Heart surgeon speaks out on what really causes heart disease

This is an article i got in my e-mail thought i would share it.                                                         

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.   

With
inspiration rippling through the collective,

the
heart of the world grows unalterably stronger.