Fasting and Eating for Health (16 page)

Doctors should really think twice about doing interventions that could potentially kill the patient or lead to significant disability. When we compare the potential benefits and risks of these traditional though invasive procedures to the nutrition interventions described in this book, these procedures look foolish.

This situation is especially tragic because aggressive nutritional approaches are typically not even discussed with patients:

Though high-tech methods, new drugs, and advances in surgical techniques aim to reduce symptoms, the underlying cause of disease—a disease-causing diet—goes completely ignored or is addressed with inadequate and improper advice. The patients inevitably get sicker and sicker.

Natural Methods Are Both Safer and More Effective
The encouraging news is that we now know heart disease is both preventable and reversible. Every cardiac patient should be made aware of this.

Unfortunately, the general public, as well as many physicians, is not aware of the fact that coronary blockages, high blood pressure, and angina can be reversed without drugs or surgery.

For years, there has been a small number of avant-garde physicians who have been using very low fat diets to reverse cardiovascular disease. These nutritional approaches are much safer than conventional treatments; they are more effective, and, most important, they prolong life. Now, when a healthy diet is combined with controlled therapeutic fasting, we can offer even cardiac patients with advanced disease a noninvasive, safe, effective approach that can literally rejuvenate their entire cardiovascular system in a short period of time.

Before I explain this approach, let's look at some of the recent studies of diet and cardiovascular health. Both interventional studies and large epidemiologic (population-based) studies conclusively document that certain diets promote cardiovascular disease, and that other diet-styles can both prevent and reverse it.

The Lifestyle Heart Trial

One of the most important recent studies on the effect of diet on heart disease is the Lifestyle Heart Trial, conceived by Dr. Dean Ornish.18 It demonstrated that blockages in blood vessels were effectively reversed when patients 84

combined a plant-based zero-cholesterol diet with exercise and stress management, and that the most severely blocked arteries showed the most improvement.

This interventional study, conducted on patients with documented coronary artery disease, split patients into two separate groups, the
control
group and the
intervention
group.

The control group was placed on the American Heart Association's (step 2) recommended diet, similar to the diet recommended by the American Diabetic Association for diabetics. This diet suggests cutting out butter and choosing chicken or fish instead of red meat, although a limited amount of red meat is still allowed. This change of eating habits reduces fat intake from the American norm of 40 percent of calories from fat to 30 percent. It keeps cholesterol intake to less than 200 mg daily. This control group was also advised to exercise and stop smoking. All patients had cardiac catheterization before beginning the study, and one year later the cardiac catheterizations were repeated to document the effect of the intervention.

Many were surprised to find that the majority of subjects in this control group did not improve. They carefully followed standard medical advice (Step 2: American Heart Association Diet) to stop smoking, to exercise, and to cut down on fat by eating chicken (without the skin) and fish. Yet the followup cardiac catheterizations on this group showed that a majority had a
worsened
cardiac status after one year.

This result is not surprising since we know from numerous other medical studies that the usual advice (recommendations of the American Heart Association and most physicians) does not halt the progression of heart disease; it merely slows down the rate at which a patient's condition will worsen.

Imagine if you came to me with a breathing problem stemming from a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. If I said to you, "Don't worry, I can help you—just cut back from smoking three packs to two, and you will get better," would you expect good results? Studies have now conclusively documented that the typical dietary advice doesn't work: the level of fat and cholesterol permitted is still much too high to allow improvement. People only
think
they are on low-fat diets.

In comparison, the intervention group in the Lifestyle Heart Trial was placed on a truly low fat diet, with less than 10 percent of calories derived from fat. To achieve this ratio, they ate without restriction in quantity from plant foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains. A limited amount of egg whites and nonfat milk or yogurt was allowed. Dr. Ornish found reversal in atherosclerotic plaque in 82 percent of coronary heart disease patients from this intervention group after one year on the vegetarian diet, combined with light exercise and stress management.

The important findings emerging from this study have served to change 85

conventional thinking about reversing heart disease. The findings include: 1. Age has nothing to do with atherosclerotic plaque reversal; even elderly persons show impressive improvements.

2. Individuals do not have to lower their cholesterol levels to below 150 to get reversal. Compliance with the program was what was related to the reversal, not the degree or number to which the cholesterol level dropped.

3. Even arteries that have been totally blocked for years open up.

Dr. Ornish has astutely noted in a January 1994 interview in
Visions
Magazine:

Conventional wisdom is that small, gradual changes are easy and big; rapid changes are hard. If anything, we have found that, the reverse may be true. When you make small, gradual changes, you get the worst of both worlds. You get a sense of deprivation, because you're not getting to eat or to do everything that you enjoy, but you're not making changes big enough to be of much benefit. Your cholesterol, your blood pressure or your weight don't come down enough. Your chest pain doesn't get better. Worst of all, if you have heart disease, according to not only our study, but those conducted by the American Heart Association and National Cholesterol Education Program, in every one of those studies where people made moderate changes, the majority of those patients get worse.

As Dr. Ornish states, his study is only one of several that document that the standard recommendations (following a diet in which 30 percent of calories come from fat) still allows the progression of heart disease.19 Yet research studies, such as the Lifestyle Heart Trial and others, document that heart disease is reversible with vegetarian diets.20,21,22 These studies were designed after it was noted in numerous population-based studies that cardiovascular deaths were virtually nonexistent in rural populations consuming vegetarian diets. Additionally, it is noted by researchers that deaths from heart disease increase gradually as populations gradually increase their consumption of animal-based foods.23

The China-Oxford-Cornell Project

The most famous of the epidemiologic studies on diet and health is the China-Oxford-Cornell Project (called the Grand Prix of epidemiology24). This study clearly documented that the diseases that affect and kill most Americans are unusual in rural China. Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the leader of the China Project, stated:

The average protein intake from animal sources in the United States is 70 percent. In China, only 7 percent comes from animal sources, so there is a tremendous difference between the two countries. But in spite of the low levels of protein intake from animal sources in China, 86

if they add just a little bit (animal protein) to the diet, the cholesterol levels start going up, heart disease starts going up, and cancer increases. This tends to suggest that it doesn't take much animal protein to start changing cholesterol levels and consequently have the risk of heart disease and cancer.25

The more animal protein consumed, the higher the cardiovascular risk. In fact, those Chinese who ate the most protein (even fish) had the highest rate of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

The Dangerous Recommendations of the American Heart
Association

All animal foods are rich in fat and protein and deficient in fiber and antioxidant nutrients that protect against heart disease and cancer. Many studies looking at populations consuming 30 percent of calories from fat illustrate a substantial amount of cardiovascular deaths, and all studies done on populations that consume under 15 percent of calories from fat show that heart disease and diabetes are virtually nonexistent.26,27,28

Standard medical advice for controlling heart disease and lowering cholesterol levels is usually to switch from beef and pork to chicken, fish, and skimmed-milk dairy products. Unfortunately, this advice does not work. Cardiac disease invariably worsens.

A recent investigation analyzed the data from 16 different trials evaluating the possible benefit of the American Heart Association Step 1 diet. It concluded that this advice is essentially worthless, and that the "Step 1 diet produced no significant gains in cholesterol reduction at any of several time points."29

Once again it is important to note that a diet in which fat calories are lowered to 30 percent is still too heavy in animal-based foods, which cause heart disease. A diet that includes salad oils, chicken, fish, and dairy foods is a high-fat diet for our species. Though the average American consumes even more fat (40 percent of calories) than the American Heart Association guidelines, dropping the fat ratio to 30 percent is simply not enough.

These standard recommendations still allow the progression of atherosclerosis because the diet is still too high in cholesterol, too deficient in antioxidants and fiber, and too abundant in animal-based protein. Since the cholesterol levels in chicken and fish are equivalent to those in beef and port, dieters' cholesterol levels do not show a meaningful change. Studies in which chicken or fish was substituted for beef in human subjects have shown no significant difference in blood cholesterol level regardless of the choice of animal flesh.30,31

Dr. John McDougall, the author of
The McDougall Plan
and other books, has pointed out on numerous occasions that the cholesterol and fat content of the American diet is so far in excess of the amount necessary to cause heart disease that relatively small increases or reductions are unimportant. Once one 87

has exceeded the amount of dietary cholesterol needed to cause illness (as little as 100 mg cholesterol per day), any more makes little appreciable difference.32 For example, the egg industry can publish studies that show that the addition of an egg to an otherwise high-cholesterol diet has little impact on raising cholesterol levels further. However, when people on a no-cholesterol diet are fed even one egg a day, their cholesterol level rises considerably.33

My intention here is to explain why the conventional recommendations and treatments fail at truly removing the risk of cardiovascular disease, as a preliminary to presenting an approach that is predictably effective even in the most advanced cases.

Fasting: A Powerful Means to Reverse Cardiovascular Disease
In addition to aggressive dietary changes as described above, a physician-supervised therapeutic fast can be utilized to bring a patient to a new level of cardiac safety. Fasting, in conjunction with optimal nutrition before and after the fast, offers the ability to undo the damage done to the body by the rich diets of modern societies. Through therapeutic fasting a patient is able to reverse a cardiac condition quickly, without the need for invasive medical procedures. The results I have seen in patients using this approach have been spectacular.

There are some cardiac conditions in which patients are at such risk that it is imperative the blockages in the arteries be quickly diminished. People, who have been told they need bypass surgery or angioplasty, as well as those with angina at low workloads, are prime candidates for therapeutic fasting. Fasting allows the body actually to remove the plaque from within the blood vessels and to heal itself in the shortest amount of time.

There is always a choice. One can be put to sleep in the operating room, have one's sternum split and chest pried and stretched open, have a heart-lung machine pump blood while the heart's action is stopped, and risk death or a decline in mental ability—all this for results that will not significantly increase the life span. Or one can combine a fast with a healthy plant-based diet that can facilitate a recovery and a new lease on life.

I find most patients who choose to get well via aggressive nutritional approaches are angry that their other physicians did not give them this option before they were told they must have bypass or angioplasty. Patients must be given this choice of a very low-fat vegetarian diet and fasting because it is safer, cheaper, less invasive, and more effective at extending the patient's life.

Anything less is selling the patient short.

The deplorable state of cardiovascular health we have in our nation and the current ineffective methods for treating heart disease should not continue. The general public must learn how to challenge heart disease as the nation's number one killer. Those suffering from the ravages of heart disease must be told that there is a safe, less invasive way to get relief and prolong their lives.

A plant-based diet in conjunction with a properly conducted fast most often 88

leads to a total recovery or a vast improvement in hypertension and angina.

This method of treating cardiac patients is not new. Studies in the medical literature on fasting as a treatment for heart disease began in the 1960s. Over the years, reports of improvements in cardiac status from fasting documented consistent benefits ranging from reducing blood pressure to alleviating angina and congestive heart failure.34,35,36

Dietary restriction has for a long time been considered an effective approach to many chronic diseases. After World War II, studies of populations that underwent semistarvaton during wartime rekindled physician interest.