heart disease reversal

[dlhanson]

This is part of what Dr. John McDougall says about reversing heart disease:

"An expected part of aging in Western societies is to have the arteries feeding your heart, brain, legs, and penis close down by atherosclerosis. Yet these problems are almost never found in populations of people who follow a diet low in animal-derived and processed foods, such as those living in rural Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. The matter that clogs the arteries is living tissue (not concrete) and therefore, can heal given the right environment. To clean up your arteries (reverse atherosclerosis), a very low-fat, no-cholesterol diet must be followed strictly. Immediate benefits, such as relief of chest pains (angina) and tolerance for more exercise, are seen within days. Heart surgery fails to prolong life in the vast majority of people and is fraught with serious side effects, including permanent brain damage – don't go this route unless you have no other choice."
Hot Topics: Heart Disease & Atherosclerosis

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

This is part of what Dr. John McDougall says about reversing heart disease:

"An expected part of aging in Western societies is to have the arteries feeding your heart, brain, legs, and penis close down by atherosclerosis. Yet these problems are almost never found in populations of people who follow a diet low in animal-derived and processed foods, such as those living in rural Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. The matter that clogs the arteries is living tissue (not concrete) and therefore, can heal given the right environment. To clean up your arteries (reverse atherosclerosis), a very low-fat, no-cholesterol diet must be followed strictly. Immediate benefits, such as relief of chest pains (angina) and tolerance for more exercise, are seen within days. Heart surgery fails to prolong life in the vast majority of people and is fraught with serious side effects, including permanent brain damage – don't go this route unless you have no other choice."
Hot Topics: Heart Disease & Atherosclerosis

I don't think we know for sure whether the benefits of that kind of diet derive from reduction in fats, cholesterol, etc. or whether they are due primarily to the drastic reduction in refined carbs which accompanies it; the evidence seems to be leaning toward the carbs playing the major role (Taubes' book summarizes).

Alas, we may never know since diet-health studies are very difficult to do for lots of reasons, and cross-cultural comparisons are frought with confounding genetic and lifestyle variables. That said, many Inuit populationis go for months every year eating almost nothing but seal fat and meat, virtually no carbs, and have very low rates of coronary disease - a tantalizing observation, not a cause-and-effect assumption.

Another observation from the lab suggests that eating fatty foods is not harmful while your carb intake is low, but if you combine fats with high carbs, the accompanying insulin surge makes the fats more harmful by promoting their deposition into fat cells more rapidly, and making them more difficult to mobilize back out. Insulin seems to be a common thread in many of these studies.

 

[ERD50]

That said, many Inuit populationis go for months every year eating almost nothing but seal fat and meat, virtually no carbs, and have very low rates of coronary disease - a tantalizing observation, not a cause-and-effect assumption.

One thing to remember is that they eat a lot of (exclusively?) raw meat. As I understand it, there is just enough Vitamin C in raw meat to prevent scurvy. Cooking would drop the content below the threshold.

IIRC, some of these diets seem to indicate that they cut heart disease, but actually increase the chance of stroke (Okinowa studies?). I've seen both in my family, and I'd rather have the heart disease if I had to choose (of course, it's never that simple or direct cause/effect).

-ERD50

 

[Bimmerbill]

I saw a nice gain in good cholesterol and decrase in bad cholesterol after doing the Atkins diet. Of course, I also lost about 50 lbs. Then moved into a modified Southbeach with higher fiber intake.

I stopped since I was still losing weight. I should do a couple weeks of Atkins again to drop 5 lbs.

6 egg omlette with 1/2 a pound of bacon every morning! Thats my kind of diet.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

One thing to remember is that they eat a lot of (exclusively?) raw meat. As I understand it, there is just enough Vitamin C in raw meat to prevent scurvy. Cooking would drop the content below the threshold.

IIRC, some of these diets seem to indicate that they cut heart disease, but actually increase the chance of stroke (Okinowa studies?). I've seen both in my family, and I'd rather have the heart disease if I had to choose (of course, it's never that simple or direct cause/effect).

-ERD50

Taubes cites studies of English sailors who were vitamin C deficient but had plenty of cured meat and other non-carbs on board, and never developed scurvy; after months at sea they might finally reach a port where bread and other carbs were abundant and they would set sail again; within weeks of adding lots of carbs to their diet, they would develop scurvy. Hard to explain and of uncertain accuracy but interesting.

 

[ERD50]

Taubes cites studies of English sailors who were vitamin C deficient but had plenty of cured meat and other non-carbs on board, and never developed scurvy; after months at sea they might finally reach a port where bread and other carbs were abundant and they would set sail again; within weeks of adding lots of carbs to their diet, they would develop scurvy. Hard to explain and of uncertain accuracy but interesting.

Here's another interesting tie-in - Just last night I read the chapter in "The Seven Daughters of Eve" (about tracing the mitochondrial DNA in Europe back through the maternal lines to just seven mothers) that dealt with the emergence of grain farming. He said that while the women were eating mostly meat, that their menstrual cycles would cease the entire time they breast fed their children. This acted to help space births out several years, so that a family was not strained by too many to care for at one time.

He went on to say that higher carb intakes interfered with this, women would become fertile while still breast feeding, and populations zoomed (since they also had a food supply in addition to hunting). Women could tend gardens with children while the men hunted. And this in turn led to disease, since people were more closely packed together.

I always thought the claim that we were evolved to eat meat, not grains and veggies was a stretch by those promoting this or that diet, but I'm rethinking that now.

-ERD50

 

[windsurf]

As to propositions about eating "just meat" and citing, for example, the inuits, they did not eat feed lot cattle. They ate marine mammals and arctic fish with a balance strongly favoring omega 3 fatty acids-nothing resembling the fat from supermarket pork chops and corn fed ground sirloin. Grains are an issue-particularly refined grains-which, of course, comprise the bulk of "grains" in the standard American diet. the significance of the evolutionary diet is a complicated science, brimming with controversy, but one well worth pursuing if one is trying to forge an informed way of formulating day to day diet choices.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Worth reading along with Taubes.

 

[CoolChange]

Personally, I am trying to move towards something similar to what Dr. Fuhrman seems to be proposing. (I just briefly browsed each web site.) My personal plan revolves around reducing my total caloric intake as much as possible while still obtaining adequate nutrition and without making my life otherwise unbearable.

In my opinion, Calorie Restriction is dietary approach with the most promise that has been subject to the the best research to date: Research that will change your life! | CRS

In addition to reducing my total caloric intake, I am slowly moving to a diet based less in meat protein with lower total fat and refined carbs.

My current targets are 2,000 Kcal/ day with less than 20% of that being from fat and at least 85 g. protein. Anectdotally, I feel much better. Various blood test have indicated some imperical improvements; but, I am not sure they are statistically siginficant yet.

While I have not had any indications of health issues yet (recently had several normal EKG's, stress tests, and a boat load of blood work in a medical study), my father died at 50 with a heart attack and his brother died younger. So, I try to eat fairly well, exercise, and am hoping to retire very soon.

 

[Nords]

Does that translate as "eat more bacon"?

Odd, I read that as "eat more fish"... but you probably find more bacon in your back yard than I do!

The good news is that with [-]a lot of[/-] time [-]and strenuous miserable effort[/-] the mind can override the body's instincts. I've learned to eat fish at least 4-6x/week and even a bunch of broccoli. (Any day now I'm afraid of seeing that documentary CFB always talks about, "Broccoli: The Silent Killer".) I've cut almost all of the chocolate out of my weekly diet, as we have the sugar in cereal. We've even substituted ground pork & ground turkey for ground beef.

I never even knew that the word "tofu" could be part of the term "spaghetti sauce". Good thing my dearly departed mother can't learn what I've done to her recipe.

The upshot of eating like this for the last year is that my BP has cratered to 105/60. That's after six years of ER and never going lower than 120/80. Now I get a head rush every time I haul my butt out of the recliner.

The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Worth reading along with Taubes.

Excellent book!

 

[windsurf]

Odd, I read that as "eat more fish"...
/quote]

Your lucky to be living in a region where fresh ocean fish is local. Have you read Laird Hamilton's fitness book? Very inspirational-not too scientific-but some nice descriptions of the seafood he and Gabrielle weave into their diet. One of my favorite parts was the profile of Laird's buddy, geezer-jock Don Wildman, mid-70's fitness stud.

 

[Buckeye]

Another observation from the lab suggests that eating fatty foods is not harmful while your carb intake is low, but if you combine fats with high carbs, the accompanying insulin surge makes the fats more harmful by promoting their deposition into fat cells more rapidly, and making them more difficult to mobilize back out. Insulin seems to be a common thread in many of these studies.

That makes ice cream a dangerous food. Hmmm.

 

[Tigger]

This is part of what Dr. John McDougall says about reversing heart disease:

"An expected part of aging in Western societies is to have the arteries feeding your heart, brain, legs, and penis close down by atherosclerosis.

I suppose that some treatments for impotence might also improve the health of arteries in general.

Impotence is a warning sign. According to Dr Graham Jackson, "On average the erection problem comes about three years before the heart attack."

When a family member had died of a heart attack, I recovered a book about aging that I lent him. I found a bookmark in the chapter about impotence... so I suppose he had that warning sign.

In a (very small scale) test for BBC television, impotence was cured in 6 men out of 7 who daily ate four raw cloves of “Murado garlic” (a commen type of garlic), probably because it restored the blood circulation in the clogged arteries. For a potent effect the cloves need to be pressed or cut before they’re eaten. The video says they should be "eaten within ten minutes of chopping" and they should be eaten raw. (I suspect they meant “after ten minutes” instead of “within ten minutes”)
Source: Truth about food "Is garlic a natural cure for male impotence?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/flashapp/nonflash.shtml*

Arginine supplements have big results, even over a short time period. Men were divided into two groups of 15. One group was given a mere 2.8 grams of oral arginine for two weeks’ time. Six of the men who were given this minimal dose experienced significant improvement in their ability to achieve an erection. None of the men in the placebo group showed any sign of improvement.
Source: Zorgniotti, A.W. and Lizza, E.F., “Effect of Large Doses of Nitric Oxide Precursor, L-Arginine, on Erectile Dysfunction,” International Journal of Impotence Research,” 6 (1994) 33-36.

Disclaimer: nobody knows nuttin!

 

[Nords]

Odd, I read that as "eat more fish"...

Your lucky to be living in a region where fresh ocean fish is local. Have you read Laird Hamilton's fitness book? Very inspirational-not too scientific-but some nice descriptions of the seafood he and Gabrielle weave into their diet. One of my favorite parts was the profile of Laird's buddy, geezer-jock Don Wildman, mid-70's fitness stud.

Sorry, I'm an enthusiastic surfer but I'm definitely not a Hamilton fan. Gabby's made amazing progress in his domestication but he's burned through almost as much aloha around here as Sonny Garcia.

Believe it or not, I don't eat much fresh local fish. Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to relieve a buddy of some of his 100+ pounds of fresh-caught ahi or mahi mahi when his cooler fills up, but my fish diet comes pretty much out of the Coleson's grocery-freezer cabinet and a daily fish-oil capsule.

I'm also surprised at how much less I need to eat. We form our eating habits pretty early in life, but every 6-12 months for the past five years I've knocked another 100 calories out of my daily consumption and realized that it wasn't necessary to supporting life. Part of that was recognizing a writer's comment that he couldn't really adjust to his changing food needs until he ended his emotional relationship with eating and saw it as just "refueling". I'm not a calorie-restriction zealot but I can see that we humans eat a lot more out of entertainment/boredom than from our nutritional requirements.

But this is probably unusual behavior-- I don't care to cook and I can eat the same daily diet for weeks on end. Seems to be working for me but I wouldn't get a magazine article out of it, much less a book.

 

[Urchina]

Odd, I read that as "eat more fish"... but you probably find more bacon in your back yard than I do!

Go pig hunting with a bounty hunter, Nords. All the bacon you can eat, and you know how it was killed because you did it yourself! Plus, you're saving the environment. That's a win-win for everyone but the pig!

As far as diet -- I know a couple of folks who (for different reasons, all health-related) follow a raw vegan diet. It seems pretty extreme, but it gets the refined carbs problem out of the way quick. There's no easy way to eat raw white flour. Some of their recipes sound delicious! I think it might be a hard lifestyle change, but they both seem happier for it. They both also take nutritional supplements to make sure they're getting their B-vitamins and other nutrients.

I also heard about the RAVE diet on PBS. Checked the book out of the library. Very interesting. I'm thinking of checking it out again, reading it again and then doing my own research to see if any solid medical studies have been done on it. Anyone else tried this diet?

 

[Nords]

Go pig hunting with a bounty hunter, Nords. All the bacon you can eat, and you know how it was killed because you did it yourself! Plus, you're saving the environment. That's a win-win for everyone but the pig!

I dunno... I think I hear banjo music...

 

[windsurf]

At my rehab today, it was "Open Discussion" for the education portion. Not very "educational" as the discussion was dominated by quips and stories of sneaking Oreos and husbands or wives who are getting in the way or nagging. I am about ready to bail. It's several hundred dollars a day (my insurance pays 80% of mine) and I've read tons of studies and abstracts (and several books) since my "event." I do more on my own later in the day in the workout at my local Wellness Center than they program me for at "rehab." On the other hand, the initial assessment (treadmill stress) was important to give me a baseline and the program has this past month given me confidence to exercise at various levels as I am on a monitor the whole time and have developed a sense for what intensity produces what blood pressures and pulse rate.

 

[Tigger]

Coronary Artery Calcification Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency

New article: "Coronary Artery Calcification Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency"
Coronary Artery Calcification Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency - Renal and Urology News

Most people are deficient. More about vitamin D: Vitamin D Council | Understanding Vitamin D Cholecalciferol

 

[windsurf]

At my rehab today, it was "Open Discussion" for the education portion. Not very "educational" as the discussion was dominated by quips and stories of sneaking Oreos and husbands or wives who are getting in the way or nagging. I am about ready to bail. It's several hundred dollars a day (my insurance pays 80% of mine) and I've read tons of studies and abstracts (and several books) since my "event." I do more on my own later in the day in the workout at my local Wellness Center than they program me for at "rehab." On the other hand, the initial assessment (treadmill stress) was important to give me a baseline and the program has this past month given me confidence to exercise at various levels as I am on a monitor the whole time and have developed a sense for what intensity produces what blood pressures and pulse rate.

I'll reply to myself here-why not? The cost of the cardiac "rehab" is very high, I think, relative to the actual value. Yet, my insurance company covers it- albeit, with my policy, once my large deductible was covered, I am paying 20 % (and btw, I pay pretty "big" -over 7k just for me- my wife's portion is less, subsidized thorough her teacher retirement program- which is warning of huge shortfalls). I wish the insurance companies were willing to pay for and promote much more preventive intervention than they are now willing to undertake. Most of my "classmates" at rehab have outward signs of metabolic syndrome (direct result of standard American diet) Out of 20, there are three of us who "look" very fit even though we obviously weren't as to cardiac arteries.

 

[calmloki]

....
In a (very small scale) test for BBC television, impotence was cured in 6 men out of 7 who daily ate four raw cloves of “Murado garlic” (a commen type of garlic), probably because it restored the blood circulation in the clogged arteries. For a potent effect the cloves need to be pressed or cut before they’re eaten. The video says they should be "eaten within ten minutes of chopping" and they should be eaten raw. (I suspect they meant “after ten minutes” instead of “within ten minutes”)
Source: Truth about food "Is garlic a natural cure for male impotence?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/flashapp/nonflash.shtml*

Arginine supplements have big results, even over a short time period. Men were divided into two groups of 15. One group was given a mere 2.8 grams of oral arginine for two weeks’ time. Six of the men who were given this minimal dose experienced significant improvement in their ability to achieve an erection. None of the men in the placebo group showed any sign of improvement.
Source: Zorgniotti, A.W. and Lizza, E.F., “Effect of Large Doses of Nitric Oxide Precursor, L-Arginine, on Erectile Dysfunction,” International Journal of Impotence Research,” 6 (1994) 33-36.

Disclaimer: nobody knows nuttin!

Hey, so garlic rods out arteries? Cool, thinks I. So the other morning as I was making coffee I looked over and we had a nice fat garlic clove sitting out. Smacked it with the flat side of a knife blade and peeled the skin, popped it in my mouth and crunched it up real well and swallowed it. HOLY CWAP! Note to self - have something to eat before trying that again. My stomach was rudely shocked awake and protested mightily - thought I was gonna hurl. Unsettled my belly for an hour or more. At 4:30 that afternoon we were in Costco and my gal was claiming that I still had a garlic miasma wafting around me. That night as she tucked into my shoulder she startled back - I was sweating garlic.

Garlic may be good for your arteries and pitching tents, but it's not much good if you can't get someone under the tent with you.

 

[CoolChange]

Hey, so garlic rods out arteries? Cool, thinks I. So the other morning as I was making coffee I looked over and we had a nice fat garlic clove sitting out. Smacked it with the flat side of a knife blade and peeled the skin, popped it in my mouth and crunched it up real well and swallowed it. HOLY CWAP! .....

Sounds like my SO's normal cooking. Maybe she's trying to tell me something.

 

[tmm99]

I used to have some Korean friends who ate a bunch of kimche with tons of raw garlic at every meal. They all ate those nasty tasting mints (not really mints.. they look like tiny little silver beads and they contained some nasty tasking herbs) to kill the smell of garlic in their mouths, but I could smell the garlic from their skin... I didn't have the heart to tell them that though...

I have heard garlic lowers BP. I wonder if there are any stats on this that compares the Korean folks with some other people.

 

[ls99]

Having had Triglycerides in the 1150 range some years ago, going through all the varieaties od stuff Drs thunk up and most not doing squat, I have been on a self impsed diet of minimizing refined carbohydrates.

Recent Triglycerides are hovering in the 100 to 170 range.

If you are a glutton for reading here is a long list of places discussing cholesterol etc.:Paleolithic Diet Page (Paleo Diet, Caveman Diet, Hunter/Gatherer Diet)

Happy trails.

 

[windsurf]

Recent Triglycerides are hovering in the 100 to 170 range.

If you are a glutton for reading here is a long list of places discussing cholesterol etc.:Paleolithic Diet Page (Paleo Diet, Caveman Diet, Hunter/Gatherer Diet)

Happy trails.

Also see Arthur Devany's site at http://www.arthurdevany.com/ and Jimmy Moore's at
The Official Website For Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low-Carb as well as Mark Sisson at Mark's Daily Apple

 

[oldtrig]

I had a real close friend try to reverse heart disease with diet. He checked himself out of the hospital while they were preparing for open heart surgery. I talked to him after he had been on the diet for about 3 months. He was working out and felt great and said he was well on his way to recovery. The doctor that had told him he needed bypass surgery seen him in the grocery store and asked him was he trying to make him look bad by being in great shape. He told the doc that all he needed was to eat better and exercise. He fell over dead later that year with a heart attack. He was only 55. Looking at him you would have thought he was a picture of health. I miss him, he was a very smart person but not quite smart enough.