Hopefully, this sort of ignorance, that I blogged about here, will someday be a thing of the past.
Surgeon Shyam Kolvekar from The Heart Hospital at University College London, who performed Mr Haj’s triple bypass, said cases like this were increasingly common and highlighted the dangers of eating too much saturated fat.
A priori thinking: “his heart is clogged with saturated fat, thus eating saturated fat is what caused it.” That’s false, as well as being ignorant of the research; it’s also ignorant of the fact that high saturated fat-eating primitive cultures don’t get heart disease.
As you know, I’ve many times highlighted the work of Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist who used to be ignorant, just like the guy above, and who now detects and reverses heart disease, all the while his patients eat plenty of fat.
Then just recently, I highlighted another hero: heart surgeon Dr. Dwight Lundell, in two parts (Part 1 / Part 2). You know what Dr. Lundell says about himself? He says that he “made a big mistake.”
Now comes Dr. Steven Gundry, Director of The Center for Restorative Medicine at The International Heart and Lung Institute for Advanced Cardiac Surgery in Palm Springs, California, as well as being Clinical Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He was named America’s Top Doctor by Castle-Connolly Publications, for three three years running.
He has also invented many of the instruments used in heart transplants, and specialized in infant heart transplants. So, don’t listen to me. But please do listen to Dr. Gundry.
And, you can. Jimmy More did a two-part interview with him a couple of months back. Jimmy called it his favorite interview yet, and that’s inclusive of many great people he’s interviewed in about 200 podcasts so far. I have to agree. It was very fascinating.
Dr. Gundy himself lost 70 pounds on a Paleo-like diet, although he advocates that after the initial super high-fat, high protein, low carb phase that one gradually transitions to a sort of modified raw vegan approach, i.e., mostly greenish vegetable matter (which is about half vegetable protein, by the way) with about 5-10% of calories coming from animal and fish protein. He points out, correctly, that no primates are vegetarians. They eat lots and lots of bugs in the process of eating leaves, limbs, and stalks. At any rate, I’m fine with that, if that’s what you prefer. Not for me in a million years, but such a diet is in every way vastly superior to the SAD (standard American diet).
Now, how do you think Dr. Gundry became enlightened? He tells the story in the first part of the interview, but let me just recount it to wet your appetite. It was about 7 years or so ago that a male patient in his 40s came to him, had already had several heart attacks, and had been pronounced inoperable, as every single artery was 95% clogged. In essence, he had been given a death sentence, and it was only a matter of time.
About a year later, the gentleman returned to see the doctor and begged him to do another angiogram. Guess what? The 95% blockages had been reduced to 50% blockages. So, a “know nothing” — kinda like me — cured the profound ignorance of one of the world’s top heart surgeons and changed Dr. Gundry’s life and medical approach for good.
Now, go listen to these marvelous interviews.
If you want to know more, then you can also get his book: Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You–And Your Waistline–And Drop the Weight for Good.
So does Gundry think that this is only for weight loss or permanent? He himself switched to a lower fat diet after losing weight.
Near as I can tell — by listening to the interview — it's permanent, but the Atkins-style at the beginning is to wean off high carbs, then transitioning gradually to a more veg-heavy lifestyle with moderate lean protein. For me, the importance is the evolutionary basis, i.e., real foods, and eliminating sugar, grains, legumes, dairy and such. I really have not much complaint about whatever diet makeup one chooses to operate in within that evolutionary spectrum.
That said, I am thoroughly convinced that a very high saturated fat diet is absolutely the way to go…PERMANENTLY!
And a high saturated fat diet will clog your arteries…….. You think 98% of the world's cardiologista are wrong?
Your saturated fat rich diet is the reason you are fat !
I agree with Philip or Dirk or whoever.
There are 9 major risK factors for CAD: high cholesterol, high blood pressure,smoking, diabetes,physical inactivity, and obesity. So even with 1 risk factor (high cholesterol) their risk of CAD will be low.
This is also epidemiological evidence, Richard, which is not the best evidence to go by. The gold standard for medical research is the randomized double blinded placebo controlled study.
"You think 98% of the world's cardiologista are wrong?"
No.
I KNOW they are. And by the way, the number who are wrong is getting less and less every day, as they cure their woeful ignorance in comparison to myself and others. We are right. They are wrong. It's quite simple. We're paying attention to facts, the science, verifiable anecdotes, our own results and most importantly: how we actually FEEL.
"Your saturated fat rich diet is the reason you are fat !"
Quite untrue, on several points:
1. I'm no longer fat (see photos). At 15% BF, quite above average leanness for America just now. I'll be at <10% BF within a few months at most.
2. This loss (from 230 to 185, so far) has been achieved by means of:
a. a high-fat diet (animal, coconut, olive oil)
b. intermittent fasting
c. high intensity training, twice per week, 30 min each, and usually in a fasted state from 18-30 hours
You're welcome to _respectfully_ disagree (your other two comments with rude insults have been deleted, unanswered, as will all others of a similar nature), but you might want to cure your ignorance, first. Here's a few places to start, in case you're actually interested in learning something over being a troll. And BTW; I know who you are, Philip Downey.
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
http://tinyurl.com/abtdel
(The Tokelauans on their natural diet obtained 50% of energy from saturated fat and their weren't getting heart disease)
http://tinyurl.com/adv4s6
Finally:
"And a high saturated fat diet will clog your arteries"
Unlikely, with an HDL of 106 and Trigs of 47.
http://tinyurl.com/alrlro
I'll get an MNR measurement on LDL pretty soon, as calculated is rubbish:
http://tinyurl.com/ck3z58
http://tinyurl.com/djf62d
I expect I'll have 95%+ large & fluffy, just like most high-fat eaters, and not the 80%+ small & dense like most grain, sugar and frankenoil eaters.
I recently had a CT heart scan. I had small minor calcification in one artery (all others clear). Since it's the first and only, no way of telling whether I'm on the way up or the way down, but given my greatly lowered average BP and my bloodwork, the doc is pretty certain I'm on the way down. Another test in six months will yield the proof.
Now, get serious, present your arguments respectfully, or just go bother someone else, troll.
"There are 9 major risK factors for CAD: high cholesterol, high blood pressure,smoking, diabetes,physical inactivity, and obesity. So even with 1 risk factor (high cholesterol) their risk of CAD will be low."
You're listed six, not nine. In any case, if you were really paying attention to the blog, you would understand that I have never denied that certain associations exist.
Here's the big one, in my view:
Diabetes, cancer, obesity, stroke and heart disease is heavily associated with grain, processed vegetable and derivative processed food based diets.
Which, of course, leads to the epidemiology, the chief value for which is not to confirm anything but to falsify it.
Non-industrial, H-G and pastoral peoples just don't die from this stuff, and we need not look to the archeology, as we have plenty of documented observations going back to the 1800s, much of which was written about by Taubes in GCBC.
And, we know what they eat. I'm aware of Cordain's bringing up the 800-yr-old Eskimo with atherosclerosis.
http://cavemanforum.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=741.0
I don't find an 800-yr-old p=1 very compelling. Moreover, how does the level of plaque compare to a modern person on a low-fat high-carb regime, and even more important: it's about total mortality, not a symptom that may or may not amount to anything.
In the end, the only real thing to look at is total mortality.
Here's some other links to look at (Pt1)
https://freetheanimal.com/root/2008/09/keeping-it-real-food.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-to-do-if-your-study-contradicts.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/masai-and-atherosclerosis.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-masai.html
More links (Pt 2)
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/saturated-fat-and-risk-of-death-brief.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/saturated-fat-and-health-brief.html
Good health was once viewed as a combination of
A. having a good doctor and eating three hearty meals a day.
B. possessing good personal habits and good luck.
C. living in the right place and possessing good personal habits.
D. good luck and the right parentage.