Heart Disease and Stroke
"BY: PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
Medical research is at a crossroads. The major killer diseases are not solved by old experimental techniques. In order to win against the major diseases, researchers are looking to new technologies, and doctors are forced to learn new approaches.
Heart Disease: The Number One Killer The greatest advance in the understanding of heart disease was the discovery that it can be virtually eliminated by controlling three factors - cholesterol, smoking, and blood pressure. This extraordinary advance came from sophisticated studies of human patients.
Over the past four decades, in Framingham, Massachusetts, thousands of individuals in two generations have been carefully studied to see which factors are responsible for heart disease. The Framingham Heart Study showed that if one's cholesterol level stays below 150, a heart attack is extremely unlikely. Every 1 percent increase in cholesterol leads to approximately a 2 percent increase in risk. Other studies, such as the Lipid Research Clinic's Trial and the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, have also demonstrated the importance of controlling cholesterol levels.
Dean Ornish, M.D., of the University of California at San Francisco, has shown that if people who have advanced heart disease adopt a low-fat vegetarian diet, stop smoking, reduce stress, and engage in mild daily exercise, the plaques in their arteries will actually start to disappear.
Coronary artery bypasses and heart transplants, while helpful for some patients, have not matched the potency of dietary and other lifestyle measures. Bypasses and transplants develop aggressive atherosclerosis unless strict dietary steps are taken. Clearly, medicine's best strategy is to institute such steps while the patient is still healthy.
More research is needed: what we need are human behavioral studies on how to help people change long-standing smoking and dietary habits. Economic and political studies on how to shift farm production away from tobacco and livestock and toward grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits are also essential.
Stroke: The Number Three Killer In stroke, a part of the brain is killed, leading to paralysis, loss of sensory function, and often death. Clinical and epidemiologic studies have shown how stroke is caused and how it can be prevented. It has become clear that the same factors that lead to heart disease - high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and smoking - can also cause stroke. Controlling these factors can prevent stroke. To reduce the incidence of stroke, more aggressive measures to help people change dietary and smoking behavior must be developed. "
See Caldwell B Esselstyn Jr, M.D.'s book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease