Without inflammation, cholesterol won't accumulate in blood vessel walls and
cause heart disease
Heart Surgeon Admits
Huge Mistake!
By Dwight Lundell, MD
We physicians with all our raining, 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 thatinflammation 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 wechronically 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 therecommended mainstream diet that is low
in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowingwe 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-6vegetable 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 cytokinesthat 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 butterfrom 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.
[Ed. Note: 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.
