Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [36]
Not surprisingly, the causes of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are the same as the causes of heart disease. According to a 2010 report from the Alzheimer’s Association, “A growing body of evidence suggests that the health of the brain—one of the body’s most highly vascular organs—is closely linked to the overall health of the heart and blood vessels.” The Association specifically notes that Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia have the same risk factors as “high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity and physical inactivity…. Many of these risk factors are modifiable—that is, they can be changed to decrease the likelihood of developing both cardiovascular disease and the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.”
“The link between heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease is growing in strength every few months,” according to the Association’s scientific director, Bill Thies, speaking to ABC World News. “And we predict it will continue to grow…. I’m not surprised that there’s a relationship…. The heart is the organ that supplies essential elements to many parts of the body, and the brain is just one of the first.”
So we can easily make connections based on our analysis of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. For the same reason that almost 100 percent of heart disease is preventable, dementia—including Alzheimer’s—can be staved off by a healthy vegan diet. And sure enough, we learn from Dr. Esselstyn that “at least half of all senile mental impairment is caused by vascular injury to the brain” and that “clogged arteries serving the brain and clogged arteries serving the heart are part and parcel of the same disease.”
He tells of one study of 500 eighty-five-year-olds, which found that fully one-third of them showed some form of dementia. A careful analysis revealed that in half of those with dementia, their mental impairment was due to a diseased arterial blood supply to the brain. Similarly, a study in the Netherlands focused on 5,000 people between the ages of fifty-five and ninety-four. “The researchers studied the circulation in the brains of all their subjects, then asked them to perform various written tests of mental acuity. The results were quite clear: those suffering from artery disease and thus impaired circulation in the brain performed less well on the tests than did those whose arteries were clean. Age made no difference. Arterial health was the variable that counted.”
Dr. Esselstyn concludes, “Just as you are not doomed to heart disease as you grow older, you also are not doomed to mental deterioration. Most cases of stroke and dementia, like heart disease, need never occur. Your aorta, along with all your other arteries, can be as clean at ninety years of age as they were when you were nine.”
Wow.
And Now Impotence
Viagra is the best-selling drug in U.S. history, but apparently it needn’t be so. Once upon a time, doctors thought that impotence was a purely mental condition. Now we know that the vast majority of cases are physical. And the cause of impotence: clogged arteries.
You might have read about the links between obesity and impotence, and diabetes and impotence. Of course, overweight men and women have worse circulation than people who maintain a healthy weight. One study published by the American Urological Association found that obese men had twice the impotence rates of men of a healthy weight. Similarly, the Harvard Medical School explains that “diabetes can cause nerve and artery damage in the genital area, disrupting the blood flow necessary for an erection.”
Impotence can also be a sign in itself of other problems. Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish have both written about the connection between impotence and elevated cholesterol. According to Esselstyn, impotence is “as robust a predictor of cardiovascular disease as elevated cholesterol, smoking, or a strong family history of the disease.” Dr. Ornish writes in the introduction to his book