never too early to start eating healthier for the next generation.

If we accepted the recommendation of the American Heart Association that we eat less than 5 percent of our calories as saturated fat, we would have to ban breast milk. (It contains a whopping 25 percent of its calories as saturated fat.)

Doctors and drugs (medical errors) are the third-leading cause of death in the United States (behind heart disease and cancer). As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, over 250,000 Americans die each year from medical therapies, including at least 113,000 from the negative effects of prescription medications.

The separation of mind and body that informs medical practice is also the dominant ideology in our culture. We do not often think of socio-economic structures and practices as determinants of illness or well-being. They are not usually “part of the equation.” Yet the scientific data is beyond dispute: socio-economic relationships have a profound influence on health. For example, although the media and the medical profession — inspired by pharmaceutical research — tirelessly promote the idea that next to hypertension and smoking, high cholesterol poses the greatest risk for heart disease, the evidence is that job strain is more important than all the other risk factors combined. Further, stress in general and job strain in particular are significant contributors both to high blood pressure and to elevated cholesterol levels. Economic relationships influence health because, most obviously, people with higher incomes are better able to afford healthier diets, living and working conditions and stress-reducing pursuits. Dennis Raphael, associate professor at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto has recently published a study of the societal influences on heart disease in Canada and elsewhere. His conclusion: “One of the most important life conditions that determine whether individuals stay healthy or become ill is their income. In addition, the overall health of North American society may be more determined by the distribution of income among its members rather than the overall wealth of the society…. Many studies find that socioeconomic circumstances, rather than medical and lifestyle risk factors, are the main causes of cardiovascular disease, and that conditions during early life are especially important.” The element of control is the less obvious but equally important aspect of social and job status as a health factor. Since stress escalates as the sense of control diminishes, people who exercise greater control over their work and lives enjoy better health. This principle was demonstrated in the British Whitehall study showing that second-tier civil servants were at greater risk for heart disease than their superiors, despite nearly comparable incomes. Recognizing the multigenerational template for behaviour and for illness, and recognizing, too, the social influences that shape families and human lives, we dispense with the unhelpful and unscientific attitude of blame. Discarding blame leaves us free to move toward the necessary adoption of responsibility, a matter to be taken up when we come in the final chapters to consider healing.

No nation influenced American thinking more profoundly than Germany, W.E.B. DuBois, Charles Beard, Walter Weyl, Richard Ely, Richard Ely, Nicholas Murray Butler, and countless other founders of modern American liberalism were among the nine thousand Americans who studied in German universities during the nineteenth century. When the American Economic Association was formed, five of the six first officers had studied in Germany. At least twenty of its first twenty-six presidents had as well. In 1906 a professor at Yale polled the top 116 economists and social scientists in America; more than half had studied in Germany for at least a year. By their own testimony, these intellectuals felt "liberated" by the experience of studying in an intellectual environment predicated on the assumption that experts could mold society like clay. No European statesman loomed larger in the minds and hearts of American progressives than Otto von Bismarck. As inconvenient as it may be for those who have been taught "the continuity between Bismarck and Hitler", writes Eric Goldman, Bismarck's Germany was "a catalytic of American progressive thought". Bismarck's "top-down socialism", which delivered the eight-hour workday, healthcare, social insurance, and the like, was the gold standard for enlightened social policy. "Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy; assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old", he famously told the Reichstag in 1862. Bismarck was the original "Third Way" figure who triangulated between both ends of the ideological spectrum. "A government must not waver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward", he proclaimed. Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 national Progressive Party platform conspicuously borrowed from the Prussian model. Twenty-five years earlier, the political scientist Woodrow Wilson wrote that Bismarck's welfare state was an "admirable system . . . the most studied and most nearly perfected" in the world.

According to the American Heart Association, people with type 2 diabetes are two- to four-times more likely to have a stroke and two- to four-times more likely to die of heart disease. Type 2 diabetes can also lead to kidney damage or kidney failure, diseases of the eye and loss of vision, and nerve damage.

(The Big Horn Association was formed in Cheyenne, and its members believed in Manifest Destiny: “The rich and beautiful valleys of Wyoming are destined for the occupancy and sustenance of the Anglo-Saxon race. The wealth that for untold ages has lain hidden beneath the snow-capped summits of our mountains has been placed there by Providence to reward the brave spirits whose lot it is to compose the advance-guard of civilization. The Indians must stand aside or be overwhelmed by the ever advancing and ever increasing tide of emigration. The destiny of the aborigines is written in characters not to be mistaken. The same inscrutable Arbiter that decreed the downfall of Rome has pronounced the doom of extinction upon the red men of America.”)

The contemptuous person is likely to experience feelings of low self-esteem, inadequacy, and shame. In a March 2019 New York Times opinion piece entitled Our Culture of Contempt, Arthur C. Brooks writes: “political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the civil war. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organized their social lives and their news exposure along with ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints.” What's our problem? A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on motive attribution asymmetry, the assumption that your ideology is based in love while your opponent’s is based in hate suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average republican and the average democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it's driven by a benevolence while the other side is evil and motivated by hatred, and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise. People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse – contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust, and not just contempt for other people's ideas but also for other people. In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” Brooks goes on to say contempt makes political compromise and progress impossible. It also makes us unhappy as people. According to the American Psychological Association, “the feelings of rejection so often experienced after being treated with contempt increases anxiety, depression, and sadness. It also damages the contemptuous person by stimulating two stress hormones -- cortisol and adrenaline -- in ways both public and personal. Contempt causes us deep harm.

As a nation, we were told to eat less fat and less saturated fat, which we did, or at least tried to do—saturated-fat consumption steadily declined over the years that followed, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics—and yet, rather than getting leaner, we got fatter. What’s more, the incidence of heart disease has not even diminished, which goes against expectations, if eating less fat or saturated fat makes a difference. This has been documented in numerous studies, the latest of which appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association in November 2009 by Elena Kuklina and her colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors made much of the fact that the number of Americans with high levels of LDL cholesterol has recently been decreasing, as would be expected in a nation avoiding saturated fat (and spending billions of dollars yearly on cholesterol-lowering drugs), but the number of heart attacks was not decreasing with it.

I rise, Mr President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions terminate here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more.” His voice faltered at the outset, but soon it gathered volume and rang clear—“like a silver trumpet,” according to his wife, who sat in the gallery. “Unshed tears were in it,” she added, “and a plea for peace permeated every tone.” Davis continued: “It is known to senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union.… If I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation … I should still, under my theory of government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action.” He foresaw the founding of a nation, inheritor of the traditions of the American Revolution. “We but tread in the paths of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard … not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.” England had been a lion; the Union might turn out to be a bear; in which case, “we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.

A recent American Heart Association-funded study compared the lifestyles and arteries of nearly five hundred twins. It found that diet and lifestyle factors clearly trumped genes.

The exodus of this whole people from the land of their fathers is not only an interesting but a touching sight. They have fought us gallantly for years on years; they have defended their mountains and their stupendous canyons with a heroism which any people might be proud to emulate; but when, at length, they found it was their destiny, too, as it had been that of their brethren, tribe after tribe, away back toward the rising of the sun, to give way to the insatiable progress of our race, they threw down their arms, and, as brave men entitled to our admiration and respect, have come to us with confidence in our magnanimity, and feeling that we are too powerful and too just a people to repay that confidence with meanness or neglect—feeling that having sacrificed to us their beautiful country, their homes, the associations of their lives, the scenes rendered classic in their traditions, we will not dole out to them a miser’s pittance in return for what they know to be and what we know to be a princely realm.

The key word here is recurrence. A review of 11 large-scale studies covering some 65,000 patients, published in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Internal Medicine, showed no evidence that statins had any benefits for heart disease prevention in patients who had not been previously diagnosed with a cardiovascular condition.2 Even worse, you may have to endure some unpleasant side effects—such as muscle aches, headaches, and bloating—without any definite benefit.

Who Funds the AHA? The story of how the American Heart Association came to dominate nutrition thought begins with the very first industry to fund the AHA. As we’ll learn, the AHA was effectively launched with a large sum of money that came straight from the vegetable oil industry. The AHA used this money to support Ancel Keys’s cholesterol theory—and to convince the public to start eating vegetable oils. The AHA continues to receive money from industries selling vegetable oil, and the AHA’s practice guidelines continue to support the vegetable oil industry today. Today, our massive processed food industry depends heavily on vegetable oils, as do the companies that grow most of our foods. The AHA’s top corporate donors now include heavy hitters from Big Ag and Big Food, including Conagra, Monsanto (before the company closed in 2018), LibertyLink, Kellogg’s, Quaker, Tyson, FritoLay, Campbell, and Subway.22 The AHA’s website states that 80 percent of their $1 billion plus annual revenue comes from non-corporate sources. Nevertheless, in 2021, drug and device companies donated just over $40 million, and “other” corporations donated more than $140 million.23 The AHA uses this money in part to support scientists interested in exploring the benefits of vegetable oils, the harms of cholesterol, and new ways to use drugs that lower cholesterol—and to publish and publicize their findings. The money also goes to lobbyists who influence public health policy at the state and national levels.24

After years of examining the accumulating evidence, eight top health organizations joined forces and agreed to encourage Americans to eat more unrefined plant food and less food from animal sources, as revealed in the dietary guidelines published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. These authorities are the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young, the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, the American Dietetic Association, the Division of Nutrition Research of the National Institutes of Health, and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. Their unified guidelines are a giant step in the right direction. Their aim is to offer protection against the major chronic diseases in America, including heart disease and cancer. “The emphasis is on eating a variety of foods, mostly fruits and vegetables, with very little simple sugar or high-fat foods, especially animal foods,” said

With this in mind, the American Heart Association came up with “The Simple 7” factors that can lead to a healthier life: not smoking, not being overweight, being “very active” (defined as the equivalent of walking at least twenty-two minutes a day), eating healthier (for example, lots of fruits and vegetables), having below-average cholesterol, having normal blood pressure, and having normal blood sugar levels.27 The American Heart Association’s goal is to reduce heart-disease deaths by 20 percent by 2020.28 If more than 90 percent of heart attacks may be avoided with lifestyle changes,29 why so modest an aim?

There is simply no room for doubt: for the American Heart Association, the science on saturated fat is rock-solid, like your arteries after a year of eating too much bacon. The AHA is wrong. That’s not what decades of sound science has proven. It’s what decades of loud public policy makers have said—and, unfortunately, public policy doesn’t always proceed from sound science.

In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength. No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men. Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that every association must have a head in order to accomplish its object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power.

The American Heart Association advises women limit added sugars to 25 grams (about 6 teaspoons) a day and men to 37.5 grams (about 9 teaspoons) a day.

...the Virgin of Guadalupe was not a mere Christian front for the worship of a pagan goddess. The adoration of Guadalupe represented a profound change of Aztec religious belief...The pagan Tonantzin was a dual-natured earth goddess who fed her Mexican children and devoured their corpses. She wore a necklace of human hands and hearts with a human skull hanging over her flaccid breasts, which nursed both gods and men. her idol depicts her as a monster with two streams of blood shaped like serpents flowing from her neck. Like other major deities in the Aztec pantheon, Tonantzin was both a creator and destroyer...The Christian ideals of beauty, love, and mercy associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe were never attributed to the pagan deity." William Madsen, "Religious Syncretism", Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, p.378.

The low-cholesterol diet became national policy not only because the American Heart Association and nutritionists enthusiastically endorsed it as a solution to heart disease but even more importantly because the vast power of the US government swung behind it.

at least 18 other health organizations and the Federal Government supported a reduction in fat and cholesterol,” wrote the editors, with only the academy and the American Medical Association on the other side. The diet’s potential costs—an increased heart disease risk from the carbohydrates, an increased risk of cancer from polyunsaturated oils, or a lack of adequate nutrition for children—were not part of the discussion.

with an uncharacteristic lack of reserve. “I think the public is being hosed by the NIH and the American Heart Association,” he declared. “They desire to do something good. They’re hoping to God that this is the right thing to do. But they are not acting on the basis of scientific evidence, but on the basis of a plausible but untested idea.

Anthony Gotto, president of the American Heart Association, told Time that if everyone went along with a cholesterol-lowering program, “we will have [atherosclerosis] conquered” by the year 2000.

In this period, the health of America has become strikingly worse. When the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet was first officially recommended to the public by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 1961, roughly one in seven adult Americans was obese. Forty years later, that number was one in three.

My good heart and empathetic personality were assumed by many as a weakness. I was unwarily and widely opening doors to my sponge-like heart for people with a strict intent to take advantage of me. I was considered naive and gullible. My charitable practices caused me more pains and heartaches than a long expected feeling of joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Dealing with constant depreciation, disrespect, and in few cases even abused, I was being left feeling wronged and victimized. Such treatment sent me into a low-vibration state of mind and ever since I have been attracting and letting all the wrong and toxic people in to my life. In the effect, inadvertently and totally unconsciously, I neglected and deprived myself from having what I deserved best: - true and unconditional love, respect and gratitude. By constantly placing me at "second place”, I depleted myself from positive energy, neglected my own life; its desires, needs, and ended up running on empty. I started losing touch with my own creative inspiration, and my artistic originality suffered a great deal. I started noticing that I was left with no fuel to properly nourish my own body, soul and mind. It is time for me to take charge of my life, place myself first before anyone else, let go of all the “wolfs in sheep’s garment”, and rebuild my dwindling self-esteem. It is time for me to heal and rebuild my essence, give myself proper love, balanced nutrition and attention, and feel again that strong desire to live my life to the fullest. It is time for me to reconstitute, refocus and re-center in order to achieve a blissful feeling of inner peace. I understand that this new development may disappoint some of my "friends" and associates who are used to my giving nature. They will have to accept my transformation given that I cannot go on with my life running on empty, especially since most of my actions remain usually non-reciprocated. It is time for Alex to finally be able to distinguish between those that are really in need and those that are just pure pococurante parasites or scavengers, always expecting of me to cater to their every single need. It is time for me to say "no" to those who under false pretenses entered my sensitive and charitable heart only to take advantage of it and who are always taking but never giving.

used to scorn this, seeing their human judgment as irreplaceable. Now, says Jiri Stejskal of the American Translators’ Association, it has won respectability. Technological change has not brought consolidation to a fragmented industry, however. Lionbridge, which has the largest disclosed revenues ($489m in 2013), makes much of its money from services other than translation. Like most of its rivals, Lionbridge talks up technology, but is fairly traditional. The heart of the business is managing projects, acting as a go-between for customers and freelance translators on jobs like managing file formats and locations, client reviews and so forth. Tedious project-management tasks like these may offer scope for disruptive

American Heart Association has reported that 75 per cent of heart involvements begin before ten years of age. My studies have shown that in about 95 per cent of these cases there is active tooth decay. The important change that I made in this boy's dietary program was the removal of the white flour products and in their stead the use of freshly cracked or ground wheat and oats used with whole milk to which was added a small amount of specially high vitamin butter produced by cows pasturing on green wheat. Small doses of a high-vitamin, natural cod liver oil were also added. At this time the boy was so badly crippled with arthritis, in his swollen knees, wrists, and rigid spine, that he was bedfast and cried by the hour. With the improvement in his nutrition which was the only change made in his care, his acute pain rapidly subsided, his appetite greatly improved, he slept soundly and gained rapidly in weight

Every time you make a contribution to an organization purported searching for a “cure,’ such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the United Way, or any other such institution, you are helping maintain the status quo. Plus, you are helping researchers torture, usually for years and always for no reason, millions of helpless, innocent animals.

Fresh foods contain more potassium than sodium. In fact, if foods are unprocessed, they contain potassium that is 5 to 10 times more than sodium, which is the ratio that the bodies of hunter-gatherers adapted during their time. Potassium is beneficial for the kidneys, heart, and other organs in the body. A person with low potassium level is prone to heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure, which are also associated with excessive intake of sodium. Nowadays, the average American’s intake of sodium is twice as much as potassium.

American Dietetic Association (ADA) surveyed all the studies on food and health, they concluded not just that a vegetarian or vegan diet is as healthy as one that includes meat, but that “vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer.

According to the American Heart Association, optimal levels are as follows (note: those levels have been converted from US mg/dL measures): Total cholesterol (3.7–5.1 mmol/L, below 3.7 has been associated with depression) High-density lipoprotein (HDL) (>= 1.5 mmol/L) Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (<2.6 mmol/L) Triglycerides (<1.1 mmol/L).

According to the American Heart Association, optimal levels are as follows (note: those levels have been converted from US mg/dL measures): Total cholesterol (3.7–5.1 mmol/L, below 3.7 has been associated with depression) High-density lipoprotein (HDL) (>= 1.5 mmol/L) Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (<2.6 mmol/L) Triglycerides (<1.1 mmol/L). If your lipids are off, make sure to get your diet under control, as well as taking fish oil and exercising regularly. Of course you should see your physician. Also, knowing the particle size of LDL cholesterol is important. Large particles are less toxic than smaller particles.

In a 2014 interview with New York Magazine, senior Associate Justice Antonin Scalia stated his belief that there is an actual devil. Not a mythical creature representing the dark side of the human heart, but an actual, malevolent entity living in a fiery netherworld who, like some Bond villain holding a pitchfork instead an albino pussycat, is actually plotting to corrupt mankind. This was stated with confidence, even arrogance, by a man who made decisions affecting the lives of 350 million Americans and, by extension, the world.

As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. “I love this country,” he used to say, “not only because my ancestors’ blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.” Shea Howell, Oakland University rhetoric professor and former director of Detroit Summer, has helped hundreds of students and community organizers appreciate what Jimmy meant: Love isn’t just something you feel. It’s something you do every day when you go out and pick up the papers and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they’re doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give ’em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than we are. In other words, Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after. Taking King seriously also requires a paradigm shift in how we address the three main questions of philosophy: What does it mean to be a human being? How do we know? How shall we live? It means rejecting scientific rationalism (based on the Cartesian body-mind dichotomy), which recognizes as real only that which can be measured and therefore excludes the knowledge that comes from the heart or from relationships between people. It means that we must be willing to see with our hearts and not only with our eyes. King was assassinated before he could begin to develop strategies and praxis to implement this revolutionary/evolutionary perspective for our young people, our cities, and our country. After his death many of his closest associates were too overwhelmed or too busy taking advantage of the new opportunities for advancement within the system to keep his vision and his practice alive. We will never know how King would have developed had he lived to see the twenty-first century. What we do know is that in the forty years since his assassination, our communities have been turned into wastelands by the Hi-Tech juggernaut and the export of, first, factory and, now, computer jobs overseas so that global corporations can make more of a profit with cheaper labor. We have witnessed and shared the suffering of countless numbers of young people in our inner cities,

And allowing oneself to remain vulnerable to disease remains a legal privilege today. Dictionaries aside, what it means to have a conscience may be no more clear to us now than it was in 1898. We do recognize when it is lacking—she has no conscience, we say. But what exactly is missing? I put this question to my sister, who teaches ethics at a Jesuit college and is a member of the North American Kant Society. “It’s tricky,” she says. “In the eighteenth century, Kant wrote that we have a duty to ourselves to examine our conscience. This implies that it’s not transparent, that it must be scrutinized and deciphered. Kant thought of conscience as an inner judge and used the metaphor of a courtroom to explain its operation. In the courtroom of conscience, the self is both judge and judged.” I ask her if this means our conscience emerges from thought and is a product of our minds. “It’s an evolving concept,” she says. “It may have once been more closely associated with the emotions, but we still say we feel a pang of conscience—it involves a unity of thought and feeling.” Kant, she tells me, called the inner judge a “scrutinizer of hearts.” “The part that’s tricky,” my sister says, “is how you discern between a sense of discomfort and what your conscience is telling you.” This question remains with me, and I am disturbed by the possibility that I could mistake the call of my conscience for something else. I ask a former professor of mine, a novelist who teaches the Old Testament as literature, how one recognizes one’s own conscience. She looks at me sternly and says, “It’s a very distinct feeling. I don’t think one’s conscience is easily confused with any other feeling.

Writing of Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley and his close associate, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, he says, “[T]he heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it.

My own story is instructive. More than twenty years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The conventional treatment made my condition worse, so I approached this health challenge from my perspective as an inventor. I immersed myself in the scientific literature and came up with a unique program that successfully reversed my diabetes. In 1993 I wrote a health book (The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life) about this experience, and I continue today to be free of any indication or complication of this disease.13 In addition, when I was twenty-two, my father died of heart disease at the age of fifty-eight, and I have inherited his genes predisposing me to this illness. Twenty years ago, despite following the public guidelines of the American Heart Association, my cholesterol was in the high 200s (it should be well below 180), my HDL (high-density lipoprotein, the “good” cholesterol) below 30 (it should be above 50), and my homocysteine (a measure of the health of a biochemical process called methylation) was an unhealthy 11 (it should be below 7.5). By following a longevity program that Grossman and I developed, my current cholesterol level is 130, my HDL is 55, my homocysteine is 6.2, my C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation in the body) is a very healthy 0.01, and all of my other indexes (for heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions) are at ideal levels.14

According to the American Heart Association, for every minute that goes by without someone attempting CPR or defibrillation, the odds of survival decrease by 7 to 10 percent. 8 If ten minutes go by, survival is a long shot.

Then in March 1993, everything changed. My one-year-old son, Charlie, had his first seizure. There’s absolutely nothing funny about being the parent of a child with uncontrolled epilepsy. Nothing. After a year of daily seizures, drugs, and a brain surgery, I learned that the cure for Charlie’s epilepsy, the ketogenic diet—a high fat, no sugar, limited protein diet—had been hiding in plain sight for, by then, over seventy years. And despite the diet’s being well documented in medical texts, none of the half-dozen pediatric neurologists we had taken Charlie to see had mentioned a word about it. I found out on my own at a medical library. It was life altering—not just for Charlie and my family, but for tens of thousands like us. Turns out there are powerful forces at work within our health care system that don’t necessarily prioritize good health. For decades, physicians have barely been taught diet therapy or even nutrition in medical school. The pharmaceutical, medical device, and sugar industries make hundreds of billions every year on anti-epileptic drugs and processed foods—but not a nickel if we change what we eat. The cardiology community and American Heart Association demonize fat based on flawed science. Hospitals profit from tests and procedures, but again no money from diet therapy. There is a world epilepsy population of over sixty million people. Most of those people begin having their seizures as children, and only a minuscule percentage ever find out about ketogenic diet therapies. When I realized that 99 percent of what had happened to Charlie and my family was unnecessary, and that there were millions of families worldwide in the same situation, I needed to try to do something. Nancy and I began the Charlie Foundation (charliefoundation.org) in 1994 in order to facilitate research and get the word directly to those who would benefit. Among the high points were countless articles, a couple appearances of Charlie’s story on Dateline NBC, and a movie I produced and directed about another family whose child’s epilepsy had been cured by the ketogenic diet starring Meryl Streep titled First Do No Harm (1997). Today, of course, the diet permeates social media. When we started, there was one hospital in the world offering ketogenic diet therapy. Today, there are 250. Equally important, word about the efficacy of the ketogenic diet for epilepsy spread within the scientific community. In 1995, we hosted the first of many scientific global symposia focused on the diet. As research into its mechanisms and applications has spiked, incredibly the professional communities have found the same metabolic pathway that is triggered by the ketogenic diet to reduce seizures has also been found to benefit Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, severe psychiatric disorders, traumatic brain injury, and even some cancers. I

It was, of course, hypocritical nonsense. In Jackson’s four years at Auburn, football season ticket applications increased by 1,700 annually. The school was making millions off of his presence, his likeness, his replica jersey, his name on stickers and pins and hats. A year earlier Jackson was prevented from appearing at the American Heart Association’s “Walk for the Health of It” walkathon because it would violate “The Rules.” Which rules? No one was sure. But there were rules. Plenty of rules. “The SEC clings to its pompous eligibility rules,” wrote Bob Wojnowski in Florida Today, “like a bum clings to his dignity.

Although the move from Calvinism to Arminianism began in the seminary classroom, it came to have a profound influence on American culture through the events of the Second Great Awakening. The revivals of the first Great Awakening were supernatural events, wrought by the power of God’s Spirit. The same could be said of the new wave of revivals that began in the 1790s and continued well into the nineteenth century. Like its predecessor, the Second Great Awakening began and flourished in Calvinist churches, where it was believed that because revival is a work of God alone, it is “peculiarly illustrative of the glorious doctrines of grace.”29 However, since it was only natural to want the awakening to continue, some Christian leaders—especially Methodists—sought to devise methods for promoting revival. Their concern for personal salvation was commendable. However, rather than relying on God to bless the ordinary means of grace (prayer, the ministry of the Word, and the sacraments), they adopted the “New Measures” associated with the invitation system: the protracted camp meeting, the “anxious bench,” the altar call. These pragmatic techniques were susceptible to manipulation, especially where it was considered important to count the number of converts. Preachers stressed the necessity of “coming forward to receive Christ,” with the unintended consequence of con-fusing a human decision (to come forward) with a divine transformation (spiritual conversion). In short, there was a shift from revival to revivalism.30 This transition was rooted in an Arminian theology of conversion, which maintained that sinners were neutral—free to choose their own spiritual destiny. Whereas the Puritans had insisted that depravity prevented anyone from choosing for Christ apart from the prior work of the Holy Spirit, the new revivalists called on people to exercise their own ability to receive the gospel. Gardiner Spring described this as the difference between a revival that is “got up by man’s device” and one that is “brought down by the Spirit of God.”31 The difference can be illustrated by comparing Jonathan Edwards, who described revival as “a very extraordinary dispensation of Providence,”32 with Charles Finney, who insisted that a revival is not supernatural but the natural “result of the right use of the constituted means.” Like most revivalists, Finney explicitly rejected the doctrines of grace. Early in his ministry he left the Presbyterian church and repudiated Calvin’s views “on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines.”33 The view he eventually adopted was not merely Arminian but actually Pelagian. Finney believed that sinners could initiate their own conversion: “Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God.

ONE OF THE FIRST SEX SCANDALS to rattle twenty-first-century American evangelicalism struck at the heart of evangelical power. In 2006, male escort Mike Jones went public with the news that Colorado Springs megachurch pastor Ted Haggard had been paying him for sex for the past three years—the approximate period during which Haggard had been serving as head of the National Association of Evangelicals. Haggard, the pastor of the muscular-angel-bedecked New Life Church, had at the time been lobbying for Colorado Amendment 43, a ban on same-sex marriage, and it was Haggard’s hypocrisy that prompted Jones to go public.11

Simply stated, methamphetamines make you feel good—really good. However, that feeling can often be followed by severe manic-depression, paranoid delusions of hypergrandiosity, schizophrenic dissociative behavior, and at its worst, a complete breakdown of logical perception. Methamphetamine can also cause a rise in the user’s blood pressure, an increased heart rate, and even a heart attack. And this is not to mention that methamphetamine is also highly addictive. Methamphetamine was first synthesized by a Japanese scientist in 1919 and used by the Germans as well as the British in World War II. During the 1920s it was widely considered a wonder drug and was used to treat everything from asthma to nasal congestion. While amphetamines had been first approved to be sold in tablet form by the American Medical Association in 1937, methamphetamine had been first marketed over the counter as an inhaler known as Benzedrine by the drug manufacturer Smith, Kline, and French beginning in 1932.

Other conditions that are associated with chronic inflammation are heart disease, Alzheimer’s, asthma, cancer, and diabetes. It’s not healthy. This variant is causing our cells to secrete a disproportionate number of cytokines, which are proteins that signal our bodies to produce more inflammatory cells.

dietary fat was linked to them. The American diet is full of the so-called “bad” fats, saturated fats derived from animal and dairy sources and fried foods (oxidized, also known as “rancid” fats). Studies have shown that even fats once thought to be healthy, such as margarines and other trans fats, actually promote degenerative disease. The American Heart Association and National Cancer Institute recommend that the

Not only does our individual and societal sanity depend on connection; so does our physical health. Because we are biopsychosocial creatures, the rising loneliness epidemic in Western culture is much more than just a psychological phenomenon: it is a public health crisis. A preeminent scholar of loneliness, the late neuroscientist John Cacioppo and his colleague and spouse, Stephania Cacioppo, published a letter in the Lancet only a month before his death in 2018. "Imagine," they wrote, "a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed, and self-centered, and is associated with a 26% increase in the risk of premature mortality. Imagine too that in industrialized countries around a third of people are affected by this condition, with one person in 12 affected severely, and that these proportions are increasing. Income, education, sex, and ethnicity are not protective, and the condition is contagious. The effects of the condition are not attributable to some peculiarity of the character of a subset of individuals, they are a result of the condition affecting ordinary people. Such a condition exists — loneliness." We now know without doubt that chronic loneliness is associated with an elevated risk of illness and early death. It has been shown to increase mortality from cancer and other diseases and has been compared to the harm of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. According to research presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in 2015, the loneliness epidemic is a public health risk at least as great as the burgeoning rates of obesity. Loneliness, the researcher Steven Cole told me, can impair genetic functioning. And no wonder: even in parrots isolation impairs DNA repair by shortening chromosome-protecting telomeres. Social isolation inhibits the immune system, promotes inflammation, agitates the stress apparatus, and increases the risk of death from heart disease and strokes. Here I am referring to social isolation in the pre COVID-19 sense, though the pandemic has grievously exacerbated the problem, at great cost to the well-being of many.

Contempt makes political compromise and progress impossible. It also makes us unhappy as people. According to the American Psychological Association, the feeling of rejection, so often experienced after being treated with contempt, increases anxiety, depression and sadness. It also damages the contemptuous person by stimulating two stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. In ways both public and personal, contempt causes us deep harm.

The humble egg, in particular, was singled out in a 1968 proclamation by the American Heart Association, accused of causing heart disease because of its high cholesterol content. It has remained in nutritional purgatory for decades, even after reams of research papers showing that dietary cholesterol (and particularly egg consumption) may not have much to do with heart disease at all. Eating lots of saturated fat can increase levels of atherosclerosis-causing lipoproteins in blood, but most of the actual cholesterol that we consume in our food ends up being excreted out our backsides. The vast majority of the cholesterol in our circulation is actually produced by our own cells. Nevertheless, US dietary guidelines warned Americans away from consuming foods high in cholesterol for decades, and nutrition labels still inform American consumers about how much cholesterol is contained in each serving of packaged foods.

We Americans once reveled in our reputation for self-sufficiency. We were tinkerers, fixers of things. Yet while many of us can recall our parents wrestling into compliance a recalcitrant toaster or washing machine, few of us today would attempt the same with a malfunctioning microwave oven, digital camera, or anything built up from a computer chip. Appliances, electronics, and automobiles are black boxes, impervious to probing and resistant to repair. Getting into the guts of things is difficult, and if we dare trespass in the innards of what we thought belonged to us, we do so at the risk of the guarantee. Even seasoned professionals are losing heart. In less than two decades, the Professional Service Association lost three-quarters of its small appliance and consumer electronics shop members. During that same period the number of electronics repair shops plummeted from twenty thousand to five thousand. Repair people of all stripes have fallen into obscurity. Sesame Street closed its “Fix-it Shop” in 1996, stating as its reason that young viewers were unlikely to encounter one.

The American Heart Association’s recommended limit is 1,500 mg of sodium a day.2183 Care to guess what percentage of Americans exceed that? An incredible 99.4 percent.2184 The overwhelmingly vast majority of U.S. adults consume too much sodium and, at the same time, too little potassium, a mineral that lowers blood pressure. (Less than 2 percent of U.S. adults consume the recommended daily minimum intake of potassium.)

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential. Insufficient levels of two of the most important omega-3s—eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)—have been linked to depression and bipolar disorder, suicidal behavior, inflammation, heart disease, ADD/ADHD, cognitive impairment and dementia, and obesity.[1] Ninety-five percent of Americans do not get enough dietary omega-3 fatty acids.[2] The human body doesn’t produce omega-3s on its own, so you have to get it from outside sources, such as fatty fish. If you aren’t getting enough of this essential nutrient from your diet, it’s bad news for your brain. That’s because omega-3s contribute to about 8 percent of your brain’s weight. At Amen Clinics, we tested omega-3 levels of 50 consecutive patients who were not taking fish oil supplements. A shocking 49 out of 50—that’s 98 percent!—had suboptimal levels. In a subsequent study, we analyzed the scans of 130 patients with their omega-3 levels. Patients with the lowest levels had lower blood flow in the areas of the brain associated with depression and dementia.

Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.

Over the next few years, the number of African Americans seeking jobs and homes in and near Palo Alto grew, but no developer who depended on federal government loan insurance would sell to them, and no California state-licensed real estate agent would show them houses. But then, in 1954, one resident of a whites-only area in East Palo Alto, across a highway from the Stanford campus, sold his house to a black family. Almost immediately Floyd Lowe, president of the California Real Estate Association, set up an office in East Palo Alto to panic white families into listing their homes for sale, a practice known as blockbusting. He and other agents warned that a 'Negro invasion' was imminent and that it would result in collapsing property values. Soon, growing numbers of white owners succumbed to the scaremongering and sold at discounted prices to the agents and their speculators. The agents, including Lowe himself, then designed display ads with banner headlines-"Colored Buyers!"-which they ran in San Francisco newspapers. African Americans desperate for housing, purchased the homes at inflated prices. Within a three-month period, one agent alone sold sixty previously white-owned properties to African Americans. The California real estate commissioner refused to take any action, asserting that while regulations prohibited licensed agents from engaging in 'unethical practices,' the exploitation of racial fear was not within the real estate commission's jurisdiction. Although the local real estate board would ordinarily 'blackball' any agent who sold to a nonwhite buyer in the city's white neighborhoods (thereby denying the agent access to the multiple listing service upon which his or her business depended), once wholesale blockbusting began, the board was unconcerned, even supportive. At the time, the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration not only refused to insure mortgages for African Americans in designated white neighborhoods like Ladera; they also would not insure mortgages for whites in a neighborhood where African Americans were present. So once East Palo Alto was integrated, whites wanting to move into the area could no longer obtain government-insured mortgages. State-regulated insurance companies, like the Equitable Life Insurance Company and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, also declared that their policy was not to issue mortgages to whites in integrated neighborhoods. State insurance regulators had no objection to this stance. The Bank of America and other leading California banks had similar policies, also with the consent of federal banking regulators. Within six years the population of East Palo Alto was 82 percent black. Conditions deteriorated as African Americans who had been excluded from other neighborhoods doubled up in single-family homes. Their East Palo Alto houses had been priced so much higher than similar properties for whites that the owners had difficulty making payments without additional rental income. Federal and state hosing policy had created a slum in East Palo Alto. With the increased density of the area, the school district could no longer accommodate all Palo Alto students, so in 1958 it proposed to create a second high school to accommodate teh expanding student population. The district decided to construct the new school in the heart of what had become the East Palo Alto ghetto, so black students in Palo Alto's existing integrated building would have to withdraw, creating a segregated African American school in the eastern section and a white one to the west. the board ignored pleas of African American and liberal white activists that it draw an east-west school boundary to establish two integrated secondary schools. In ways like these, federal, state, and local governments purposely created segregation in every metropolitan area of the nation.

All advocate an alternative hypothesis: that carbohydrates are the problem, not fat, and if we eat less of them, we will weigh less and live longer. All have been summarily dismissed by the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, and nutritional authorities as part of a misguided fad.

During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes,” observed Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general of the United States. “It was loneliness.” He described it as “a growing health epidemic” that can lead to stress, inflammation, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and early death. It may be one reason suicide rates are at a modern high. Murthy calculates that loneliness and social isolation are even more associated with early death than obesity, and have approximately the same impact on lifespan as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

At the 1988 American Heart Association conference, a Black hypertension researcher said African Americans had higher hypertension rates because only those able to retain high levels of salt survived consuming the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage. “I’ve bounced this off a number of colleagues and…it seems certainly plausible,” Clarence Grim told swooning reporters. Plausibility became proof, and the slavery/hypertension thesis received the red carpet in the cardiovascular community in the 1990s. Grim did not arrive at the thesis in his research lab. It came to him as he read Roots by Alex Haley. Who needs scientific proof when a biological racial distinction can be imagined by reading fiction? By reading the Bible? —

Worst among the new lexicon of anti-male slogans is that of ‘toxic masculinity’. Like each of these other memes, ‘toxic masculinity’ started out on the furthest fringes of academia and social media. But by 2019 it had made it into the heart of serious organizations and public bodies. In January the American Psychological Association released its first ever guidelines for how its members should specifically deal with men and boys. The APA claimed that 40 years of research showed that ‘traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression, is undermining men’s well-being’.

One thing is clear: There is no nutritional deficiency that develops when you stop consuming wheat and other processed foods. Furthermore, you will simultaneously experience reduced exposure to sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial food colorings and flavors, cornstarch, and the list of unpronounceables on the product label. Again, there is no genuine nutritional deficiency from any of this. But this hasn’t stopped the food industry and its friends at the USDA, the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association, and the American Diabetes Association from suggesting that these foods are somehow necessary for health and that doing without them might be unhealthy. Nonsense. Absolute, unadulterated, 180-proof, whole grain nonsense.

SPINACH-ARTICHOKE HUMMUS Creamy texture, pretty green color, and assertive taste—this dip has it all! SERVES 8 | ¼ cup per serving 2 ounces spinach (about 2 cups) 1 cup canned no-salt-added chickpeas, rinsed and drained 4 medium canned artichoke hearts, rinsed, squeezed dry, and quartered ¼ cup Chicken Broth or commercial fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth 2 tablespoons shredded or grated Parmesan cheese ½ teaspoon grated lemon zest 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons tahini 1 to 2 medium garlic cloves, minced ¼ teaspoon pepper In a food processor or blender, process all the ingredients until the desired consistency. Serve at room temperature or cover and refrigerate until needed. COOK’S TIP ON TAHINI Tahini is a thick paste made from ground sesame seeds. Add small amounts to enhance salad dressings, marinades, soups, stuffings, and other dips and spreads. Look for tahini in the condiment or ethnic sections in the grocery store. PER SERVING calories 101 total fat 3.5 g saturated 0.5 g trans 0.0 g polyunsaturated 1.5 g monounsaturated 1.5 g cholesterol 1 mg sodium 89 mg carbohydrates 13 g fiber 4 g sugars 2 g protein 5 g calcium 40 mg potassium 188 mg dietary exchanges 1 starch ½ lean meat

SLOW-COOKER MOROCCAN CHICKEN with Orange Couscous Thanks to a wonderful blend of spices and dried fruit, ordinary chicken gets a Moroccan makeover in this meal-in-one dish. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients—this dish is simple to put together. SERVES 6 | 1 cup chicken mixture and ½ cup couscous per serving Cooking spray CHICKEN 2 medium carrots, cut crosswise into ½-inch pieces 1 medium sweet onion, such as Vidalia, Maui, or Oso Sweet, halved lengthwise, thinly sliced lengthwise, and separated into half-rings 1 large rib of celery, chopped 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, all visible fat discarded, cut into 1½- to 2-inch cubes ⅓ cup dried plums, coarsely chopped ⅓ cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped ⅓ cup golden raisins ⅓ cup white balsamic vinegar 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 cup dry white wine (regular or nonalcoholic) 3 tablespoons firmly packed light brown sugar 3 medium garlic cloves, minced 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon cayenne 1 15.5-ounce can no-salt-added cannellini beans, white kidney beans, or chickpeas, rinsed and drained COUSCOUS ½ cup water ½ cup fresh orange juice 1 cup uncooked whole-wheat couscous Lightly spray a 3½- or 4-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Put the carrots, onion, and celery in the slow cooker. Place the chicken cubes over the vegetables. Top with the dried plums, apricots, and raisins. Don’t stir. In a medium bowl, whisk together the vinegar and flour until smooth. Gradually whisk in the wine. Whisk in the remaining chicken ingredients except the beans. Pour over the chicken mixture. Don’t stir. Cook, covered, on low for 5½ to 6½ hours or on high for 2½ to 3 hours, or until the chicken and vegetables are tender. Stir in the beans. Cook, covered, for 5 to 10 minutes (on either low or high), or until the beans are heated through. While the beans are heating, in a small saucepan, bring the water and orange juice just to a boil over high heat. Remove from the heat. Stir in the couscous. Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Spoon onto plates. Ladle the chicken mixture over the couscous mixture. PER SERVING calories 450 total fat 2.5 g saturated 0.5 g trans 0.0 g polyunsaturated 0.5 g monounsaturated 0.5 g cholesterol 44 mg sodium 108 mg carbohydrates 76 g fiber 11 g sugars 27 g protein 28 g calcium 99 mg potassium 833 mg dietary exchanges 3 starch 1½ fruit 1 vegetable 2½ very lean meat

What About the DASH Diet? What if you are among the seventy-eight million Americans who already have high blood pressure? How can you bring it down? The American Heart Association (AHA), the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) all recommend that patients first try lifestyle modifications, such as reducing body weight, limiting sodium and alcohol intake, getting more exercise, and eating a healthier diet.92 However, if their recommended lifestyle changes don’t work, then it’s off to the pharmacy.

with “The Simple 7” factors that can lead to a healthier life: not smoking, not being overweight, being “very active” (defined as the equivalent of walking at least twenty-two minutes a day), eating healthier (for example, lots of fruits and vegetables), having below-average cholesterol, having normal blood pressure, and having normal blood sugar levels.27 The American Heart Association’s goal is to reduce heart-disease deaths by 20 percent

SLOW-COOKER MOROCCAN CHICKEN

In 1988, the American Heart Association decided that it would be a good idea to start accepting cash to put its Heart Check symbol on foods of otherwise dubious nutritional quality.

VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP Making this soup with roast beef you’ve saved from another meal (maybe Easy Roast Beef) cuts down on both prep time and cooking time. Even people who think they don’t like leftovers will enjoy this soup, which gets lots of flavor from fresh produce. SERVES 6 | 1 cup per serving Cooking spray 1 medium onion, chopped 1 medium rib of celery, diced 1 medium carrot, sliced 1½ teaspoons chopped fresh oregano or ½ teaspoon dried, crumbled 2 medium garlic cloves, minced ½ teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled 4 cups Beef Broth or commercial fat-free, no-salt-added beef broth 1 cup chopped cooked lean roast beef, cooked without salt, all visible fat discarded 1 cup cut fresh or frozen green beans 1 medium tomato, chopped Pepper to taste Lightly spray a Dutch oven with cooking spray. Cook the onion, celery, carrot, oregano, garlic, and thyme over medium heat for 4 minutes, or until the onion is soft, stirring occasionally. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. COOK’S TIP ON THICKENING SOUP To thicken and enrich most kinds of soup, either add some vegetables if none are called for or use more vegetables than the recipe specifies. Once they’ve cooked, transfer some or all of the vegetables to a food processor or blender and process until smooth, adding a little liquid if needed. Stir the processed vegetables back into the soup. PER SERVING calories 70 total fat 1.0 g saturated 0.5 g trans 0.0 g polyunsaturated 0.0 g monounsaturated 0.5 g cholesterol 13 mg sodium 46 mg carbohydrates 6 g fiber 2 g sugars 3 g protein 9 g calcium 35 mg potassium 304 mg dietary exchanges 1 vegetable 1 very lean meat

BEEF AND PORTOBELLO PASTA Portobello mushrooms have a meaty texture that’s perfect for this classic meat-lovers’ dish. SERVES 4 | 1 cup per serving 1 cup dried whole-grain small shell macaroni 1 pound extra-lean ground beef 1 medium portobello mushroom, stem trimmed, cut into ¾-inch cubes (about 1 cup) 1 cup chopped onion 1 medium garlic clove, minced 1 14.5-ounce can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained 1 8-ounce can no-salt-added tomato sauce ½ cup water 1 medium dried bay leaf 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning, crumbled ½ teaspoon pepper ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional) Prepare the pasta using the package directions, omitting the salt. Drain well in a colander. Set aside. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick saucepan, cook the beef, mushroom, onion, and garlic over medium-high heat for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the beef is browned on the outside and the mushroom and onion are soft, stirring occasionally to turn and break up the beef. Drain if necessary. Wipe the skillet with paper towels. Return the drained mixture to the skillet. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the pasta. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until heated through. Discard the bay leaf before serving the dish. PER SERVING calories 309 total fat 6.5 g saturated 2.5 g trans 0.5 g polyunsaturated 1.0 g monounsaturated 2.5 g cholesterol 62 mg sodium 108 mg carbohydrates 35 g fiber 5 g sugars 8 g protein 31 g calcium 66 mg potassium 855 mg dietary exchanges 1½ starch 3 vegetable 3 lean meat

You’ve probably had your blood pressure taken at the doctor’s office. The nurse reads off two numbers, say, for example, “115 over 75.” The first number (“systolic”) represents the pressure in your arteries as your blood pumps from the heart; the second number (“diastolic”) is the pressure in your arteries while the heart is resting between beats. The American Heart Association defines “normal” blood pressure as a systolic pressure under 120 and a diastolic pressure under 80—or 120/80. Anything above 140/90 is considered hypertensive. Values in between are considered prehypertensive.8

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, medical treatment is the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the United States.

Ancel Keys demonstrated that a diet low in saturated animal fat and processed food was associated with a low incidence of mortality from coronary heart disease and cancer. Beginning in the late 1950s, the study followed almost 13,000 men from seven different countries (Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Finland, United States, and Japan). Men living in the Mediterranean region had the lowest incidence of heart disease and the longest life expectancy. And Greek men had a 90% lower likelihood of premature death from heart attack compared to American men!

Yet even now, the American Heart Association guidelines still favor LDL-C testing instead of apoB. I have all my patients tested for apoB regularly, and you should ask for the same test the next time you see your doctor.

According to a recent report in the journal of the American Medical Association, lifestyle changes and low-dose diuretics should be the first choice in treatment of high blood pressure in the elderly.