World Renown Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease
March 1, 2012
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 labeled “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 dietthat 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 labeled polyunsaturated.
Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The
science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The
science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we
now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about
saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the
no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing
an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when
it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6
fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease
and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole
foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery
store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods
and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse
years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical
American diet.
Dr. Dwight
Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief
of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care
Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery
to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of
Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping
large corporations promote wellness. He is also the author of The Cure for
Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.