Deadly Blows
The sports world rejoiced when former Yale president Bart Giamatti became commissioner of baseball. A few months later a shocked nation wept when this respected man died suddenly at age 51, attacked by his heart.
Listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Tim Russert, America's beloved and respected television journalist, appeared for 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. In April of 2008, he performed well on his doctor's stress test. Two months later, on June 13, at the age of 58, an important irreplaceable voice in American journalism had been silenced, unexpectedly by his heart.
Scenarios like these are repeated thousands of times each day across North America. Heart disease now strikes a deadly blow to almost three out of every 10 Americans.
Is there no way out? Does it have to be like this?
Yes... and no.
As long as Americans continue to eat their rich, fatty diet, the statistics will remain the same. We’ve known for years that a diet high in fat and cholesterol is the primary and essential cause of coronary heart disease. But there is a way out. We have to eat less fat, oil, and grease, and cut back on our cholesterol intake. To the extent that we commit to do this, we can help prevent and even reverse heart disease.
Despite sub-human diets and unimaginable torture, survivors of the Holocaust were surprisingly free of atherosclerosis. It was the first indication — later confirmed by angiographic examinations of American POWs in Vietnam — that the process of atherosclerosis is reversible. Those held longest in captivity had the cleanest arteries.
Are you saying that heart disease may be curable?
It looks more and more that way. The idea took on a life of its own when a young cardiologist, Dr. Dean Ornish, published a report in the Lancet Medical Journal, in 1990, that shook up the medical community.
Dr. Ornish spent one year studying 48 men with advanced heart disease, many of whom were candidates for coronary bypass surgery. He randomly assigned the men to two groups. Both groups were asked to quit smoking and to walk daily. In addition, the first group practiced stress management and followed a fairly strict vegetarian diet with less than 10 percent of their calories coming from fat and with virtually no cholesterol.
The second group was given the Standard American Heart Association’s “Prudent Diet” for heart disease. This diet allowed 30 percent of calories as fat and up to 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day. At the end of the year, when the results were presented at the Scientific Session of the American Heart Association in Washington, D.C., they became front page news all over America.
Dr. Ornish reported that those on the very-low-fat vegetarian diet not only dropped their dangerous LDL-cholesterol levels by 37 percent, but 82 percent of their narrowed, plaque-filled arteries had actually widened, allowing more blood and oxygen to nourish the heart muscle. The heart disease had, in fact, begun to reverse itself. And the older men with the most advanced disease actually had the best results.
The group on the so-called "Prudent Diet", however, had virtually no cholesterol drop, and most of their coronary arteries showed increased narrowing—their heart disease had actually gotten worse.