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Diet and Atherosclerosis information
Part 1: Introduction
There are many conditions in Western industrialised societies today that were unheard of, or at least very rare, just a century ago. The same conditions are still unheard of in primitive peoples who do not have the 'benefits' of our knowledge. There is a very good reason for this: They eat what Nature intended; we don't. The diseases caused by our incorrect and unnatural diets are those featured on these pages.
Dietary causes:
Carbohydrate-rich 'healthy' diet; polyunsaturated vegetable oils and margarines, processed convenience foods.
Atherosclerosis is a condition whereby arteries become blocked or partially blocked. This blockage effectively reduces the interior diameter of the artery thus restricting blood flow. The body then either increases the blood pressure or oxygen transport around the body is lessened. If the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart muscle are involved, the heart muscle is starved of the oxygen it needs. And that results the chest pain called angina, and eventually, as arteries become completely blocked either by the atherosclerosis or a blood clot, in a heart attack.
Conventional orthodox treatment for atherosclerosis includes bypass surgery in which the blocked coronary artery is removed and a piece of vein, usually from the leg, is grafted in to replace it. Another less drastic method used to treat atherosclerosis is a 'stent'. This is a metal lattice which is inserted into the partially blocked, atherosclerotic artery and expanded to hold the artery open. In neither case does the treatment address the cause of the atherosclerosis, or do anything to help other arteries which may also be affected by atherosclerosis. Not only that, both treatments are expensive, invasive and potentially life-threatening.[1] Around one in 20 patients dies on the operating table.
Often these techniques do not last long and have to be repeated as atherosclerosis develops again. The few times they have been subjected to double blind studies to assess their usefulness to cure or prevent atherosclerosis they failed to demonstrate any improvement in the long term survival.
That may well be because the 'furring' of the arteries we know as atherosclerosis is not a pathological deposition of fat or cholesterol as we are led to believe.
In 1953 a brilliant Canadian Physician, Dr G C Willis, made the crucial observation that atherosclerosis mainly occurs in the vessels near the heart. What was so special about them? Although wide and apparently strong, it was their very proximity to the heart that was the problem, he concluded. The sheer pumping force of the heart put those vessels under constant mechanical stress, thus weakening them. So, the atherosclerosis, he suggested, was a means of artificially thickening the arteries to prevent damage.[2]
Arguably, Willis should have been given a Nobel for his findings because, 30 years later, Drs Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein were awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery that atherosclerotic plaques are deposited in response to injury of the blood vessel wall.[3] Where arteries pass through bony channels in the skull or through the heart muscle, where they are strengthed by the tissues surrounding them they never develop atherosclerosis. This suggests that the stiffening action of atherosclerosis is actually a protective measure.[4]
Is atherosclerosis the most important cause of heart failure deaths?
And atherosclerosis may not be the most common cause of a heart death. Autopsies of adults who had suffered sudden cardiac deaths found that the most common cause of heart deaths was not blockage of the coronary arteries, but arrhythmias.[5] As far as we know, arrhythmia is not caused by any dietary constituent, but by physical or mental stress. That said, however, while supplements of the omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA did not reduce heart attacks, they did reduce arrhythmias.[6]
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