Coronary Heart Disease Quotes

Four of the top ten causes of death today are chronic diseases with well-established links to diet: coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer.

But today, the AHA is saying something quite different. In their massive 2015 report Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, they buried a bombshell in the text.8 It says that five huge randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that total fat consumption does not affect rates of coronary heart disease or stroke.

FACT 413: Smoking contributes to heart disease, the number one cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smokers quadruple their risk for developing coronary heart disease. I think it would be fun to put on a Grim Reaper costume and go stand in the corner of the smoking room at the airport. Just stand there. With my sickle.

For example, the latest studies are showing that lifestyle changes are often actually better than drugs and surgery in treating and even reversing many of the most prevalent chronic diseases, including stable coronary heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer.

How poorly today’s North American way of life serves the needs of the human body may be gauged by the high levels of, say, heart disease, diabetes and obesity on this continent. The situation of the human brain is analogous. The miswired ADD circuits of the prefrontal cortex are as much the effect of unhealthful circumstances as are the cholesterol-plugged arteries of atherosclerotic coronary disease.

Here are the facts. Coronary artery disease is the leading killer of men and women in Western civilization. In the United States alone, more than half a million people die of it every single year. Three times that number suffer known heart attacks. And approximately three million more have “silent” heart attacks, experiencing minimal symptoms and having no idea, until well after the damage is done, that they are in mortal danger. In the course of a lifetime, one out of every two American men and one out of every three American women will have some form of the disease.

I glanced around the geriatric lighting in the alley for anything I could use as a weapon. All I spotted was a crumpled McDonald’s coffee cup and a hailstorm of cigarettes. If I could get him to smoke them, I could take him out with coronary heart disease in twenty to twenty-five years.

Our deeply-rooted beliefs about the wholesomeness of milk and dairy products should be re-considered under careful, scientific evaluation. Given the tumor promotor effect of IGF-1, patients with tumorous disease should restrict consumption of milk and milk protein. The same applies to patients with coronary heart disease and with a family history of neurodegenerative disease.

a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School set out on a thirty-year study to find out if a single related cause existed for mental illness, hypertension, malignant tumors, coronary heart disease, and suicide. After studying 1,377 people over a thirty-year period, the single common denominator was not diet or exercise. Not at all. They found instead that the most significant predictor of these five calamities was a lack of closeness to the parents, especially the father.7 Why? Stress! When a child grows up in a loving, intimate home, particularly with a father, the child is better capable of handling stress in life.

Thus wailing and pounding the walls in grief or leaping about and shouting in ecstasy can place similarly large demands on a diseased heart. Put another way, your sympathetic nervous system probably has roughly the same effect on your coronary arteries whether you are in the middle of a murderous rage or a thrilling orgasm.

Our deeply-rooted beliefs about the wholesomeness of milk and dairy products should be re-considered under careful, scientific evaluation. Given the tumor promotor effect of IGF-1, patients with tumorous disease should restrict consumption of milk and milk protein. The same applies to patients with coronary heart disease and with a family history of neurodegenerative disease. Milk consumption has already been identified as an aggravating factor in the acne “epidemic” among adolescents, and preliminary successes have been reported with reduced milk consumption. It is even more important that excessive milk consumption can promote diseases commonly associated with a Western lifestyle

protein, or HSCRP. This test measures the levels of a specific blood protein that increases with inflammation of the coronary arteries, and it is considered by many cardiologists to be even better than a standard cholesterol measurement at assessing your risk of heart attacks. All those patients who failed turned out to have elevated HSCRP levels.

Many are familiar with the so-called French paradox, which has been trumpeted with great fanfare by the wine industry. Despite the expected cardiac disaster that is traditional French cuisine, centered on butter, milk, and foie gras, the French have surprisingly low rates of heart disease. The claim was that at least part of the secret is the amount of wine, particularly red wine, drunk by the French, which appears to compensate for high levels of saturated fat. While the details of the French paradox have been disputed, research does suggest that moderate intake of any alcohol reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, 1 apparently by boosting the level of “good” HDLs. There is also some evidence for the long-term cognitive benefits of moderate alcohol use, including improved function on tasks such as memory or semantic fluency tests, as well as a decreased risk of depression. 2

meat sales in the United States to fall by half in 1906, and they did not revive for another twenty years. In other words, meat eating went down just before coronary disease took off. Fat intake did rise during those years, from 1909 to 1961, when heart attacks surged, but this 12 percent increase in fat consumption was not due to a rise in animal fat. It was instead owing to an increase in the supply of vegetable oils, which had recently been invented.

I was beginning to care for them. And as that cancerous emotion swelled within my heart so did my poor heart’s fear. Swollen heart. This is an insidious malady chiefly common in that mythical organ that pumps life through the veins of the ego: care, coronary care, complicated by galloping fear. The go-away-closer disease. Starving for contact and calling it poison when it is offered. We learn young to be leery of contact: Never open up, we learn . . . you want somebody running their dirty old fingers over your soul’s privates? Never accept candy from strangers. Or from friends. Sneak off a sack of gumdrops when nobody’s looking if you can, but don’t accept, never accept . . . You want somebody taking advantage? And above all, never care, never never never care. Because it is caring that lulls you into letting down your guard and leaving up your shades . . . you want some fink knowing what you are really like down inside?

One of the key reasons that rates of dementia have fallen sharply since the 1970s is the advent of improved treatments for heart ailments. What’s good for the heart is actually very good for the brain. The steps you take to keep your heart arteries unclogged also keep brain arteries open. Cholesterol-lowering drugs have dramatically reduced coronary artery disease and are effective even in people who live sedentary lifestyles and eat foods that aren’t “heart healthy.” Statins, prescribed to lower cholesterol, have lately been shown to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in most people.

WARNING: Before commencing any program of sustained physical inactivity, consult your physician. Sedentary living doubles the likelihood of stroke and coronary artery disease, making it as risky as smoking, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure. If unaccustomed to sitting for extended periods, you may experience weak muscles, low bone density, high cholesterol, hyperglycaemia, a rapid resting heart rate, mental decline, mood disorders, and obesity. Start slowly and increase inactivity gradually. If you experience drowsiness, difficulty in concentration, or craving for stimulation, discontinue inactivity immediately.:-)

Hunter-gatherers who survive childhood typically live to be old: their most common age of death is between sixty-eight and seventy-two, and most become grandparents or even great-grandparents.70 They most likely die from gastrointestinal or respiratory infections, diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis, or from violence and accidents.71 Health surveys also indicate that most of the noninfectious diseases that kill or disable older people in developed nations are rare or unknown among middle-aged and elderly hunter-gatherers.72 These admittedly limited studies have found that hunter-gatherers rarely if ever get type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, breast cancer, asthma, and liver disease. They also don’t appear to suffer much from gout, myopia, cavities, hearing loss, collapsed arches, and other common ailments. To be sure, hunter-gatherers don’t live in perpetually perfect health, especially since tobacco and alcohol have become increasingly available to them, but the evidence suggests that they are healthy compared to many older Americans today despite never having received any medical care. In short, if you were to compare contemporary health data from people around the world with equivalent data from hunter-gatherers, you would not conclude that rising rates of common mismatch diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes are straightforward, inevitable by-products of economic progress and increased longevity. Moreover,

This tragic sequence helps explain the fearful loss of cognition in coronary artery bypass patients.3 But neuroradiologists also report that using magnetic resonance imaging, they can detect little white spots in the brains of Americans starting at about age fifty. These spots represent small, asymptomatic strokes (see Figures 18 and 19 in insert). The brain has so much reserve capacity that at first these tiny strokes cause no trouble. But, if they continue, they begin to cause memory loss and, ultimately, crippling dementia. In fact, one recently reported study found that the presence of these “silent brain infarcts” more than doubles the risk of dementia.4 We now believe, in fact, that at least half of all senile mental impairment is caused by vascular injury to the brain.

For the longest time, the crucial importance to health of just moving around was hardly appreciated. But in the late 1940s a doctor at Britain’s Medical Research Council, Jeremy Morris, became convinced that the increasing occurrence of heart attacks and coronary disease was related to levels of activity, and not just to age or chronic stress, as was almost universally thought at the time. Because Britain was still recovering from the war, research funding was tight, so Morris had to think of a low-cost way to conduct an effective large-scale study. While traveling to work one day, it occurred to him that every double-decker bus in London was a perfect laboratory for his purposes because each had a driver who spent his entire working life sitting and a conductor who was on his feet constantly. In addition to moving about laterally, conductors climbed an average of six hundred steps per shift. Morris could hardly have invented two more ideal groups to compare. He followed thirty-five thousand drivers and conductors for two years and found that after he adjusted for all other variables, the drivers—no matter how healthy—were twice as likely to have a heart attack as the conductors. It was the first time that anyone had demonstrated a direct and measurable link between exercise and health.

The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.

The impact of second-class treatment on black people’s bodies is devastating. It is manifested not only in the black–white death gap but also in the drastic measures required when chronic disease is left unmanaged. Black patients are less likely than whites to be referred to kidney and liver transplant wait lists and are more likely to die while waiting for a transplant.68 If they are lucky enough to get a donated kidney or liver, blacks are sicker than whites at the time of transplantation and less likely to survive afterward. “Take a look at all the black amputees,” said a caller to a radio show I was speaking on, identifying the remarkable numbers of people with amputated legs you see in poor black communities as a sign of health inequities. According to a 2008 nationwide study of Medicare claims, whites in Louisiana and Mississippi have a higher rate of leg amputation than in other states, but the rate for blacks is five times higher than for whites.69 An earlier study of Medicare services found that physicians were less likely to treat their black patients with aggressive, curative therapies such as hospitalization for heart disease, coronary artery bypass surgery, coronary angioplasty, and hip-fracture repair.70 But there were two surgeries that blacks were far more likely to undergo than whites: amputation of a lower limb and removal of the testicles to treat prostate cancer. Blacks are less likely to get desirable medical interventions and more likely to get undesirable interventions that good medical care would avoid.

The Company We Keep So now we have seen that our cells are in relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and each other. How do they factor into our relationships with others? Listening and communicating clearly play an important part in healthy relationships. Can relationships play an essential role in our own health? More than fifty years ago there was a seminal finding when the social and health habits of more than 4,500 men and women were followed for a period of ten years. This epidemiological study led researchers to a groundbreaking discovery: people who had few or no social contacts died earlier than those who lived richer social lives. Social connections, we learned, had a profound influence on physical health.9 Further evidence for this fascinating finding came from the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Epidemiologists were interested in Roseto because of its extremely low rate of coronary artery disease and death caused by heart disease compared to the rest of the United States. What were the town’s residents doing differently that protected them from the number one killer in the United States? On close examination, it seemed to defy common sense: health nuts, these townspeople were not. They didn’t get much exercise, many were overweight, they smoked, and they relished high-fat diets. They had all the risk factors for heart disease. Their health secret, effective despite questionable lifestyle choices, turned out to be strong communal, cultural, and familial ties. A few years later, as the younger generation started leaving town, they faced a rude awakening. Even when they had improved their health behaviors—stopped smoking, started exercising, changed their diets—their rate of heart disease rose dramatically. Why? Because they had lost the extraordinarily close connection they enjoyed with neighbors and family.10 From studies such as these, we learn that social isolation is almost as great a precursor of heart disease as elevated cholesterol or smoking. People connection is as important as cellular connections. Since the initial large population studies, scientists in the field of psychoneuroimmunology have demonstrated that having a support system helps in recovery from illness, prevention of viral infections, and maintaining healthier hearts.11 For example, in the 1990s researchers began laboratory studies with healthy volunteers to uncover biological links to social and psychological behavior. Infected experimentally with cold viruses, volunteers were kept in isolation and monitored for symptoms and evidence of infection. All showed immunological evidence of a viral infection, yet only some developed symptoms of a cold. Guess which ones got sick: those who reported the most stress and the fewest social interactions in their “real life” outside the lab setting.12 We Share the Single Cell’s Fate Community is part of our healing network, all the way down to the level of our cells. A single cell left alone in a petri dish will not survive. In fact, cells actually program themselves to die if they are isolated! Neurons in the developing brain that fail to connect to other cells also program themselves to die—more evidence of the life-saving need for connection; no cell thrives alone. What we see in the microcosm is reflected in the larger organism: just as our cells need to stay connected to stay alive, we, too, need regular contact with family, friends, and community. Personal relationships nourish our cells,

Cholesterol is at most a minor player in coronary heart disease and represents an extremely poor predictor of heart attack risk. Over half of all patients hospitalized with a heart attack have cholesterol levels in the “normal” range. The idea that aggressively lowering cholesterol levels will somehow magically and dramatically reduce heart attack risk has now been fully and categorically refuted. The most important modifiable risk factors related to heart attack risk include smoking, excess alcohol consumption, lack of aerobic exercise, overweight, and a diet high in carbohydrates.

A 2009 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology called “Life-Course Socioeconomic Position and Incidence of Coronary Heart Disease” found that the longer a person remains in poverty, the more likely he or she is to develop heart disease.133 People who were economically disadvantaged throughout life were more likely to smoke, be obese, and have poor diets and the like. In an earlier study by epidemiologist Dr. Ralph R. Frerichs, focusing specifically on the socioeconomic divide in the city of Los Angeles, CA, found that the death rate from heart disease was 40 percent higher for poor men over all than for wealthier ones.134

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.

A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine set out on a thirty-year study to find if a single related cause existed for five major issues: mental illness, hypertension, malignant tumors, coronary heart disease, and suicide. After studying 1,377 students over thirty years, the most prevalent single cause of all five illnesses was not what you may think. Diet? Exercise? Not at all. They found instead that the most significant predictor of these five tragedies was a lack of closeness to the parents, especially the father.24

Heart Disease is one of the most common and dangerous disease in the world. It is a coronary artery disease which causes a reduction in blood supply to the heart. There are various reasons for this disease but most common are high BP, overweight, saturate life style, junk food, smoking habits and heredity of heart problem in family. Blockage of artery is mainly because of high level of cholesterol in your blood. These issues with slow down your working capacity and will lead you to a point where you will be unable to do what you want to do. You will fatigue, tiredness, unable to exercise and this will ultimately lead towards heart attack & death. The Common remedies for heart diseases are lifelong medicine, angioplasty, bypass surgery. All these methods have great side effects associated with them. Fortunately nature has given us a great gift to cure heart problem. Unfortunately most of the people are not aware about it.

CALCIUM-SCORE SCREENING HEART SCAN This is a test used to detect calcium deposits found in atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries. Computerized tomography methods, such as this one, are the most effective way to detect early coronary calcification from atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), before symptoms develop. The amount of coronary calcium has been recognized as a powerful independent predictor of future heart problems and is useful in making lifestyle changes and guiding preventive care to reduce their risk. The doctor uses the calcium-score screening heart scan to evaluate risk for future coronary artery disease. If calcium is present, the computer will create a calcium "score" that estimates the extent of coronary artery disease based on the number and density of calcified coronary plaques in the coronary arteries. Absence of calcium is considered a "negative" exam. However, there are certain forms of coronary disease, such as "soft plaque" atherosclerosis, that escape detection during this CT scan. It is important to remember that a negative test suggests a low risk, but does not exclude the possibility of a future cardiac event, such as a heart attack. The calcium-score screening heart scan takes only a few minutes to perform and does not need injection of intravenous iodine.

Ultra-Sensitive C-Reactive Protein Blood (HS-CRP) C-reactive protein measures an inflammatory response in the body and has been shown to play a role in atherosclerosis and blood clot formation.  Patients should ask their doctor specifically about HS-CRP, as this test helps determine heart disease risk. Elevated HS-CRP is related to increased risk for heart attack, restenosis of coronary arteries after angioplasty, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease (PVD). While elevated cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides plus low HDL are independent risk factors for heart disease and cholesterol build-up, HS-CRP provides added information about inflammation in the arteries. This cannot be determined by lipid testing alone. Results Less than 1.0 mg/L = Low Risk for Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) 1.0 – 2.9 mg/L = Intermediate Risk for CVD Greater than 3.0 mg/L High Risk for CVD

Results about disease risk that largely agree among different studies include those for CHD [Coronary Heart Disease] and perhaps diabetes and colon cancer. In addition, data on other risk factors for chronic diseases, such as overweight, blood lipids, and blood pressure, fit this criterion. Mortality and incidence rates of coronary disease events are indeed clearly lower in vegetarians. This is true in the 2 previous cohorts of Adventists (16, 22) and in the older cohorts of British and German vegetarians (23–25). A combined analysis of those cohorts (26) confirmed this result with a 32% higher CHD mortality rate in the nonvegetarians. This is not surprising because there is convincing evidence that several important risk factors for CHD have more optimal values in vegetarians. Regular, moderate nut (16, 27) and wholegrain (11, 16) consumption are associated with lower risk of CHD. These are foods often preferred by vegetarians. Several other studies of nonvegetarians have strongly suggested that dietary patterns emphasizing fruit, vegetables, and less meat are associated with much lower risk of CHD (10, 28) consistent with the CHD mortality data in studies of vegetarians. Animal fats (largely saturated) raise LDL cholesterol (29) and increase risk; these obviously come from foods eaten less or not at all by vegetarians. Total or LDL cholesterol is typically lower in vegetarians (30, 31). HDL cholesterol is not consistently different (30, 32), although it does tend to be a little lower in Adventists (33), perhaps because of the lack of alcohol consumption. Vegetarians are consistently thinner, or at least less overweight, than are nonvegetarians within the same studies (34, 32). It is also probable that vegetarians have lower blood pressures than others (32, 35, 36), although the reasons are still controversial, and effects are sometimes small as in British vegetarians (37).

SAMPLING OF SOME OF THE MAJOR TRIAL RESULTS WITH EDTA CHELATION A 1993analysis of 19 studies of 22,765 patients receiving EDTA chelation therapy for vascular disease found measurable improvement in 87%. A study of 2,870 patients with various degrees of degenerative diseases, especially vascular disease, almost 90% of the patients showed excellent improvement. The study measured walking distance, ECG, and Doppler blood flow changes. A small, blinded, crossover study of patients with peripheral vascular disease found significant improvements in walking distance and ankle/brachial blood flow. In 30 patients with carotid artery stenosis, there was a 30% improvement in blood flow after EDTA treatment. EDTA chelation treatment was evaluated in patients with carotid and coronary disease using technetium 99 isotope techniques. Significant improvement in arterial blood flow and ejection fraction (a measure of heart pumping ability) was reported. 65 patients on the waiting list for CABG surgery for an average of 6 months were treated with EDTA chelation therapy. The symptoms in 89% (58) improved so much they were able to cancel their surgery. In the same study, of 27 patients recommended for limb amputation due to poor peripheral circulation, EDTA chelation saved 24 limbs.

Studies have found that people who eat more than five servings of fruits and vegetables per day have a 20 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease compared with people who ate three servings or less.

Chart 4.4: Disease Groupings Observed in Rural China Disease of Affluence (Nutritional extravagance) Cancer (colon, lung, breast, leukemia, childhood brain, stomach, liver), diabetes, coronary heart disease Disease of Poverty (Nutritional inadequacy and poor sanitation) Pneumonia, intestinal obstruction, peptic ulcer, digestive disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, parasitic disease, rheumatic heart disease, metabolic and endocrine disease other than diabetes, diseases of pregnancy, and many others Disease associations of this

There is convincing evidence that vegetarians have lower rates of coronary heart disease, largely explained by low LDL cholesterol, probable lower rales of hypertension and diabetes mellitus, and lower prevalence of obesity. Overall, their cancer rates appear to be moderately lower than others living in the same communities, and life expectancy appears to be greater.

Did saturated fat intake increase risk of heart disease? In a word, no. Here are the final conclusions of this forgotten jewel: ‘There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD [coronary heart disease] in the study group.

With just 30 minutes of physical activity a day you can: Reduce health risks (high blood pressure, stroke, osteoporosis, coronary disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers) Keep off excess weight Ward of viral illnesses Help keep your arteries clear Strengthen your heart

In September 2009, the World Health Organization’s Food and Agricultural Organization published a reassessment of the data on dietary fat and heart disease. “The available evidence from [observational studies] and randomized controlled trials,” the report stated, “is unsatisfactory and unreliable to make judgment about and substantiate the effects of dietary fat on risk of CHD [coronary heart disease].

The heart is essentially a muscular pump connected to an elaborate network of branching tubes. Although there are several kinds of cardiovascular disease, almost all arise from something going wrong in either the tubes or the pump. Most problems start with the tubes, primarily the arteries that carry blood from the heart to every nook and cranny of the body. Like the pipes in a building, arteries are vulnerable to getting clogged with unwanted deposits. This hardening of the arteries, termed atherosclerosis, starts with the buildup of plaque—a gloppy mixture of fat, cholesterol, and calcium—within the walls of arteries. Plaques, however, don’t simply accumulate in arteries like crud settling in a pipe. Instead, they are dynamic, changing, growing, shifting, and sometimes breaking. They develop when white blood cells in arteries trigger inflammation by reacting to damage usually caused by a combination of high blood pressure and so-called bad cholesterol that irritates the walls of the artery. In an effort to repair the damage, white blood cells produce a foamy mixture that incorporates cholesterol and other stuff and then hardens. As plaque accumulates, arteries stiffen and narrow, sometimes preventing enough blood from flowing to the tissues and organs that need it and further driving up blood pressure. One potentially lethal scenario is when plaques block an artery completely or detach and obstruct a smaller artery elsewhere. When this happens, tissues are starved of blood (also called ischemia) and die. Plaques can also cause the artery wall to dilate, weaken, and bulge (an aneurysm) or to tear apart (a rupture), which can lead to massive bleeding (a hemorrhage). Blocked and ruptured arteries create trouble anywhere in the body, but the most vulnerable locations are the narrow coronary arteries that supply the heart muscle itself. Heart attacks, caused by blocked coronary arteries, may damage the heart’s muscle, leading to less effective pumping of blood or triggering an electrical disturbance that can stop the heart altogether. Other highly vulnerable arteries are in the brain, which cause strokes when blocked by blood clots or when they rupture and bleed. To this list of more susceptible locations we should also add the retinas, kidneys, stomach, and intestines. The most extreme consequence of coronary artery disease is a heart attack, which, if one survives, leaves behind a weakened heart unable to pump blood as effectively as before, leading to heart failure.

Arrhythmias are additional common causes of problems and death, and the heart can also be damaged by infections, birth defects, drugs, and faulty wiring. But atherosclerosis is by far the leading culprit, and chronically high blood pressure, hypertension, is a close second. Hypertension is a silent condition that relentlessly strains the heart, arteries, and various organs. At least 100,000 times a day, the heart forces about five liters of blood through thousands of miles of arteries that resist each squeeze, generating pressure. When we exercise, blood pressure rises temporarily, causing the heart’s muscular chambers to adapt, mostly by becoming stronger, larger, and more elastic so it can pump more blood with each stroke.30 Just as important, arteries also adapt to exercise to keep blood pressure low, primarily by expanding, multiplying, and staying elastic.31 However, when blood pressure is chronically high, the heart defends itself by developing thicker muscular walls. These thicker walls stiffen and fill with scar tissue, and eventually the heart weakens. A vicious cycle then ensues. As the heart’s ability to pump blood declines, it becomes harder to exercise and thus control high blood pressure. Blood pressure may rise as the heart progressively weakens until the failing heart cannot support or sustain a normal blood pressure. Death usually ensues. Coronary artery disease is ancient and has even been diagnosed in mummies.32 But research on nonindustrial populations provides powerful evidence that coronary artery disease and hypertension are largely evolutionary mismatches. Although many medical textbooks teach doctors that it’s normal for blood pressure to rise with age, we have known since the 1970s this is not true among hunter-gatherer populations like the San and the Hadza.33 The average blood pressure in a seventy-year-old San hunter-gatherer is 120/67, no different from a twenty-year-old. Lifelong low blood pressure also characterizes many subsistence farming populations. My colleagues Rob Shave and Aaron Baggish and I measured more than a hundred Tarahumara farmers of every age and found no difference in blood pressure between teenagers and octogenarians.34 By the same token, blood pressure can also stay normal into old age among industrialized people who eat sensibly and stay active.35

Thus strength training gives your metabolism a boost far beyond the duration of the actual workout, for as long as 48 hours. In contrast, after aerobic training your metabolism returns to normal almost immediately. So with interval training we’re not only building muscle, but we’re also able to kick up our metabolism long after–even when sleeping! Many people believe aerobic activity strengthens their heart, and decreases the chance of things like coronary artery disease. Yet, after much research, even U.S. Air Force Cardiologist Dr. Kenneth Cooper–the very man who coined the term “aerobics”–now believes there is no correlation between aerobic performance and health, longevity, or protection against heart disease. On the other hand, aerobic activities do carry with them a great risk of injury. Most, even so-called “low impact” classes or activities like stationary cycling, are not necessarily low-force. And things like running are extremely high-force, damaging to your knees, hips and back. Aerobic dance is even worse. Sure, you’ll hear the occasional genetic exception declare that they’ve never ever been injured doing these exercises. But overuse injuries are cumulative and often build undetected over years until it’s too late, leading to a decrease or loss of mobility as you age, which, in turn, too often leads to a shortened lifespan.

Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.

Every 7 g of daily fiber intake correlates to a 9 percent reduced risk in heart disease, our number one killer.3368 So, would 77 g a day drop our risk by 99 percent? That’s about how much fiber they used to eat in Uganda,3369 a country in which coronary heart disease was almost nonexistent

When you are cooking with oil, use a good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It is more expensive than vegetable oil, but the health benefits are much better and it is worth the cost. Olive oil has been associated with a reduced risk in coronary heart disease and helps to increase the elasticity of the arterial walls which reduces the chance for heart attack and stroke.

Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (New York: Anchor Books, 2010). For an expanded discussion of Taubes’s arguments, see Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (New York: Anchor Books, 2008). It includes a helpful summary of Taubes’s conclusions (p. 454): 1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization. 2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis—the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being. 3. Sugars—sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, specifically—are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates. 4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization. 5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior. 6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger. 7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance. 8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated—either chronically or after a meal—we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel. 9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. 10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity. For a fascinating discussion of the role of fat in a healthy diet, see also Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).

An LDL around 70 mg/dL corresponds to a total cholesterol reading of about 150, the level below which no deaths from coronary heart disease were reported in the famous Framingham Heart Study, a generations-long project to identify risk factors for heart disease.29

In 1966, they published Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis and the Saccharine Disease, a book in which they argued that all the common chronic diseases of Western societies—including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, peptic ulcers, and appendicitis—constituted the manifestations of a single, primary disorder that could be called “refined-carbohydrate disease.

The likelihood of suffering a fatal first heart attack was no less for those with a cholesterol level of 180 mg/dl than for those with 250. “The lack of association between serum cholesterol level and the incidence of sudden death suggests that factors other than the atherosclerotic process may be of major importance in this manifestation of coronary artery disease,

If the public’s diet is going to be decided by popularity polls and with diminishing regard for the scientific evidence,” remarked Pete Ahrens in 1979, “I fear that future generations will be left in ignorance of the real merits, as well as the possible faults, in any given dietary regimen aimed at prevention of [coronary heart disease].

by the 1960s hypertension and high cholesterol were two of the three major risk factors associated with premature coronary heart disease (the third was smoking), so it was difficult to imagine that eating carbohydrates might be beneficial for one risk factor, cholesterol, while being detrimental for another, blood pressure.

carbohydrates might be responsible for causing or exacerbating either metabolic syndrome or the combination of low HDL, high triglycerides, and small, dense LDL, which is described as occurring “commonly in persons with premature [coronary heart disease].

In 2002, four Danish scientists began examining grocery receipts. This may sound like a waste of taxpayer dollars, but in fact it was the kind of experiment other scientists describe as “elegant.” For years, science had been grappling with the unexplained health benefits of wine—wine drinkers seemed more resistant to coronary heart disease and certain cancers, but no one knew why. Predictably, there was a large-scale effort to rip wine apart in search of whatever compound was working its peculiar magic on the human body and turn it into a pill. (Resveratrol was one.) The Danish group came at it from a different angle. They didn’t need a gas chromatograph. They needed receipts. They wanted to know what else all those healthy wine drinkers were buying when they visited the supermarket.

When we react to problems, as opposed to create with them, we get hooked into stress. When we are under constant low-grade stress—and it’s estimated that over 80 percent of us are all the time—this begins to hurt us.1 When we are stressed, our nervous system tightens up and we lose our creativity. Stress stops us learning, and if we aren’t learning, we aren’t growing.2 Stress, AKA fear, corrodes the curiosity and courage we need to experiment with the new. It is almost impossible to play big in life, if we are scared of looking like idiots, going bankrupt, or being rejected. Stress kills creativity and kills us too. Whereas small amounts of stress help us focus, engage, and learn, chronic or elevated stress burns us out, literally as well as metaphorically. People who live near airports and deal with the stress of giant airplanes roaring above them have higher rates of cardiac arrest than those who don’t.3 People who deal with a controlling or uncommunicative boss have a 60 percent higher chance of developing coronary heart disease than those who don’t.4 Stress leads to tangible changes inside all the cells of the body. Specific genes start to express proteins, which leads to inflammation; and chronic inflammation is associated with killers such as heart disease and cancer. Over time, stress reduces our ability to prevent aging, heal wounds, fight infections, and even be successfully immunized.5 Unmanaged stress, simply from having a sense of disempowerment at work, can be more dangerous than smoking or high cholesterol.

The relationship between BP and mortality in patients with stroke may be “U-shaped.” According to this notion, systolic BP (SBP) values above or below 140 to 180 mm Hg are associated with increased mortality. In the International Stroke Trial, SBP above 200 mm Hg was associated with an increased risk of recurrent ischemic stroke (50% greater risk of recurrence), while low BP (particularly <120 mm Hg) was associated with an excess number of deaths from coronary heart disease.

In the course of his career as a naval surgeon travelling the world, Captain T.L. Cleave,97 together with South African physician G.D. Campbell, formulated the hypothesis that a variety of medical conditions – including dental caries and associated periodontal disease, peptic ulcers, obesity, diabetes, colonic stasis ‘and its complications of varicose veins and haemorrhoids’, heart attack (coronary thrombosis) and certain gut infections – are caused by diets high in sugar and refined carbohydrates, and should therefore be termed the ‘saccharine diseases’.

The US dietary guidelines were the first ever to inform the general public about what should not be eaten. Specifically, we were told to avoid fat, especially saturated fat, and to replace dietary saturated fats with carbohydrates and polyunsaturated ‘vegetable’ (actually seed) oils. Failure to do so, we were warned, would cause us all to die of heart attacks, because cholesterol, we were told, causes coronary heart disease. Instead, the advice drove us down the road to obesity and the much more severe form of arterial disease caused by T2DM. Some have described this monumental error as the greatest scam in the history of modern medicine. The fallout has produced some very big ‘winners’, specifically those pharmaceutical companies that have benefited from the sale of the largely ineffective statin drugs, and the processed-food industry, dominated by 10 companies that produce the ‘displacing foods of modern commerce

Studies show definite negative health consequences to those who hold jobs that offer them low intellectual discretion (a measure of how repetitive a job is) and little freedom of schedule (such as the ability to take a break at one’s discretion). Those holding such jobs are at significantly higher risk for coronary heart disease. A more recent meta-analysis revealed that the risks go beyond coronary heart disease to include significantly higher rates of all-cause morality for workers with low job control. Lack of occupational freedom kills!

Should you be eating soy? There’s been some debate about soy due to the perception of its carrying estrogen, but I want you to understand that phytoestrogens aren’t estrogen, nor do they act like human estrogen. Instead, phytoestrogens are isoflavones, one of the unique phytochemicals in soy beans. There are actually three soy isoflavones: genistein, daidzein, and glycitein. They have a number of health benefits, including: lowering cholesterol, strengthening bones, treating menopausal symptoms, lowering risk of coronary heart disease, and reducing risk of prostate/colon/breast/ovarian cancers. Want even more good news about soy? There are certain gut bacteria that can convert soy isoflavones into an even more beneficial compound called equol. This is like a supercharged isoflavone, giving you even more cardiovascular, bone, and menopausal health benefits. Unfortunately, you need to have the bacteria in order to do this. Equol can be produced by 50 to 60 percent of Asian people but just 30 percent of Westerners. For what it’s worth, diets high in carbohydrates (really meaning fiber) and low in saturated fat are associated with equol production, while antibiotics appear to hinder it. I recommend consuming only non-GMO and organic soy in its whole-foods forms: edamame, tofu, miso, tempeh, tamari, and unsweetened soy milk. Model your soy consumption after the way they do it in Asia. For some delicious ways to consume soy, check out the recipes in Chapter 10.

In contrast, when a coronary artery in your heart is only 30–40 percent blocked, it is more unstable because it’s not calcified, and it has not had time to grow a protective network of collaterals. This is why these are called “vulnerable plaques”—because they are more likely to rupture and cause a sudden total obstruction, known as “catastrophic progression,” which is as bad as it sounds.

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In the late 1950s, he and fellow physician Ray Rosenman began noticing similarities in their patients who were prone to heart disease. It wasn’t only what these patients ate or what genes they inherited that affected their susceptibility to coronary trouble. It was also how they led their lives. These patients, Friedman noted, demonstrated: a particular complex of personality traits, including excessive competition drive, aggressiveness, impatience, and a harrying sense of time urgency. Individuals displaying this pattern seem to be engaged in a chronic, ceaseless, and often fruitless struggle—with themselves, with others, with circumstances, with time, sometimes with life itself.

Fundamentally, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop were trying to shift our perspective from focusing on I and me and mine to we and us and ours. Earlier in the week the Dalai Lama had referenced a classic study that suggested the constant use of personal pronouns leads to a greater risk of heart attack. In a multicenter prospective study of coronary heart disease, health researcher Larry Scherwitz found that people who more frequently said I, me, or mine had a higher risk of having a heart attack and had a higher risk of their heart attack being fatal. Scherwitz found that this so-called “self-involvement” was a better predictor of death than smoking, high cholesterol levels, or high blood pressure. A more recent study conducted by researcher Johannes Zimmerman found that people who more often use first-person singular words—I and me—are more likely to be depressed than people who more often use first-person plural—we and us. This was interesting evidence that being too self-regarding really does make us unhappy

The physical benefits of taking time off are substantial. A study sponsored by the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institute of Health followed, over a nine-year period, twelve thousand men who had a high risk for coronary heart disease. The study found that those who took frequent annual vacations were 21 percent less likely to die from any cause and were 32 percent less likely to die from heart disease.14 According to a Gallup study, people who always make time for regular vacations had a 68.4 score on the Gallup-Healthway Well-Being Index, in comparison to a 51.4 Well-Being score for less frequent travelers.15 Professional services firm Ernst & Young conducted an internal study of its employees and found that, for each additional ten hours of vacation employees took, their year-end performance ratings improved 8 percent.16 One study found that three days after vacation, subjects’ physical complaints, quality of sleep, and mood had improved as compared to before vacation.17 And, vacations are good for relationships, too. A study published in the Wisconsin Medical Journal found that women who took vacations were more satisfied with their marriages.18

Obese individuals showed 50% lower blood levels of vitamins D3 and D2 compared with nonobese individuals, probably because of sequestering of 25(OH)D in adipose tissue (14) Studies report that the rates of coronary heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, like Vitamin D deficiency, increase in proportion to increasing distance from the equator (16

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

Traditional" Japanese immigrants had coronary disease rates in line with their homeland counterparts. "Westernised" immigrants had a prevalence that was at least 3 times higher. "Retention of Japanese group relationships is associated with a lower rate of coronary heart disease", the authors concluded. And so, acculturation, they declared, is a major risk factor for coronary disease in immigrant populations.

In fact, in one major study of the factors in coronary heart disease, postmenopausal women with cholesterol levels higher than 295 had heart attack rates that were the same as or lower than

In a study conducted in Greece, naps were correlated with a 30 percent reduction in the incidence of coronary heart disease.

David S. Jones, a Harvard Medical School professor, recounts how two of the most common treatments for heart disease, coronary bypass surgery and angioplasty, have been widely used for years because doctors believed—falsely, it turns out—that these procedures would extend life expectancy.

But that doesn’t mean genes don’t play an important role in disease. Genetic variations influence plenty of chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart arrhythmias, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and Alzheimer’s.65 In these and other cases, genes help load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.

The researchers found that the “low-control” workers were at significantly higher risk of developing coronary heart disease over the course of the study than “high-control” workers. Yet researchers also found that workers with rigorous job demands were at no greater risk of developing heart disease, nor were workers who reported low levels of social support on the job. Lack of control seems to be the killer, literally.

Flavonoid-rich berries help prevent coronary disease by lessening inflammation in the heart and blood vessels and may reduce the risk of cancer by protecting cells from free radical damage.

Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure. Fitting Charlotte Brontë’s prophetic wisdom that “a ruffled mind makes a restless pillow,” sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality.

As with countless Greek tragedies, the end result was heartbreaking, but here in the most serious, literal way. None of the individuals had a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the start of the study, indicating the absence of cardiovascular ill health. However, those that abandoned regular siestas went on to suffer a 37 percent increased risk of death from heart disease across the six-year period, relative to those who maintained regular daytime naps. The effect was especially strong in workingmen, where the ensuing mortality risk of not napping increased by well over 60 percent.

Progressively shorter sleep was associated with a 45 percent increased risk of developing and/or dying from coronary heart disease within seven to twenty-five years from the start of the study. A similar relationship was observed in a Japanese study of over 4,000 male workers. Over a fourteen-year period, those sleeping six hours or less were 400 to 500 percent more likely to suffer one or more cardiac arrests than those sleeping more than six hours.

of what exactly is good for the heart. Because Alzheimer’s researchers, like diabetologists, assume that Keys’s fat-cholesterol hypothesis is supported by compelling evidence, they will often suggest that cholesterol and saturated fat play a role in Alzheimer’s as well. But if coronary heart disease is mostly a product of the physiological abnormalities of metabolic syndrome, as the evidence suggests, then this implicates insulin, blood sugar, and refined carbohydrates instead, a conclusion supported by several lines of research that began to converge in the last decade.

Coronary artery calcification has long been recognized as a big risk factor for heart disease, but for some reason we continue to obsessively focus on cholesterol, while few people have heard much about the calcium connection.

Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.

There was little precedent in other diseases for such an astonishing diversity of causes. Diabetes, a complex illness with complex manifestations, is still fundamentally a disease of abnormal insulin signaling. Coronary heart disease occurs when a clot, arising from a ruptured and inflamed atherosclerotic plaque, occludes a blood vessel of the heart. But the search for a unifying mechanistic description of cancer seemed to be sorely missing. What, beyond abnormal, dysregulated cell division, was the common pathophysiological mechanism underlying cancer? To answer this question, cancer biologists would need to return to the birth of cancer, to the very first steps of a cell’s journey toward malignant transformation—to carcinogenesis.

risk factors [for heart disease].” This means the more calcium you have accumulated in your coronary arteries, the greater your chances of some blood ending up clotting there, causing you to suffer a heart attack.

in the progression of arterial disease among those who regularly eat them. In studies of two of the most important arteries in the body, the coronary arteries that feed the heart and the carotid arteries that feed the brain, people who ate the most whole grains had significantly slower narrowing of their arteries.90,91 Since atherosclerotic plaque in the arteries is our leading killer, ideally, you should not just slow down the process but actually stop or even reverse it altogether. As we saw in chapter 1, this appears to require more than just whole grains; whole vegetables, whole fruits, whole beans, and other whole plant foods are needed, along with a significant reduction in your intake of trans fats, saturated fats, and cholesterol, the food components that contribute to clogging your arteries shut.

PROVISIONAL LIST OF WESTERN DISEASES Metabolic and cardiovascular: essential hypertension, obesity, diabetes mellitus (type II), cholesterol gallstones, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, coronary heart disease, varicose veins, deep vein thrombosis, and pulmonary embolism Colonic: constipation, appendicitis, diverticular disease, haemorrhoids; cancer and polyp of large bowel Other diseases: dental caries, renal stone, hyperuricaemia and gout, thyroidtoxicosis, pernicious anaemia, subacute combined degeneration, also other forms of cancer such as breast and lung HUGH TROWELL AND DENIS BURKITT, Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention, 1981

In one analysis, a typical American population that departed even modestly from the Western diet (and lifestyle) could reduce its chances of getting coronary heart disease by 80 percent, its chances of type 2 diabetes by 90 percent, and its chances of colon cancer by 70 percent.

Routinely sleeping less than six hours a night weakens your immune system, substantially increasing your risk of certain forms of cancer. Insufficient sleep appears to be a key lifestyle factor linked to your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.

Dr. Robert O. Young states, “The exact cause of atherosclerosis is NOW known. It is caused by an acidic lifestyle and diet leading to excess acid retention in the blood and then tissues leading to acid solidification or plaque that builds up on the arterial wall causing poor circulation, cold hands, cold feet, light headedness, dizziness, muddle thinking, forgetfulness, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and finally death.

It’s well documented that glycated hemoglobin is a powerful risk factor for diabetes, but it’s also been correlated with risk for stroke, coronary heart disease, and death from other illnesses. These correlations have been shown to be strongest with any measurement of hemoglobin A1C above 6.0 percent.

The bottom line is that insulin use creates a vicious cycle that cuts years off a person’s life. Insulin both blocks cholesterol removal and delivers cholesterol to cells in the blood vessel walls, increasing the risk for heart attacks and strokes. Almost 80 percent of all deaths among diabetics are due to hardening of the arteries, particularly coronary artery disease. Many diabetics turn to their physician for guidance, but oftentimes the well-meaning doctor only worsens the problem by prescribing more insulin. The extra insulin does not just cause heart disease, weight gain, and the eventual worsening of the diabetes; as with type 1 diabetes, insulin can increase the risk of cancer as well. Type 2 diabetic patients exposed to insulin or sulfonylureas, which push the pancreas to produce more insulin, have significantly increased incidence of cancer at multiple sites.8

The bottom line is that insulin use creates a vicious cycle that cuts years off a person’s life. Insulin both blocks cholesterol removal and delivers cholesterol to cells in the blood vessel walls, increasing the risk for heart attacks and strokes. Almost 80 percent of all deaths among diabetics are due to hardening of the arteries, particularly coronary artery disease. Many diabetics turn to their physician for guidance, but oftentimes the well-meaning doctor only worsens the problem by prescribing more insulin. The extra insulin does not just cause heart disease, weight gain, and the eventual worsening of the diabetes; as with type 1 diabetes, insulin can increase the risk of cancer as well. Type 2 diabetic patients exposed to insulin or sulfonylureas, which push the pancreas to produce more insulin, have significantly increased incidence of cancer at multiple sites.

If the truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never ever exist and if it does exist it need never ever progress.

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!

What is the mechanism that would make you think that red meat increased mortality.  One of the most remarkable statements in the paper: “Regarding CVD mortality, we previously reported that red meat intake was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease2, 14 and saturated fat and cholesterol from red meat may partially explain this association.  The association between red meat and CVD mortality was moderately attenuated after further adjustment for saturated fat and cholesterol, suggesting a mediating role for these nutrients.” (my italics) This bizarre statement — that

study after study also directly links the intake of excess sugar to an increased risk for cancer, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems, eye diseases, osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, and other inflammatory diseases.