Low-Fat Way to Health for Americans

Why is the epidemic of heart disease particularly strong in the U.S.A.? If you are the average American, your diet is probably unbalanced and is very likely to lead you towards obesity, regardless of whether you know it or not. Drs. Louis Katz and J. Stamler, prominent researchers in this field, called it \”a pernicious combination of over-nutrition and under-nutrition -excessive in calories, carbohydrates, lipids and salt; and frequently substandard in certain critically important amino acids, minerals and vitamins.\” This makes sense, since the study of nutrition, which is relatively new to the medical field, has focused almost entirely on not having enough nutrition until recent years. People have been encouraged to \”eat the right foods\” and to provide plenty of meat, eggs, milk, and cheese for their children. In most areas of the world, the problem of getting enough food to eat for nourishment and survival is still existent, but this is not the problem in America. Our problem is actually more like the opposite: eating too much, especially the foods that are bad for us. Our diet is high fats, calories, refined sugars and starches, while low in essential nutrients, minerals and other vital supplements. The relationship between the amount of fat in your diet and the amount of cholesterol produced in your body is still not very clear. Research disagree on some points, but all one aspect of the problem, though, we all concur: the cholesterol found in the blood is produced mainly in the liver from fats in the diet. It is also believed that cholesterol is produced in the arterial walls themselves, but the main source and the one that we can to a definitely monitor is fat in our food.

What is the situation in other countries of the world? We have evidence that the reason for the large difference between health of Americans and peoples in various other countries is their diet. For example, in Norway, during the war years of 1940-1945, the consumption of butter, milk, cheese and eggs (which are all high in fats) had to be greatly reduced. Did the reduction of fat content in the country\’s diet have any effect on the number of deaths from heart attack? The Norwegian Ministry of Health, which kept accurate records, answered that question with an emphatic \”yes.\” With the reduction in fat consumption, the death rate from also coronary attacks decreased. The Norwegians reported that deaths related to heart disease were reduced by 31% each year among the urban population. In addition, there was a 22% drop in heart disease-related deaths among the rural population. France, which also to cut down on high-fat content foods during the war years, had similar results. Mr. Marcel Moine, from the French Ministry of Health, reported to me that from 1941 to 1945, when the French population was on a low-fat diet, the death rate from heart disease was reduced to an average of 20.6 for each 100,000 persons. In the postwar years, when the diet returned to normal fat consumption, the death rate rose to 25.5 per 100,000, which was the death rate prior to the war. Italy provides another example, in which they studied two neighboring provinces. In one neighborhood the daily diet included pork products rich in fats, the occurrence of coronary and generalized artery disease ended up being much higher than in the neighboring town where the population followed the comparatively low-fat diet of the country as a whole. Related studies have been conducted in all across the world-countries such as Finland, Denmark, South Africa, China, and Japan. Statistically, the results all reveal the same conclusion: high-fat diet means a high rate of heart deaths. Prominent figures, as Mark Twain and Marilyn Monroe have shown, sometimes have a way of deceiving us, by interpreting cause and effect relationships where the health of whole populations is concerned. For example, you could claim, on the basis of statistics, that since the use of soap was also sharply reduced in some countries during the war, with a corresponding drop in death rate from cardiovascular disease, the soap (which is a fat) was to blame for the disease. In a more scientific perspective, however, the evidence weighs heavily on the side of fat consumption as the primary factor in causing atherosclerosis.

Is the epidemic confined to older people? What has affected to our culture to the point that men between 30 and 45 are common victims of this \”silent killer\”? Why are increasingly more young women, thought to be practically immune to this disease until after menopause, are now joining men as common victims? We do not know the entire answer to this mystery, or even if there is a single answer to theses questions. However, the research that has been carried out by my colleagues across the globe, and by myself during the past 10 years, has provided some informative hints. Recently, we discovered to our amazement that over 90% of our adult population has, to a greater or less degree, a degenerative disease of the arteries that doctors call atherosclerosis. That, as you know, is the term meaning the thickening and narrowing of certain vital blood vessels, which is the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes. Doctors and physicians once believed that it was a result of growing old, but the disease is now being discovered in infants and children as well. As children, however, we have the ability of absorbing the fats that deposit themselves to the artery walls. As we age, we seem to lose this power of absorption, and thus real trouble begins. At what age does this happen? Much earlier than we might expect.

For example, my associates and I made a study of the arteries of 600 patients who had died of various diseases. About 100 of them had met sudden death from accidents or acute illness. To our amazement we found that atherosclerosis, a disease of the arteries, was present in many of the young people before they had reached their thirtieth year.By the time they were 40 to 50 years of age, the fatty deposits and embedded crystals of cholesterol were inside the artery walls. Such thickening and narrowing of the blood vessels interfered with the nourishment and vitality of the tissues in the heart, brain, or kidney. Striking evidence of how widespread the disease is among our younger people today came also from Korea. There Army doctors autopsied 300 American soldiers who had died while serving in Korea. It was the first time such a study had been made of a cross section of the country\’s youth; their average age was only 22. A report of the mass autopsies contained startling information that 77 per cent of the young U.S. servicemen already had atherosclerosis! Balanced against this shocking total was a mere 11 per cent incidence of the same disease among Koreans and Orientals who had died on the same battlefield under the same conditions.

Does heredity have anything to do with the problem? At this point you are probably wondering: why do some people have more cholesterol in their blood than others? At present we do not know the whole answer to that question. We do, however, know some of the predisposing factors. One of them is heredity. Some families are affected by what physicians call hereditary familial hyper-(excessive) cholesteremia. In such a family the tendency to high levels of cholesterol in the blood is passed on for several generations. Among members of such families we usually find a large number of individuals who suffer heart attack and strokes. If no heart attacks or strokes have occurred in your own family line, you have at least one protective factor in your favor from the beginning. The second factor is one that is pretty much up to you. It concerns what you eat and how much you eat. Unfortunately, it is too late for us to choose our parents.But it is not too late to choose our diet. By learning how to avoid food excessive in fat and cholesterol content, we can help minimize the effect of heredity.

Women have better natural protection against atherosclerosis. If you are a woman, you are less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke until well after you pass the half century mark. That is when your protective female hormones give out, and you become as susceptible to the disease as men.Can\’t men take female hormones to protect themselves? They can, but if they do, they will \”cross the border\” and develop a high voice, full enlarged breasts, and other feminine characteristics. So that approach to the problem is not practical. Anything else? Yes, there is something everyone can do without great inconvenience, and with the added reward of improved health in general. It is this: select a diet that will keep your blood fats down to normal levels.

Can you reverse damage done to your arteries by excessive fat? Only recently have medical research teams produced dependable evidence supporting that excessive fat in our diets increases the risk of heart disease. If you are past the age of thirty, you have probably already started wonder whether the harm done to your arteries is permanent, or if it is reversible. Right now, as our current level of research, we doctors cannot answer the question with certainty. However, we can convey the hopeful fact that experiments have shown that the condition is reversible in animals. We have data that verifies cholesterol in the arteries is absorbed in adolescents, as proposed by Dr. Russell Holman and others. However, this metabolic gift disappears as we age. There are many qualified experts in this field who hypothesize that since atherosclerosis is reversible in animals, the same can be true for humans as well. However, we should be careful when drawing conclusions from animal testing, as their metabolism is quite different from ours.

Another question that patients often ask is: \”Can you tell if I am already affected by this degenerative artery disease?\” Unfortunately, there is not a test yet that can predict accurately whether you are vulnerable to such heart diseases. However, there is a test that does produce accurate results related to heart disease. If your doctor can detect a minimal amount of cholesterol in your blood, your risk of heart and blood vessel disease, such as heart attack or stroke, is quite low. However, if there is a substantial amount, you face a greater chance of developing such disease. If you are past 30, you should have your doctor check these levels of cholesterol routinely, as part of your check-up. All too often, middle-aged men are so involved in their fast-paced life that they dangerously neglect the importance of their own health.

What is the solution for us? There have been numerous studies on heart disease, but none have concluded that it is due to diet alone. However, they do emphasize much of the information that I have acquired in my 25 years of practice and laboratory research. Together, these trials and studies are evidence that strongly support this fact: If everyone in the United States would reduce his/her fat intake by 25 percent, we can cut the number of heart-disease related deaths in half within two decades. Not only will it prevent deaths, but it will indefinitely improve the overall well-being and general health of the population. Now, you may be wondering \”How can I go about reducing the fat in my diet? Where do I begin?\” In my articles you will find a helpful guide; it includes low-fat meal plans and directions for using simple and inexpensive nutritional supplements that I use in my own practice to help my patients prevent heart attack, and to treat those who have already experienced one or more. If you follow these directions carefully, you will not only add years to your life, but life to your years.

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