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Coronary heart disease
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.Part 1: Why did coronary heart disease 'take off'?
Coronary heart disease took off in the 1920s, but atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries, which the medical establishment teaches is the cause, doesn't happen overnight: it takes many years. So what factor introduced in the late nineteenth century could explain the twentieth century occurrence of coronary heart disease? Dr Kilmer McCully, Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston, told me that
'The introduction of food processing with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and the use of chemical additives and other processes in the 20th century is the only satisfactory explanation for the dramatic changes in incidence of vascular disease in the 20th century.'[1] The major dietary change brought about by such food processing was a marked reduction of the B group of vitamins in such processed foods. This leads to an increase of a non-protein amino acid called homocysteine in the blood.
Numerous studies have shown an independent relationship between raised levels of homocysteine and cardiovascular diseases.[2] Starting at 10 micromols/L, there is a linear increase in cardiovascular risk as homocysteine levels rise.[3] The B vitamins, particularly folic acid, prevent this occurrence and, thus, prevent diseases affecting the blood system. There is little doubt that we should ditch unreliable measurements of cholesterol and concentrate on increasing B vitamins while using homocysteine as a measuring tool.
References
1. Kilmer S. McCully, M.D. Personal communication.
2. Boushey CJ, Beresford SA, Omenn GS, Motullsky A. A quantitative assessment of plasma homocysteine as a risk for vascular disease. Probable benefits of raising folic acid intakes. JAMA 1995; 274: 1049-1057.
3. De Bree A, Verschuren WMM, Kromhout D, et al. Homocysteine determinants and the evidence to what extent homocysteine determines risk of coronary heart disease. Pharmacol Rev 2002; 54: 599-618.
Last updated 1 August 2008
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