Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (28 page)

Many of my patients were advised by other physicians to undergo angioplasty or bypass. When they refused, they were referred to my office and chose aggressive nutritional management. Without exception, they have all done well; chest pain has resolved in almost every case (only one went to repeat angioplasty because of a recurrence of chest symptoms); and none has died from cardiac disease.

A typical patient is John Pawlikowski. I see patients like him almost every day. John’s story is not unusual—but a miracle to him nevertheless. John came to me with a history of steadily worsening angina. His chest pains were increasing. His stress thallium test suggested multivessel coronary artery disease. He underwent a cardiac catheterization, which revealed a 95 percent stenosis of the left anterior descending artery, and the left circumflex had diffuse disease. He had normal heart function. His cholesterol was 218, he weighed 180 pounds, and he was on two blood pressure medications.

Within a few weeks of following my diet, John’s chest pain ceased and he stopped taking nitroglycerin tablets for chest pain
relief. In two months his weight dropped to 152—a loss of twenty-eight pounds in eight weeks—and his stress test normalized. Today, sixteen years later, he still weighs 150 pounds, following the same diet. He is well, with no heart problems, and is physically fit; his blood pressure runs about 120/70. He is eighty-eight years old and requires no medication.

JOHN’S LABORATORY REPORTS

Revascularization procedures may be necessary in rare circumstances, such as triple vessel disease with reduced cardiac output or an injured (stunned) heart muscle. However, I am convinced that aggressive nutritional therapy with the addition of nutritional supplements (and, if needed, medication) will provide a more favorable outcome for the majority of patients than angioplasty, stent placement, and bypass.

One might argue, where are the adequate studies that prove this? But where are the studies to prove revascularization will give a better outcome with a stable patient, without a reduction in cardiac output? The benefits of revascularization procedures for patients with good cardiac function have not been convincingly demonstrated, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that the adverse outcomes outweigh the potential benefits. Furthermore, these dubious results are measured against patients who refuse revascularization and then follow the normal (worthless) dietary recommendations. When we factor in the results I see with very aggressive nutritional management, it seems likely that many patients would be at lower risk if they avoided invasive
cardiac procedures and surgery. Fortunately, I am not the only physician in America with this opinion, but sometimes it sure seems as if I am.
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Rarely will you find a cardiologist who advises aggressive nutritional therapy before angioplasty or bypass. And physicians who offer medical interventions are usually satisfied if blood pressure is below 140/90 and cholesterol level is under 200. Those levels are not sufficiently normal to offer true protection.

Studies clearly demonstrate that the higher one’s cholesterol level, the higher the risk of heart disease; conversely, the lower one’s cholesterol level, the lower the risk. For true protection, do not be satisfied until your LDL cholesterol is below 100. There is nothing particularly magical about the number 200—heart disease risk continues to decrease as one’s cholesterol decreases below this level. The average cholesterol level in China is 127. The Framingham Heart Study showed that participants with cholesterol levels below 150 did not have heart attacks.
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In fact, most heart attacks occur in patients whose cholesterol runs between 175 and 225. That is the average cholesterol range among Americans, and the average American has heart disease. Do you want to be average, or do you want to be healthy?

I know you were told that if your blood pressure is below 140/90, it is normal. Unfortunately, this is not true, either. It is
average—
not
normal
. This number is used because it is the midpoint of adult Americans older than sixty. The risk for strokes and heart attacks starts climbing at 115/70.

In societies where we do not see high rates of heart disease and strokes, we do not see blood pressure increase with age.
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Almost all Americans have blood pressure that is unhealthfully high. At a minimum, we should consider blood pressure higher than 125/80 abnormal.

Numerous scientific investigations have shown that the following interventions have some degree of effectiveness in lowering blood pressure:
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• Weight loss
  

• Sodium restriction
  

• Increased potassium intake
  

• Increased calcium and magnesium intake
  

• Alcohol restriction
  

• Caffeine restriction
  

• Increased fiber intake
  

• Increased consumption of fruits and vegetables
  

• Increased physical activity or exercise
  

Studies have shown controlling sodium intake and weight loss to be effective in reducing blood pressure, even in the elderly.
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How can you integrate these interventions into your lifestyle? It’s simple. Eat many more fruits, vegetables, and legumes; eat less of everything else; and engage in a moderate amount of exercise. High blood pressure is relatively simple to control.

I encourage my patients to do what it takes to normalize their blood pressure so they do not require medication. Prescribing medications for high blood pressure has the effect of giving someone a permission slip. Medication has a minimal effect in reducing heart attack occurrence in patients with high blood pressure because it does not remove the underlying problem (atherosclerosis), it just treats the symptom. Patients given medication now falsely believe they are protected, and they continue to follow the same disease-causing lifestyle that led to the problem to begin with, until the inevitable occurs—their first heart attack or stroke. Maybe if high blood pressure medications had never been invented, doctors would have been forced to teach healthful living and nutritional disease causation to their patients. It is possible that many more lives could have been saved.

Do not expect to receive valuable health advice from your typical doctor. Physicians usually do not help; they rush through their patient appointments, especially in the current HMO climate, because they are paid so poorly for each visit and are pressured to see as many patients as possible each day. Your physician is likely doing just as poorly as you are and eating just as unhealthfully or worse. After reading this book, you could improve his health and reduce his risk of premature death more than he could help yours. Even when physicians offer their full time and effort, their recommendations are invariably too mild to have a significant benefit.

Drs. Randall S. Stafford and David Blumenthal, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, reviewed the records of more than 30,000 office visits to 1,521 U.S. physicians of various specialties and found that doctors measured patients’ blood pressure during 50 percent of the visits. However, doctors tested their patients’ cholesterol levels only 4.6 percent of the time. Physicians offered patients advice on how to lose weight in 5.8 percent of the visits, and suggestions on how to quit smoking 3 percent of
the time. On average, doctors gave patients advice on dietary and other changes that can help lower cholesterol in 4.3 percent of the visits, and advice on exercise in 11.5 percent of the visits. When records were reviewed for those who had cardiovascular disease, the typical (almost worthless) dietary counseling and exercise were usually never even mentioned.
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Obviously, we have a long way to go.

More than twenty million Americans have diabetes.
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As our population grows fatter, this figure is climbing. Diabetes is a nutritionally related disease—one that is both preventable and reversible (in the case of Type II diabetes) through nutritional methods.

Diabetes can take a severe toll—causing heart attacks and strokes, as well as other serious complications. More than 80 percent of adults with Type II diabetes die of heart attacks and strokes.
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The statistics are even more frustrating when you watch people gain weight, become even more diabetic, and develop attendant complications, all while under the care of their physicians.

Patients are told to learn to live with their diabetes and to learn to control it because it can’t be cured. “No, no, and no!” I say. “Don’t live with it, get thin and get rid of it, as many of my patients have!”

There are basically two kinds of diabetes: Type I, or childhood-onset diabetes, and Type II, or adult-onset diabetes. In Type I, which generally occurs earlier in life, children incur damage to
the pancreas—the organ that produces and secretes insulin—so they have an insulin deficiency. In Type II, the most common type, the individual produces near-normal levels of insulin, but the body is resistant to it, so the level of blood sugar, or glucose, rises. The end result is the same in both types—the individual has a high glucose level in his or her blood.

Both types of diabetes accelerate the aging of our bodies. Diabetes greatly promotes the development of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, and it ages and destroys the kidneys and other body systems. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in adults and is the leading cause of kidney failure. We witness today a huge number of Type II diabetes patients with terrible complications, such as amputations, peripheral neuropathy (painful nerve damage in the legs), retinopathy (the major cause of blindness in diabetics), and nephropathy (kidney damage); complications of Type II diabetes are just as bad as those of Type I diabetes.
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Diabetics, regardless of type, have higher levels of triglycerides and increased levels of LDL cholesterol than the general population. Diabetics have more than a 400 percent higher incidence of heart attacks than nondiabetics. One-third of all patients with insulin-dependent (Type I) diabetes die of a heart attack before age fifty. This acceleration of the atherosclerotic process, and the resulting high mortality rate, is present in both types of diabetes.
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By simple logic, you would expect that any dietary recommendations designed for diabetics would at least attempt to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular event. Unfortunately, the nutritional advice given to diabetics is to follow the same diet that has proved not to work for heart disease patients. Such a diet is risky for all people, but for the diabetic it is exceptionally hazardous—it is deadly. The combination of refined grains, processed foods, and animal products guarantees a steady stream of available customers for hospitals and emergency rooms.

When Type I patients take a more aggressive and progressive
nutritional approach, they can prevent many of the complications that befall diabetics. They can expect a normal life span, because it is the interaction between diabetes and the disease-causing modern diet that results in such dismal statistics, not merely being diabetic. Type I diabetics will still require some insulin, but often I find my Type I diabetic patients requiring about half as much insulin as they did prior to adopting my lifesaving program. Their sugars don’t swing wildly up and down, and since they are using less insulin, they have less chance of developing potentially dangerous hypoglycemic episodes.