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RossD
RossD SuperDork
3/7/12 5:54 p.m.

More specifically your thoughts on this article:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/242516-Heart-Surgeon-Speaks-Out-On-What-Really-Causes-Heart-Disease said: Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease Dr. Dwight Lundell We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled "opinion makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working! These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated. The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences. Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before. Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year. Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped. Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial. What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully. The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine. What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods. Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now. Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation. While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone. How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick? Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works. When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat. What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels. While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator -- inflammation in their arteries. Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell -- they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy. To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated. There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils. There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef. Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today. The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers. What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

Does anyone have any comments about the website, the author, or the content? I read this thinking this guy could be right, but have very little knowledge about it, so I ask a forum about cars...

-Ross

Zomby woof
Zomby woof SuperDork
3/7/12 6:04 p.m.

This isn't going to be good.

RossD
RossD SuperDork
3/7/12 6:08 p.m.

Am I start a E36 M3 show?

Streetwiseguy
Streetwiseguy SuperDork
3/7/12 6:09 p.m.

My mom said, "All things in moderation" Thats my diet.

Zomby woof
Zomby woof SuperDork
3/7/12 6:13 p.m.
Streetwiseguy wrote: My mom said, "All things in moderation" Thats my diet.

That's what I live by.

mad_machine
mad_machine GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
3/7/12 6:27 p.m.

me as well.... though I should eat more veggies

nicksta43
nicksta43 HalfDork
3/7/12 6:42 p.m.

My father died of his second a heart attack at 67. My mother has sugar and several stints in and has been battleing high blood pressure as well. My brother who is 57 is in the same boat.

I am going to turn 33 in a couple of weeks. I just got a check up and my bp was through the roof when they checked it. I don't remember exactly but it was over 200/100. After the bloodwork and everything came back they said I have high ch. as well. I've been checking my bp once a day or so and it is still running a little on the high side. I may be a little heavy at 6' 200# but I am by no means obese.

With my family history I am very concerned. Wtching this with interest.

JFX001
JFX001 SuperDork
3/7/12 6:50 p.m.

I am a advocate for Diabetes Awareness. Depending on what you read, there are 366 million with Diabetes (projected to double in the next 20 years), and one person afflicted with it dies every 8 seconds.

I agree with the "moderation" concept, but it's the kids that I am ultimately worried about.

oldtin
oldtin SuperDork
3/7/12 6:56 p.m.

Paging Dr. Hess...

Snowdoggie
Snowdoggie Dork
3/7/12 6:57 p.m.

Yep. Junk food kills. Not as quickly as alcohol, tobacco or illegal pharmaceuticals, but it kills. but I think we already knew that.

Will the government put warning labels on candy bars now? Do we need a department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Ding Dongs?

z31maniac
z31maniac SuperDork
3/7/12 7:01 p.m.

We just watched Forks over Knives, where they posit that the cause of the inflammation is all the animal products in food, and that eating a vegetarian diet is the way to go.

We haven't gone full vegetarian, but we've cut meat/cheese from a couple of times a day down to basically 1-2 a week.

mad_machine
mad_machine GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
3/7/12 7:32 p.m.

I am with you there, Z31. I need to cut down the starches now

EastCoastMojo
EastCoastMojo GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
3/7/12 7:40 p.m.

Sounds better than getting hookworms.

bastomatic
bastomatic Dork
3/7/12 8:24 p.m.

No, hookworms will cure it!

Seriously though, a cardiothoracic surgeon is not someone I would go to in order to find out how diet affects my heart. He'd probably be able to fix heart disease in the OR pretty well, but based on my daily interactions with surgeons, they're not exactly up on "whole body" medicine.

Also, this particular guy was stripped of his license for poor patient care in 2008.

FInally, he stands to personally make more than a few bucks if his untested theory gains any traction, as he is Chief Medical Officer of Asantae, who is hawking a new "inflammation reducing" supplement.

So yeah, I'd say I'm skeptical of his arguments.

Also the site it's posted on seems to be "conspiracy theory" central. 9-11 Truther stuff, "What do we really know about the secret space programs," and why you should NEVER remove your tonsils. It's not a place to get your daily science news.

Schmidlap
Schmidlap HalfDork
3/7/12 8:36 p.m.

From the article: "The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which ...blah blah blah".

Really? It's the long-established dietary recommendations that have created an epidemic of obesity?

Dr. Hess
Dr. Hess SuperDork
3/7/12 8:56 p.m.

I think bastomatic is on track here, and has good Google-Fu.

Now, that said, inflammation of the vessels involved can and probably is a cause of the problems. But, what exactly causes the inflammation? What is the root cause? I personally doubt it's a simple sugar, as found in, say, bread. High cholesterol doesn't help, it's bad. High blood pressure is bad. Overweight is bad. Bad family history is bad. nicksta43, you're berkeleyed. Nobody gets out of here alive.

I've mentioned before that it took 10 years of studies and a WHOLE LOT of money to come up with one study that showed that taking the -statins ($tatin$) actually led to a prolonged life. Unless you have that weird, rare familial hypercholesterolimia where your 25 and have a total cholesterol of 500, I don't think the statins are going to do you much good. They may make you feel like E36 M3, though. Make your own decisions.

There are CT surgeons and Medicine Queers. A CT surgeon did my herniaraphy. Hey Buddy. You want the surgeon cutting on you as you're dieing. You want the Medicine Queer thinking about what causes heart disease and giving you recommendations on how to avoid it, and telling you what cofactor some enzyme uses in some bizarre cycle someone got a PhD on 50 years ago. They're real good at that.

carguy123
carguy123 SuperDork
3/7/12 9:15 p.m.

So the inflammation only began AFTER we began our low fat diets?

Pete240Z
Pete240Z SuperDork
3/7/12 10:08 p.m.

My chloresterol #'s were high. The wife has me on Barleygreen and Omega 3 and my # is down to 128. Great blood pressure.

February was heart month. We are late on this one.

nicksta43
nicksta43 HalfDork
3/7/12 10:16 p.m.
Dr. Hess wrote: High cholesterol doesn't help, it's bad. High blood pressure is bad. Overweight is bad. Bad family history is bad. nicksta43, you're berkeleyed. Nobody gets out of here alive.

LOL, Thanks Doc! Go ahead and bill me the three hundred for the consultation.

I guess the point is I want to be around when my son is 18. I really wish mine would have been.

z31maniac
z31maniac SuperDork
3/7/12 10:19 p.m.
mad_machine wrote: I am with you there, Z31. I need to cut down the starches now

Don't know if I can go that far!

Potatoes and rice, especially with Thai curries have made it super easy to give up most of the meat and cheese.

Not eating much bread either.

Mitchell
Mitchell SuperDork
3/7/12 10:37 p.m.
carguy123 wrote: So the inflammation only began AFTER we began our low fat diets?

To make the low-fat and fat-free stuff taste somewhat palatable, food was pumped with sugars and salts and all sorts of other stuff that adds no nutritive value.

Whenever I'm eating junk food, I like to search Wikipedia for all ingredients that I do not recognize as "food." This canister of Pringles has some interesting ones: Medium chain triglycerides, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate. Keep in mind that these ingredients came before "cheddar cheese" in my loaded baked potato crisps.

Osterkraut
Osterkraut SuperDork
3/7/12 11:38 p.m.
Mitchell wrote:
carguy123 wrote: So the inflammation only began AFTER we began our low fat diets?
To make the low-fat and fat-free stuff taste somewhat palatable, food was pumped with sugars and salts and all sorts of other stuff that adds no nutritive value. Whenever I'm eating junk food, I like to search Wikipedia for all ingredients that I do not recognize as "food." This canister of Pringles has some interesting ones: Medium chain triglycerides, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate. Keep in mind that these ingredients came before "cheddar cheese" in my loaded baked potato crisps.

MCTs are actually pretty good fats. They're from coconut oil!

As someone who's HDLs and LDLs are nearly tied (on last year's bloodwork, didn't fast this year: LDL of 198, baby), I'm tired of all the brainpower being wasted on diseases of affluence. Scientists could be making healthy humans immortal, dammit!

Cole_Trickle
Cole_Trickle Reader
3/7/12 11:58 p.m.
Mitchell wrote:
carguy123 wrote: So the inflammation only began AFTER we began our low fat diets?
To make the low-fat and fat-free stuff taste somewhat palatable, food was pumped with sugars and salts and all sorts of other stuff that adds no nutritive value. Whenever I'm eating junk food, I like to search Wikipedia for all ingredients that I do not recognize as "food." This canister of Pringles has some interesting ones: Medium chain triglycerides, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate. Keep in mind that these ingredients came before "cheddar cheese" in my loaded baked potato crisps.

Son-of-a, I just finished some Pringles. Gross stuff goes in those. My wife is a vegetarian, and because of it I eat less meat. If she is cooking pasta or something else, I am not likely to throw some burgers on the grill. Growing up, I cant really think of a meal that didnt include meat. Now, just when we are separate or if its fast food (the worst kind, I know).

T.J.
T.J. SuperDork
3/8/12 5:41 a.m.

I can't comment on that guy's credentials, the website, or his theory exactly, but I agree that there is something fishy with cholesterol and statin drugs. They drug makers say we should all take their drugs to lower our cholesterol, but I am not convinced that cholesterol is a major factor in heart attacks.

I also tend to agree that our diets as a whole are terrible for our bodies. I don't see the answer as taking some anti-inflamatory drug, but rather eating real food in moderation and exercising. I'm not doing to well at either right now - I eat crappy processed foods and do not exercise.

DILYSI Dave
DILYSI Dave SuperDork
3/8/12 9:37 a.m.

There's a good movie / documentary on Netflix called Fat Head. It does a decent, though not scientific job, of pulling the curtain back on the industrial food and agriculture world, the FDA, the testing that led to various recommendations (pyramids, food groups, etc) and other things related to what we eat. It's well done and worth a watch if you're interested in this stuff.

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