Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [24]
Straight from the Source: Caldwell Esselstyn, MD, on Heart Disease
KF: What exactly is coronary heart disease?
CE: Coronary heart disease is the leading killer of women and men in Western civilization. It is predicted to become the number one global disease burden by 2020.
It consists of an inflammatory buildup of blockages in arteries to the heart muscle. These blockages are made of fat, cholesterol, calcium, and inflammatory cells. Blockages can become severe enough to cause symptoms such as shortness of breath or chest pain (angina). When blockages suddenly become complete, the portion of heart muscle fed by that blocked artery is now deprived of oxygen and nutrients, thus it is injured or dies. This is a heart attack. The patient may survive or succumb if the event is accompanied by a fatal heart rhythm.
KF: Who develops heart disease?
CE: Just about anyone eating the typical Western diet. In autopsy studies of our GIs who died in the Vietnam and Korean wars, almost 80 percent, at an average age of just twenty years old had disease that could be seen without a microscope. Forty years later, in 1999, a study of young persons between the ages of sixteen and thirty-four who had died in accidents, homicides, and suicides found that disease is now ubiquitous.
KF: What is the cause of the disease?
CE: It is the typical Western diet of processed oils, dairy, and meat, which destroys the life jacket of our blood vessels—our endothelial cells. This cell layer is the one-cell-thick lining of all our blood vessels. Endothelial cells manufacture a magical protective molecule of gas called nitric oxide, which protects our blood vessels. It keeps our blood flowing smoothly, it is the strongest dilator (widener) of our blood vessels, it inhibits the formation of blockages (plaques), and it inhibits inflammation.
KF: With such natural protection, why do we ever develop heart disease?
CE: Every Western meal of processed vegetable oils, dairy products, and meat (including chicken and fish) injures these endothelial cells. As individuals consume these damaging products throughout their lives, they have fewer functioning endothelial cells remaining and thus less of the protective nitric oxide. Without enough nitric oxide the plaque blockages build up and grow, eventually creating heart disease and strokes.
KF: Can it be stopped or even reversed?
CE: Yes. First we must look at the lessons learned from cultures such as those in rural China, the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, central Africa, and the Tarahumara people of northern Mexico, where there is a virtual absence of coronary artery heart disease. Their nutrition is plant based and without oil.
Beginning in 1985 I initiated a study of seriously ill coronary artery disease patients. I put them on a plant-based diet, without any oil. Their cholesterol levels plummeted. Their angina disappeared. Their weight dropped. I have reported this study at five years, twelve years, and sixteen years, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and again beyond twenty years in my book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. In some of the patients we had follow-up angiograms (Xrays) of previously blocked arteries demonstrating striking disease reversal.
The greatest gift to these patients is the increasing recognition that they are the locus of control for their disease—not some pill or procedure. They have made themselves heart-attack-proof and lose the greatest fear of all heart patients and their families—when will the next one occur?
KF: What about drugs, stents, and heart bypass surgery?
CE: In the midst of a heart attack a stent or bypass may be lifesaving, however, for the remaining 90 percent of patients, studies confirm that