How to Live to be 100
Sugar Busters: What a CHS Perfusionist Learned When Heart Disease Hit Home
This article was first published in Health View, November 2001.
In past articles, I have stressed the importance of diet as the cause of our diseases. The protective effects of natural foods have been stressed. The fact that coronary artery disease has only been common for a few hundred years, points out how our modern diet is the cause of so many of our ailments.
Modern medicine has evolved as a treatment paradigm instead of a prevention paradigm. With the exception of vaccines and sanitation, we have spent our money treating diseases rather than preventing them. We are now seeing heart disease at a much younger age than ever before and our seniors are battling disease on a daily basis. We can do better than this.
In some ways, the paradigm is changing. We now have drugs that prevent disease. However, my contention is that unless we change how we eat, we will not live much longer on these drugs than we would have without them.
In America, osteoporosis is blamed on aging. This is a disease that is uncommon in the third world. In the third world, they don't consume dairy products. In America, where dairy is one of our four food groups with vast consumption, we have terrible osteoporosis in our post-menopausal females. High milk consumption actually correlates with high levels of osteoporosis, yet our health establishment tells us to drink more milk!
We now have wonderful drugs that help us survive on bad diets! These drugs allow us to get heavier and heavier, but still keep our "numbers" in the normal range: Blood pressure below 140/90 and total cholesterol under 180. We develop a false sense of security when we normalize our numbers. Even though I prescribe these medications, my goal is to have my patients on as few drugs as possible and hopefully prevent some of my younger patients from ever being on medication.
There is now plenty of data to support the need for major changes in the American diet. Nutrition is now a part of the curriculum in many medical schools. Even though there are differing opinions on what type of diet we should be eating, at least we are looking closely at changing what we eat.
In the months ahead, I am going to revisit cholesterol and heart disease. I am going to urge my readers to make specific changes in what they eat, drink and how much they exercise. I will focus primarily on the vegan diet (no meat, dairy and eggs) and will follow and point out the problems I have with the high protein, low carbohydrate diet. My wife will continue to include recipes.
Read along with us in the coming months. Next month, I am going to review "Sugar Busters." I will explain how it came about and why it is a good diet to start out on. Until then, start walking while the weather still permits.
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