Dr. Paul Dudley White has said that heart disease has made the United States the most unhealthy country in the world. It accounts for 50 per cent of all deaths, which is ten times higher than in most civilized nations. This disease kills more men than women under the age of 45, but during the later years more women succumb to it. Although produced in thousands of experimental animals of every variety by one inadequate diet or another, always it is preventable. For animals which survive heart attacks, it is reversible.
Types of Heart Attacks
The arteries supplying blood to the heart muscles are called coronary arteries. These coronary arteries are plugged to some degree with fatty substances. If the circulation has been so decreased that little oxygen reaches the heart, pain occurs known as angina, a cousin of the word anguish.
Should the atherosclerosis become so severe that a coronary artery is completely plugged and no oxygen reaches a given area, a heart attack known as a coronary occlusion occurs. Because fatty substances are deposited slowly, years pass before the blood supply is thus completely blocked. Clots, however, form readily in the blood of persons with atherosclerosis. When a clot, or thrombus, clogs an artery and cuts off the oxygen supply, the attack is called a coronary thrombosis. A clot, which requires only minutes to form, can occur in the blood of young persons whose atherosclerosis is not advanced; hence coronary thrombosis rather than occlusion is now the major cause of heart attacks, and kills progressively younger men each year.
In any attack, great masses of cells--perhaps even half the heart itself-are destroyed. Before health can be restored, fatty deposits must be removed from the arterial walls , more clots prevented from forming, and the destroyed area, known as a myocardial infarction, must be gradually filled in with normal tissue.
Blood Fat and Clotting
The death rate from coronary thrombosis is high whenever diets contain large amounts of saturated fats;1Q-1a8n d the greater the quantity of saturated fat (triglycerides) in the blood, the more tendency it has to clot. Though a clot may cause phlebitis, varicose veins, a pulmonary embolism (a clot lodged in the lungs), or a stroke as readily as a heart attack, excessive blood fat rather than high cholesterol indicates that a coronary thrombosis might occur at any time. For example, of 100 patients who had heart attacks brought on by clots, only 18 per cent had blood cholesterols above 250 milligrams whereas almost go per cent had abnormally high blood fat. As with excessive cholesterol, persons prone to coronary thrombosis lack the nutrients necessary to utilize fats.
Fat in the blood is increased by fats eaten at the last meal; by fat formed from alcohol or an excess of carbohydrates or proteins perhaps only two hours after they have been consumed; or, if no food is eaten, by fat brought in from storage depots. When a meal is missed, so much stored fat pours into the blood that it often rises six times above normal; hence missing meals, inadequate reducing diets, and fasting can be particularly dangerous for a person subject to heart attacks. Blood fat can be decreased by judicious exercise, when animals are on inadequate diets, exercise can cause heart attacks.
The blood fat of healthy individuals increases after a meal but drops to normal in three or four hours. In persons with or susceptible to heart disease, this amount usually stays excessively high for six hours or more; and eating solid fats causes it to remain high much longer than do oils. For instance, heart attacks and strokes frequently occur after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners when the intake of saturated fat may be higher than at any other time during the year, If a person with high blood fat is under stress or is given cortisone, so much additional fat from storage depots is called in that the amount in the blood soars into the danger zone. Executives, for example, have higher blood fat, shorter clotting time, and seven times more heart attacks than relaxed individuals.
Lecithin Inhibits Clotting
As early as 1891, lecithin was described as "the furnace in which body fats are burned." It has the same effect on blood fat as on cholesterol: it causes the particles of fat, microscopic in the blood of healthy persons but in giant molecules in individuals with or subject to heart disease, to break into small molecules which pass readily through the arterial walls. Large fat particles act as a foreign substance on which a clot may form and, by inhibiting circulation, cause blood cells to clump together and initiate a clot.
Persons who suffer from coronary thrombosis, particularly young men, have consistently been found to have low blood lecithin; and the lower the lecithin falls, the greater becomes the danger of clotting. Individuals susceptible to heart attacks often have so much fat in their blood serum that it looks milky. When lecithin is taken, however, this milkiness quickly disappears. Conversely, if the normal lecithin in a sample of blood from a healthy individual is purposely destroyed, within minutes .such large particles of fat form that this serum also appears milky.
As with atherosclerosis, any deficiency that prevents lecithin from being produced in normal amounts, such as a lack of linoleic acid, indirectly allows blood fats to soar and clots to form. The high blood fat following a rich meal has been reduced by giving magnesium. Clots form readily if the blood magnesium is low but not when it is adequate; and animals deficient in magnesium show multiple clots in the coronary arteries and large areas of destroyed heart muscle. Thrombosis produced in rats by feeding saturated fat and cholesterol has also been prevented by increasing the protein content of the diet; if the protein was dropped to half, clots formed readily. Similarly, heart attacks are particularly frequent in persons severely deficient in protein; without adequate protein, cholin cannot be made from methionine, and lecithin production is again limited.
Giving oil alone-the present approach-does not solve the problem. When heart disease has been produced in rats by diets containing 40 per cent hydrogenated or other saturated fat, half of the animals have developed clots. Rats given corn oil instead of the saturated fat developed both atherosclerosis and clots, and those receiving peanut oil had no clots but did have atherosclerosis. Other nutrients, therefore, must also be adequate.
Author Resource:
David Crawford is the CEO and owner of a Male Enhancement Products company known as Male Enhancement Group which is dedicated to researching and comparing male enhancement products in order to determine which male enhancement product is safer and more effective than other products on the market. Copyright 2010 David Crawford of http://www.maleenhancementgroup.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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