Heart health.

— Dr Tim O’Shea

Are you really trying to drive me crazy? I see you come into my office year after year, usually for other reasons, and I take your blood pressure and it’s usually way above 140/100. Sometimes above 180/100. You’re overweight, sweating, dehydrated, can’t breathe well, and have no energy. But you think everything’s under control because your doctor, the specialist, knows about your problem and is managing it with drugs. Here they come – Lipitor, HCT, Mevacor, Cardizem, Procardia, on and on. And the months turn into years and the blood pressure problem turns into a degenerative heart condition, and you start cutting normal activities out of your life with the because they’re ‘bad for the heart.’ And middle aged people are suddenly getting older faster, and old people suddenly aren’t around.

CREATING AN INDUSTRY IN THE USUAL PATTERN

Do most people have any idea what’s going on with their heart??
Today’s best scientific research shows that the conventional wisdom on heart health couldn’t be more misdirected. Most of what people absorb through the hypnopedia of TV inculcates perceptions that are simply not accurate, especially such notions as

• High Blood Pressure Can Be Controlled with Drugs
• High Blood Pressure Necessitates Lifetime Drug Protocols
• Heart Drugs Prolong Life
• Cholesterol from animal products causes high blood pressure
• High cholesterol causes heart disease
• Cholesterol Drugs prevent heart disease

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE WILL KILL YOU

Let’s back up a little here. There is no question that living one’s life with sky high blood pressure shortens life and offers a fairly safe bet that the individual will die of a heart attack or heart disease. In fact, high BP doubles one’s chance of death from heart failure. These statistics are very clear on that.

So it is certainly a laudable goal to try and normalize high BP. It’s just that our standard solution to the heart problem is a fraud: when we actually examine what the scientists who create heart medications say about them, it’s quite a different story from the one being hawked in doctors’ offices and on TV commercials every 10 minutes.

And with what is now known about the curative powers of holistic nutrition and the effective detox programs available today, it is no longer necessary to triple one’s chances of heart failure by means of a prolonged program of heart medications. [Rogers]

So first off, let’s look at the traditional approach to heart conditions and check out its track record.

HISTORY OF PROCESSED FOOD

In 1900 the term “heart attack” didn’t even exist. In the 20th century, for the first time in history more people were dying of heart problems than any other disease.

These days 1 out of 2 Americans dies of congestive heart failure. (CDC website) a statistic that has gone unchanged since the 1970s. (Statistical Abstracts)

The #1 cause of death in the US (not counting the effects of prescription drugs) is heart disease. This is according to the CDC itself. [1] In 40% of heart disease cases, their first symptom was death.

What obvious changes took place early in the 20th century that brought on this epidemic of heart disease?

That question is explored thoroughly in the chapter on Enzymes and more particularly in the video on Processed Foods. But for now let’s simply state that the overall American diet changed radically during that time. The emergence of processed foods that followed World War I and metamorphosed into the grocery business brought with it a new watchword — Shelf Life.

As industrialization and urbanization, and then suburbanization took place, the food industry was faced with the task of making inexpensive foods available to the masses in local supermarkets. Like any industry, the food industry has always been driven by profit, rather than by fostering health through nutrition.

So, profitable foods were those which lasted the longest time on the shelf. Which meant the evolution of scientific processes by which enzymes could be removed from natural foods. Refining, milling, chemically preserving, pasteurization, hydrogenation, and later on – gassing and irradiating the produce to keep it from ripening… Soon shelf life would no longer be measured out in weeks, but in years.

After this new processed diet had become the standard for a generation, suddenly in the 1940s people start dying of heart complications. Year by year the percentages increase, and new terms come into the general vocabulary: arrhythmia, heart murmurs, congestive heart disease, pulmonary edema, shunts, pacemaker, EKG, atherosclerosis, angiogram, and of course, bypass.

Gradually people accept these de-evolutionary terms as part of the normal human condition rather than what they really are – marketing tools. And watersheds of declining health.

Since the 1970s the number of heart medications has skyrocketed, as has the percentage of the population who take them as a matter of course, accepting them as a natural part of life in America. Nearly a third of the population today are either taking heart drugs or else are being actively recommended for them.

Let’s take a quick look at this class of medications:

HEART DRUGS

There are five main types of heart medication:

• calcium channel blockers
• beta adrenergic blockers
• ACE inhibitors
• diuretics
• cholesterol drugs

(Merck)

The first three slow down heart activity, either by inhibiting heart muscle, or blocking nerves to the heart, or by constricting blood to the heart.

Why is drugging the heart a bad idea?

When blood pressure elevates, either due to plaque in the arteries or because of the demand for increased blood flow to the muscles to do some work, the heart has to work twice as hard to push all that blood through the system.

But instead of trying to do something to ease the burden on the heart, to unblock the flow, what do our doctors do? They drug the heart so that their blood pressure gauges will read normal, and prevent the heart from delivering the oxygen demands of the body, demands which have not changed.

But now with the heart shackled by the added pharmacological deadweight, those oxygen demands don’t get met. Short-term effect: decreased circulation, oxygen deficit, fatigue. Long term effect: heart muscle degeneration, enlargement, degeneration of any organ or tissue which is not getting the blood it keeps calling for, lung congestion, premature aging, and early death.

Heart muscle is different from skeletal muscle.

When you work out and your biceps get bigger, it’s getting stronger. The biceps is skeletal muscle. Heart muscle is different. When heart muscle enlarges, it’s getting weaker – overstretched and thinner and flimsier. (Guyton, p 282) That’s why an enlarged heart is a problem – a pathology.

Why does the heart enlarge? Increased resistance from blocked arteries makes it harder to push all the blood through the system. Unlike skeletal muscle, heart muscle can never rest, so in the congestive patient the cardiac muscle becomes larger, flimsier, less substantial as time goes by.

STANDARD PRESCRIPTION COCKTAILS

When a patient first goes to the doctor and is labeled with hypertension, the standard cocktails of drugs the new patient is given are called practice guidelines. In 2002 there was an article in the Journal of the AMA which stated that 87% of the authors who set these practice guidelines for physicians were themselves financially linked to the drug they’re recommending. [2]

Let’s briefly look at each type of drug in an average heart case.

CALCIUM CHANNEL BLOCKERS

This class works by keeping calcium from the heart muscle, thus inhibiting muscle contraction. Examples include:

• Cardene
• DynaCirc
• Cradizem
• Procardia
• Norvasc

and many others.

Studies of long term use of this class of drug prove that calcium channel blockers enlarge the heart, as described above. What is less commonly known is that they also shrink the brain in most cases within 5 years. [3, 4]

A European study in 2000 [5] showed that calcium channel blockers caused

• loss of intellect
• 26% increase in heart attack
• no lowering of blood pressure

Other medical sources show how calcium channel blockers significantly increase one’s chances for both cancer and diabetes. [3,6 – New England Journal of Med]

BETA BLOCKERS/ANGIOTENSIN CONVERTING ENZYME INHIBITORS
These 2 classes of heart drugs handicap the heart by blocking nerves that control heart muscle.

Same problem as above: the blood output of the heart is artificially reduced, causing less oxygen to reach the body’s cells and tissues. The result will be normal blood pressure cuff readings, but that may have very little to do with actual one’s health. The body still needs all that blood it needed before taking the drugs, only now the need is being disguised.

The problem is being covered up, in the classic allopathic style. The body is now being forced to go through life with less oxygen than it needs, and organs slowly start wearing out. Premature aging.

Some standard beta blockers:

• Atenolol
• Propranolol
• Practolol
• Carvedilol

Some ACE inhibitors:

• Accupril
• Altace
• Captopril
• Lotensin

In addition to the long term destructive side effects of early death from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes by using these drugs, here is a partial list of more immediate side effects, according to the manufacturers:

• Headache
• Dizziness
• Slowed heart
• Edema
• Abnormal EKG
• Angina
• Irregular heartbeat
• Low blood pressure
• Fast heart
• Fainting
• Amnesia
• Depression
• Hallucinations
• Insomnia
• Personality change
• Tremors
• Ringing in the ears
• Anorexia
• Constipation
• Vomiting
• Weight gain
• Photosensitivity
• Nosebleed
• Muscle cramps
• Joint pain
• Sexual difficulties
• Anemia
• Birth defects
• Kidney failure
• Decreased white cells

source: Physician’s Desk Reference [7]

A study in Annals of Allergy showed a 2000% increase in death by anaphylaxis by using ACE inhibitors. [8]

DIURETICS – THE WATER PILL
The 1980s saw the enormous popularity of diuretics. The astounding reasoning behind these drugs posits that since the heart has to work so hard to pump the blood through the system, let’s reduce blood volume by dehydrating the body. They talk about “clearing water” from the body, fantasizing that excess water in the blood is responsible for high blood pressure.

Diuretic names are very familiar:

• Lasix
• HCT
• Aldactone
• Lozol
• Diuril

and many more.

WHY DIURETICS CAN’T POSSIBLY WORK

It is a masterpiece of hoodwinking that the average patient buys the shaky rap used to sell these dangerous drugs, about “thinning the blood” – that the blood needs less water in order to normalize blood pressure. First of all, as we saw in the Water chapter, most Americans are dehydrated to start with. The body is 70% water and the brain 90%. So the idea that the blood has excess water is preposterous per se.

Worse, as water is artificially pumped out of the body by diuretics, what does that do to blood viscosity? Make the blood thicker or thinner? Pop quiz.

The correct answer to that question has been known by true physiologists since the 1930s. Harvard’s Walter B Cannon MD, one of the foremost physiologists of his day, patiently and meticulously documents the simple facts: the percentage of water in the blood is virtually unchanged, whether the body is dehydrated or given more water than it needs. Only in the most pathologically dehydrated individual does water content drop even slightly.
([21] – The Wisdom of the Body) Survival depends on human blood remaining constant within a very narrow range of both pH and viscosity (water content).

What this means for the patient taking diuretics is that the water being artificially pumped out is having no effect on blood thickness whatsoever.

Why does no one ever ask these absurdly simple questions? Why do they just mutely take their pills?

In addition to promoting dehydration and even higher blood pressure, here are some of the other side effects of diuretics:

• fatigue
• depression
• irritability
• urinary incontinence
• loss of sexual drive
• breast swelling in men
• allergic reactions
• gout
• Mg and K deficiency
• raise cholesterol level
• arrhythmias
• early heart attack

[3,4,7]

THE MYTH OF CHOLESTEROL DRUGS

Duane Graveline MD is an astronaut and flight surgeon. Years ago he began taking Lipitor to lower his cholesterol. He then woke up one morning to find that he had lost all memory of the past 20 years of his life.

When he recovered from this global amnesia, Graveline set about to find out what had really happened to him. His research led him to write the amazing book titled Statin Drugs [4]. Realizing that the only thing that had changed in his life to bring on the amnesia was Lipitor, Graveline conducted extensive research into the history and pharmacology of all the cholesterol or statin drugs.

Statin drugs came on the scene in the late 1980s along with the sudden claim by the medical community that the cause of high blood pressure was high cholesterol, mostly from animal foods like red meat, eggs, and dairy.

With relentless, sledgehammer type media repetition of the same disinformation over and over again, in a very short time there were few people, both lay and professional, who did not accept as self evident the following myths:

• High cholesterol causes high blood pressure
• High blood cholesterol causes atherosclerosis
• Cholesterol from animal products causes heart disease
• High blood cholesterol needs to be controlled by medication
• Heart drugs can cure the heart

From the most authoritative scientific sources, Graveline derives the facts that not only refute this list of notions but also demonstrate statin drugs as an undeniable cause of

• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Alzheimers
• Aging
• Impotence

Graveline reminds us how before the 1980s, before the cholesterol myths were introduced, the earlier hype was the “eat fiber, no saturated fats” mantra. This type of indoctrination defied the historical evidence of cultures who relied heavily on animal products in the diet and yet had no incidence of heart disease. Indeed, Weston A Price proved this fact long ago in his master work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration wherein he describes the lifestyles of the healthiest people on earth. [9]

THE NEW STATIN DRUGS
As Graveline records, all of a sudden and out of nowhere in the late 1980s came the cholesterol drugs, with the media in full battle attack, shrieking about how these drugs were America’s only hope of survival from the heart disease epidemic, etc… We know the names:

• Lipitor
• Mevacor
• Zocor
• Crestor
• Baycol

The biggest was Lipitor. By 2002 it had become the highest selling drug in history. [10] Lipitor was the first drug in history to break the $10 billion per year mark, and by 2005 had passed $12 billion. [11]

By 2009 Lipitor was bringing in more than $15 billion per year.

Over 40 million patients are on Lipitor, with another 20 million on other statin drugs. (Graveline, p 99)

HOW CHOLESTEROL DRUGS WORK

Statin drugs work by disabling a liver enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. This enzyme is necessary in the pathway by which the body makes cholesterol. [12]

So there is no doubt that statin drugs will attempt to block the body from producing all cholesterol. But is that a really a good idea?

WHAT IS CHOLESTEROL?
Cholesterol is one of the most important compounds made by the body. It is vital for survival.

Just for starters, cholesterol makes up:

• all cell membranes
• cartilage
• myelin
• synapses
• bile acids, necessary for absorbing vitamins A,D,E, and K
• the steroid base for all the body’s hormones

Without cholesterol you would have no hormones, including

• testosterone
• estrogen
• aldosterone
• cortisol
• calcitrol

No hormones – no survival. So even at first glance we must wonder what the original thinking was behind creating drugs that would have this kind of an effect in the body… beyond the $15 billion, of course.

Co-enzyme Q10
Statin drugs also inhibit production of a vital metabolic enzyme called Coenzyme Q-10, with output falling by 50% in just 30 days. [13] All the body’s cells must have CoQ-10 in order to produce ATP for cell energy, and also to make collagen for structural integrity.

Doesn’t that sound like a rather critical side effect for a drug with only doubtful value to begin with?

Here are a few of the consequences of having low Co Q-10

• rhabdomyolysis
• hepatitis
• myopathy
• neuropathy
• cardiomyopathy
• vertigo
• congestive heart failure

– Graveline p 35

All this in exchange for the drugs’ dubious value as a cholesterol controller??

The first of these effects is serious enough all by itself.

Rhabdomyolysis is a potentially fatal disease in which muscle tissue virtually liquefies because cell walls have disintegrated from lack of CoQ-10. The resulting debris clogs up the kidneys. It affects heart muscle as well, causing weakened cardiac output.

THE CHOLESTEROL MYTHS
Even more credible than the work of Graveline was the work of a Danish physician named Uffe Ravnskov, MD. [14] With painstaking, irrefutable care and precision, Ravnskov analyzed every single study since 1987 that has been held up by organized medicine as proof of the cholesterol/diet/heart myth that is so slavishly accepted today.

In his master work The Cholesterol Myths Dr Ravnskov meticulously shows how the actual conclusions of the major clinical studies themselves were just the opposite of the results that have been falsely claimed by the marketing arm of organized medicine all these years.

Among those studies were

• MRFIT study
• New York University study
• Paterson study
• Framingham Mass. study
• Mayo Clinic study
• UCLA study

Dr Ravnskov demystifies the conventional wisdom that has tricked Americans for the past 20 years into believing that high cholesterol from animal products was the main cause of heart disease, that high cholesterol could be controlled by drugs, and that these drugs would extend life.

Ravnskov is relentless in demanding the scientific basis of the hypertension issue. After explaining what the pertinent research actually found, he uncovers what the real experts on heart disease say. A few examples:

 

THE BLOOD THINNER MYTH

Coumadin. Xarelta. Ever notice they don’;t work very well?

4. WARFARIN SLAVES

Warfarin – Coumadin – Xarelta. Same thing.

Reports I get from doing consultations have put me in a position to have direct awareness of how desperate medicine has become to invent new ways to force people into unending programs of prescription drugs.

I really didn’t want to know all this..

Had a recent interview with a patient who was told in April she had vertebral artery thrombosis, possible aneurysm. Follow up CT in July reports thrombosis, no aneurysm, no dissection. They also told the patient she has a vertebral artery dissection, which she didn’t.

The thrombosis, described in both studies, was of “indeterminate age.” Meaning she could have been born with it, or at least have had it for a long time. Treatment: PT, and lifetime Warfarin (Coumadin).

Physical Therapy, or Shake and Bake as it is colloquially known, would have no certain positive effect on thrombosis, with just as great a chance of breaking a stable thrombosis up and turning it into an embolism.

The patient tells a darkly funny story about her report of findings. This older woman in a white coat, acting very doctorly, with all the condescension that entails, comes into the patient’s room and asks her in a fake Euro accent if she has “seen the film” about Coumadin.

She’s talking about this very intimidating, frightening NLP-type video they make everybody watch, any patient with any real or imagined circulation problem.

This doctor, who looks like an Asian Morticia Adams, apparently is The Closer for Coumadin in that hospital. Her job is to go around and make sure of patient compliance, which is a standard obstacle with prescribing Coumadin. Patient resistance is common, hence the video.

Their plan is that everyone, no matter what the diagnosis, understands that they will be on Coumadin for life. No getting better, no improved health, you now live in the shadow of the threat of What Might Happen, this rule by fear that ensures a lifetime marketing plan for Coumadin.

These guys are the past masters at marketing – they’re locking in the life-or-death necessity for a permanent prescription before they even get the diagnosis! Turns out, it’s the worst false advertising. My new PDR just came in.

Now of course any sane human should read the entire section on any drug they plan on taking. But with Warfarin, we should all read the entire entry- p. 2666.

Once you do that, you will have about 10x more knowledge of what Coumadin really does than your doctor, count on it. This is one of the most dangerous and debilitating drugs ever invented.

All most doctors know is the cliche they learned back in medical school: Coumadin is a “blood thinner” that is required in any case of heart or circulatory disease, to keep the blood thin enough to pass through the clogged arteries, especially the capillaries.

This simplistic metaphor is the extent of their knowledge 99% of the time, believe me. Try questioning them. They know nothing further.

In reality, that’s not what Coumadin really does at all. Same with Warfarin and Xarelta. They’re not a blood thinner – they’re anticoagulants, which is something entirely different.

An anticoagulant interferes with certain steps in the vitamin K/fibrinogen clotting cascade. The drug maintains a completely unnatural condition in the blood at all times. The drug’s very dangerous effect is that it prevents clotting, as if anyone would ever have occasion to want that. Warfarin creates a chronic susceptibility to excess bleeding, in the event you cut yourself, or some internal bleeding is happening.

Clotting is a necessary survival mechanism. Why would people want to take a drug that makes them virtual hemophiliacs?

Under the 1000x microscope, we looked at the live blood of this Coumadin patient on the monitor and saw anything but thin blood. We saw the typical rouleaux and red cell aggregation associated with the standard processed American diet. These glued-together cells definitely have a deleterious effect on normal circulation, but they are completely unaffected by Coumadin.

That’s not the worst of it. Wait till you see the PDR‘s pages of side effects and tissue destruction that are common with coumadin – weakening of arteries, hemorrhage, liver diseases, respiratory disease, skin necrosis, organ deterioration, GI symptoms, tissue death, emboli, etc.

See if any of the symptoms you live with are listed as effects of this drug. Stop believing these unlettered Svengalis.

You can read it by yourself. Just do it– the Physicians Desk Reference is in every community library. Forget the online version – it’s for the terminally unlettered. Read the book itself – it’s not that difficult, and very complete.

If you don’t protect yourself, you deserve the fate they have reserved for you. Natural selection – survival of the informed.

Seems like at least one of you should read it, because it’s a virtual certainty your doctor has not.

There is a true blood thinner, however – something that really keeps rouleaux and aggregation of erythrocytes from forming throughout the day. It’s not a drug at all. It is a completely natural supplement with no side effects whatsoever. It is an enzyme formula called Digestazyme, which actually accomplishes what these pharmaceutical “blood thinnners” claim to.

Read the chapter..

THE MASAI AND THE ESKIMOS

There are two civilizations that always get left out of the any mainstream “study” of heart disease and cholesterol: the Masai and the Eskimos. ([14], p 32)

The Masai are sheepherders who live in the highlands of Kenya. For centuries their diet has consisted almost exclusively of blood, meat, and milk. A diet higher in cholesterol could scarcely be imagined, unless of course we consider the diet of another isolated group: Eskimos. The Eskimos subsist on diets of meat, fish, and blubber. When no meat or fish is available they can live for months on blubber alone – almost 100% cholesterol. So if the diet/heart/cholesterol myth of organized medicine were true, these two groups should be dying of hypertension and heart attack in high numbers. Instead, the exact opposite is true – heart disease is unknown in both these societies.

The Masai have consistently set records in distance events in the Olympics and all world class athletic events. And yet none of the top clinical studies cited above by Ravnskov has ever even mentioned either of these two patently obvious examples of the benefits of high natural cholesterols in the diet.

A premier example of selective data gathering in the statistical carnival of the junk science that underlies the cholesterol/heart disease/drug mythology of today…

DR KILMER MCCULLY AND HOMOCYSTEINE

So if high blood cholesterol doesn’t cause hypertension, then what is the real cause?

The pioneer in discovering the true cause of heart disease was certainly Kilmer McCully MD. Ignored for years because his research did not support the heart drug empire, McCully is now finally getting the recognition he deserves – at least from the informed.

In his master work The Heart Revolution, McCully clearly and brilliantly describes the pathophysiology that results from chronically high level of homocysteine in the blood. [15]

Homocysteine is an amino acid that results from the breakdown of protein by the body, specifically of methionine, which is an amino acid found in most plant and animal protein.

Homocysteine itself is normally not harmful to humans because it is broken down when normal levels of B vitamins and good fats are present. The problem is that most Americans have become vastly deficient in both these nutrients. As a consequence, homocysteine is not metabolized, and begins to accumulate. Its constant presence in the blood triggers a chronic inflammatory process within the arteries.

The arterial linings eventually thicken and are then able to attract debris that is going by in the bloodstream, which becomes incorporated into a matrix known as arterial plaque. Plaque builds up, arteries narrow, we now have atherosclerosis, and the rest of the story is well known – blocked arteries, hypertension, etc.

OXIDIZED CHOLESTEROL

McCully was the first to tell us about the Emperor’s lack of attire, with respect to the cholesterol mythology, but no one believed him for more than a decade. Turns out that cholesterol actually does play a role in plaque formation, but not in the way that is popularly advertised. Here’s what McCully proved:

After the inflammatory process is established in the artery lining, a certain type of cholesterol is likely to become incorporated into plaque by gluing itself to the damaged endothelial cells.

But it is only oxidized cholesterol that has this plaque-forming propensity. Oxidized cholesterol is that found in processed foods, especially as a component on hydrogenated oils, margarine, deep fried foods, fast foods, chips, fries, and the like. (see The Magic Bean [16]) Oxidized cholesterol is man-made.

Contrary to conventional wisdom and the medical/heart bandwagon, cholesterol from animal foods and unprocessed plant sources contains sufficient enzymes for its own breakdown, and is therefore not a candidate for aiding plaque formation.

It’s so simple when you look at the larger picture. And this information is not even new; McCully began proving it in the late 1970s.

DEATH BY BYPASS

Angioplasty? Bypass? Do you think these are going to save you? Guess what the re-occlusion rate for angioplasty is after two years? Re-occlusion means the arteries close up again.

“The value of angioplasty in occluded coronary arteries is limited by a reocclusion rate of 50-70%.”
– Cardiology Department, King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS, UK [17]

How could it be otherwise? If the arteries to the heart are packed full of plaque, do you think the rest of the arteries throughout the body would be clear? Of course not. So as soon as balloon angioplasty pushes some of the plaque in the coronary arteries aside and cleans them out a little, what starts happening the following day? Exactly – re-occlusion. Plaque from the rest of the arterial system just begins to fill in the space – nature abhors a vacuum.

In a 1997 study, two groups of heart attack patients were followed for one year. The first group had either angioplasty or bypass. The second group had nothing. Guess what the difference in mortality was? Zero. After one year both groups were exactly the same! ( [18] New England Journal of Medicine) That means that neither bypass nor angioplasty extends people’s lifespan whatsoever – statistically you’ll live just as long without either, by doing nothing.

That’s not long enough for a study? In a 22 year follow-up study of 682 heart patients, it was found that the bypass surgery had no effect on the survival rate or the day to day pain. ( [19] Am J Cardiology)

We could go on and on citing similar studies, but the conclusion is inescapable. After several years, every heart surgeon must eventually confront reality: bypass surgery doesn’t save lives. After surviving a fair chance of dying on the table, most patients come back for more later on.

Most bypass surgeries these days are done before the patient is in acute distress. Often the patient is intimidated into surgery with mild chest pain as the only symptom, perhaps even with normal blood pressure. The diagnosis is made quickly before the prey gets better and flies away. We’re talking sales and marketing here, and the surgeons are very good at closing the sale. Fear and panic are very persuasive motivators.

What about the actual risk of death from the bypass operation itself. In a bizarre advertisement in the 23 Nov 98 issue of Newsweek, they ran a comparison of bypass surgery death rates on the operating table among the leading hospitals in the country. Here are the survival odds they advertise for bypass surgery

• Texas Heart Center 87%
• Johns Hopkins 90.2%
• Mayo Clinic 93.3%

A 13% chance of dying from a surgery that isn’t even going to prolong survival? That is marketing.

Very successful marketing: 500,000 coronary bypasses surgeries and 1 million angioplasties per year. [20]

LIFETIME PROGRAM

Remember when you were first diagnosed with high blood pressure and were first put on medications to “control your blood pressure”? Remember that?

OK now, when was the next time your doctor took your blood pressure? Two months later? Six months? Three years? Never? The point is, if you’re taking these powerful medications to ‘control’ blood pressure, how will you or your doctor know if they’re working or not unless you monitor your blood pressure every few days?

Heart medications are like most medications – fine for short-term, life-threatening situations. But long term, as with any drug, legal or illegal, eventually your body will pay the price. Looking again in the Physicians’ Desk Reference [6], we find that even the manufacturers of most heart medications don’t recommend them for indefinite, open-ended use. That book is in any library. Look up your medication and see the recommended duration of prescription.

So people say – look at my BP – 130/84. And I’ve been on medication for 4 years. I need it to keep my blood pressure down. Well how do you know that you still need the drug to do that? Perhaps the heart has accommodated after all this time, or else maybe you have learned to do less and to make less energy demands on the system. Is this health? Are you getting stronger or weaker, year by year? And what about the very certain side effects of those drugs?

Others will say, yes I’ve been on medication for several years and my blood pressure is 160/105. Guess what? It’s not that your medication is ineffective – it is definitely having a physiological impact. It’s just that the effect is not the one your doctor predicted. Patients like this are at double the risk – high blood pressure plus drug toxicity and side effects.

Or they say – yeah I know it’s high, but if I stop with the medication, it’ll go through the roof. Long term or short term? How do you know? What if you were on vacation and your cruise ship marooned you on a desert island somewhere, without your drugs. Would you die? What would happen?

The point is, have you ever heard of a doctor taking somebody off heart medication because the drugs had finally cured the heart problem?

A SANER APPROACH TO NORMAL HEART HEALTH

What’s the alternative to this one-way downward spiral?

It’s clear that a lifestyle of drugs and bad diet isn’t working too well and probably won’t last too long. Do people on heart medications look healthy? Do they have an active life? Are they getting stronger or weaker, year by year? Look at all the people you used to know in this category who are no longer around.

The natural alternative to dead end medicine is simply this: a combination of lifestyle change and detox. That’s what this website is all about: lifestyle change and detox. The New West Diet, the 60 Day Detox Program, and The Last Resort.

A universal principle for any life form is that either it’s improving or it’s dying. Day by day the inner systems are either becoming stronger and more refined, or else they’re degenerating and breaking down. Not both. Unless they’re in a serious accident, most people don’t die all at once, but by stages, day by day, very often with no pain or symptoms. Just like heart attacks. Do these people get a warning? In 40% of heart attacks, their very first symptom was death.

These days everybody is on the healthy heart bandwagon. But it’s mostly frantic, misguided marketing. No fat, low fat, fat free, heart health, low cholesterol, no cholesterol, no trans fats – these labels are found on some very heart-unfriendly foods. How can we make any sense of all this?

Again, The New West Diet, the 60 Day Detox Program, and The Last Resort.

ENZYMES

The program must begin with an understanding of the prime importance of enzymes. The surprise here is: it doesn’t matter what you eat; it only matters what you digest. That is why charts of calories and fat/protein/carbo ratios are meaningless. If the food isn’t being digested, what does it matter what percentage protein you eat, or for what blood type or body type or in what Zone, or what beach? So we begin with a focus on the subject of enzymes. For the whole story, see the chapter on enzymes at thedoctorwithin.com.

Enzymes break down foods into their simplest components, the only usable forms. The body has its own enzymes for digestion – amylase, pepsin, lipase, chymotrypsin, ([23] Guyton), to name a few.

Because of food processing, most foods we eat contain no enzymes. The best foods humans can eat are those which contain within them the enzymes necessary for that food’s complete breakdown and assimilation by the body. ([22] Howell) Examples: raw fruits and vegetables. The more raw fruits and raw vegetables in the diet, the more digested the food becomes, resulting in a greater nutritive value by the time the blood nourishes the individual cells in all organs and tissues.

What happens to what doesn’t get broken down, what doesn’t get digested within the digestive tract every day? Right. It stays there. Goes in but never comes out. Does the word putrefy mean anything to you? It’s another word for rot. The undigested food rots and clumps up and blocks the stomach and intestines. Year by year we simply fill up, like a balloon. The body dehydrates, toxifies, and degenerates.

DEBRIS IN THE BLOOD

Undigested food then makes its way from the intestines to where it doesn’t belong – into the bloodstream. Leaky Gut Syndrome. (Colon chapter) This makes the blood cells clump together, like stacks of coins (rouleaux). Blood cells are supposed to circulate through the smallest vessels, single file. When they’re all stuck together, blood flow slows way down. Increased resistance for the Main Pump – the heart – harder to push all that blood through the system.

Once in the bloodstream, the undigested food can no longer be digested, because digestion only happens in the digestive tract, not in the blood. The undigested sludge can then lodge anywhere – in the muscles, joints, or any organ.

The weakest organ, the one that goes first, will malfunction. Then you go to your doctor and have all efforts focused on this one organ, whatever it may be, and they’ll even give you a name for your condition. And each condition has a certain protocol of tests, drugs, and surgery. Not any of which has anything to do with the original problem, which is still ongoing, especially if we factor hospital food into the equation. The original problem was simple: you weren’t digesting your food.

WEIGHT LOSS PLATEAU

Some patients actually make a serious change in their day-to-day food intake. They make great progress and begin to feel much better. But often they get to a point where even though they are eating very reasonably, they just don’t seem to be able to lose any more weight, or get any better. They’ve hit the plateau, the brick wall, the glass ceiling. This is a different stratum of problem from simple food intake. Here we are dealing with fundamental issues: digestion, metabolism, fat storage, colon blockage. Why can’t a person of normal weight lose cellulite in the hips and legs no matter how good the diet becomes? Answer: digestion, enzyme metabolism, fat storage.

FREE RADICALS AND HEART HEALTH

Another aspect of the artery story has to do with free radicals. Remember, those are the unstable little molecules we get from drugs, alcohol, stress, processed food, smoking, radiation from TV and computers, trauma.

A free radical is a molecule that is missing an electron and tries to steal an electron from a normal cell or molecule in the body, making that molecule able to do the same thing to another one, in a chain reaction, like musical chairs. This is how DNA gets altered, and how cells change – how cancer starts.

In the arteries, free radicals are the guys who make the little cuts or nicks in the artery lining. Babies’ arteries are as smooth as looking down the inside of the barrel of a shiny new shotgun. If homocysteine levels are always high, eventually artery linings inflame and are further damaged by free radicals.

GENETICS

Of all the people who died this year in the U.S. 1 out of 2 of them died from heart disease. Not very good odds, would you say? Most people aren’t born with a bad heart. The genetic theory is pretty shaky – it really doesn’t matter if your parents or grandparents died of heart attacks. Much more significant are the eating habits and cooking habits we inherit. These determine the health of the heart far more than genetics can.

CHELATION

Some clinics are offering a medical alternative to bypass surgery. It is called chelation therapy. EDTA is an amino acid compound that is introduced into the blood for the purpose of dissolving the plaque out of the arteries. Practitioners claim high rates of success.

Chelation therapy can be either intravenous or else given orally, with tablets. Originally developed for cleaning heavy metals out of the blood, the application with arterial plaque soon became obvious. Because chelation therapy cuts into the $50 billion heart surgery turf, insurance companies won’t cover it unless the diagnosis is to resolve heavy metal poisoning. Although EDTA may damage the kidneys, at least it actually does what it advertises, which is to remove plaque from all the arteries – an improvement over bypass surgery and angioplasty, which only rearrange the plaque temporarily.

NATURAL ALTERNATIVE TO HEART MEDICATION –

If you’re on medication now, there is a natural way to lower blood pressure and get off drugs. Many people have done it. (See Feedback.) A few natural supplements and a simple program can do the trick:

1. Enzymes
2. Oral Chelation
3. New West Diet
4. The 60 Day Detox

This program is elaborated in detail at thedoctorwithin.com

LIFETIME OF DRUGS

Ask your doctor when he plans on taking you off drugs. Not in this lifetime?

Dr. Kavanaugh, a Canadian cardiologist, instead of bypass and angioplasty, puts his patients on a specialized exercise program, initially very light, and gradually increasing in duration. One of his bypass patients actually went on to run in the Boston Marathon!

But even easier than these programs are the simple enzymes and chelation supplements cited above.

Ever notice the pattern of how the cause of every disease seems to be a deficiency of drugs? Very curious. One of the most famous heart surgeons in the US, Robert Willix, finally stopped recommending either drugs or surgery because of all the years of watching his own failures and realizing that angioplasty and bypass simply do not heal people. They just postpone the inevitable for a short time.

Willix came to the same conclusion: no matter how far gone the patient is, there’s a far greater chance of lasting improvement simply by diet and exercise. In fact, that’s the only chance.

But Americans don’t think like that. Responsible for my own health? I just trust my doctor. That way I don’t actually have to do anything, except take my pills. And I can continue my present self toxifying self destructive lifestyle.

The death statistics however indicate otherwise – in 95 years, it’s gone from less than 1% all the way up to 50% of all deaths being caused by heart failure. Today over a million Americans die of heart disease every year. The doctor knows what’s best? Best for whom? The surgeons, hospitals and drug companies?

The new idea is – work with the body, facilitate its own inner systems of regulation, minimize stress from food overload. Detox the blood, the milieu in which all cells are bathed. The holistic approach, in evidence since the days of Hippocrates.

Drugs? If drugs worked, you’d already be better, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

 

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