Thursday, December 11, 2014

HEART SURGEON SPEAKS OUT ON WHAT REALLY CAUSES HEART DISEASE


Dr Dwight Lundell said, “I freely admit to being wrong…..today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact….insisted heart diseased resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol….the only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and diet that severely restricted fat intake….It is not working”.

I think this is a statement with a dramatic picturesque approach, before at all, cardiovascular disease can refer to differents heart or blood vessel problems, the term is often used to mean damage to your heart or blood vessels by atherosclerosis, a buildup of fatty plaques in your arteries, it buildup thickens and stiffens artery walls, which can inhibit blood flow through your arteries to your organs and tissues (Mayo Clinic Foundation, 2014).

Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of cardiovascular disease, but it can be caused by others correctable problems such as unhealthy diet, sedentary, obesity and smoking. Hyperlipidemia, included the high blood cholesterol, constitutes one of the most important risk factors for atherosclerosis (Damjanov, 2012) and cardiovascular diseases.

The discovery a few years ago that inflammation as concept, in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease like Dr Lundell mentions,  is really true, but a long time ago, the medical community in spite of an incompletely understood the interaction between the critical cellular elements in the atherosclerotic lesion, postulated theories related to atherosclerosis and cells injury, for example Rokitansky in 1851, suggested that atherosclerosis begins in the intima with deposition of thrombus and its subsequent organization by the infiltration of fibroblasts and secondary lipid deposition, few years later in 1856, Virchow proposed that atherosclerosis start with lipid transudation into the arterial wall and its interaction with cellular and extracellular elements, causing intimal proliferation (Boudi, 2014). In the 1990s, Ross and Fuster postulated that vascular injury starts the atherosclerotic process. (Ross, Fuster, & Topol, 1996).

The above explained that we were not wrong, but we were finding explanations based on studies and investigations that were conducted.

Finally, with the knowledge that we have today, the concept a little clearer about the inflammation and potential precursors, I agree with Dr Lundell, what we can do is choose whole foods that our grandmother served and not the manufactured foods that we found in the grocery today, because eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, we can reverse the damage in our arteries.

Bibliography

Boudi, F. B. (2014, May 12). www.emedicine.medscape.com. Retrieved from Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/153647-overview#aw2aab6b2b

Damjanov, I. (2012). Pathology for the Health Professions. ELSEVIER.

Mayo Clinic Foundation. (2014, Jul 29). www.mayoclinic.org. Retrieved from Heart Disease: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/basics/causes/con-20034056

Ross, R., Fuster, V., & Topol, E. (1996). Atherosclerosis and Coronary Artery Disease. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott-Raven.

 

 

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