Saturday, April 29, 2017
Saturday, March 25, 2017
World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease By: Dr. Dwight Lundell
World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What
Really Causes Heart Disease
By: 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 withomega-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.
Monday, February 27, 2017
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