CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9
Heart Disease – Symptom of a Sick Body
ess than one hundred years ago heart disease was an extremely rare disease. Today, it kills more
people in the developed world than all other causes of death taken together (with the exception of
doctor-caused, iatrogenic, diseases; see Chapter 14). According to the New England Journal of Medicine,
sudden cardiac arrest claims 350,000 to 450,000 lives per year in the United States (over 1,000 per day)
and is responsible for more than half of all deaths that are due to cardiovascular disease. 865,000
Americans suffer a heart attack each year. There are 7.8 million people in the U.S. who are heart attack
survivors (as per year 2004). Direct (medical costs) and indirect (lost productivity) costs related to
coronary heart disease were about $133 billion in 2004. And a recent study concludes that 85% of people
over 50 already have artery blockages… and 71% of people over 40!
Although the ability to recognize patients who are at high risk for cardiac arrest has greatly improved
over the past 20 years, 90 percent of cases of sudden death from cardiac causes occur in patients without
identified risk factors. It is known that the majority of cases of sudden death from cardiac causes involve
patients with preexisting coronary heart disease. Yet cardiac arrest is the first manifestation of this
underlying problem in 50 percent of patients.
The most common underlying cause of sudden cardiac arrest is a heart attack which causes irregular
heart rhythm and subsequent stoppage of the heart. In several industrialized nations mortality rates from
heart attacks have slightly decreased due to a generation of breakthroughs in heart care. These include
new medicines, the bypass operations, and the angioplasties. But now the “beneficiaries” of this kind of
heart care are living with unexpected, often devastating consequences: Their damaged hearts still beat, but
not strong enough to enjoy a decent quality of life. Many wish they had died swiftly than suffering a slow
and torturous death.
The unintended result of better cardiac care is an unprecedented increase in a chronic, debilitating
disease called chronic heart failure, which could very well be described as an epidemic. Heart failure is
described as a gradual ebbing of the heart’s power to pump blood and supply the body with oxygen.
“Heart failure is a product of our success in dealing with heart disease and hypertension,” said Dr.
Michael Bristow of the University of Colorado. Treating the symptoms of heart disease and hypertension
rather than their causes has lead to more hardship and suffering than anticipated. It is the call of our time
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to take a more holistic look at the causes of this greatest killer disease in the modern world and to apply
natural methods to restore heart functions swiftly and permanently, without side effects.
The Beginning Stages of Heart Disease
Our cardiovascular system is composed of a central pumping device – the heart muscles – and a blood
vessel pipeline, consisting of arteries, veins and capillaries. The heart muscles pump blood through the
blood vessel system to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all parts of the body. The blood vessel system is
over 60,000 miles long and has a surface of more than half an acre. The 60-100 trillion cells in the body
depend on the frictionless flow of blood through this vast network of channels.
The tiny blood capillaries, which have the thickness of one tenth of a human hair, are of particular
importance to the body. Unlike the arteries, capillaries permit oxygen, water, and nutrients to pass through
their thin walls in order to bring nourishment to the surrounding tissues. At the same time, they have to
allow for certain cellular waste to return to the blood so that it can be excreted from the body. If the
capillary network becomes congested for reasons explained below, the heart has to pump the blood with
greater pressure to reach all the different parts of the body. This considerably increases the heart’s
workload and makes its muscles tense and tired. In due time, the exertion of the heart leads to stress and
fatigue and impairs all major functions in the body.
Since the blood capillaries are also responsible for nourishing the muscle cells of the arteries, a
reduced supply of oxygen, water, and nutrients will gradually injure and destroy arteries. To counteract
this form of involuntary self-destruction, the body responds with inflammation. The inflammation
response, which is often mistaken for and treated as a disease, is actually one of the body’s best methods
to increase the blood supply and deliver vital nutrients to promote growth of new cells and repair
damaged connective tissue. However, continuous inflammatory responses eventually generate sizable
lesions in the arteries which, in turn, lead to the development of atherosclerotic deposits. Hardening of
arteries is commonly believed to be the main cause of heart disease, although this is, as new studies have
shown, not entirely true.
Major Contributing Factors
While most heart attacks are believed to be triggered by the clogging of the heart arteries, which
destroys millions of heart cells, strokes are assumed to be caused by the clogging of the brain arteries,
which causes the death of millions of brain cells. Since brain cells coordinate the activities and
movements of every part of the body, their death can lead to partial or complete paralysis and death. A
stroke is considered to be merely a consequence of advanced atherosclerosis.
The brain arteries are located in close proximity to the heart. The blood pressure in both the brain and
heart arteries is relatively higher than in those arteries located in other parts of the body, hence the
difference of blood pressure in the different arteries of the circulatory system. If turbulence and
congestion occur in the branching areas of the arteries, the blood pressure begins to rise. This particularly
stresses the coronary, carotid (neck), and cerebral (brain) arteries to the point of damage. Damage occurs
first in those blood vessels that are already weakened by internal congestion and nutrient deficiencies.
This makes high blood pressure a major risk factor for strokes and heart disease.
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Lowering an elevated blood pressure through medication, however, does not serve as a solution, but as
a mere postponement and further aggravation of the problem. And, as recent research has shown, it can
lead to chronic heart failure. Without removing the root cause(s) of elevated blood pressure the standard
treatment for hypertension can cause severe cellular dehydration and sharply reduce the blood’s capacity
to deliver oxygen to the heart muscles and remove toxic waste from the cells and tissues of the body. All
this further increases the risk of heart disease and many other health problems, including kidney and liver
disorders.
The Western Hemisphere is heading the global list of heart disease. For many years, now, doctors have
blamed the wrong type of food, overeating, too little exercise, smoking, and stress as the major risk
factors. Latest research has added a few more, such as free radicals, pollution, poor circulation, certain
drugs and chemicals, and a decreased ability of the blood to digest protein, which may lead to the
formation of blood clots. When the proteolytic enzymes bromelain, trypsin, and chymotrypsin are no
longer sufficiently available to help break down the blood clots, heart attacks, phlebitis, and stokes are the
most likely consequences.
The major physical cause of coronary heart disease, however, is overeating of animal proteins. When
stored in the body, protein becomes one of the greatest risk factors for heart disease and most other
diseases as well. one of the latest markers of arterial damage and inflammation now believed to be the
main reason behind blood clots triggering a heart attack is the protein homocysteine. High concentrations
of homocysteine are found in meat.
Meat Consumption and Heart Disease
To illustrate the development of heart disease from virtual non-existence to being the biggest killer
disease, I have used statistical trends describing disease development in Germany – a typical, modern
industrialized nation. In the year 1800, meat consumption in Germany was about 13 kg (28 pounds) per
person per year. one hundred years later, meat consumption was nearly three times as high, at 38 kg per
person per year. By 1979 it had reached 94.2 kg, which is an increase of 725 percent in less than 180
years. These figures do not include fats. During the period of 1946-1978, meat consumption in Germany
increased by 90% and heart attacks rose by 20 times. During the same period, fat consumption remained
the same, whereas consumption of cereals and potatoes, which are major suppliers of vegetable protein,
decreased by 45%. Therefore, fats and carbohydrates, as well as vegetable proteins, cannot be considered
to be causes of coronary heart disease. This leaves meat as the main factor responsible for the dramatic
upsurge of this degenerative blood vessel disease.
In consideration of the fact that at least 50 percent of the German population is overweight and most
overweight people eat much more meat than those with normal weight do, meat consumption among the
overweight must have at least quadrupled in the 33 years after World War II. Being overweight is
considered to be a major risk for high blood pressure and heart disease.
According to statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1978, the yearly
increases of heart attacks in Western European countries were accompanied by a continuous yearly
increase in meat consumption by as much as 4kg per person. This practically means that eating habits
after World War II have shifted from a healthy mixed diet to one excessive in animal protein, but poor in
carbohydrates such as fruits, vegetables and grains. According to the WHO, fat consumption remained
virtually unchanged. Heart attacks and atherosclerosis began to increase dramatically in Germany and in
Western industrialized nations soon after the war; today they cause over 50 percent of all deaths.
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Although fat consumption among vegetarians is not lower than among meat eaters, the vegetarians
have the lowest death rates from heart disease. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported
that a vegetarian diet could prevent 97% of all coronary occlusions. The incredibly popular high protein,
low carbohydrate Atkins Diet and South Beach Diet have the unfortunate side effect of starving a person
by clogging up his capillary and artery walls with excessive proteins, and by greatly limiting his fuel
intake (carbohydrates). This can certainly make a person lose weight, but not without also damaging his
kidneys, liver, and heart. Both the late Dr. Atkins, a heart disease and obesity victim, and former U.S.
President Bill Clinton, a keen follower of the South Beach Diet and recipient of a quadruple bypass,
suffered the consequences of the high protein diet (for details, see section below). Millions of Americans
are following in their footsteps.
The reason for the virtual absence of coronary heart disease among vegetarians is their low intake or
complete absence of animal protein. Fat consumption is, therefore, only an accomplice of the disease, but
not its cause. The constantly recycled mass hysteria that believes fat, which is generally associated with
cholesterol, to be the main dietary culprit of heart disease, is completely unfounded, outdated, and has no
scientific basis.
Yes, Your Body Can Store Protein!
Meat and meat products have five to ten times the concentration of protein than found in plant protein
foods. It is, therefore, easily possible to overeat animal protein, but it is hardly possible to overeat
vegetable protein because a normal digestive system does not have the ability to process 5-10 times more
food than is normal for the body. It is common knowledge that the body is able to store unused sugar and
other carbohydrates in the form of fat, but it lesser known that it also has a large storage capacity for
protein. The body’s protein stores are the connective tissues (the fluids between the capillaries and the
cells) and the basal or basement membranes, which hold together and support the cells of the blood
capillaries and arteries (see illustration 14). When these protein stores are filled to their full storage
capacity, the organs and arteries that are supplied by these protein-congested capillaries begin to starve of
oxygen and nutrients, and suffocate in their own metabolic waste products. The resulting toxicity crisis
prompts an inflammatory process by the body, which is necessary to increase blood flow and make
nutrients available for growth of new cells and repair of damaged connective tissue. Repeated bouts of
inflammation in the artery walls can involve bleeding and subsequent formation of blood clots. Blood
clots are the number one cause of heart attacks (see illustrations 15a/b) and strokes. As a measure of first
aid and to avert constantly occurring potential heart attacks or strokes, the body attempts to contain the
bleeding wounds. It does this by dispatching the glue-like lipoprotein, LP5, into the blood. LP5 attaches
itself to the open wounds, thereby sealing them. To promote wounds healing and prevent them from
repeated bleeding, the sticky LP5 catches the relatively large lipoprotein molecules, such as LDL and
VLDL cholesterol molecules, and builds them into the artery walls. The resulting protective “bandage”
saves the person’s life, at least for a while. If this survival mechanism occurs in the coronary arteries, it is
called hardening of arteries or coronary heart disease.
A person who eats too many simple carbohydrate foods such as sugar, bread and pasta, or fats in a
particular meal may have elevated concentrations of sugar, fats, and the cholesterol-containing
lipoproteins in his blood. But blood tests also show that if he overeats protein foods, his blood will
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contain higher concentrations of protein. Nutritional science assumes14 that protein is completely burned
during the digestive process. Whatever protein the body cells don’t use or need, so goes the argument,
continues to circulate in the blood until it is broken down by liver enzymes and excreted as urea.
A major problem arises when a person does not have enough of these enzymes to remove the excessive
protein from the blood stream. The liver of Kapha and Pitta types, for example, who naturally require only
very few proteins to sustain themselves, has a limited capacity to break down food proteins. If liver bile
ducts are congested with stones, this also greatly diminishes this important liver function. The same
applies to people who regularly eat too many proteins. In any case, the extra proteins that are not broken
down and eliminated through the liver route, are absorbed by the connective tissue under the skin (which
is the least harmful), and the intercellular connective tissue of the organs (which can be very harmful). If
there is a continuous, regular supply of large amounts of food protein, the intercellular connective tissue
and basal membranes of the capillaries start filling up with the protein and begin to thicken. Unless
protein intake is discontinued, the capillary cells become damaged. The body responds with inflammation
to help destruct and remove damaged or dead cells. This inflammatory process, though, has side-effects. It
forms the beginning stage of diet-caused atherosclerosis.
By contrast, as it was first discovered in 1955, people who live on a protein-free diet for a certain
length of time do not produce urea after their first protein meals. This means that their connective tissues
contain no abnormal amounts of protein. This applies to all vegetarians whose only source of protein is of
purely vegetarian origin, such as in grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc. Vegetarians hardly ever develop a
surplus of protein in the connective tissues and blood vessel walls, and are, therefore, not at risk of
developing atherosclerotic deposits. This has been confirmed by the American Medical Association.
It is a commonly accepted medical theory that all unused calories, whether they occur in the form of
carbohydrates, fat, or protein, are converted into fat and deposited in the body’s fat cells. This would
make fat to be the only storage molecule responsible for obesity and related illnesses, including coronary
heart disease and Type 2 Diabetes (see chapter 11). Yet there is overwhelming evidence to show that
stored fat alone cannot be held responsible for causing coronary heart disease. The only other substance
that the body can store in large amounts is protein. And much of it ends up in the blood vessel walls.
In addition to breaking down proteins in the liver and storing proteins in the blood vessel walls, the
body employs another tactic to get rid of this dangerous culprit. A well-trained athlete can utilize no more
than 40 grams of protein per day. The average American eats up 200 grams per day. Whatever proteins
cannot be stored, which easily happens by regularly eating more than 30-40 grams of protein each day,
the body converts into nitric, sulfuric and phosphoric acids. The kidneys try to eliminate some of the
strong acids (similar to the ones found in your car battery). To do so, they have to attach a basic mineral
to every acid molecule, As a result, sodium, potassium, magnesium (the main basic minerals) and all the
rest become depleted as well. All this sets your body up for an incidence of acidosis, which is another
name for toxicity crisis. Heart disease is a typical symptom of chronic acidosis.
14 There is no scientific study to support this assumption
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Illustration 14: Congestion of Blood Vessel Walls with Excessive Protein
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Illustration 15a: Blood clot that caused heart attack in 54-year old man
Illustration 15b: Healthy, open artery of a 100-year old woman
Protein Storage – A Time Bomb
Obese people have both high concentrations of fats and excessive amounts of protein in the blood. The
blood’s tendency towards clotting, which is considered to be the greatest risk for suffering a heart attack
or stroke, stems almost exclusively from the saturation of the blood with proteins (also smoking increases
blood protein concentrations, as shown below). Fats, on the other hand, have no blood-clotting ability. In
their attempt to avert a heart attack, the capillary cells absorb the excessive protein, convert it into
collagen-fiber, and store it in their basement membranes. Although this emergency response has a blood-
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thinning and, therefore, life-saving effect, it also makes the blood walls thicker and more vulnerable to
injury.
Examinations of connective tissue in obese people have proved that it contains not only plump fat
cells, but also large amounts of dense collagen-fiber. Collagen is 100 percent pure protein. Building more
collagen-fiber than necessary is one of the main emergency measures the body takes to deal with
dangerously high protein concentrations in the blood. By removing the protein from the blood and thereby
putting it out of circulation, the blood becomes thin and the crisis is avoided. But the situation changes
drastically when the body’s protein stores are all filled up to capacity, and protein consumption continues.
This time, the blood becomes and remains saturated with protein. In such a case the blood begins to
permanently thicken and develop a tendency towards clotting. Unless the afflicted person takes aspirin,
which has a blood thinning effect, a stroke or a heart attack may occur. Yet in the long term the drug not
only fails to prevent such an incidence, but strongly encourages it. There is a heightened risk of deadly
uncontrolled bleeding that comes with regular or excessive aspirin use. In addition, once aspirin
treatment discontinues, the risk of suffering a heart attack is greatly increased. [Warning: If you are
suffering from macular degeneration – the #1 cause of blindness in people over 55 years – make sure to
avoid taking aspirin. A major study linked aspirin to America’s epidemic of macular degeneration. The so
often prescribed one-aspirin-a day routine makes your retinas more likely to hemorrhage. Besides, aspirin
belongs to the same class of painkillers as Vioxx, Celebrex and Aleve, all of which were found to increase
heart attack and stroke risk by over 50%.]
Examinations have shown that by abstaining from food for a periodic length of time both fat cells and
collagen fiber deposits begin to reduce in size and amount. This also demonstrates that overeating protein
does, in fact, increase protein tissue in the body; the sites of the protein deposits being the basement
membranes of the capillary walls and the connective tissues that surround the cells. As a direct
consequence of this development, the thickened blood vessel walls are no longer capable of absorbing
sufficient amounts of oxygen, water, and nutrients and removing all the metabolic waste products that the
cells which constitute them produce. Hence the cells that make up these blood vessels become injured and
eventually die from malnutrition, suffocation, and dehydration.
In a young person, the blood vessels of the heart have a diameter of about 3mm. By regularly
overeating protein foods, the normally smooth and polished inner wall of a blood vessel becomes uneven,
and the blood vessel as a whole thickens and loses its elasticity. This leads to a deterioration of blood flow
throughout the circulatory system, and may culminate in a complete blockage. Coronary arteries that are
totally blocked resemble an old rusty, damaged, calcified water pipe. Their walls are brownish-red and are
clogged up with yellowish, calcified material.
The Revealing Role of Homocysteine
Researchers discovered that the toxic, sulphur-containing amino acid homocysteine (HC) promotes the
tiny clots that initiate arterial damage and the catastrophic ones that precipitate most heart attacks and
strokes (Ann Clin & Lab Sci, 1991 and Lancet 1981). HC results from normal metabolism of the amino
acid methionine – which is abundant in red meat (especially well done steak), milk, and dairy products.
Normally, your body has a built-in defense mechanism against homocysteine buildup – it transforms it
into a harmless substance called cystathionine, which is flushed from the body in the urine. However,
regularly overeating proteins greatly undermines this ability.
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Although the role of increased homocysteine levels in the blood as a major risk factor of heart disease
has been common knowledge in the field of medical research for many years, it is only now being
recognized as such in the field of applied medicine. The presence of unsafe levels of homocysteine in the
body is thought to be associated with people who are genetically unable to convert homocysteine at a
sufficient rate. But the enormous incidence of abnormal homocysteine levels among heart disease patients
suggests that the genetic factor is secondary, or may even be a response to continuously overwhelming the
body with protein foods (similar to the phenomenon of genetic mutation in cancerous growths, see
chapter 10). Foods that are high in folic acid (see chapter 7) have been shown to drastically lower
homocysteine levels and thereby reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Conclusion: If you regularly consume large quantities of animal protein, including meat, pork, poultry,
fish, eggs, milk, cheese, etc., your body’s ability to break down and safely remove all the protein or
homocysteine becomes increasingly impaired (if it is not already naturally inefficient by constitution).
Since excessive protein consumption thickens the blood and increases its risk of clotting, the body is
forced to store the protein and the by-products of protein metabolism in the connective tissues under the
skin as well as in the connective tissue of the organs and the basement/basal membranes of the capillary
network. When the storage capacity of these membranes is exhausted, no more protein can be deposited in
the capillaries. If overconsumption of animal protein continues, the body begins to store the excessive
protein in the walls of the arteries (see illustration 14). At this stage the main coronary arteries become
thickened, damaged, and inefficient. As they become occluded and cut off the oxygen supply to the heart,
a heart attack occurs. Thus, the storage of excessive protein in the body acts like a “time bomb,” ready to
explode at any moment.
C-Reactive Protein Reveals the Truth
Continuous storage of excessive proteins in the blood vessel walls will eventually damage them. To
help repair the damage and remove weak and injured cells, the body responds with inflammation.
Inflammation is not a disease, but the body's basic emergency-response system. When the body is
threatened by disease-causing germs, such as storage of proteins in the basal membranes of the blood
vessel and subsequent buildup of protective fatty plaque in the arteries, the immune system dispatches
large amounts of specialized cells to swarm and destroy the invader or potentially life-threatening
obstructions. In the process of trying to fix the problem through inflammation, the immune cells cause
multiple lesions that become increasingly unstable and may eventually rupture. When the body is unable
to contain the bleeding resulting from a ruptured lesion, and any attempts to seal off the wound (s) fails, a
heart attack or stroke occurs.
In a groundbreaking study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002, doctors from
Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital showed that a simple blood test, called C-Reactive Protein
(CRP), was able to predict which patients are most likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. CPR measures
the presence and intensity of inflammation in the walls of the blood vessels. Inflammation in the blood
vessel walls is a much more accurate indicator of imminent heart trouble than measuring the
concentrations of the “good” cholesterol (HDL) and the “bad” cholesterol (LDL) in the blood. This
finding is very significant because half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels.
It not only shows that inflammation plays a key role in heart disease, but also in a wide range of other
disorders involving the circulatory system, including arthritis, diabetes and cancer.
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CRP is a protein produced by the liver in reaction to the immune system's inflammatory response. A
simple blood test is able to detect this protein. It’s concentration in the blood can determine how inflamed
the heart arteries may be.
In the above study, the research team tracked the levels of both CRP and LDL ("bad" cholesterol) in
nearly 28,000 women for eight years. According to the results of the study, women with high levels of
CRP were twice as likely to have heart disease as those with high LDL. It also showed that many women
who later suffered heart attacks would have been given a clean bill of health on the basis of their low LDL.
Just relying on testing a person’s cholesterol levels may is not enough, and may, in fact endanger his life.
CRP cannot be considered the ultimate testing kid for heart disease either, because it can jump as much
as 10-fold when a person is fighting a cold or the flu. Infection includes an inflammatory response, and,
therefore, the C-reactive protein is most likely to show up in the blood. However, this important piece of
research shows that cholesterol testing is not what we should be focusing on if we want to save the lives
of people who are at risk of heart disease. This is further substantiated by the most recent research
showing that elevated blood cholesterol level cannot even be considered to be a major risk factor for heart
attack (see Risk Indications of a Heart Attack below). Instead, focusing on the very causes of the
inflammatory response will help us eradicate the incidence of heart disease, as well as arthritis and cancer.
How and Why Heart Attacks Really Occur
Just cutting off oxygen supply to the heart may not be enough to destroy the heart. The heart is one of
the most innovative and resilient organs in the body, and it requires a lot of abuse for it to die. When the
basement or basal membranes of the capillaries and arteries can no longer guarantee sufficient supply of
oxygen, sugar, and insulin to the cells of the heart muscles, their ability to contract and pump blood is
greatly reduced. Just to continue their work without enough oxygen, the heart cells begin to ferment
glucose to produce energy, but this (anaerobic) process produces lactic acid, which acidifies the muscle
tissues.
To further maintain its pumping action, the heart employs an additional emergency measure to gain
energy, which is to mobilize and break down fats. Yet, without using oxygen in the process, these fats
turn into harmful, cell-destructive acids. Proteins also begin to be used to provide energy; the by-products
are once again harmful fatty acids. Since the thickening of the connective tissues as well as the lymph and
blood capillaries in the heart begins obstructing normal elimination of metabolic waste, the heart muscles
become intensely saturated with harmful acidic material. This may cause intense pain in the heart.
If uric acid, a waste product resulting from the breaking down of old cells, is retained in the tissues,
gout occurs. The congestion leads to severe dehydration in the muscle cells, which prompts a group of
cells known as mast cells to secrete the hormone histamine – a major water-regulating hormone in the
body). When histamine passes over the sensitive pain nerves in the tissues, strong muscle pain results. If
this form of muscle rheumatism occurs in the heart it is called Angina pectoris. Both the acid
accumulation and lack of oxygen lead to the death of the heart cells.
eart attacks can occur in a number of ways:
H
1. The connective tissues surrounding the heart cells may become so densely congested that the
heart cells simply die a painless death of suffocation.
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2. In the case of an angina attack, it is acidification and low oxygenation of the heart muscles that
destroys the heart.
3. The basal membranes of the capillaries and arteries are blocked and can no longer supply
oxygen to the heart. The part of the heart where the attack occurs is also the part where the
storage capacity for protein was first exceeded.
4. A blood clot breaks loose from a congested and injured blood vessel, enters the heart and blocks
its oxygen supply.
New Studies Question Value of Opening Arteries
The new and emerging understanding of how heart attacks occur raises the question how valuable or
useful it is to open blocked arteries. For one thing, the increasingly popular aggressive treatments of
opening arteries – bypass surgery, angioplasty15 and stents16 – do little or nothing to prevent the
recurrence of an occlusion. Although bypass surgery was found to extend the lives of some patients with
severe illness, it does nothing to prevent heart attacks. Overall, none of the currently used surgical
procedures have been shown to significantly lower the mortality rate from heart disease.
One of the main reasons for the poor success rate of these treatments is that the vast majority of heart
attacks do not originate with obstructions that narrow arteries. To tackle the heart disease epidemic
spreading in most industrialized nations like North America, preventative strategies are the only ones that
make sense. But since they cost near to nothing (including eating less protein, regular exercise, early
bedtimes, balanced meals and regular meal times, drinking enough water, avoiding junk foods, giving up
smoking, reducing alcohol consumption, etc.), prioritization of preventative approaches versus treatment
after the fact is not lucrative enough for those in charge of health care.
The old model of understanding heart disease is rapidly falling apart, much to the surprise of heart
experts. “There has been a culture in cardiology that the narrowings were the problem and that if you fix
them the patient does better,” said Dr. David Waters, a cardiologist at the University of California at San
Francisco. This theory made so much sense to the surgeons, cardiologists and laypeople that for decades
hardly anyone questioned it, except those few (including myself) who were more interested in discovering
the true causes of heart disease. The newest scientific discoveries now finally exposed this theory’s major
flaws, with little room for discussion.
Until recently17, it was believed that coronary disease is akin to sludge building up in a pipe. Plaque
accumulates slowly, over decades, and once a coronary artery is blocked completely, no blood can get
through to the heart and the patient suffers a heart attack. In order to prevent this catastrophe from
happening, the most apparent rational “solution” to this problem was to perform bypass surgery or
angioplasty to replace or open up the narrowed artery before it closed completely. The assumption that
this would avert heart attacks and prolong life seemed indisputable. But as medical research shows, this
theory is no longer valid, and therefore, misleading. A study published in the New England Journal of
15 Opening of arteries by pushing plaque back with a tiny balloon and then, often, holding it there with a stent
16 Stents consists of wire cages that hold plaque against an artery wall; they can alleviate crushing chest pain. They can also
rescue someone in the midst of a heart attack by holding the closed artery open.
17 This is not quite true, since as long ago as 1986, Dr. Greg Brown of the University of Washington at Seattle published a
paper showing that heart attacks originated in areas of coronary arteries where there was too little plaque to be stented or
bypassed.
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Medicine by Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Cooperative Study Group clearly demonstrated that the
three year survival rate for bypass surgery is almost exactly the same as if no surgery was undertaken.
According to numerous heart disease studies, most heart attacks do not occur because an artery is
narrowed by plaque. Instead, researchers say, heart attacks occur when an area of plaque bursts, causing
formation of a blood clot over the area and abruptly blocking blood flow. In actual fact, in 75 to 80
percent of cases, the plaque that breaks off was not obstructing an artery at all and would, therefore, not
even be considered for bypass surgery or stenting. The really dangerous type of plaque is soft and fragile,
produces no symptoms and would not be seen as an obstruction to blood flow. For that reason, bypassing
the hardened parts of an artery does nothing to lower the risk of a future heart attack. Not surprising then
that so many heart attacks are unexpected. Accordingly, a person may have no problem jogging one day,
but suffer a heart attack (or stroke) the next. If a narrowed artery were the culprit, the person would not
even be able to exercise due to severe chest pain.
Most heart patients have hundreds of vulnerable plaques in their arteries. Since it is impossible to
replace all these injured, plaque-ridden sections, the current interventional procedures are pretty helpless
to prevent heart attacks. Regardless, this doesn’t mean there are less bypasses or stent operations
performed. The multi-billion dollar stent-business has, in fact, become unstoppable.
Heart researchers and some cardiologists are becoming increasingly frustrated with the fact that their
findings are not being taken seriously enough by the health practitioners and their patients. “There is just
this embedded belief that fixing an artery is a good thing,” said Dr. Eric Topol, an interventional
cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. It has almost become fashionable to have one’s arteries fixed,
just in case. Dr. Topol points out that more and more people with no symptoms are now getting stents. In
2004, over one million Americans opted for a stent operation.
Although many doctors know that the old theory no longer holds true, they feel pressured to opening
blocked arteries anyway, regardless whether patients have symptoms or not. Dr. David Hillis, an
interventional cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, explained:
“If you're an invasive cardiologist and Joe Smith, the local internist, is sending you patients, and if you
tell them they don't need the procedure, pretty soon Joe Smith doesn't send patients anymore. Sometimes
you can talk yourself into doing it even though in your heart of hearts you don't think it's right.”
According to Dr. Topol, a patient typically goes to a cardiologist with a vague complaint like
indigestion or shortness of breath, or because a scan of the heart indicated calcium deposits – a sign of
atherosclerosis, or buildup of plaque. Doing his job, the cardiologist follows the standard procedures and
puts the patient in the cardiac catheterization room, examining the arteries with an angiogram. If you live
in a developed country like America and are middle-aged or older, you are most likely to have
atherosclerosis, and the angiogram will show a narrowing. It won’t take much convincing to tell you that
you need a stent. “It's this train where you can't get off at any station along the way,” Dr. Topol said.
“Once you get on the train, you're getting the stents. once you get in the cath lab, it's pretty likely that
something will get done.”
Dr. Hillis believes that it is ingrained in the American psyche that the worth of medical care is directly
related to how aggressive it is. Hillis has tried to explain the evidence to his patients, but with little
success. “You end up reaching a level of frustration,” he said. “I think they have talked to someone along
the line who convinced them that this procedure will save their life. They are told if you don't have it done
you are, quote, a walking time bomb.”
Even more disquieting, Dr. Topol said, is that stenting can actually cause minor heart attacks in about 4
percent of patients. This means that out of the 1 million stent patients in 2004, 40,000 ended up suffering
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heart damage from a procedure meant to prevent it, heart damage that they may never have developed
without undergoing the procedure.
According to a new report (October 15, 2004) in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two stents
that are currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Cordis Cypher sirolimuseluting
stent and the Boston Scientific Taxus Express paclitaxel-eluting stent, have been associated with
highly publicized adverse events after they were approved for marketing.
Bypass, angioplasty and stent operations are really not about preventing heart attacks per se. The
obvious purpose of the procedures is symptom relief. Patients are satisfied that “something” was done,
relieved of the anxiety of dying from a sudden heart attack. And the doctors are satisfied that their patients
are happy. The drug industry is satisfied because the patients are doomed to taking expensive drugs for
the rest of their lives.
Risk Indications of a Heart Attack
Most food-related blood vessel diseases, including heart attacks, stroke, rheumatism, and angina
pectoris, are not primarily disorders of sugar and fat metabolism, but diseases resulting from protein
storage. Eating too much protein food can be considered to be one of the greatest risk factors for
developing any kind of disease. The thickening of the basal membranes of blood vessels and connective
tissues caused by the storage of protein affects the very lives of all cells in the body. When and wherever
in the body such congestion occurs, premature aging of cells and organs result. on the other hand,
wherever the capillary walls maintain their porous, flexible nature and original thinness, cell nourishment
and organ vitality continue throughout life.
Fat and cholesterol are not the primary blocking agents of blood vessel walls and, can therefore, not be
considered to be the main cause of heart disease or any other disease in the body. Storage of protein in the
blood vessel walls, on the other hand, is the common factor in all patients who suffer from alimentary
(food-caused) atherosclerosis. Since most people in the advanced nations have consistently been
consuming excessively large quantities of protein, particularly since World War II, coronary heart disease
has become the leading cause of death in the developed world. As you will be able see below, most of the
leading risk elements of suffering a heart attack are directly or indirectly linked with high protein
consumption and protein deposits in the blood vessel walls. The following are the indications of such
risks:
1. Thickening of blood as measured by Hemocrit or packed cell volume
The Hemocrit is the volume of red blood cells in one liter of whole blood and can be determined by a
simple and cheap blood test. If it is above 42%, the risk of a heart attack increases. A healthy person has a
Hemocrit of 35% to 40%. Under the assumption that the presence of larger quantities of protein in the
blood is harmless, many doctors consider a volume of 44-50% to be still in the normal range; research,
however, has shown that heart attacks were twice as high when the Hemocrit reached 49% compared to
when it was 42%. The fact is that the higher the Hemocrit rises the greater is the risk of suffering a heart
attack.
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The question arises, why would the volume of red blood increase to beyond 40%? When the basal
membranes and the intercellular tissues become thickened due to storage of excessive protein, blood flow
slows down and becomes obstructed. This “naturally” increases the concentration of all blood values,
including proteins, fats, and sugar. The thickening of the blood poses a great risk that affects all parts of
the body. To deal with the dangerously high concentration of protein in the blood, the pancreas secretes
extra insulin, but in doing so, the insulin may further injure and weaken the blood vessel walls. The cells
making up the capillary walls start to absorb some the excessive protein, convert it into collagen, and
deposit it in their basal membranes. Although this has a much-needed thinning effect on the blood, it also
reduces nutrient transport to the cells. When the cells signal malnutrition, the blood nutrient levels begin
to rise until the pressure of diffusion is high enough to again deliver enough nutrients to the cells.
In the meanwhile, this constant maneuvering raises the number of red blood cells, which contain the
red colored hemoglobin. Hemoglobin combines with oxygen in the lungs and transports it to all the body
cells. With increased thickness of the basal membranes, the oxygen supply to the cells also becomes
restricted. The resulting increased need for oxygen by the cells raises hemoglobin concentrations in the
red blood cells. However, this makes the red blood cells swell up. Eventually, they are too enlarged to
pass through the tiny capillaries, blocking them altogether.
This even more drastically cuts down the nutrient and water supply to the cells, which subsequently
begin to suffer dehydration. To signal dehydration, the cells release their water deficiency enzyme renin
into the tissue fluid, which through a myriad of chemical events leads to an increase of heart beat and
cardiac output. This emergency measure increases water supply to the cells and prevents their demise, but
it also raises the blood pressure. Known as essential hypertension, this situation causes even more stress
and damage to the blood vessels than have already occurred. The vicious cycle is closed. The
preconditions of suffering a heart attack are now in place.
Conclusion: Both factors combined – an increased Hemocrit, which indicates increased blood
thickening, and a higher hemoglobin concentration in the red blood cells – reduce blood circulation. A
round, red-colored face and chest are typical indications of an abnormally high blood volume and a
decreased blood circulation in the adult hypertensive and diabetic patient. The cell tissues begin to
dehydrate as water distribution becomes increasingly difficult. The rate and force of contraction of the
heart muscle increases to help maintain the cardiac output against a sustained rise in congestion
throughout the circulatory system. Eventually, the heart can no longer afford such strenuous activity and
collapses.
2. Eating too much Animal Protein
The majority of heart attack patients confirm that they have been eating large quantities of animal
protein, including, meat, chicken, fish, eggs, or cheese throughout their life or at least for many years. By
contrast, there are virtually no heart attacks among vegetarians eating a balanced died plant food diet.
3. Cigarette Smoking
The risk of cardiovascular diseases increases greatly with smoking. This, however, is not so much due
to the nerve toxin nicotine, which is completely broken down within a few hours after smoking, but is
rather caused by the carbon oxide (CO) contained in cigarette smoke. Carbon oxide or monoxide diffuses
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from the lungs into the blood where it attaches itself to the hemoglobin of the red cells, about 300 times
faster and tighter than oxygen does. All the CO of the inhaled smoke combines with hemoglobin and
thereby blocks off oxygen transport to the cells. The red blood cells, which are loaded with carbon
monoxide-hemoglobin, begin to burst and shed their defective protein particles into the plasma of the
blood from where many of them are deposited in the basal membranes of the capillary walls. When the
capillaries’ storage capacity has reached its saturation point, the arteries begin to deposit the protein debris
in their walls.
This makes the carbon monoxide of cigarette smoke a slow-working, but lethal poison that, by
forming excessive amounts of protein debris, destroys the body’s circulatory network and heart muscles.
Also, passive smokers inhale large amounts of carbon monoxide, which explains why they are at a similar
risk of developing coronary heart disease.
4. Constitutional (genetic) Disposition towards Reduced Protein Destruction
People whose constitution does not require extra food protein in order to be healthy (mostly the Kapha
and Pitta types) don’t have a very efficient enzyme system for breaking down food protein. Since
constitutional body-types are mostly hereditary, this genetically determined “inefficiency” is passed on
from parents to children. Those with a family history of heart attacks appear to be at risk because of
possible hereditary factors, but the role of genetics in heart disease is only marginal. The primary reason
is family members sharing a similar diet, lifestyle and constitutional body type, with possibly the same
“inefficient” enzyme systems for destroying excessive, unused proteins.
5. Women during and after Menopause
Women who consume large quantities of protein foods and/or smoke cigarettes are at risk once their
menstrual cycles become irregular or come to an end. The regular loss of menstrual blood practically
protects a woman (before menopause) from accumulating dangerous amounts of protein in the body, as
long as the reproductive system functions normally. This may explain why menstruating women before
age 40 are generally not at risk of suffering a heart attack, whereas men of that age are. All the different
blood values in women under 40 are lower than among men in the same age group. These include red
blood cells, hemoglobin, Hemocrit, and the total amount of protein. Research has shown that men aged
between 30 and 40 years are six times more likely to die from a heart attack than women of the same age.
In fact, heart attacks among menstruating women are extremely rare.
Once a woman’s menstrual cycles subside, if she continues eating animal protein, the level of protein
concentration in the blood begins to rise steadily. By the time she is about 50 years old, her risk of
suffering a heart attack is nearly the same as it is for a man of the same age. The earlier the menopause
begins the greater the risk. Women, whose ovaries have been removed before age 35, have a seven times
greater risk of a heart attack than those who have yet to enter menopause.
The hot flushes and reddening of the face, which many women experience during menopause, are
most often signs of higher blood values. They indicate that the body has stored excessive amounts of
protein, which it can no longer expel with the menstrual blood. It has now been found that a diet
consisting of a lot of dairy products hastens the forming of atherosclerotic deposits in a woman’s body
even further, and, as I will explain later, causes osteoporosis.
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6. Not eating enough fruit and vegetables, smoking and not exercising
It was a wake-up call for Baby Boomers when newscasters were reporting in 2004 about emergency
heart surgery performed on former President Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, the message conveyed to the
world wasn’t on improving heart health, but on taking the right drugs. It was by mere coincidence that
just one week before President Clinton was admitted to the hospital, the prestigious medical journal The
Lancet sounded a wakeup call with a different meaning. A major new study on heart disease risk
published by the Lancet had this message for those concerned about their hearts: "Wake up and get heart
healthy. You don’t need medicine for that."
When President Clinton left office in 2001, he was still on the cholesterol-lowering statin drug Zocor.
But once his excessive weight came off and his cholesterol levels dropped, he discontinued taking the
statin drug. So when main stream doctors heard about Clinton’s heart condition they immediately pointed
the finger at not taking the statins as being the culprit. "See what happens when you don't take your pills?"
Their words carried a warning for the rest of us who perhaps are just as careless when it comes to keeping
our cholesterol levels in check. Some cardiologists believe that Clinton will now have to be on a much
higher dose of a cholesterol-lowering drug for the rest of his life. This is certainly not unusual after
undergoing a heart bypass operation, but it doesn’t always make sense, and perhaps it hardly ever does.
In a Newsday report, Dr. Valavanur Subramanian, chairman of cardiovascular surgery at New York's
Lenox Hill Hospital, noted that two of the three arteries used in Clinton's operation were mammary
arteries, taken from his chest. Dr. Subramanian described these arteries as "extraordinarily resistant to
cholesterol buildup." The question arises why put a man on potentially dangerous statin drugs when his
arteries are virtually incapable of accumulating cholesterol deposits. Clinton is also most likely sentenced
for life to taking a daily aspirin, along with a diuretic drug (to prevent buildup of fluid), and a beta blocker
(to help regulate heartbeat). This potentially hazardous drug cocktail is going to be his “crutch” for the
rest of his life, unnecessarily, though. According to the editors of the Lancet, the new study titled
INTERHEART is one of the most robust studies ever done on heart disease risk factors. The 260
researchers closely observed and rigorously tested 15,000 heart attack patients for about a decade,
matching them with the same number of subjects who had not experienced any heart problems. The
worldwide study included male and female subjects with a wide range of ages, cultural backgrounds and
dietary habits. The result may come as a shock to those who believe that high LDL cholesterol (the “bad”
cholesterol), is a major risk factor for heart attacks. According to the study this isn’t the case.
According to INTERHEART, the number one physical risk factor of heart attack is an abnormal ratio
of apolipoproteinB (apoB) to (apoA1). Apolipoprotein is cholesterol's protein component. ApoB is the
protein found in LDL, and apoA1 is found in HDL. The ideal apo ratio is one apoB to two apoA1. In
other words, an elevated bad cholesterol (LDL) alone poses no major risk for the heart. Yet, high LDL is
the very condition cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are prescribed for. The whole focus has been on
getting your cholesterol down and keeping it low. When doing this with drugs, you are asking for trouble.
Thus, due to the numerous harmful side-effects of statin drugs, millions of unsuspecting healthy people
have already been turned into real patients with real (drug-caused) diseases. They have never been told
that elevated cholesterol poses no major risk to their heart. Certainly, no patient I know has heard from his
doctor about the apo ratio.
The INTERHEART study was launched in 1994, at a time other major risk factors were not yet widely
known; factors such as triglycerides, homocysteine and C-reactive protein. In their report the
INTERHEART team listed the most important risks of heart attack after apo ratio (from greater to lesser
risk): cigarette smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, excessive abdominal fat, stress, inadequate intake
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of fruits and vegetables, and lack of exercise. Much to the surprise of the cholesterol/heart disease
lobbyists, elevated cholesterol wasn’t one of them. In the concluding remarks of the 10-year study,
researchers wrote that the relative risk for heart attack can be lowered by about 80 percent just by doing
three things: eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, getting regular exercise, and avoiding smoking. Since
cholesterol-lowering drugs have not been shown to lower the risk of heart attack, they were notably
absent in the study’s list of recommendations, much to the annoyance of the major statin producers.
INTERHEART isn’t the only large study that discovered the significance of the apo ratio. During a
Swedish study, researchers tracked more than 175,000 men and women for about five and a half years.
The average age of the subjects was 48. Researchers studied all the main markers believed to be a risk,
including total cholesterol, LDL and HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and concentrations of apoB and
apoA1. Over the course of the study, 864 men and 359 women died from heart attacks. While comparing
the blood profiles of these heart attack victims to the remainder of the participants, the researchers found
that an unbalanced apo ratio was the strongest predictor of heart attack death among all of the markers
studied. Apo ratio was the only marker consistent over all age groups. They also found that an abnormal
apo ratio continued to pose the same heart attack risk even when total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and
triglycerides were within normal ranges.
It is my experience with hundreds of heart disease patients that eliminating animal proteins from their
diet has helped restore normal heart functions, sometimes within a matter of six weeks. I, therefore, have
come to the conclusion that eating a high protein diet, which is among the most acid-forming diets anyone
can eat, greatly upsets the apo ratio and induces an inflammatory response in the coronary arteries. Both
factors go hand in hand and, as we now know, pose the greatest physical risks to the health of the heart.
7. Kidney Disease
Just as is the case with congestion of the liver’s bile ducts and gallbladder with stones, many people
live with undetected, chronic kidney disease. When symptoms finally begin to appear, it is often too late
to reverse the damage. Health officials estimate that there are many as 10 to 20 million people in the U.S.
with serious kidney problems. But what has this to do with heart disease?
Two new studies, published in September 2004 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM),
found a clear correlation between chronic kidney disease (even non-severe) and cardiovascular disease,
which makes prevention of kidney disease more important than ever.
In one of the studies, researchers examined three years of data covering the medical records from over
one million patients (made available to them by the Kaiser Permanente Renal Registry in San Francisco).
The average age of the subjects was 52 years. The research team specifically looked at the results of a
blood test that measures the rate at which kidneys are able to filter waste from the bloodstream
(glomerular filtration rate or GFR). The findings revealed that as GFR dropped, the risks of
cardiovascular disease, stroke, hospitalization and death all increased sharply. In those patients where the
GFR was above 45, the risk of death jumped by 17 percent, and the risk of a cardiovascular event
increased by more than 40 percent.
In the second study, conducted in the cardiovascular division of Boston's Brigham and Women's
Hospital, researchers showed that a GFR below 45 among patients who had suffered heart attack boosted
death risk to more than 45 percent. Noting that factors common to kidney disease (such as the protein
albumin in the urine, high homocysteine levels, inflammation and anemia) may boost the risk of
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cardiovascular disease and death, the researchers concluded that even mild kidney disease should be
considered a major risk factor for cardiovascular complications after a heart attack.
To ensure that your kidneys continue functioning properly, you will need to keep your colon, liver and
kidneys clean (see chapter 7). Kidney health largely depends on efficient performance of the digestive
system. In addition, to allow the kidneys do their important job of blood filtering, the basal membranes of
the capillaries and arteries supplying blood to the kidney cells must be free of any protein deposits.
Kidney health also depends on how well the lymph ducts are able to drain the kidneys’ metabolic waste
products and millions of turned-over, dead kidneys cells each day. Congestion in the body’s largest lymph
vessel (thoracic duct) leads to back-flushing of waste in the kidneys, which slowly suffocates them in
their own waste and cell debris (see also the kidney-liver connection in my book The Amazing Liver
Cleanse). Among the most lymph-congesting foods are animal proteins, milk and cheese, as well as
highly processed and fat-deprived foods.
Besides keeping the main eliminative organs clean, there are other ways to prevent kidney disease,
including: a nutritious low-protein diet, regular nutritious meals, sleeping between 10 p.m-6 a.m. to
permit the liver and kidneys to do their respective work, taking care of one’s emotional health, and most
other advice provided in this book. If you keep your kidneys healthy, your heart may have little to fear.
8. Antibiotics and other synthetic drugs
It is becoming increasingly evident that medicinal drugs that have a suppressive effect on anything in
the body diminish heart health. Every time you try to prevent the body from clearing out accumulated
toxins and waste through a cold, a viral infection, or a disease process that includes inflammation, your
heart is burdened with the difficult task of having to push the harmful waste material released from the
tissues back to where it came from. With each new attempt to subdue pain, infection, cholesterol, etc., less
and less of this waste finds its way out of the body. Some of it ends up congesting the lymph ducts
responsible for draining the heart muscles of their metabolic waste products. Antibiotics are one of the
leading culprits for this form of heart damage.
For many years, antibiotics have been over-prescribed, often for infections (such as the common cold
and flu) that they have no effect on at all. It is common knowledge that antibiotics don’t kill viruses, only
bacteria. Now a new study shows that the popular antibiotic erythromycin, which has been widely used
since the 1950s, may actually trigger cardiac arrest.
For many years, heart doctors have been aware of a risk of cardiac arrest when erythromycin is used
intravenously, but this risk has been less well known among family practitioners who often prescribe the
same antibiotic in pill form to treat a wide variety of infections. This new study, conducted by researchers
from Vanderbilt University, examined the risk of cardiac arrest when oral erythromycin is used alone or
with other medications. Their report, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in
October 2004, covered the medical records of more than 4,400 Medicaid patients, averaging 15 years per
patient. About 1,475 subjects suffered cardiac arrest during the study period. When the complete
medication use of each subject was analyzed, researchers came up with these results:
? The rate of sudden death from cardiac causes was twice as high among patients using
erythromycin, compared to subjects that didn't use the antibiotic.
? Two blood pressure medications that are sold generically – verapamil and diltiazem – were both
associated with an additional increased risk of cardiac arrest when taken with erythromycin.
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? Other drugs associated with increased cardiac attack risk when taken with erythromycin include
the antibiotic clarithromycin, the vaginal yeast infection drug fluconazole, and two antifungal
drugs: itraconazole and ketoconazole
According to the researchers, blood levels of these additional drugs may be boosted by erythromycin,
making the blood thick and sluggish. This can result in a slower heart rate, which in turn may trigger
irregular rhythms, setting in motion a cardiac arrest. In an interview with The Associated Press, the lead
researcher of the study, Wayne A. Ray, Ph.D., warned that erythromycin levels may also be increased by
drinking grapefruit juice or by taking protease inhibitors used to treat AIDS.
Just because your doctor prescribes you a medical drug does not mean it is safe. Very few drug
interactions with other drugs or with common foods have ever been tested. Drug prescription can be a
gamble of life and death that you a willing to risk when you enter your doctor’s office. The bottom line is
that all pharmaceutical drugs contain poisons that have a detrimental effect on your health. Your heart is
the one that pays the ultimate price for the constantly offered and highly praised shortcuts to health.
The fact is no Disease Control Agency or Federal Drug Administration (FDA) can protect you from
developing a serious illness or dying as a result of using prescribed drugs. The VIOXX scandal of
September 2004 has taught us that there are no safe drugs out there. VIOXX, a leading arthritis drug, was
withdrawn by its producer, Merck & Co, after evidence leaked out that its use doubled the risk of heart
attack and stroke. [As per the end of 2004, Merck was faced with over 1,000 lawsuits]. According to
documentation, this risk has been known to both the drug producer and the FDA since the mid-nineties.
The result of this well-kept secret was that a minimum of 27,000 people suffered a heart attack or died
because of it. Given the high number of unreported side-effects, this number may well exceed hundreds of
thousands.
More are more drugs are coming under suspicion of being killer drugs. Bextra is next. According to a
study of more than 1,500 patients who had previously undergone cardiac surgery, those who were treated
for pain with Bextra were more likely to have heart and blood clotting problems than those who received
no drug at all. Stroke, heart attack, blood clots in the lung, deep vein blood clots in the leg, all can result
just from taking this drug. Arthritis drugs have never been safe, but they have never been properly tested
for safety. Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Aleeve, Aspirin are just plain poisons. Another arthritis drug –
infliximab (Remicade) – is on cancer-causing alert. Amazingly, so many people have been so blinded by
clever advertising campaigns and methods of brainwashing that they have no clue they are methodically
poisoned in order to support and sustain, besides oil, the most lucrative business in the world – the
pharma-medical industry.
The main question is how could anyone possibly want to entrust his life to the hands of drug-producers
whose only objective it is to keep the sickness-business going by making sure what they produce creates
more health problems that it can resolve? In the majority of all cases, attempting to prescribe medications
that claim to offer a relief to the symptoms of disease is not only a dangerous approach, but also an
unscientific and unethical one.
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Ending the Cholesterol-Heart Disease Myth
At no time has there been a record of cholesterol ever having blocked a vein in the body! It is not the
stickiness of cholesterol that causes the blockage of healthy blood vessel walls! The body uses cholesterol
as a kind of bandage to cover abrasions and tears in its arterial walls. It is a life-saver.
For the past thirty-five years, the lipoprotein cholesterol has been stigmatized to be the number one
cause for most deaths in the rich nations – heart disease. This is how the theory goes: cholesterol is known
to increase in the blood stream of many people today, stick to the walls of arteries, and eventually starve
the heart muscles of oxygen and nutrients. The masses are advised to reduce or ban fats from their diet so
that they can live without the fear of dying from a heart attack. The tremendous concern of being attacked
by this “vicious” lipoprotein has finally led to innovative technologies that can even extract cholesterol
from cheese, eggs, and sausages, thus making these “deadly” foods “consumer-safe.” Products that claim
to be low in cholesterol, such as margarine and light-foods, have become a popular choice of “healthy
eating.”
Cholesterol is Not the Culprit After All
But as INTERHEART and other studies have shown, cholesterol isn’t even a major risk factor for
heart disease. An earlier study sponsored by the German Ministry of Research and Technology showed
that there is no exact link between food cholesterol and blood cholesterol. Even more surprising, in Japan,
the cholesterol levels have risen during recent years, yet the number of heart attacks has dropped. The
largest health study ever conducted on the risks of heart disease took place in China. Like so many other
similar studies, it found no connection between heart disease and the consumption of animal fats.
All the major European long-term cholesterol studies confirmed that a low fat diet did not reduce
cholesterol levels by more than 4% percent, in most cases by merely 1-2%. Since measurement mistakes
are usually higher than 4% and cholesterol levels naturally increase by 20% in autumn and drop again in
winter, the anti-cholesterol campaigns since the late 1980s have been very misleading, to say the least. A
more recent study from Denmark involving 20,000 men and women, in fact, demonstrated that most heart
patients have normal cholesterol levels. The bottom line is that cholesterol hasn’t been proved a risk
factor for anything.
The current medical understanding of the cholesterol issue is more than incomplete. The argument that
animal tests on rabbits have confirmed that fatty foods cause hardening of the arteries sounds reasonable,
but only when the following facts are omitted:
1. Rabbits respond 3,000 times more sensitively to cholesterol than humans do.
2. Rabbits, which are non-carnivorous animals by nature, are force-fed excessive quantities of
egg yolk and brain for the sake of proving that cholesterol-containing foods are harmful.
3. The DNA and enzyme systems of rabbits are not designed for consumption of fatty foods,
and if given a choice, these animals would never eat eggs or brains.
It is obvious that the arteries of these animals have only an extremely limited ability to respond to the
damage caused by such unsuitable diets. For over three and half decades the Western civilization assumed
that animal fats are the main cause of dietary heart disease. This misinformation is highlighted by the fact
that heart attacks began to rise when consumption of animal fats actually decreased. This was verified by
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British research, which revealed that those areas in the UK where people consumed more margarine and
less butter had the highest numbers of heart attacks. Further studies revealed that heart attack patients had
consumed the least amounts of animal fats.
In this context, it is important to differentiate between processed and unprocessed fats. It has been
discovered that people who died from a heart attack were found to have many more of the harmful fatty
acids, which are derived from the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils of margarine, in their fat tissue
than those who survived. These so-called “faulty” fats (trans-fatty acids) envelop and congest the cellular
membranes, including those of the heart and the heart arteries. This practically starves the cells of oxygen,
nutrients, and water, and eventually kills them. In another more comprehensive study, 85,000 nurses
working in American hospitals observed a higher risk for heart disease in patients who consumed
margarine, crisps, biscuits, cakes, and white bread, all of which contain “faulty” fatty acids.
Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter
according to a recent Harvard Medical Study. While increasing LDL cholesterol, margarine lowers the
beneficial HDL cholesterol. It also increases the risk of cancers by up to five fold. Margarine suppresses
both the immune response and insulin response. This highly processed and artificial product is but one
molecule from being plastic. Flies, bacteria, fungi, etc. won’t go near it because it has no nutritional value
and cannot be broken down by them. It can last for years, not just outside the body, but inside as well. It is
very apparent that eating damaged, rancid fats or trans-fats can destroy any healthy organism and should
be avoided by anyone.
Healthy Today – Sick Tomorrow
Unfortunately, high cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia) has become the dominating health of the 21st
century. It is actually an invented disease that doesn’t show up as one. Even the healthiest people may
have elevated serum cholesterol and yet they remain healthy. But they are instantly turned into patients
when a routine blood test reveals that they have a “cholesterol problem.”
Since feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol, the cholesterol issue has confused
millions of people. To be declared sick when you actually feel great is a hard nut to swallow. So it may
take a lot of effort on a behalf of a practicing physician to convince his patients that they are sick and need
to take one or more expensive drugs for the rest of their lives. It may actually have a depressing effect on
these healthy individuals to be told that apart from having to take side effect causing drugs to lower their
cholesterol levels, they also learn that they will require regular checkups and blood tests. The worry-free,
good life is now over.
These doctors cannot be blamed for the blunder of converting healthy people into patients. Behind
them stands the full force of the U.S. government, the media and the medical establishment, agencies, and
pharmaceutical companies, to name a few. Each has contributed to create relentless pressure to
disseminate the cholesterol dogma and convince the population that high cholesterol is its number one
enemy. We are told that we need to combat it, by all means, to keep us safe from the dreadful
consequences of hypercholesterolemia.
What constitutes a healthy level of cholesterol has been changed over and over during the past 25 years,
which certainly does not give me much confidence in a system of medicine that professes to be founded
on scientific principles. In the early days of measuring cholesterol levels, a person at risk was any middleaged
man whose cholesterol is over 240 with other risk factors, such as smoking or being overweight.
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After the adjustment of parameters during the Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the
population was hit by a shock wave. Now, anyone (male or female) with overall cholesterol readings of
200 mg% (200mg per 100 ml) could receive the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. The claim
that 200 blood serum cholesterol is normal and everything above is dangerous was scientifically
unfounded, though. At least, this is what all the major cholesterol studies showed. In fact, in a 1995 issue
of the Journal of the American Medical Association, it reported that there was no evidence linking high
cholesterol levels in women with heart conditions later in life. Although it is considered completely
normal for a 55-year-old woman to have a cholesterol level of 260 mg%, most women that age are not
told about this. Also healthy employees are found to have an average of 250 mg% with high fluctuations
in both directions.
The lack of evidence linking elevated cholesterol with increased risk of heart disease, however, didn’t
stop the brainwashing of the masses. From one day to the next, 84% of all the men and 93% of all the
women aged 50-59 in the U.S. whose cholesterol levels are 220 mg% and more, were suddenly told they
needed treatment for heart disease. The totally unproved, but rigorously promoted cholesterol theories
turned most of us into patients for a disease that we probably will never develop. Fortunately, not
everyone has followed the advice to have their cholesterol levels checked.
To make matters worse, the official, acceptable cholesterol level has now been moved down to 180. If
you already have had a heart attack once, your cardiologist will tell you to take cholesterol-lowering
statins even if your cholesterol is very low. From the viewpoint of conventional medicine, having a heart
attack implies that your cholesterol must be too high. Hence you are being sentenced to a lifetime of
statins and a boring low-fat diet. But even if you have not experienced any heart trouble yet, you are
already being considered for possible treatment. Since so many children now show signs of elevated
cholesterol, we have a whole new generation of candidates for medical treatment. So yes, current edicts
stipulate cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children. The statin drugs that
doctors use to push cholesterol levels down are LIPITOR (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor
(lovastatin), and Pravachol (pravastatin). If you decide to follow your doctor’s advice and take one of
these drugs make certain to read the list of side-effects so that you know the risks you are taking.
If you want to obtain objective and untainted information on cholesterol, agencies like the National
Institutes of Health and the American College of Cardiology are certainly not the places from which to
obtain it. Until not too long ago, they wanted you to keep your overall level below 150. Then, in 2001,
they finally admitted that measuring overall cholesterol levels makes no sense at all. So they began
recommending to keep your LDL level below 100. Now their aim is to keep LDL lower than 70. Every
time they lower the target, the number of “patients” requiring treatment jumps dramatically. Being
officially backed by these agencies, doctors feel motivated, if not obliged, to prescribe these expensive
drugs to these new patients. The extensive promotional campaigns by the pharmaceutical giants have
already brainwashed the masses to believe they need these drugs to be safe from sudden heart attack.
Even if a doctor knows the truth about the cholesterol issue, these anxious patients will demand a
prescription from him. That the massive sales of these best-selling drugs of all time drive up health care
costs to levels that undermine economic growth and make basic health care unaffordable to an everincreasing
number of people doesn’t seem to be their immediate concern.
In 2004, there were already 36 million statin candidates in the U.S., with 16 million using LIPITOR
alone. When the official LDL target level drops to 70, there will be another 5 million people eligible for
their use. At the consumer markup price of $272.37 and a cost of $5.80 for a month supply of LIPITOR,
for example, you can do the math and understand the incentive the pharmaceutical industry has to push
their products and make them a mass commodity.
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What Statins May do to You!
Statins inhibit the production of cholesterol. Now, most people would think that this is a good thing.
The statins manage to lower cholesterol by inhibiting the body's production of mevalonate, which is a
precursor of cholesterol. When the body makes less mevalonate, less cholesterol is produced by the cells
and thus blood cholesterol goes down as well. Still sounds good to most people. But mevalonate is a
precursor of other substances also, substances with many important biologic functions that you definitely
don’t want to disrupt (see side effects below).
The masses are told that the most important objective is to get rid of the excessive cholesterol so that it
doesn’t clog up their arteries and cause a heart attack. This simplistic train of thought got us into trouble
in the first place. Contrary to what we know about the true value of cholesterol, it has been declared to us
that this essential substance is a dangerous nuisance that makes our lives miserable.
The fact is that each cell in your body requires cholesterol to make it waterproof and prevent its
membrane from becoming leaky or porous. If your diet, for example, contains a lot of acidic compounds,
such as meat protein, sugar and trans fats, your cell membranes become damaged and require repair. To
fulfill the repair request by the cells, the body releases a flood of corticoid hormones that cause extra
amounts of cholesterol to be transported to areas where it is needed.
One of cholesterol’s many roles is to repair tissue damage. Scar tissue is known to contain high levels
of cholesterol, including scar tissue in the arteries. In other words, whenever an artery becomes injured
due to acid attacks and buildup of proteins in their walls, you can expect cholesterol to be there to help
repair the damage as best as possible. The increased demand for more cholesterol is naturally met by the
liver, which can raise production by 400% if necessary. That this emergency response must lead to
elevated cholesterol levels in the blood is not only common sense, but desirable. Obviously, this changes
any negative preconceived notions that you may have had about the role of cholesterol in your body.
Cholesterol is not your worst enemy, but your best friend.
Apart from cholesterol protecting your health, there are many more reasons why we need to avoid
meddling with the finely tuned cholesterol-producing mechanism in the body (explained in following
sections). A real problem arises when we lower cholesterol by bypassing or disturbing this life-essential
mechanism. The cholesterol-lowering statin drugs do just that. If your body has reasons to increase
cholesterol levels in your blood, it is for your protection only. Artificially lowering blood cholesterol with
synthetic drugs removes that protection and can generate an entire host of health problems, starting with
disrupting the production of adrenal hormones. This, in turn, can lead to:
? Blood sugar problems
? Edema
? Mineral deficiencies
? Chronic inflammation
? Difficulty in healing
? Allergies
? Asthma
? Reduced libido
? Infertility
? Various reproductive disorders
? Brain damage
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The last side-effect on the list – brain damage – may be one of the most disturbing side-effects
resulting from long-term use of stains. A case-control study published in 2002 by the American Academy
of Neurology found that long-term exposure to statins may substantially increase the risk of
polyneuropathy.
The problem with statin drugs is that they don’t cause immediate side-effects like the older,
cholesterol-lowering drugs did. The old method used was to lower cholesterol by preventing its
absorption from the gut, which led to nausea, indigestion, and constipation. But the old drugs’ success
rate was minimal and patient compliance was very low. Statin drugs became an overnight success story
because they were able to lower cholesterol levels by 50 points or more, with no immediate major sideeffects.
On the false notion that cholesterol causes heart disease, statins – the bestselling pharmaceuticals
of all time – have become the miracle drug of the 21st century. The promise of the drug giants is that if
you keep taking their drugs for the rest of your life you will forever be protected against man’s greatest
killer disease. This equation, however, has two major flaws in it. one, cholesterol has never been proved
to cause heart disease. Two, by lowering cholesterol with the help of statins, you can actually make your
body very ill. The industry is now faced with an ever-growing number of reports listing the side effects
that manifest many months after the commencement of therapy.
A 1999 study at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London found that 36 percent of patients on LIPITOR’s
highest dose reported side effects and 10% of the patients at the lowest dose also reported side effects.
The steady increase of obvious and hidden side-effects (such as liver damage) isn’t at all surprising. The
“benefits” (of lowering cholesterol) seen with LIPITOR early in the trial that led to its approval were so
convincing that it was halted approximately two years ahead of schedule. The trial was never long enough
to show that LIPITOR had long-term side-effects that could devastate people’s lives. Side-effects from
using LIPITOR include gas, stomach pain or cramps, diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, headache, blurred
vision, dizziness, rash or itching, upset stomach, muscle pain, tenderness, muscle cramps or weakness
with or without a fever.
The most commonly experienced side effects are muscle pain and weakness. Dr. Beatrice Golomb of
San Diego, California is currently conducting a series of studies on statin side effects. Golomb found that
98 percent of patients taking LIPITOR and one-third of the patients taking Mevachor (a lower-dose statin)
suffered from muscle problems, such as severe calf pain and foot pain. An increasing number of longterm
patients (after three years) develop slurred speech, balance problems and severe fatigue. It often
begins with restless sleep patterns. Fine motor skills can be affected and cognitive functions decline.
Memory loss is not uncommon. Usually, when patients discontinue taking the statins, the symptoms
weaken or disappear.
I found in my own practice that regular statin users accumulate an excessive amount of cholesterol
stones in the bile ducts of their liver and gallbladder, which can lead to a vast number of chronic diseases
(see The Amazing Liver & Gallbladder Fush for details).
Before deciding to take LIPITOR (or other statins), there are some basic of points for you to consider:
o You need to tell your doctor and pharmacist if you are allergic to LIPITOR/ Atorvastatin or any
other drugs. This obviously raises the question how many patients follow that advice.
o You are supposed to tell your doctor and pharmacist what prescription and nonprescription
medications you are taking, especially antacids; antifungal medications such as itraconazole
(Sporanox) and ketoconazole (Nizoral); digoxin (Lanoxin); erythromycin; medications that
suppress the immune system such as cyclosporine (Neoral, Sandimmune); oral contraceptives
(birth control pills); other cholesterol-lowering medications such as cholestyramine (Questran),
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colestipol (Colestid), gemfibrozil (Lopid), and niacin (nicotinic acid); and vitamins. You may
wonder how many people follow that advice, and how many doctors ask this information of their
patients?
o You need to tell your doctor if you have or have ever had liver or kidney disease, a severe
infection, low blood pressure, or seizures. How many people actually know if their liver’s bile
ducts are packed with stones, whether their kidneys have major stone deposits in them, or if their
blood pressure is below acceptable?
o Tell your doctor if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding. If you
become pregnant while taking LIPITOR/Atorvastatin, you are supposed to stop taking
LIPITOR/atorvastatin and call your doctor immediately as this drug can harm the fetus. If the
drug can harm the fetus, you may need to ask what else it can harm.
o If you are having surgery, including dental surgery, tell the doctor or dentist that you are taking
LIPITOR/Atorvastatin. How many people remember to do that?
o Talk to your doctor about the safe use of alcohol while taking this LIPITOR drug. Alcohol
increases the side effects caused by LIPITOR/Atorvastatin. Many doctors forget to tell their
patients about the potential risks regarding alcohol, and many patients just ignore that warning,
often with severe consequences.
o Plan to avoid unnecessary or prolonged exposure to sunlight and to wear protective clothing,
sunglasses, and sunscreen. LIPITOR/Atorvastatin may make your skin sensitive to sunlight. It is a
pretty serious condition when the sun becomes so dangerous that you have to hide from it.
o For the drugs to be effective, you also need to eat a low-cholesterol, low-fat diet. This kind of diet
includes cottage cheese, fat-free milk, fish (not canned in oil), vegetables, poultry, egg whites, and
polyunsaturated oils and margarines (corn, safflower, canola, and soybean oils). Avoid foods with
excess fat in them such as meat (especially liver and fatty meat), egg yolks, whole milk, cream,
butter, shortening, lard, pastries, cakes, cookies, gravy, peanut butter, chocolate, olives, potato
chips, coconut, cheese (other than cottage cheese), coconut oil, palm oil, and fried foods. Please
see Chapter 14 about the damaging side-effects that arise from being on a prolonged low-fat diet
or light-food diet.
But Doesn’t Aspirin Protect Against Heart Disease?
If you are diagnosed with heart failure and follow the recommended treatment of taking blood thinners
such as aspirin or coumadin, you could seriously endanger your health. In a recent study, researchers
compared Blood-Thinning Therapies to no Antithrombotic Therapy. They not only found no advantage in
undergoing such treatments, but risks of further complications. Participants included 279 patients who
were diagnosed with heart failure that required diuretic therapy. The subjects were divided into three
groups, aspirin therapy, warfarin therapy and no antithrombotic therapy.
Results of the Study
? Aspirin and warfarin didn't provide the patients with any valuable health benefits
? There didn't appear to be any substantial differences of incidences of death, nonfatal heart
attacks or nonfatal stroke in the three groups of the study
? Patients in the aspirin group had increased chances of experiencing serious gastrointestinal
problems
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? Cases of minor bleeding complications were primarily seen among the aspirin and warfarin
group
? Patients in the aspirin therapy group were twice as likely as the patients in the warfarin group to
face hospitalization for cardiovascular complications, particularly worsening cases of heart
failure during the first 12 months following the study
? warfarin proved to be ineffective and should be eliminated as a treatment option
Based on the results from this study, the treatment of heart failure should not involve the use of drug
thinners, such as aspirin. It is relatively easy to keep the blood thin through a balanced vegetarian diet,
drinking sufficient quantities of water, avoiding diuretic foods and beverages, keeping regular meal and
bedtimes, and cleansing the liver, kidneys and colon.
Dangers of Low Cholesterol
It seems we need to be more concerned about low cholesterol, which is a major risk for cancer, mental
illness, stroke, suicide, liver diseases, anemia, and AIDS. Studies conducted in major German hospitals
verified that low cholesterol levels are linked to high mortality rates. When cholesterol levels dropped to
150 mg%, two out of three patients died. Most of the patients whose cholesterol levels were high
recovered from whatever they suffered. Also longevity in old homes is linked with higher levels of
cholesterol. Recent studies published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) indicate that a low level of
blood cholesterol could increase a person’s risk of suicide.
A study published in the Lancet in 1997 showed that particularly among the elderly, high total
cholesterol levels are associated with longevity. The research suggests that elderly people with elevated
cholesterol levels live longer and are less likely to die from cancer or infection. Doctors at Reykjavik
Hospital and Heart Preventive Clinic in Iceland noted that the major epidemiological studies on
cholesterol had not included the elderly. So when they studied total mortality and blood cholesterol in
those over 80, they found that that men with blood cholesterol levels over 6.5 had less than half the
mortality of those whose cholesterol level was around the 5.2 we are told is “healthy”. In support of this
discovery, scientists working at the Leiden University Medical Centre found that “each 1 mmol/l increase
in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality.” A study of Maori in New Zealand
showed that those with the lowest levels of blood cholesterol had the highest mortality.
Similar findings were also borne out by the Framingham Heart Study. Forty years after the
Framingham Heart Study began, its researchers looked at total mortality and cholesterol. They found “no
increased overall mortality with either high or low serum cholesterol levels” among men over forty-seven
years of age. There was also no relationship with women older than forty-seven or younger than forty. But
the researchers concluded that people whose cholesterol levels are falling may be at increased risk.
The same applies also to children. Research on seven to nine-year-old boys from six countries revealed
a strong correlation between low blood cholesterol and childhood deaths in those countries. The death rate
rose dramatically as blood cholesterol levels fell. So for children too, low blood cholesterol is outright
unhealthy. And once again the official line is for parents to reduce their children’s fat intake in order to
lower their cholesterol or keep it low. But instead of telling the people to keep their cholesterol levels
down, parents should be told that it is better to let cholesterol rise. This effectively lowers their risk of
disease and death.
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The low cholesterol-cancer connection has been known for many years. And although there never has
been any convincing evidence that raised levels of cholesterol have any causal relationship with coronary
heart disease, this hasn't stopped the drug giants from advertising statins drugs as a safe approach to
protect the masses against heart disease. The extremist attempt to indiscriminately lower cholesterol levels,
especially among the elderly where elevated cholesterol levels are normal and very necessary, has led to
numerous cancers in the U.S. and worldwide. As most studies have shown, high serum cholesterol is a
weak risk factor or no risk factor at all, for men above fifty, and actually increases longevity in those over
eighty.
Women, in particular should be cautious about using statins. Most studies have shown that high serum
cholesterol is not a risk factor for women at all, and, therefore, should not be lowered by any means. The
bottom line is that cholesterol protects the body against cancer. Removing the protection is synonymous
with “involuntary suicide. Both animal and human trials have demonstrated increases in cancers when
cholesterol was lowered through fibrates and statins. In the CARE trial, for example, the relative breast
cancer increase was a whooping 1,400%!
Then there is the low cholesterol-stroke connection. on Christmas Eve, 1997, a very important study
made it to the headlines in the press. Researchers heading the famous Framingham study (still continuing)
said that "Serum cholesterol level is not related to incidence of stroke . . ." and showed that for every three
percent more energy from fat eaten, strokes would be cut by fifteen percent. They conclude: “Intakes of
fat and type of fat were not related to the incidence of the combined outcome of all cardiovascular
diseases or to total or cardiovascular mortality.”
All this published evidence, of course, does not deter the big pharmaceutical business from coming up
with more drugs. Soon doctors will be recommending one pill to lower your LDL level, and another drug
to raise your HDL level and lower your triglycerides. This will not only double the already high cost
many people are paying for their current statin drugs, but also greatly increase your risk of suffering a
stroke, or dying from cancer or any other disease.
Even aggressive behavior and suicides are now linked with lowering cholesterol levels. Since 1992,
researchers have noted increases in suicides among those undertaking cholesterol-lowering treatment or
dietary regimes. By lowering blood cholesterol you also reduce serotonin receptors leading to increased
micro viscosity and affecting the balance of cerebral lipid metabolism. This is believed to have profound
effects on brain function. Data from mental institutions have revealed that aggressive people and those
with antisocial personality have lower blood cholesterol levels than average. Mental patients with high
blood cholesterol levels were found to be less regressed and withdrawn than those with lower levels.
After so many years of researching heart disease and its risk factors, there is no evidence to date
linking high cholesterol levels to heart disease, stroke or any other disease as a cause-and-effect
relationship, although in some cases both may occur together. The decision to embark on lifelong
cholesterol lowering drug treatment in patients with primary hypercholesterolemia depends on the
doctor's interpretation of available evidence. However, such evidence exists only for those who have a
vested interest in keeping the cholesterol myth alive. At the same time, the true culprits or contributing
factors of vascular diseases remain largely concealed from the public’s eye. Yet it is becoming
increasingly evident that a diet high in animal proteins poses, perhaps, the greatest physical risk for
arterial damage and subsequent buildup of cholesterol-containing plaque.
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Cholesterol – Your Life and Blood
A newborn baby that is being breast-fed by its mother receives a high dose of cholesterol right from
the beginning of its life. Mother’s milk contains twice the cholesterol of cow’s milk! Nature certainly has
no intention of destroying a baby’s heart by giving it such high amounts of cholesterol. on the contrary, a
healthy heart consists of 10% pure cholesterol (all water removed). Our brain is made of even more
cholesterol than the heart is and half of our adrenal glands consist of it. Cholesterol is an essential
building block of all our body cells and is needed for every metabolic process. Because cholesterol is such
an important substance for the body every single cell is capable of producing it. We could not even live a
single day without it.
Cholesterol
• is important for brain development
• protects the nerves against damage or injury
• repairs damaged arteries (seals off lesions)
• supports immune functions
• gives elasticity to red blood cells
• stabilizes and protects cell membranes
• is the basic ingredient of most sexual hormones
• helps to form the skin
• is the essential substance which the skin uses to make vitamin D
• is the basic ingredient used to manufacture the body’s stress hormones
• is needed to form bile acids to help digestion of fats and keep us lean
• helps to prevent kidney damage in diabetes
Cholesterol plays a vital role in every living being. Microbes, bacteria, viruses, plants, animals, and
human beings all depend on it. Since cholesterol is so important for our body, we cannot solely depend on
its supply from external sources, but must be able to produce it independently as well. Normally, our body
makes about half a gram to one gram of cholesterol a day, depending on how much the body requires at
the time. The main cholesterol producers are the liver and the small intestines. These organs release the
cholesterol into the blood stream where it is instantly tied to blood proteins that are responsible for
transporting it to their designated areas for the purposes listed above. Cholesterol basically consists of fat
and protein molecules, which gives it the name “Lipo Protein.” only about five percent of our cholesterol
circulates in the blood, the rest is used for numerous activities in the body’s cells.
If a healthy person consumed 100g of butter a day (the average European eats 18g a day), he would
ingest 240-mg cholesterol, of which only 30-60% would be absorbed through his intestines. This would
give him about 90 mg cholesterol each day. Yet of this amount only 12 mg would eventually end up in his
blood and raise the cholesterol level by as little as 0.2%. In comparison, our body is able to produce 400
times more cholesterol than we could obtain from eating 100g butter. In other words, if you eat more than
the usual amount of cholesterol with your food, your blood cholesterol levels will naturally rise. However,
to balance this increase your body will automatically reduce its own cholesterol production. This selfregulating
mechanism ensures that cholesterol remains on the exact level that your body requires in order
to sustain optimal functions and equilibrium.
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If eating fatty foods does not significantly increase cholesterol levels to meet the body’s demands for
this vital substance then the body must take other more drastic measures. one of them is the stress
response. If your body runs low in cholesterol, you are likely to feel stressed. You will loose your calm
and patience, and feel tense. Stress is a powerful trigger for cholesterol production in the body. Since
cholesterol is the basic constituent of all stress hormones, any unsettling situation will use up large
quantities of cholesterol. To make up for the loss or increased demand of cholesterol, the liver starts
making more of it.
Take the example of the cholesterol-increasing effect of television. Research has shown that watching
television for several hours at a time can drive up blood cholesterol more dramatically than any other so
called risk factors, including diet, sedentary lifestyle, or genetic disposition. Exposure to television is a
great challenge for the brain. It is far beyond it’s the brain’s capacity to process the flood of incoming
stimuli that emanate from the overwhelming number of picture frames appearing on the TV screen every
second. The resulting strain takes its toll. Blood pressure rises to help move more oxygen, glucose,
cholesterol, vitamins, and other nutrients around the body and to the brain, all of which are used up
rapidly by the heavy brainwork. Add violence, suspense and the noise of gunshots etc., to the spectacle
and the adrenal glands respond with shots of adrenaline to prepare the body for a “fight or flight”. This
causes contraction of many large and small blood vessels in the body, leading to shortage of water, sugar
and other nutrients in the cells.
The signs for this stress-response can be several. You may feel shattered, exhausted, and stiff in neck
and shoulders, very thirsty, lethargic, depressed, and even “too tired” to go to sleep. If the body did not
bother to increase cholesterol levels during such stress encounters, we would have millions of television
deaths by now. Thanks to rising cholesterol levels!
When Cholesterol Signals SOS
The self-regulating cholesterol mechanism that keeps the body healthy even in stressful situations is
disrupted when the body has begun to store excessive amounts of protein in the liver capillaries. The liver
capillaries, called sinusoids, are grid-shaped, and their thin basal membranes have sizable pores that
normally permit larger molecules and even the relatively large blood cells to leave the blood stream and
enter the fluids surrounding liver cells. Unlike other cells, liver cells are thus able to work directly with
the blood and its contents.
In comparison with the High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), also known as “good” cholesterol, the Low
Density Lipoprotein (LDL) as well as Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL), termed “bad” cholesterol,
are relatively large cholesterol molecules. Despite their size, the latter two are still able to pass through
the sinusoids and enter the liver cells where they are rebuilt, sent to the gallbladder for storage, or
excreted into the intestines. In fact, most of these large cholesterol molecules cannot “escape” the blood
stream anywhere else, but through the liver sinusoids. only the small HDL molecules, which make up
80% of all lipoproteins, are small enough to pass through ordinary capillaries in different parts of the
body. For this reason HDL is hardly ever found to reach abnormally high levels in the blood. LDL and
VLDL, on the other hand, may rise to levels that reflect an underlying disorder (congestion) of some sort.
Under normal circumstances, most of the cholesterol eaten in a meal is absorbed by the small intestine
and sent to the liver. once the larger LDL and VLDL molecules enter the liver they are removed from the
blood in the manner described before. This mechanism, which keeps the cholesterol concentration of the
blood balanced, becomes defective when the normal outlets for cholesterol, namely the grid fibers of the
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sinusoids, become blocked by excessive amounts of stored proteins. Consequently LDL and VLDL
concentrations begin to rise in the blood to levels that indicate the occurrence of blockage and, possibly,
inflammatory processes in the sinusoids and coronary arteries. The “bad” cholesterol is trapped in the
circulatory system because its escape routes, the liver sinusoids, are congested. The liver’s sinusoids
become congested with proteins whenever the capillary and artery walls in the rest of the body are
congested. The injuries caused by the proteins require much of the bad cholesterol to be used as a band
aid to prevent possible occurrences of heart attack. Eventually, however, the arteries become increasingly
hard, rigid, and occluded. This may raise arterial blood pressure and pose further problems to the heart.
The vicious cycle closes when the liver cells are no longer able to receive enough of the LDL and
VLDL cholesterol. They naturally assume that the blood does not contain sufficient amounts of
cholesterol. The liver cells subsequently begin to produce extra quantities of cholesterol which they pass
into the bile ducts. Much of the cholesterol intermixes with bile and is then dispatched to the intestines
where it combines with fats and enters the blood stream. This may raise the blood cholesterol levels even
further. Some of the affected individuals produce twice as much LDL as a healthy person does.
In the presence of toxic substances and due to lack of bile salts some of the excessive cholesterol forms
intrahepatic stones (consisting of mostly cholesterol). These stones decrease bile flow and further reduce
the body’s ability to digest protein and fat-containing foods. Every meal that contains cholesterol – a
natural part of numerous foods – adds more of the “bad” cholesterol to the one that is already trapped in
the blood stream. The body’s final attempt to stay alive is to accommodate more and more cholesterol in
the bile ducts and tissue of the liver, which could end up leading to an enlarged, fatty liver, and to stick as
much cholesterol as possible to the damaged walls of the arteries.
In many cases, the liver’s sinusoids become so congested with proteins that they do not even allow
enough water and sugar to reach the liver cells. As a result, many of the liver cells simply die off. The
dead liver cells are replaced with fibrous tissue, leading to portal hypertension, diabetes, and possibly
liver failure. And because the protein storage does not only occur in the liver sinusoids, but also in the
capillaries and arteries throughout the body, the risk of a heart attack or stroke increases dramatically.
Cholesterol cannot be considered a culprit for heart disease or any other illness. Due to protein deposits
in the sinusoids the liver cells are increasingly cut off from the daily needed cholesterol supplies, and are
therefore forced to synthesize more and more cholesterol. Lowering blood cholesterol by cutting out fats
in the diet and/or artificially reducing it through statin drugs has little or no benefits in the control of heart
disease. What helps most is cutting out all animal protein (meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk) from
the diet plan, until the condition has been completely normalized. If any of these foods are being
reintroduced, they should only be eaten occasionally and very sparingly. At the same time, all gallstones
in the liver bile ducts and gallbladder should be removed through a series of liver cleanses, and the colon
should be cleansed from any existing waste deposits. Additional essential measures include drinking
plenty of water (6-8 glasses per day), maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle, and, if necessary, giving
blood to reduce excessive amounts of protein from the blood and to lower the Hemocrit value. All this can
effectively reverse atherosclerosis and prevent a heart attack or stroke.
Balancing Cholesterol Levels Naturally
Apart from the above methods, there a number of herbal substances and foods that have powerful
cleansing effects on the blood vessels and lymphatic ducts. When ingested regularly, they naturally
balance blood cholesterol concentrations to where they need to be for the body to function optimally.
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Take for example, the extract from a common Indian tree known as the mukul myrrh or guggul. Guggul is
no strange medicine in India. It has been used for over 3,000 years to treat a variety of diseases. one side
benefit happens to be the lowering of cholesterol and triglycerides. Double blind clinical trials in India
have proven that the extract of this small thorny tree is just as effective for this as some common
prescription drugs. Of course, what heals common ailments naturally is unattractive to big drug
companies, and, therefore, stands no chance of making it into the field of mainstream medicine, at least
not in countries where health care is dominated by the pharmaceutical giants.
There are dozens of herbs and common foods that all have similar effects as guggul. Green tea alone
has shown to have great benefits for cholesterol health. Most fruits and vegetables, including apples,
citrus fruit, berries, carrots, apricots, cabbage, and sweet potatoes have also shown to be helpful in
naturally balancing cholesterol. Almonds walnuts, pumpkin seeds, olive oil, coconut oil, oats, barley, etc.,
are just as effective.
Recently, the drug giants declared war on red yeast rice, and succeeded banning it in the U.S. Several
studies show that this ancient Asian edible slashed cholesterol an average of 40 points in just 3 months,
without any side effects whatsoever. As its reputation increased, it became a serious threat to the greatest
drug-sellers of all time – statins. To secure the continuance of the big business, red yeast rice needed to be
eliminated, thanks to the FDA.
Lemon rind and orange peel contain a substance that lowers cholesterol quite dramatically. Even the
researchers were shocked when they tested policosanol—a safe, natural substance found in citrus peels. In
one study, 244 women with high cholesterol received either a placebo or policosanol. Researchers saw the
bad cholesterol of the policosanol group plunge by 25%. Total cholesterol fell 17%. And their ratio of
total to good cholesterol (the most important risk factor) improved by a whopping 27.2%! Another study
compared policosanol against a popular statin drug. Those given policosanol lowered their bad cholesterol
by an average of 19.3% – versus just 15.6% for the statin. Most important, policosanol improved the most
crucial ratio – total cholesterol to good cholesterol – by 24.4% (the statin drug only improved it by
15.9%).
Food is still by far the best medicine for most ailments plaguing the human body. If used wisely, and
without destroying it before its consumption, food can create miraculous cures of the most common
diseases. I have discussed a number of such healing foods and herbs in Chapter 7. When choosing the
right healing foods for you, please refer to the food lists shown in Chapter 6. Foods that harmonize with
one’s body type have the most healing properties, whereas foods that don’t may actually interfere with the
body’s own effort to restore health and vitality.
Overcoming Heart Disease – Two Encouraging Stories
Over the years I have seen hundreds of patients with “heart” problems that, in fact, were not heart
problems at all. Most of these turned out to be cases of simple indigestion, causing strong sensations of
pain in the chest and stomach. Their stomachs were usually hard and swollen, filled with pockets of gas
exerting great pressure on the diaphragm and heart. Trapped gas and “heart burn” more often than not
lead to the false alarm of a heart condition. Other patients, however, did have serious heart trouble, in
addition to suffering chronic indigestion, or, as I see it, because of it. George, age 64, was one of them.
George had received medical treatment for thirty years for what his cardiologist called “progressive
heart disease.” During the same period he had been on a large variety of drugs to relieve the symptoms.
One of them was an anti-hypertensive drug. The drug’s diuretic effects helped to drain excess fluids from
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his body, but also caused severe cellular dehydration and damaged his kidneys and liver. Other side
effects included impotence, increase of angina pain, stomach upset, eye pains, muscle weakness,
depression, and nightmares.
Despite taking the drugs regularly he was advised to undergo a bypass operation since several of his
heart arteries were almost completely blocked. A few years after the operation, at age 62, his "new"
coronary arteries also showed strong signs of damage, causing chest pain and severe tiredness. His heart
was no longer able to perform sufficiently well and, he was informed that, as a last resort, only a heart
replacement could prolong his life. That was the time I saw George for the first time. He said this to me:
“I feel more dead than alive. My energy level is only a fraction of what it used to be. There is not much I
can do now except wait for a heart replacement, but considering my general condition I am not sure
whether I even can make it through such an operation.”
After applying the diagnostic tools of Ayurvedic Pulse Reading and Eye Interpretation, I explained to
him that his real problem wasn’t his heart, but the amassed, and toxic, undigested food in his intestines ( I
was pointing to his grossly protruded belly), and the stored animal protein throughout his blood vessel
system. The toxic material was suffocating the cells of his body and causing slow poisoning of the liver,
kidney, and heart cells. His liver bile ducts were congested with thousands of gallstones. I suggested that
he remove all the toxic waste, which his body had collected over the past 40 years in his small and large
intestines through intestinal cleansing, and stimulate the digestive power through a series of liver
cleanses. Thereby, he could directly relieve his heart from the heavy burden of having to deliver nutrients
to a body that was blocked and overtaxed with harmful material. His heart was obviously exhausted from
pumping blood through a congested body.
George quickly began to implement a program that included directions for a specific body-type diet,
cleansing of his intestines and liver, the daily and seasonal Ayurvedic routine, regular full body oil
massage, yoga and walking near the beachfront, and meditation.
Within three days of his first-ever colonic irrigation session, and strict avoidance of any protein foods,
George felt a huge burden had been lifted from his heart. His energy began to return, but he still did not
feel strong enough to go back to work. Two weeks later, though, he was back at his desk, with great
enthusiasm. Being a director of his own successful insurance company, he no longer felt as stressed at
work as he used to feel before the treatment. He was also asleep by 10 p.m. and meditating each day,
which made him feel refreshed and calm, and able to handle the difficulties at work with a more relaxed
attitude.
Three months later, George visited his cardiologist who took him through a series of tests to determine
the condition of his heart. George was not surprised to hear his doctor confirm that he no longer needed a
heart transplant operation. He saved himself the $750,000.00 that the heart transplant would have cost.
Over a period of time he reduced and finally stopped all of his medication. Ten years later, he is still very
active and enjoys an excellent state of health.
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“Just thought you would like to hear the latest report from my cardiologist, whom I went to see on
Monday, just because it has now been over one year since my heart attack.” This was the beginning of an
e-mail message that Susan, a 62-year old friend of mine from Arizona, sent me in the year 2000. “He was
a bit disturbed when I first saw him,” she continued, "because I said I was not taking any medications and
had not since last August. As he was talking with me he said he would probably prescribe a couple of
medications for me to start taking again, but first he wanted to do an echocardiogram and a stress test.”
"I agreed to them both and they were done in his office. While I was on the treadmill, I became tired,
so I told his assistants I was getting tired and they said 'You may be, but your heart is not!' They said the
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echocardiogram and stress test were well within normal limits. When the cardiologist came back into the
room, he said, 'I am totally surprised, just totally surprised. These tests show a healthy heart, no failure at
all! So you can go home, continue doing what you have been doing and come back to see me in six
months.' He did not mention anything else about medications."
Her message ended by saying how grateful she was for having received all the advice and
recommendations that had given her the power to claim a healthy normal heart. Susan is one in thousands
of people who were listed as incurable heart disease patients, but through liver cleansing and changes in
diet and lifestyle, has beaten the odds.
Non-dietary Causes of Heart Disease
Lack of Social Support System
Traditionally, Japanese people living in Japan have very low rates of heart disease and cancer. But
when Japanese began immigrating in large numbers to the United States, their newly adopted lifestyle and
diet often proved disastrous for their health. By the second generation in the new world, there was no
advantage left with respect to these leading killer diseases. First it was hypothesized that the typical
American diet rich in fats, was responsible for this development. But soon the heart disease-dietcholesterol
explanation received a severe blow.
There was one subgroup among the Japanese immigrants in California who continued to have very low
rates of heart disease, irrespective of whether their blood cholesterol levels were high or low. The group
consisted of males who retained their sense of being Japanese by growing up in a Japanese neighborhood,
by participating in traditional Japanese cultural and social events, and by learning and speaking their
mother tongue. The close family ties and social support system were the only factors that prevented them
from developing degenerative heart disease. Even if they had personal problems at home or financial
difficulties, there was a large family to lean on and to receive moral and often financial support.
A Swedish study proved that frequent social interaction among men – friendships, golf outings, poker
nights, etc. – correlated into a more than 50% reduction in heart disease among test subjects. As far as I
know there is no prescription drug that could boast such results, not even close. The feeling of being
rejected, left behind and lonely can be a “heart-breaking” event that easily can turn a healthy heart into a
sick heart. It is well known that women are in greater need of support and understanding during
pregnancy. An epidemiological study on pregnant women showed that 91 percent of those who felt
unsupported by family and friends suffered serious complications during pregnancy. The women reported
that they were leading stressful lives with little or no social support. Similar studies on unemployed men
have revealed that those men who felt strong support from family, relatives and friends were less likely to
develop physical or mental problems.
Greatest Risk Factors: Job Satisfaction and Happiness Rating
What is rarely mentioned in reports on heart disease and their contributing risk factors is one the most
important discoveries ever made about man’s number one killer disease: The greatest risks of developing
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heart disease are job satisfaction and happiness rating. These unexpected risk factors turned up when
American researchers looked once more at clues of what could cause heart disease.
If you ask a man in the street whether he is satisfied with his job and happy, depending on his answer,
you will be able to make a prognosis about whether he is at risk of developing heart disease or not. It
would be too simplistic to assume that heart disease is only caused by stress, cigarette smoking,
overeating, alcohol abuse, etc. These risk factors are not the ultimate causes of a dysfunctional heart, but
rather the effects or symptoms of plain dissatisfaction in life. The cause behind the major causes of heart
disease, which is nothing but the plain lack of happiness and contentment in life, may still be there after
all the other risk factors or causes have been eliminated. A large number of people have died from heart
attacks with perfectly clean arteries and no other tangible, physical reasons. Many of them have never
smoked, abused alcohol, or led a particularly stressful life. But they were unhappy within themselves.
One 1998 study by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has confirmed what 10 other surveys have
found: Men who are clinically depressed are twice as likely as those who aren’t to suffer heart attacks or
develop other heart illnesses. If the “heartache” is severe enough, there are several ways to shut down the
arteries and, in fact, the entire energy system in the body. DNA research has shown that the double
strands of the DNA controlling the health of every cell in your body suddenly contract and shorten when
you feel fear, frustration, anger, jealously, or hatred. It is as if the software of a computer program begins
to malfunction and the computer can no longer perform properly. By applying the procedure of
Kinesiology muscling testing to a depressed or unhappy person, you find that all the muscles in his body
are weak, especially while he ponders his personal problems. His discontent also affects the muscles of
his heart and arteries. If unhappiness persists, disease is inevitable, and whatever part of his body is the
weakest will succumb first to the chronic shortage of energy. If it happens to be the heart, then heart
disease may result.
Even if such a person doses himself with antioxidants, which are believed to protect the arteries
against oxygen radical attacks, they will neither be digested and assimilated, nor be successfully delivered
to the damaged arteries. Lack of satisfaction in life paralyzes the body’s functions of digestion,
metabolism, and elimination. This causes congestion, high toxicity, and damage to all cell tissues. People
who have blocked coronary arteries are not just sick in the area of the heart, they are sick throughout the
body. The most important determinant factor of disease appears to be the inability to live a happy,
satisfying life.
The reason modern medicine is so helpless in providing lasting cures of heart disease is because there
is not much in the current medical approach that can increase happiness in a patient. Yet there is hardly
any other primary risk factor for disease, including coronary heart disease, other than its absence. It is the
lack of lasting happiness and peace of heart and mind that makes a person feel stressed, take drugs,
overeat protein and other foods, abuse alcohol and cigarettes, drink excessive amounts of coffee, become
a workaholic, or dislike his job or himself.
Your Need to Love
Satisfaction in life increases spontaneously when we devote time to meet our spiritual needs, apart
from developing our physical and mental aspects. The human self cries out to be recognized as a spiritual
being whose innate nature is unconditional happiness. A truly happy person finds deep inner satisfaction
in sharing whatever he likes about himself with others; this is called love. Love is the most basic
characteristic of a human being. Love is the life force that makes the heart beat, the cells thrive, and the
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spirit sore. However, at times it becomes overshadowed or remains unexpressed. If it is unable to flow
inside and outside the body, it causes deep sadness and frustration in the heart center.
The need to open one’s heart to others and to oneself cannot be adequately met by identifying a few
risks of disease and “treating them away.” Such an approach is futile because it ignores the fact that
human feelings are far more powerful than any physical effect could ever be. If unhappiness continues to
prevail in a patient’s life, no amount of vitamin C or E will stop free radicals from creating havoc in the
body.
The continual emphasis on the risk factors for disease today may divert people’s attention from the
real issues in life. That happiness rating and job satisfaction are the leading causes of heart disease is
hardly being publicized because there doesn’t seem to be a magic formula to deal with them. The
pharmaceutical industry possesses no drugs that can make people happy; all it can offer is drugs that deal
with the physical symptoms of the disease. If you are troubled with heart disease, you may need to ask
yourself a few basic questions, such as these:
Am I living a lifestyle that is detrimental to my health, and if yes, why would I do that? Do I feel that
no one really likes or loves me? Am I afraid of being rejected by my partner? Do I believe that I have a
deeper purpose in my life, but cannot find it? Am I feeling frustrated because I am not able to get out of
life what I really want? And most importantly, am I afraid to love, out of fear of becoming hurt?
What a Loving Wife can do
Major research on male heart attack patients has shown that the men’s feeling of being loved by their
wives was the most crucial element that determined whether they survived an attack or not. Heart attacks
often become an eye-opener for estranged couples who have forgotten how to love and care about each
other. The sudden closeness which couples often experience after one partner suffers a heart attack can
serve as an incentive for many of the patients to continue wanting to live, and the chances are that they
will live.
Surveys of male heart attack victims revealed that most men felt lonely or misunderstood before their
attack. Minor attacks led to death only in those men who felt that their wives no longer loved them. If a
relationship was brought back to “life” as a result of the attack, then even a massive heart attack could not
take the person’s life. Most men are quite sensitive at heart, even though they may not necessarily admit
it. They generally tend to put on a brave face and suffer silently when they have “heartache.” Most men
tend to consider it a sign of weakness to shed tears, especially if it is in front of a woman. Yet the male’s
tendency to repress feelings of weakness makes him a likely candidate for heart disease. A heart attack
can reveal his deep vulnerability and yearning for support and comfort. His partner is allowed to see this
“new” side of him, which can trigger love, compassion, a new sense of intimacy, and give a new lease on
life to both of them.
A new European study, from the U.K., confirmed all the earlier findings. It showed that having loving,
close relationships – with spouses, relatives or close friends – helped to measurably lower heart attack
victims' risk of suffering a second cardiovascular event. In fact, heart attack survivors that don’t have an
intimate relationship to lean on for emotional support or social interaction are twice as likely to suffer
major heart problems within one year of their initial heart attack.
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The Healing Power of “Loving Touch”
Every time someone touches us with loving care or we do the same for someone else, an emotional
exchange takes place that profoundly nourishes the heart. The ｅxpressions “He touched my heart”, “I felt
so touched by his words,” or “It was so touching to see my old friend again”, show that the sense of touch
is closely related to our physical and emotional heart, which is also the center of our being. To touch and
to be touched is as essential to health as a balanced diet, if not more.
When American researchers discovered that prematurely born babies who are stroked three times a day
increased their weight by 49 percent, they had unintentionally discovered the loving touch. As it turned
out, loving touch – the scientific ｅxpression is kinesthetic tactile stimulation - became recognized as an
effective method to reduce the time and cost of a baby’s stay in hospital. Loving touch (I prefer to use the
less sterile and more human term for this precious gift of God) stimulated the babies’ production of
growth hormones and thereby improved utilization of nutrients from the daily food ratio. The researchers
did not realize that they had stumbled upon a major technique of healing that could be applied
successfully to the young and the old, the healthy and the sick, and not only for prevention, but also for
cure.
In the human body, the sense of touch is so highly developed that it can detect or sense everything it
comes into contact with, like radar. By (unconsciously) picking up other people’s pheromones18 and/or
“touching” their aura, your body can identify who is friendly, honest and loving or cold-hearted, deceitful,
and aggressive. The body may instantly translate all that information into powerful chemical responses
that can make you either feel well or ill. These internal responses, however, also depend on your
interpretation of the experience. Muscle testing can verify whether your interpretation is correct. You may
think of a person and check with your muscles whether this person has a positive influence on you or not.
A weak muscle indicates that your relationship with this person may disturb your balance and energy
field. Merely thinking of a person gives you enough physical responses to decide whether you want to be
with that person or not.
There are multiple forms of touch that can have profound healing effects. The Ayurvedic oil massage,
for example, has been proven to open clogged arteries because of its deeply penetrating and detoxifying
action. However, the purely physical part of this kind of touch is only partly responsible for this healing
phenomenon. By touching your body with the intention to improve its health it automatically senses that
you love and appreciate yourself and your life, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. Love carries the highest
frequency of energy, and, when present in the depth of your heart, it triggers a strong healing response by
releasing endorphins19 and other healing drugs throughout the body, similar to the ones a breast-fed baby
receives from its mother.
If you want to help a sick person, but do not know how, hold his/her hand in yours, or gently hold or
massage his/her feet. This does more to help the person’s condition than any amount of sympathetic
words could do. The body remembers a loving touch more vividly than spoken words and it reproduces
the same drugs whenever it links into the “touching” feeling through remembering. Heart patients
especially need to feel that they are loved and cared for because their hearts have lost the sweetness of life
that is mostly present in a committed and loving relationship where emotional exchange is most common.
Many heart disease victims have isolated themselves from such intimacy before they became ill, by
18 Chemicals produced by the body that signals its presence to others. Pheromones play a particularly important role in sexual
behavior. It has become crystal clear that human pheromones affect us more than most people can imagine. Our knowledge of
visual input, and of how vision might influence our sexual behavior, pales by comparison.
19 Endorphins are hormones produced by the body that stop pain and make you feel good (pleasure drugs).
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overloading themselves with work, commitments, deadlines, and too many social engagements. By
rediscovering the secrets of loving touch, they can once again connect to the circuit of love that supplies
the only frequency the heart needs in order to function properly and efficiently, that is, the love frequency.
Loving touch opens the heart. It is the kind of touch that gives without expecting anything in return. It
is the kind of touch than can create miracles. Each one of us has this healing gift; it is only a matter of
acknowledging that you have it, which is a prerequisite for being able to use it. Give your touch freely and
without reservations, for it is one of the few gifts that can make you truly happy, too. It may feel nice to
be loved by someone, but it is most important to express love to others, in whatever form is possible. You
always have the choice to touch someone with your kindness, generosity, and honesty, and feel so much
better for it. This opens your heart. only a closed heart can be broken or attacked. Living your whole life
without the danger of suffering a heart attack is more your choice than something that just happens to you.
Take care of your heart and it will take care of you.