Saturated fat found mainly in animal products has been vilified by physicians, the media, and the edible oil industry for over 60 years, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. A meta-analysis of 21 prospective epidemiologic studies that had a total of 347,747 participants, showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or stroke.

Saturated fats have been nourishing societies around the world for thousands of years. If animal fats (saturated fats) are so dangerous, and vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fat) are so healthy, why are we so unhealthy as a nation? The scientific data of the past and present does not support the assertion that saturated fats cause heart disease. As a matter of fact, people who have had a heart attack haven’t eaten any more saturated fat than other people, and the degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated to diet.Ravnskov, Uffe. “The cholesterol Myths: Myth number 4”

Today in the United States one person will die from CVD every 37 seconds. This year in the U.S. over 1.2 million people will have a heart attack and just short of half will die. Approximately 80,000,000 people or roughly 25% of The U.S. has cardiovascular disease(CVD). It became our number one killer in the 1950’s and has not slowed down.(1)

Do you believe consuming saturated fat and cholesterol cause CVD? Do you believe eating polyunsaturated oils like canola and corn oil are not only good for you but lower your risk of CVD. If you answered yes to both of these questions, you are among the 10’s of millions who need to be enlightened by reading my article “Fats, Cholesterol and the Lipd Hypothesis”.

The truth is, saturated fat and cholesterol have nothing to do with your risk of cardiovascular disease. As a matter of fact there are many studies that show that people who have heart attacks do not eat anymore saturated fat than people who don’t have heart attacks. More-over the degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy, in heart attack victims, is unrelated to diet. It is also interesting to note that half of all heart attack victims do not have “clogged” arteries.

I have personally witnessed and cared for many patients who were experiencing (the big one) massive heart attacks in the emergency room. The degree of blockage had a wide range with the most common seemingly being between 80, 90 percent. But the interesting thing was, some people literally had no plaque what-so-ever according to cath lab reports. It was during my time working in emergency department, because of so many discrepancies, that I became very curious about what actually caused CVD.

low testosterone levels put men at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and early death?  One study shows that testosterone treatment reduces LDL cholesterol and increases HDL cholesterol.  Another study that looked at the cause of death in almost 2000 men aged 20 to 79 years.  The men with low testosterone at the start of the study had a 2.5 times greater risk of dying during the next ten years compared with men with higher testosterone levels.  These studies, and more, will be presented at The Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, in San Francisco, suggest that testosterone therapy has several positive effects.
(Vitacost.com Daily Health Tip; June, 2008)

Australian researchers found people mourning a loss of a loved one can die of a broken heart. In fact, the researchers found mourning the loss of a loved one increases your risk of having a heart attack 600%.

Grieving people are at significantly higher risk of heart problems, according to a Heart Foundation study of the physical changes suffered immediately after a profound loss, lead researcher Thomas Buckley said on Tuesday.

“We found higher blood pressure, increased heart rate and changes to immune system and clotting that would increase the risk of heart attack,” Buckley said.

Half of the 160 people studied were mourning the loss of a partner or child, and their risk of heart attack increased six-fold, he said. The risk, which was evident in people as young as 30, reduced after six months and leveled out after two years.

A sudden flood of stress hormones is believed to be behind the grief-induced heartache, a condition that earlier studies have found is more likely to affect women.

Newsmax.com Health Alerts

It’s been estimated that healthcare, or more accurately insurance, costs each American $8000.00 per year. The health-care we receive in the US is the best in the world by a long shot. It’s our insurance industry that our government has helped create through worthless regulation that needs reform. A majority of Americans agree in poll after poll, insurance reform is needed, but they do not want government run “healthcare”. They are smart enough to understand what a disaster that would be. Every “social program” from Medicare to social security is literally bankrupt. There are other answers.

Why don’t we hear anyone talking about is lifestyle and disease prevention as the key to affordable insurance? Because, it’s not PC to talk about the financial burden the unhealthy lifestyles many Americans put on the rest of the population. Although Americans have free will and choose their lifestyles, 100% of the blame is not theirs. A large portion of it belongs to the American Medical Association, American Dietetic Association, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, the edible oil industry and our government. The recommendations, treatments and products these organizations have bombarded society with using billions of dollars over the years wreak havoc even on the healthy. The end result, 100’s of billions of dollars wasted annually on treating highly preventable diseases.

The CDC reports that obesity related diseases have reached almost $150 billion. The cost of treating obesity has doubled over a decade due to increasing prevalence. According to the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)t he cost of cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the United States in 2009 is estimated to be $475.3 billion. This figure includes both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include the cost of physicians and other professionals, hospital and nursing home services, the cost of medications, home health care and other medical durables. Indirect costs include lost productivity that results from illness and death. The American Cancer Society estimates total costs of cancer to be $228.1 billion. Those with diabetes in 2002 had more than double the healthcare costs than those without. This includes both direct and indirect costs.

It’s glaringly obvious that the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries need to move from being treatment oriented to disease prevention. Unfortunately moving from allopathic medicine to holistic medicine is about as likely as winning the lottery; these industries make a fraction of the money in disease prevention as they do in treating disease. There is just not a lot of money to be made in healthy lifestyles.

A study finds older men who suffer from chronic anxiety substantially increase their risk of having a heart attack. While stress has been linked to an increased risk of heart problems, this is the first time that chronic anxiety has been identified as a risk factor also.

“There is an independent contribution of anxiety that can predict the onset of a heart attack among healthy older men,” said lead researcher Biing-Jiun Shen, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In the study, Shen’s group collected data on 735 men who participated in the Normative Aging Study, which assesses medical and psychological changes associated with aging. Each of the men completed psychological testing in 1986 and had no heart problems at the time. The men were followed for an average of 12 years.

The report appears in the Jan. 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

During follow-up, the researchers found men who had chronic anxiety had a 30 percent to 40 percent increased risk of heart attack. Those with the highest levels of anxiety on psychological testing had an even higher risk of heart attack.

The risk posed by anxiety remained even after the researchers adjusted their data to account for standard cardiovascular risk factors, health habits, and negative psychological and personality traits, Shen said.

Exaggerated response to acute and chronic stress in anxious individuals may trigger a number of pathways which increase the risk of developing coronary artery disease and being stricken with a heart attack, Fonarow said.

“Highly anxious individuals should be aware they may face an increased risk of a heart attack and take proactive steps under physician supervision to control those cardiovascular risk factors which are modifiable including blood pressure, lipid levels, activity level and weight,” Fonarow added. HealthDay News)

Moral of the story, don’t sweat the small stuff.

By the mid 1950’s, CVD became our number one killer and remains the leading killer today. It was around this time that the lipid hypothesis started to gain popularity. The lipid hypothesis, which was proposed by Ancel Keys in the late 1950’s, is a theory claiming there is a direct relationship between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet and the incidence of CVD. This theory however, is simplistic and unfounded; the biggest health scam in American history.

Today in the United States one person will die from CVD every 37 seconds.6 This year in the U.S. an estimated 1.26 million people will have a new or recurrent heart attack, and just short of half will die.7 Approximately 80,000,000 people or more than 25% of The U.S. population has one or more forms of cardiovascular disease.7 In 2002 CVD mortality was nearly 60% of “total mortality” in the U.S.6 This means that out of 2.4 million deaths from all causes, CVD was listed as a primary cause on about 1.4 million death certificates. CVD causes more deaths than the next 7 causes combined. It’s safe to say CVD had a meteoric rise from the 1930’s to the 1950’s to become number one and to this day the incidence is still rising. (We’re a Fat Unhealthy Nation. part I)

Did you know…

…cholesterol is a substance vital to the health of all cells in your body?

…your body produces 3 to 4 times more cholesterol than you eat?

…when you decrease your consumption the body increases it’s production and visa-versa?

…despite the same amounts of cholesterol flowing through them, veins never become sclerotic?

…arteries that pass through the bony channels of the skull and the few branches that pass through heart muscle never become sclerotic?

…studies of the hearts of people who have died from heart attacks showed approximately 1/5th of the victims had no evidence of coronary atherosclerosis?

…oxidized cholesterol is what accumulates in vessels not normal cholesterol?

…3/4’s of the lipids found in plaque is polyunsaturated?

…in Japan more people die of cerebral hemorrhage than in most other countries, and is greatest in those with the lowest cholesterol levels.

…there is no correlation between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease? In fact, many societies have decreased their animal fat consumption with a corresponding increase in cardiovascular disease.

…there are countless scientific and observable contradictions to the Lipid Hypothesis? Only one scientific contradiction is needed to disprove a hypothesis.

Do your homework and judge for yourself.

According to NewsMax Health Alerts, the five foods proven to fight cardiovascular disease are:

1. Spinach — Spinach is high in folate which helps prevent the accumulation of homoscysteine in the blood. Homoscysteine is a major risk factor for heart disease.
2. Salmon — Salmon is high in omega-3 fatty acids which reduce inflammation and help prevent plaque from blocking arteries.
3. Tomatoes — Tomatoes are rich in lycopene which lowers cholesterol.
4. Oatmeal — Oatmeal is a great source of soluble fiber which absorbs excess cholesterol and removes it from your body.
5. Pomegranates — Pomegranates are rich in polyphenols, which are antioxidants that keep hearts healthy by neutralizing cell-damaging free radicals, and may also reduce LDL “bad” cholesterol.

The above foods although nutritious,  are going to do very little in the way of warding off heart disease.  There are other foods wich are literally poisons that need to be avoided if one is trying to eat heart healthy.  Conversely, there are also foods and nutrients which you need to add to your diet that are much more heart healthy than the above list.

Despite what you have learned, high cholesterol is not your enemy. Our enemy in this battle against heart disease is vegetable oils.  That’s right, the very same oils that are promoted as heart healthy.  Studies using rabbits in the early 1900’s are often touted as proof positive that a diet high in cholesterol, which raise cholesterol, promote heart disease.  If you look up these studies you’ll find that the researchers used corn oil or partially hydrogenated oil. 

One study used corn oil with the same amount of cholesterol people normally consume.  The rabbits in this study like all the others developed rampant atherosclerosis.  As we’ve known for decades through past, as well as recent studies, vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils facilitate atherosclerosis without adding cholesterol.  Only God knows how many people have died or suffered as a result of the mass marketing of vegetable oils as heart healthy over the last 7 decades.

In his latest edition of “Did You Know…”, Mike Furci tackles such topics as anabolic steroids and their link (or lack of a link) to dangerous side effects, muscle contracting while working out and low testosterone levels and whether or not they can be associated with heart disease, diabetes and decreased libido.

…all the actual data and medical studies on healthy individuals (adults) show no conclusions that physiological replacement doses of testosterone or other anabolic steroids are dangerous or cause side effects that do not reverse with cessation?

Moreover, in males who maintain physiological high normal levels, there appears to be health-promoting benefits associated with steroids. All the evidence contradicts the anti-steroid media blitz that started in the 80’s and continues today.

Approximately 25 years ago, Dr. Bob Goldman took a ride on the media feeding frenzy train and wrote a book, “Death in the Locker Room.” This book puts steroids in the same class with alcohol and other recreational drugs as far as the dangers of usage. Since its release and despite the enormous increase in their use and dosage, there has not been one death attributable to steroids. (Planet Muscle Aug/Sept 2008: 72)

(Read the entire article here.)

Dr. James Stein, MD from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, praised the JUPITER study for exposing the fact that current therapeutic LDL-cholesterol levels are not only arbitrary, but are in fact a poor indicator of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. “Most patients with heart attacks have normal cholesterol values,” he stated. With the cholesterol theory crumbling the industry is under intense pressure to come up with a new risk factor, and one that can be treated with the same statin drugs they have invested so much money in. Enter Dr. Ridker and C-reactive protein (CRP). Ridker has been pushing treating CRP with statins for years. But is CRP a risk factor? A National Panel on CRP found no evidence treating CRP levels will improve survival rates (www.urmc.rochester.edu/pr/News/story.cfm?id=182). Elevated CRP levels are associated with many things including; anger, stress, arthritis, cancer, lupus, pneumonia, TB, oral contraceptive use, pregnancy, heart attacks, surgery, trauma, intense exercise, etc. It’s a marker for disease, not the cause. But since statins lower CRP levels slightly, you can count on CRP becoming the new cholesterol. The public will be made to fear CRP, be tested for it, and be put on dangerous statins to lower it. What a racket.