Health-Essentials.info: information that you can use . . . from an alternative perspective Health information you can use, …
… from an alternative perspective.

The Cholesterol Theory of Heart Disease: It's a Lie

High cholesterol does not cause heart disease

Adapted from a Total Health Breakthroughs.
Used by permission.

In this two-part article, thoracic surgeon, Dr. Dwight Lundell, wrote that he — and mainstream medicine — erred for many decades by insisting and defending the cholesterol theory of heart disease.

Dr. Lundell reminded us that, despite the fact that 25% of the population now takes expensive statin medications, and despite the fact we have reduced fat content in our diets (as mainstream medicine recommended), more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

We have to stop this cholesterol madness.  It is your time for the truth.  Take a moment to read this life-changing, important message from Dr. Lundell.

Sincerely,

Melanie Segala
Managing Editor
Total Health Breakthroughs

Today, I am giving you the most important message I could ever give any patient, friend or family member.  It is based on all my knowledge and experiences as a thoracic surgeon, after 25 years in practice and performing 5,000 open-heart surgeries.  I made a mistake; and today, I am righting that wrong.

My message is two-fold.

First, the cholesterol theory of heart disease is a lie.  The saturated fat, low-fat, no-fat theory is also a lie; one that is responsible for an epidemic of heart disease.  Mainstream medicine made a grave mistake for 60 years and, for me, it stops today.

Irresponsible theories, faulty research lacking scientific fact, resulted in most of the population following dietary recommendations that are slowing poisoning them each day.  And, of those, 25% take cholesterol medication.  As the numbers considered safe for cholesterol levels continue to lower, more of the population will begin taking a statin medication.  Tragic and sad, isn't it?

My second message to you is this —

High cholesterol does not cause heart disease.  Lowering cholesterol has no power to prevent, cure or reverse heart disease.  There's a very considerable chance your cholesterol medications are not giving you any benefits, and possibly causing harm.

I know what will benefit you, and I'm going to show you how, with simple dietary change and a few essential nutritional additions, you can stop inflammation raging through your body as a result of these faulty dietary recommendations that are no longer morally, ethically, medically or scientifically defensible — without medication.

You have the power to cure your heart and other inflammatory illnesses that plague you.  I'm just the doctor standing by to show you how.  So let's go.  I'm going to right that wrong and get your heart on a healing path.

How The War On Cholesterol Began

Back in the late 40's, scientists and researchers assembled in Framingham, NY to study the cause of — and hopefully find a cure for — heart disease.  This group, known as the "The Framingham Study", made some headway into discovering some things that contribute to heart disease.  Then, in 1961, they stumbled upon cholesterol and, with incomplete, "faulty" research, lacking in scientific fact, became so convinced they found "the answer", other research was disregarded and tunnel vision set in.

Unfortunately, this "tunnel vision" blinded researchers and regulators to the truth that was right in front of them; and big drug companies and special interest lobby groups used these findings to capitalize for their own greed.  Soon after, the low-fat theory was born; and the Food Pyramid followed, promoting manufactured, low-fat foods, filled with sugar and starches — all of which the human body was never designed to process.

Here's the Truth: Cholesterol is vital, not evil

Once you see how this colossal error began and was allowed to continue, you'll understand that cholesterol is absolutely essential for human life.  It is manufactured by the body and, in fact, if you don't get enough from foods you eat, your body will manufacture its own supply.  That's how important it is.

Countless clinical studies have shown that lowering the amount of cholesterol in your diet has little to no effect on the amount that ultimately circulates through your blood stream.  But, despite the overwhelming collection of evidence, we still cling to the notion of a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, and the idea that heart disease is a result of too much cholesterol floating through your arteries.

Why?  Because we are bombarded with statin drug commercials, mass media and marketing hype, and doctors who insist cholesterol must be lowered.

And yet, having followed the cholesterol theory for decades, the facts, which are proven time and time again, say:

So, why are our doctors and pharmaceutical companies treating cholesterol when … inflammation is the real reason over 850,000 people die every year from heart disease?

Just follow the money

Let's be honest.  How much money is at stake here?  For over 50 years, pharmaceutical companies created drugs and doctors followed the cholesterol myth, while Americans became conditioned to believe they must reduce cholesterol to prevent heart disease.  So, they take statin medication, as prescribed, and hope for the best.

And now, there's a mad rush to prescribe statin medication — preventatively — to people who have normal cholesterol levels!

Heart disease is still the leading cause of death

Obviously, something is seriously wrong when heart disease is still the number one cause of death.  But, it's no wonder: Since 1948, we've been treating the wrong cause, and creating an epidemic of heart disease.  The problem is not cholesterol; it's inflammation.

What is inflammation?  It's simply your body's natural, physiological response, designed to protect itself from a foreign substance.  But, under the right set of circumstances, it can literally turn against you, setting up a chain reaction of events in your arteries, with deadly consequences.

Taking a look at inflammation, the real cause of heart disease

Take a moment to imagine this: You're repeatedly rubbing a stiff brush over soft skin, until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding.  Let's say 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 image for the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it's the same.  I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries, and all diseased arteries look the same: It's as if someone repeatedly took a brush and scrubbed against their walls.  And, that's not far from what is actually happening.

Diet and arterial inflammatory response

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 with alarm, as if a foreign invader arrived and declared 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.  And, these foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

If you magine spilling syrup on your computer keyboard, and you have a good visual of what occurs inside the cells of your body.  When we consume simple carbohydrates, such as sugar, blood sugar levels rise rapidly.  In response, your pancreas secretes insulin, the primary purpose of which is to drive sugar into the cells, where it is stored for energy.  If the cells are full and don't need more glucose, they rejects it, 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 within the body 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's there.  I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients, spanning 25 years, all of whom 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's baked in one of many omega-6 oils, such as soybean oil.  Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life.  And, 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-3s.  If the balance shifts, due to the over-consumption of omega-6 fatty acids, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines, which cause a direct inflammatory response.

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.  By constrast, in today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

 

Overweight and inflammation

To make matters worse, eating these foods leads to excess weight and obesity, which creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals.  This adds to the injury caused by high blood sugar.  And so, the process that began with that innocent-looking sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle of unabated inflammatory processes, which, over time, creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and, finally, Alzheimer's disease.

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 and every day.  The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

Getting a handle on inflammation

There is but one answer to quieting this 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.  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 polyunsaturated oils.  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 all-the-more absurd.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations which, 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 to 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 the years of damage to your arteries — and throughout your body — caused by consuming the typical American diet.

 

 

[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell, M.D. 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, which promotes human health, with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness.  He is the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.  Click here now to learn more.]

 

All material in this article is provided for information only and may not be construed as personal medical advice.  No action should be taken based solely on the contents of this information; instead, readers should consult appropriate health professionals on any matter relating to their health and well-being.  The publisher is not a licensed medical care provider.  The information is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in the practice of medicine or any other health-care profession, and does not enter into a health-care practitioner/patient relationship with its readers.  We are not responsible for the accuracy, reliability, effectiveness or correct use of information you receive through our website.  The publisher is not responsible for errors or omissions.  The FDA has not evaluated these statements.  None of the information or products discussed on this site are intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate or cure any disease.

Copyright © 2008 Fourth Avenue Health Group, LLC.  Located at 245 NE 4th Avenue, Delray Beach Florida 33483, a subsidiary of Early to Rise.  All rights reserved.


Anson Digital Concerns About Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ©2009 Anson Digital Concerns