Cholesterol is Not the Cause of Heart Disease - Raine Saunders

Dr. Sinatra & Others Speaking Out – Cholesterol is Not the Cause of Heart Disease

For decades, mainstream medicine and health professionals have regarded cholesterol as the enemy of circulatory health. Yet, in the last few years a number of outspoken medical and health professionals have courageously put their reputations and careers on the line to shatter this myth.
Why? These doctors want their patients to get out of the perpetual cycle of sickness and into prevention and wellness. And, they want the public to know the truth about what really causes heart disease…and it’s definitely not what you would think.

How did this myth begin?

Since the earlier part of the 20th century, doctors have been rallying around the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease.

In 1913, Russian researcher Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch fed cholesterol to rabbits and made the conclusion that their cholesterol levels went up (with no acknowledgement whatsoever that cholesterol is not a normal part of a rabbit’s diet).

And the idea that plaque deposits collecting in the blood vessels due to diet was born.
At the same time, companies like Proctor & Gamble were busy creating products that would replace animal fats as a way to increase profits. Read the full story of how this famous company single-handedly turned an engineered substance into a food that was introduced to kitchens in the early 1900s through clever campaigns and to this day is still found in a large percentage of processed foods on the market, and which has been heralded as a “heart-healthy” alternative to real, wholesome animal fats.

The Framington Heart Study which began in 1948 and is ongoing looked at a link between the consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol levels. A survey was taken in Framingham, MA where 6,000 people answered questions about diet and lifestyle. Researchers observed that individuals with weight problems and had abnormally high blood cholesterol levels were slightly more at risk to develop heart disease.

But actually, not all individuals in this study had high cholesterol levels. And yet, just those few who did were the ones which caused the skewed results of the study to be widely publicized. What was not revealed about those who were at higher risk was that many of these people also had sedentary lifestyles, consumed a high carbohydrate diet, smoked, and also had high cholesterol. What is not commonly told is that the more cholesterol and saturated fat people consume, this actually lowers their cholesterol levels.

The work of Dr. Ancel Keys is often cited as proof that cholesterol is harmful to heart health. In 1953, he published a well-known study which became the basis of support for the Cholesterol Theory. His Seven Countries Study made a connection between heart disease and dietary fat. What is not acknowledged is that any study he looked at which didn’t go along with his hypothesis – especially those consuming low-fat diets and which also had a strong connection to mortality from cardiovascular disease – was excluded from the final results! It’s also important to know that his full study included data from 22 countries – also excluded because it didn’t fit with what he wanted.
The result was that the health communities rallied around this false study and started campaigning to remove all animal fats from the population’s diet: red meat, eggs, butter and other dairy, and anything that was perceived as “artery clogging”. It is this and the Framington Heart studies which have been largely responsible for starting and perpetuating the lie that cholesterol causes heart disease.

Dr. Stephen Sinatra

In the book, The Great Cholesterol Myth, cowritten with Johnny Bowden, Ph.D, the failed theory that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease is debunked. They explain why saturated fat is good for your health and why it “helps to raise beneficial HDL cholesterol, improving your triglyceride/HDL ratio—a key marker of cardiovascular health.”

He says to eat beef – and to make sure it’s grassfed beef, butter, nuts, and eggs. These foods are not only okay for us to eat, but vital to health! He also whole-heartedly agrees that vegetable oil is to be avoided – which is damaged during high heat processes in both manufacturing and in cooking. These oils are almost always from GMO sources, and are too high in Omega 6s – which cause excess inflammation in the body and is found in too high amounts in the Standard American diet. He also agrees that we should definitely be using extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil in our diets.

Although I am not a fan of Dr. Oz, he did a recent interview with Dr. Sinatra and Johnny Bowden that you should watch:
Part I and
Part II

Dr. Dwight Lundell

A heart surgeon with 25 years experience, Dr. Dwight Lundell, M.D. has brought the truth to light by admitting that for years he towed the party line in treating heart disease as a condition that was caused by elevated blood cholesterol due to dietary intake of saturated fat. He also reveals that anyone who went against using prescription medication for treating this issue was considered insubordinate and to do so could “possibly result in malpractice.”

Dr. Lundell also founded the Healthy Humans Foundation to help people break out of the cycle of reactive medicine which treats disease with drugs and surgery, to forward the principles of truly healthy diets and real prevention of chronic disease.

Listen to Dr. Lundell’s interview on Jimmy Moore’s site Livin La Vida Low-Carb. Also read The Cure for Heart Disease by Dr. Lundell.

Still not convinced that saturated fats are good for our health?

Answer this important question:
Why are disease rates so high – obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, and related conditions of Metabolic Disorder? If saturated fat is the enemy and we are told to avoid it, wouldn’t that correspond to a decrease – rather than an increase in these health conditions? This is because the Standard American Diet is replete in processed foods including a lot of sugar and refined carbs, very few real, whole foods that are from healthy, organic, and sustainable sources which have good bacteria, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins.

Sugar is one of the biggest enemies of heart disease, found in various studies and health professionals which reveal the connection between regular consumption of refined sugar and health problems:

• Harvard School of Public Health
• Dr. Robert Lustig
• UC Davis
• TIME Magazine

The profound research of Dr. Weston A. Price – a dentist and nutritionist who traveled all over the world to 14 different countries for a decade of time during the 1930s, discovered something similar: that all healthy populations were eating diets of indigenous, local foods – including almost TEN times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins from animal and bird foods. These foods were not treated with chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, or GMOs. These groups of people were healthy, robust, and free of physical and mental disease.

In contrast, those civilizations that did experience chronic disease were those who had introduced the following substances into their diets: vegetable oils, white flour, and white sugar. 
 
Read Dr. Price’s groundbreaking book (available in its entirety online), Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for more information.

More information:
What’s the real scoop on red meat and mortality rates?
The importance of dietary fats
The grassfed meat challenge: busting myths about meat

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Raine Saunders. This entry was posted in Healthy Living, Healthy Meat, Real Food and tagged Ancel Keys, butter, cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, dairy, Dr. Dwight Lundell, Dr. Stephen Sinatra, eggs, Framingham Heart Study, grassfed meat, Johnny Bowden, Ph.D, saturated fat. Bookmark the permalink.

========================================================

Read the complete article here.

 

The Statin Scam - Dr Lundell

The Statin Scam

by Dwight C. Lundell M.D.
For 25 years as a thoracic surgeon, my life was passionately dedicated to treating heart disease; I gave many thousands of patients a second chance at life.

Then a few years ago I made the most difficult decision of my medical career. I left the surgery that I loved to have the freedom necessary to speak the truth about heart disease, inflammation, statin medications, and the current methods of treating heart disease.

It was an exciting time to be a young cardiac surgeon in the eighties. A new surgical technique, coronary bypass, was the only effective treatment for people afflicted with severe coronary artery disease. Our ability to save lives increased and the risks of surgery decreased as techniques and technology improved.

Desperately sick and diseased patients could be restored and rehabilitated with relatively low risk, it was an exciting challenge. During my career as a surgeon I performed over 5000 coronary bypass operations.
The consensus at that time was that elevated cholesterol in the blood caused a gradual deposition of cholesterol in the channel of the blood vessel. We had two obvious treatment choices; lower the levels of cholesterol in the blood or do an operation to detour the blood around the accumulated plaque in the artery thus restoring blood flow and function to the heart muscle.

Other than looking at more effective ways to lower blood cholesterol, there was relatively little research going on as to what was causing the plaque. The medical community had settled on the idea that it was as simple as controlling saturated fat and cholesterol.

Statin drugs, the ones your Doctor insists that you take if your cholesterol is slightly elevated and Bernie Madoff ( the now infamous financial fraudster ) have both left in their wake many innocent victims, and many sincere but misled supporters. Both are huge frauds perpetrated on the unsuspecting.

Mr. Madoff, over 30 years swindled people out of about $50 billion. Statins have a worldwide market of over $30 billion annually and have had for many years. In addition, the testing for and treating elevated cholesterol costs about $100 billion annually with no noticeable benefit to the victims, I mean patients.

I'm not sure if Mr. Madoff intended to swindle when he started out, but reading the reports it seems things got out of hand and he had to continue to tell a false story in order to keep the money flowing into his coffers to support his and his supporters' lavish lifestyles, and perpetuate the fraud.

I'm not sure that the statin makers intended to swindle in the beginning but they also were not about to give up on a $30 billion annual market easily. There are many sincere, well intentioned and deeply convinced physicians that will continue to support the theory that dietary cholesterol and saturated fats cause heart disease.

They will continue to believe that cholesterol lowering medications will successfully treat and prevent heart disease in spite of the fact that a study published in The American Heart Journal ( January 2009 ) analyzing 137,000 patients admitted to hospitals in the United States with a heart attack demonstrated that almost 75% had "normal" cholesterol levels.

This fact continued to bother me during my surgical career. The idea that a normal substance, namely cholesterol, would cause heart disease never resonated with me. I would see patients coming back for second coronary bypass operations a few years after their first, having had normal cholesterol levels the entire time. In the operating room I had made the observation that there seemed to be inflammation around the coronary arteries that I was bypassing.

Through brilliant and massive marketing the makers of statin drugs have skillfully influenced science and controlled public policy so that prescribing statin drugs has become the standard of care. Anyone questioning or disagreeing with these policies is labeled as a heretic, disregarded and ridiculed.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ), The National Cholesterol Education Program, The American Heart Association and many academic centers are led and influenced by physicians who receive direct or indirect benefit from the makers of statin drugs.

Their influence is so pervasive that recently the FDA approved Crestor®, a statin, to treat patients with normal cholesterol. Some of these academics have called for treating children with statin drugs. Marketing has truly triumphed over medicine.

Treating or attempting to prevent heart disease with statin drugs is dangerous and fraudulent for two reasons:

1.) Serious, deadly and disabling side effects which are largely ignored by the medical profession and suppressed by the statin makers. These side effects have been brilliantly documented by Dr. Duane Graveline and other brave doctors who dare to speak out against the official religion of cholesterol and saturated fat.

2.) Continued focus on this ineffective treatment diverts attention from truly understanding and controlling heart disease, and gives patients a false sense of security that prevents them from making the lifestyle changes that would truly prevent and reverse heart disease.

Consider also the following:
1.) Statins have not been proven to help any woman of any age!
2.) Statins have not been proven to help anyone over the age of 65!
3.) The only group of patients who may, and I emphasize "may" get any benefit, are middle aged men who have had a previous heart attack.

It is amazing to see all the medical literature that is funded by the statin makers and delivered to doctors' offices by enthusiastic young drug reps that purport to prove that statins are beneficial.

The very best statistical manipulation shows that one must treat at least 10 people for several years for 1 to have possible benefit. I'll bet that when your doctor told you to take statins you were not told that under the most favorable statistical slant on the data there is only 1 chance in 10 that you will benefit.

The much publicized JUPITER study which led the FDA to approve Crestor® for people with normal cholesterol showed that treating 100 people for 3 years with Crestor® "may" have prevented one heart attack.

Yet the approval was granted and millions of people were exposed to the risks of statins with no possible benefit except to the maker of Crestor®. Do you think the process is pure and clean and free of improper influence?

Just as a point of reference, if I had treated 100 people with the correct antibiotic for an infection 99 would have been cured. This is why I call statin treatment a scam that is bigger and more harmful than anything Bernie Madoff pulled off, at least his victims only lost money, not their health.

In spite of being Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at a large specialty heart hospital I found that I could not change Medicine no matter how much I preached and pleaded, no matter how much scientific evidence I gathered that cholesterol was not a problem and that treating cholesterol with medications was counter productive.

So I made that difficult decision and left my successful surgical practice in order to have the freedom to speak, write and teach the truth about heart disease. I wrote a book The Cure for Heart Disease, which explains that the real cause of heart disease is low grade inflammation. For without inflammation cholesterol would never accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause plaque with its eventual consequence of heart attack and death.

Dwight C. Lundell M.D.
www.thecureforheartdisease.net
Chief Medical Consultant, Asantae Inc.
Chief Medical Consultant at www.realweight.com

Dr. Lundell's experience in Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery over the last 25 years includes certification by the American Board of Surgery, the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
Dr. Lundell was a pioneer in off-pump coronary artery bypass or "beating heart" surgery reducing surgical complications and recovery times.
He has served as Chief resident at the University of Arizona and Yale University Hospitals and later served as Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery.
He was one of the founding partners of the Lutheran Heart Hospital which became the second largest Heart hospital in the U.S.

January, 2011
======================================================
http://www.spacedoc.com/statin_scam

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

I am of the strong opinion that heart disease causes and credible treatments are not "settled science". There is lots of press coverage, ongoing research, clinical practices, opinions and evidence pointing in all different directions.

That being said I present this post, as well as most of my other posts, to help show that and to counteract the MSM view as being indisputable. I have not come to the opinion that heart disease is entirely caused by one thing or the other including inflammation. It is, as I said, NOT a 'settled science'.

I do think that a lot of what Dr . Lundell proposes is right on. I would of all people wish for a simple, easy and effective solution to atherosclerotic plaques which in fact are the disease. Cholesterol is NOT the disease.

So, read and research. It is still the best way, along with keeping an open mind, to know what really causes heart disease.
====================================================================
Heart Surgeon Dr. Dwight Lundell Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

Dr. Dwight Lundell
PreventDisease
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:58 CST

© n/a

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled "opinion makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator -- inflammation in their arteries.

Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell -- they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

======================================================================

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/242516-Heart-Surgeon-Speaks-Out-On-What-Really-Causes-Heart-Disease

Dr. Dwight Lundell on omega-3s and CLA

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Dr. Dwight Lundell on omega-3s and CLA

An interview with Dr. Dwight Lundell, cardiac surgeon and author of the new book, "The Cure for Heart Disease."

Dr. Lundell comes to us with a unique pedigree. He is a cardiothoracic surgeon practicing in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. Despite having performed thousands of coronary bypass operations, including numerous "off-pump" procedures earning him a place in the Beating Heart Hall of Fame and a listing in Phoenix Magazine’s Top Doctors for 10 years, more recently Dr. Lundell has turned his attentions away from traditional surgical treatment and towards prevention of heart disease and.

In particular, Dr. Lundell is a vocal advocate for omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil and conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.

When I heard about Dr. Lundell’s unique perspectives, I asked him if he’d like to tell us a little more about his ideas. Here follows a brief interview with Dr. Lundell.

You’re a vocal advocate of the role of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil in heart disease prevention. Can you tell us how you use it?

In my book, I recommend 3 g of fish oil daily. This would normally yield about 1000 mg of EPA and DHA depending on the concentration of the supplement. This is approximately the dose that reduced sudden cardiac death by 50%, and all cause death, by 25% in patients with previous heart attack.

In patients with signs of chronic inflammation such as heart disease, obesity, arthritis, metabolic syndrome or depression or in those patients with elevation of CRP, I would recommend higher doses, 2000 to 3000 mg per day of EPA and DHA. The FDA has approved up to 3400 mg for treating patients with severely elevated triglycerides.

I personally take a 2000 mg EPA and DHA per day because I have calcium in my coronary arteries.

Of course, in the Track Your Plaque program we track coronary calcium scores. Do you track any measures of atherosclerosis in your patients to chart progression or regression?

Carotid ultrasound with measurement of IMT [intimal-medial thickness] has been shown to be a good surrogate marker for coronary disease, as has vascular reactivity in the arm. CT scanning with calcium scoring is a direct marker of coronary disease. CT does not differentiate between stable or unstable plaque but there is no good noninvasive way of doing this.

The dramatic value of CT scan calcium scoring is to demonstrate to people that they actually do have coronary disease and to motivate them to make the necessary lifestyle and nutritional changes to reduce it. CT scan with calcium scoring is a direct way to measure the progression or regression of coronary artery disease. If there is a choice between a direct measurement and indirect measurement, always choose the direct method.

Every patient treated with CLA in my clinic, experienced significant reductions in C-reactive protein. These patients were also on a weight-loss program, so I can't prove whether it was the CLA or the weight-loss that improved their inflammatory markers. In the animal model for arteriosclerosis, CLA has a dramatic effect of reducing and preventing plaque. This has not yet been proven in humans.

Normally, when people lose weight 20% or more of the loss is lean body mass (muscle) this lowers the metabolic rate and frustrates further weight-loss. My patient, from teenagers to retirees, lost no lean body mass and continued to have satisfactory weight-loss when CLA was used as part of the plan.

In reading your book, your use of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) as a principal ingredient struck me. Can you elaborate on why you choose to have your patients take CLA?

My enthusiasm for CLA is based on:

1) Safety―this is of paramount importance. Animal toxicity studies have been done, as well as multiple parameters measured in human studies, both of these are well reviewed recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2004:79(suppl)1132s). CLA, a naturally-occurring substance, is not toxic or harmful to animals or humans. The only negative report is by Riserus in Circulation (2002), where he found an elevated c- reactive protein; however, he used a preparation that is not commercially available and not found in nature as a single isomer.

2) Effectiveness―also critically important. A recent meta-analysis [a reanalysis of compiled data] in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2007; 85:1203-1211) demonstrated the effectiveness of CLA in causing loss of body fat in humans. The study also reconfirmed the safety of CLA.

Since we now know that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disorder, any strategy that reduces low-grade inflammation without significant side effects would seem to be beneficial in the treatment and prevention of atherosclerosis. CLA not only has antioxidant properties, but it modulates inflammatory cascade at multiple points. CLA reduces PGE2 (in much the same way as omega-3) CLA also has been shown to reduce IL-2, tumor necrosis factor-alpha and Cox–2. It reduces platelet deposition and macrophage accumulation in plaques. It also has some beneficial effect in the PPAR [peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, important for lipid and inflammatory-mediator metabolism] area.

Part of the effect of CLA may be because it reduces fat mass and thus the amount of pro-inflammatory cytokines produced by fat cells.

I reiterate and fully admit that CLA has not been shown to have any effect on atherosclerosis in human beings. However, the results in the standard animal models for atherosclerosis (rabbits, hamsters,APO-E knockout mice) are very dramatic.

From all I know, it appears that the effective dose for weight loss and the animal studies in atherosclerosis would be equal to about 3 g of CLA per day. The anti-inflammatory properties of CLA seem to work better in the presence of adequate blood levels of omega-3.

I’m curious how and why a busy cardiothoracic surgeon would transform his practice so dramatically. Was there a specific event that triggered your change?

The transition from a very busy surgical practice to writing and speaking about the prevention of coronary disease has not been particularly easy, but it has been very interesting. I can't really point to any specific epiphany, it was a general feeling of frustration that we were not making any progress in curing heart disease, which is what I thought I was doing when I began my medical career.

Of course, I enjoyed the technical advances, the dramatic life-saving things that you do and I did on a daily basis. American medicine is spectacularly good at managing crises and spectacularly horrible at preventing those crises.

The lipid hypothesis is old and tired, even the most aggressive statin therapy reduces risk of heart attack by about 30% in a relatively small subset of people. It's interesting that we're now looking at statins as an anti-inflammatory agent.


Thanks, Dr. Lundell. We look forward to future conversations as your experience with CLA and heart disease prevention and reversal develops!


More about Dr. Lundell's book, The Cure for Heart Disease can be found at http://www.thecureforheartdisease.net.

The True Cause of Heart Disease

The True Cause of Heart Disease - Part One of Two

via Total Health Breakthroughs by Ian Robinson on 7/14/10

Conventional wisdom tells us that high cholesterol is the cause of heart disease. But Dr. Dwight Lundell is fighting to expose this dangerous mainstream myth.

Dr. Lundell is a pioneer and leading expert in this field. He has enjoyed a long and a distinguished career, leading his peers to new breakthroughs.. He spent 25 years as a cardiovascular surgeon and performed over 5,000 heart surgeries.

His experience in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery includes certification by the American Board of Surgery, the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He was a pioneer in “Off-Pump” heart surgery, reducing surgical complications and recovery times. He’s in the “Beating Heart Hall of Fame” and has been listed in Phoenix Magazine’s “Top Doctors” for 10 years.

He has been recognized by his peers as a leader and has served as Chief resident at the University of Arizona and Yale University Hospitals. He later served as Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery.

He was also one of the founding partners of the Lutheran Heart Hospital which became the second largest heart hospital in the U.S.

Dr. Lundell recently agreed to grant us an in-depth and revealing interview about the pioneering work he is currently conducting. It’s our privilege and pleasure to share part one of that exclusive interview with you today.

THB: You are the author of a controversial heart-health book called The Great Cholesterol Lie. The book challenges conventional wisdom and accepted medical theories. What’s been the response to this book?

Dr. Lundell: The response to the book has been overwhelming. I regularly correspond with people from around the world who are enjoying better health from the new understandings they gained from learning about inflammation and heart disease.

THB: That’s good to hear. It’s a seminal book that charts your professional journey as a cardiac surgeon. And, more importantly, reveals your gradual discovery of the true cause of heart disease.

If you could go back in time to when you were a young cardiac surgeon… what would you tell yourself and would you take a different path?

Dr. Lundell: I was dedicated to treating heart disease and passionate about saving lives. It was my responsibility to provide patients with a second chance.

As a young cardiac surgeon in the 1980s coronary bypass operation was the only effective treatment for people afflicted with severe coronary artery disease. So, as you can imagine, this was a very exciting time. Our ability to help people increased and the risks of surgery decreased as techniques and technology improved.

The scientific consensus at that time was elevated cholesterol levels in the blood cause a gradual deposition of cholesterol in the lumen of the blood vessel so two treatment forces were obvious: lower the levels of cholesterol in the blood or do an operation to detour the blood around the accumulated plaque thus restoring flow and heart function.

Rather than looking at more effective ways to lower blood cholesterol, there was relatively little research going on as to what was causing plaque. Everyone settled on the idea that it was as simple as controlling fat and cholesterol.

Then new research was in part driven by industry and not basic science. As balloon angioplasty emerged as an alternative to open heart surgery, the companies that produce the balloons became concerned by high rates of re-stenosis. They began funding studies to understand exactly what was happening biologically to cause the re-stenosis. (Re-stenosis means a re-narrowing of the artery after angioplasty or a stent has been inserted.)

This stimulated a lot of research and culminated in the seminal article published in 1999 in the New England Journal of Medicine announcing that “atherosclerosis [is] an inflammatory disease.”

THB: How did you discover that the true cause of heart disease was inflammation?

Dr. Lundell: I was excited to understand this new research because in the operating room I had observed the classic signs of inflammation around the coronary artery and was very disappointed that surgery, although effective at relieving symptoms and extending life, was not a cure for heart disease.

Many brilliant scientists and university centers continued to do more research that confirmed the basis for coronary disease was chronic inflammation. Sadly the attention was all directed at finding a therapy rather than looking at the cause of chronic inflammation.

Research is hugely expensive and was largely funded by drug companies who were making billions of dollars from the prescriptions for statin drugs.

One of the many side effects of statin drugs is that they seem to have a mild anti- inflammatory effect. Because of the size of the industry and how entrenched the cholesterol theory had become, the focus continues to be on treating everyone with statin drugs rather than understanding the cause and the ability to control chronic inflammation.

The makers of statin drugs have been so skillful at influencing science and controlling public policy that prescribing statins is the standard of care. Anyone questioning or disagreeing with these policies is labeled as a heretic and disregarded.

THB: Why were you so convinced inflammation was the culprit? You were so convinced that you made a major life – and career – change based on that conviction.

Dr. Lundell: I knew that I did not have enough influence to change any of the policies or practices from inside mainstream medicine. Taking a lesson from the drug makers with their direct to consumer advertising I decided to write the book and hopefully people would learn and make the changes needed to truly prevent and cure heart disease.

THB: You describe inflammation very powerfully in your book as a battleground. Can you give our readers an overview of what inflammation is?

Dr. Lundell: Inflammation truly is a battleground. For most of human history we died because of infection and trauma. Our immune system and our inflammatory systems are designed to aggressively respond to these two challenges.

If we get invaded by bacteria or injured in some way, our immune system recognizes the challenge and marshals all of the body’s resources to respond to defeat the invader and heal the wound.

We all have experienced the classic signs of inflammation: warmth, swelling, redness, and pain. Acute inflammation is the response to acute injuries. Chronic inflammation is the response to chronic smaller injuries and so we do not always get the four classic signs.

THB: You’ve taken the bold step to speak out against statin medications. But playing devil’s advocate for a moment… surely there are some situations when statin medications are effective?

Dr. Lundell: Statin medications have proven to be somewhat beneficial to a small group of people; that is a middle aged man with a previous heart attack. They have never been documented to benefit any woman of any age with any condition. They have not been documented to help people who have not had a previous heart attack of any age or gender.

There may be some people who would take great offense at the previous paragraph – especially the makers of Crestor and cardiologists who support treating almost everyone with statin drugs.

They might quote the Jupiter study which was touted as proving Crestor would reduce heart attack rates by almost 50% in otherwise healthy people. Happily, this month in The Archives of Internal Medicine, four peer reviewed articles gave a scathing rebuke to the Jupiter study – the methodology, the conflict of interest by most of the authors, the early termination of the study which almost always provides false results, and the conclusion that statin drugs were beneficial in this population of patients. At last I am getting reinforcements!

THB: That’s a good point to make - and you make it well. So, if statin meds aren’t effective, why are they so dangerous?

Dr. Lundell: Statin drugs are dangerous not necessarily because of the side effects which can be disabling or fatal, but because they divert our attention from understanding and preventing heart disease and merely treat it with statins, allowing us to think that this is beneficial.

Even some of the foremost cardiologists in the country who have written extensively about inflammation as the true cause of heart disease offer no solutions except taking statin drugs. $30,000,000,000 in worldwide sales of statin drugs has a lot to do with it.

In part two of our revealing interview, Dr. Lundell tells us why inflammation is the true cause of heart disease and offers critical solutions to prevent it. We also discover the four most common lifestyle factors that injure heart health and get expert guidance on how to improve it. All this and more in next Wednesday’s edition of Undercover.

About Dr. Lundell: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation and Chief Medical Advisor for Asantae. In 2003, Dr. Lundell made the most difficult decision of his 25 year surgical career. As traditional medicine continued to chase the cholesterol theory of heart disease, Dr. Lundell closed his surgical practice. He then devoted the rest of his life to speaking the truth that inflammation causes heart disease. By lowering inflammation, heart disease has a cure.

Dr. Lundell is the author of the world-wide bestselling book, The Great Cholesterol Lie. This book is a revealing look at heart disease and the faulty theories of low-fat diets and cholesterol. He also reveals his clinically-tested recommendations for lowering inflammation that can prevent and reverse heart disease.

To your health,

Ian Robinson,
Managing Editor, Total Health Breakthroughs