The MAGIC Pill Myth
In the health paradox of the year, 52-year-old cardiologist John Warner, president of the American Heart Association (AHA), recently suffered a heart attack in the middle of a health conference.
In a statement, the association reported Warner was in stable condition after having a stent placed to open a blocked artery. Part of Warner’s speech at the Scientific Sessions conference in Anaheim, California, centered around his own family’s struggle with heart disease.
In an open letter to AHA president Warner, Dr. William Davis, a New York cardiologist and author of The New York Times best seller “Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health,” writes, in part:
“If you ignore the nonsense that AHA policy dictates, you can absolutely gain control over cardiovascular risk. But you will NOT find the answers in any AHA policy. I learned these lessons practicing as an interventional cardiologist, then abandoning this ridiculous way of managing coronary disease to devote my efforts to early detection and prevention.
So, I thought I would articulate some of these thoughts in an open letter to Dr. Warner as he recovers from his procedure … Dr. Warner — … There are a number of reasons why someone like you — deeply-entrenched in the conventional world of heart disease management and what passes for prevention — highlights the miserable failure that the modern coronary care paradigm represents:
1) We are trapped by the outdated but profitable lipid hypothesis … 2) We know from abundant data that small oxidation- and glycation-prone LDL particles are highly atherogenic … are potent triggers of the inflammation cascade … and are triggered to abundant degrees in some genotypes upon consumption of the amylopectin A of grains …
[Y]es, the food that the American Heart Association advises to fill the diet with — and sugars … I am hoping that, now that this disease has touched you personally, your eyes will be opened to the corrupt and absurd policies of conventional coronary care and the American Heart Association.”
Davis goes on to note that heart disease is a multifactorial problem that cannot be solved with a pill.
“Thinking that a statin drug … [is] sufficient to prevent coronary events is absurd and overly-simplistic, like thinking that taking Aricept for dementia will stop the disease — of course, it does no such thing,” he writes, adding, “There are no drugs to ‘treat’ many of the contributors to coronary atherogenesis. But there are many non-drug strategies to identify, then correct, such causes.”
Nondrug prevention strategies suggested by Davis include:
• Avoiding any and all dietary factors that provoke insulin resistance, glycation and formation of small, dense LDL particles. Importantly, this would include avoiding the harmful fats recommended by the AHA such as margarine and processed vegetable oils, and keeping your total daily fructose consumption below 25 grams per day.
• Optimizing your vitamin D level.
• Optimizing your omega-3 fat intake: An omega-3 index of 10 percent or greater is associated with “dramatic reduction in cardiovascular events,” Davis notes. Indeed, a 2010 analysis25 found that while diets higher in omega-6 fats (found in ample amounts in vegetable oils) and lower in omega-3s increased the risk of nonfatal myocardial infarction and death from heart disease by 13 percent; a mixed diet of both omega-3 and omega-6 fats reduced these risks by 22 percent.
Meanwhile, the AHA recommends higher intakes of omega-6, saying26 “Aggregate data from randomized trials, case-control and cohort studies, and long-term animal feeding experiments indicate that the consumption of at least 5 percent to 10 percent of energy from omega-6 PUFAs reduces the risk of coronary heart disease relative to lower intakes.
The data also suggest that higher intakes appear to be safe and may be even more beneficial.” This statement runs counter to a large body of research suggesting the converse — specifically, that reducing omega-6 fats and increasing omega-3 is better for your heart.
• Addressing your thyroid function.
• Optimizing your gut microbiome to address dysbiosis caused by excess sugar, chlorinated and fluoridated water, and exposure to antibiotics, pesticides and common heartburn drugs.
That said, your heart health is really dependent on your diet — what you eat and when you eat. In my view, the best treatment for heart disease is to work your way up to an intermittent fasting schedule where you’re fasting for 20 hours a day. When you do eat, make sure you eat real food, and consider a cyclical ketogenic diet, high in healthy fats, low in net carbs with moderate protein.
Once you’re comfortable with this intermittent fasting schedule, start doing a monthly five-day water fast. This really is the most powerful metabolic intervention I know of, and I feel it’s one of the healthiest things I now do for my own health. Senescent cells, which have stopped replicating, play a distinct role in aging and disease. Once replication stops, these cells need to be removed from your body, or else they start clogging it up, causing severe inflammation and immune dysfunction.
Overall, heart health is important and prevention and self care is a big component of that. We are at a point now where the choices we make are dictating our outcome. Given that knowledge and proof, we need to be educated on all options for prevention. NrF2 reduces oxidative stress in the body by 40 percent in 30 days. The root cause of many chronic conditions is inflammation and oxidative stress. Check out the studies and research of NrF2 and Oxidative Stress in heart disease on Pubmed.gov. Click the videos to learn more on the page as well as Dr. Skip Campbell’s video on the Join page.
#TheTimeIsNow #52YearsOldIS52YearsYoung #IfYouWaityouareriskingyourLIFE