An internationally known, renowned heart surgeon with 25 years experience and more than 5,000 open-heart surgeries in his career, decided to speak out and admit that he and his colleagues have been doing a huge mistake!
Apparently, he claims that they were wrong when believing that heart disease was caused by elevated blood cholesterol. He says that the common treatment includes medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake, but it is ineffective.
He says that the treatment of heart diseases should change after the discovery that heart disease is a result of the inflammation in the artery wall.
He adds that more and more people are dying of heart diseases annually, even though 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and their diets are low in fats.
According to the American Heart Association, 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes.
Cholesterol builds up in the walls of the blood vessels due to inflammation, and this leads to strokes and heart disease. If the inflammation is treated, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body.
Inflammation is the body’s defense mechanism to a foreign invader like viruses, bacteria, and toxins, and it is beneficial as it protects the system from their negative effects.
Yet, the chronic exposure to such invaders will lead to chronic inflammation.
Our diets, being low in fat and rich in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, constantly damage our blood vessels, which leads to chronic inflammation.
Therefore, the mainstream medicine recommended low-fat diets for so long, even though they are the main culprits for injury and inflammation in the blood vessels!
Chronic inflammation is most often caused by the excessive intake of simple, highly processed carbohydrates and omega-6 vegetable oils such as sunflower, soybean, and corn oil.
The repeated intake of such foods, several times daily, for years, leads to continuous, chronic inflammation in the body. The consumption of simple carbohydrates such as sugar, increase the blood sugar levels, and the pancreas secretes insulin.
Its main role is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy, but if cells are full, the glucose ends us accumulating in the body, blood sugar rises, and it is stored as fat.
The extra sugar molecules attach to various proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall, and this stimulates inflammation.
Thus, processed foods are all rich in sugar and omega-6 oils, which ensure a longer shelf life. These oils are important, as they are part of cell membranes, but they need to be in a proper balance with omega-3’s.
In the case of an imbalance, the cell membrane produces chemicals known as cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Our modern diet leads to an extreme imbalance of these two fats, which is as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6, which in turn, increases the amounts of cytokines, and causes inflammation.
Moreover, these foods lead to weight gain, which creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals.
It is a fact that our body was not designed to consume such packaged, processed foods, so it cannot fight their dreadful effects on health.
Therefore, as this heart surgeon suggests, the only way to protect yourself and limit such side-effects is to try and consume more natural foods, more protein, and complex carbohydrates like colorful fruits and vegetables. Also, replace omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil with olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.
Namely, animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6, so they will less likely lead to inflammation. The concern that saturated fats cause heart disease is absurd now since we are well aware that cholesterol does not cause heart issues. Heart disease is a result of the epidemic of arterial inflammation and other silent killers.
Therefore, start eating as your grandparents did, and forget about the processed foods that marked our era. Eat nutrient-dense foods, and focus on fresh and raw ones as often as possible.
Such a diet will reverse the damage done to your arteries and you will support heart health, avoiding inflammation and many of its negative consequences on overall health.
Sources:
preventdisease.com