Let’s say you’re concerned about heart disease because you have a family history…or simply because it remains the nation’s No. 1 killer and you want to try to prevent it.
So, you go to your friendly neighborhood cardiologist. For the most part, they put you through a largely useless ordeal, only to hand out shockingly bad advice (which ignores the current science). It’s really pretty sad. Today, I’ll set the record straight and share three pieces of bad advice from your cardiologist you should ignore…
No. 1: Don’t get on a treadmill
Skip the ubiquitous stress test cardiologists love to put patients through. If you don’t actually drop dead during this grueling trial (which gives a new meaning to the word), they can confidently conclude you aren’t about to drop dead of a heart attack.
No. 2: Ignore their disastrous dietary advice
For decades, cardiologists told us to avoid dietary cholesterol, saturated fats and salt. So — if you followed their advice — you cut back on healthy foods like dairy, eggs, meat, and shellfish.
Of course, we now know that advice was all wrong, all along.
For example, if you substituted toxic margarine for butter, you’ve doubled your risk for heart disease. (We’ve had that data since the 1970s, but it was buried until recent years, as I’ve reported.)
If you substituted low-fat dairy for full-fat dairy, you haven’t improved your heart health. But you’ve nearly doubled your risk of Parkinson’s disease and degenerative brain and nerve diseases, as I reported in August.
Plus, when most people adopt a low-fat diet, they usually load up on sugars and carbs instead. Of course, we now know that sugar and carbs are the real causes of cardiometabolic heart disease, not to mention Type II diabetes, dementia and other chronic illnesses.
Many so-called “health experts” even suggest you can eat foods and beverages with sugars and carbs as long as you “burn off” the extra calories. But I debunked this myth last summer. You simply can’t exercise your way out of a poor diet full of sugar and carbs. And, even if you could, excessive exercise harms your bones, joints, kidneys, GI tract, and the heart muscle itself, which you are trying to protect.
No. 3: Say “no thanks” to their prescription drugs
For decades, cardiologists tried to aggressively lower their patients’ cholesterol levels with dangerous statin drugs. In fact, statins have become one of the most widely prescribed drugs in history throughout the world. Even President Trump, who should have access to some of the best medical minds in the country, takes one.
Yes — these drugs artificially lower cholesterol. But every cell in your body needs cholesterol. And lowering cholesterol simply doesn’t improve heart disease or mortality rates.
Plus, the list of side effects associated with statins is so long, it looks like the current edition of the medical diagnostic and standards manual for coding pathological diagnoses (trust me, it’s a hefty piece of reading material, to say the least).
Using drugs for prevention (what I call “medicalization of prevention”) is never superior to making the right lifestyle modifications. (Of course, it doesn’t help when most doctors make the wrong lifestyle recommendations.)
Some true believers argue that everyone over 50 years old should take a statin. Yet, more than three years ago, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older people do not benefit in any way from taking statins. As a result of that study, many gerontologists stopped prescribing statins to their patients over 70.
Still, others argue that children as young as eight-years-old with “high” cholesterol should take these drugs. This dangerous “advice” truly boggles my mind. Please, do NOT give these metabolic poisons to your kids! They need cholesterol to build healthy brains.
Plus, we now know the original data on statins wasn’t even real. In fact, big pharma manipulated the statistics on statin drugs, exaggerating their so-called “benefits” and woefully underrepresenting their dangerous side effects. And we learned those early clinical trials on statins didn’t follow patients long enough to reveal all the disastrous, long-term side effects from a lifetime taking these metabolic poisons.
Fortunately, statisticians can’t lie so much about death rates, which is the ultimate measure of a treatment’s efficacy, as I learned years ago.
So — we must ask the question: Do statin drugs lower death rates?
No — of course they don’t.
Statin drugs don’t lower death rates
In western Europe where statin drugs have been most pervasive, any clear reduction in mortality from heart attacks has yet to be shown. Nor has there been a clear reduction in people who already survived their first heart attack.
In addition, you may recall a study in Sweden I reported on some years ago. For this study, they put virtually everyone who was “eligible” on statin drugs within a short period of time. There weren’t any changes in heart disease mortality after taking the drugs.
In the end, true believers still cry “millions will die” if they discontinue prescribing this shifty drug. (If you ask me, I thought the “millions will die” argument was reserved for any attempt to change the national disaster of the “Affordable” Care Act.)
But the data shows patients who take statin drugs do NOT live longer than people who don’t take them in many placebo-controlled studies.
Instead of damaging your health by popping pills, you can help your health by focusing on what you eat. You’re much better off following a Mediterranean diet.
It’s all about diet, not weight
Research clearly shows people who follow a Mediterranean diet — which includes fish, nuts and olive oil — reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke. The diet works for both the general population and for people who already had a heart attack.
Diet-related diseases now far surpass tobacco or HIV as a worldwide health burden. But, as I have reported before, we can’t explain it all with excess weight or obesity. Take populations in Iceland, Micronesia and Mongolia for example; they all have high rates of obesity, but not high rates of Type II diabetes.
On the other hand, populations in China, India and Pakistan have low rates of obesity, but high rates of Type II diabetes.
In fact, in China, 11 percent of the population has Type II diabetes. But China doesn’t have an obesity problem. By comparison, the U.S. has one of the most obese populations worldwide. But the Type II diabetes rate in the U.S. is actually lower than China’s, at nine percent.
Mind you, many people of normal weight (up to one-third) succumb to Type II diabetes. So — there’s clearly more involved in metabolic diseases than just counting calories in and calories out.
Insulin resistance seems to be the common denominator. Consumption of refined carbs, especially sugar, easily overwhelms the body’s regulatory mechanisms in the liver and elsewhere, making it difficult to balance blood sugar levels. (Of course, when your cardiologist recommends you follow a low-fat diet, you inevitably end up eating more refined carbs and sugars, as I mentioned a moment ago.)
Furthermore, misguided, crony capitalist organizations like the American Heart Association still recommend you replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats.
In practical terms, this substitution leads to eating toxic margarine and vegetable oils full of unhealthy omega-6s, as I alluded to earlier. (Instead, you should eat more full-fat dairy, fish, meat, and nuts that contain healthy omega-3s.)
As I said, it’s all pretty sad.
They used to reserve using the label “the dismal science” for economics. But I propose they use it for contemporary cardiology.
Forget the cardiologists, their dietary advice, and their drugs. Find out how to prevent and reverse heart disease using natural approaches in my upcoming Heart Attack and Prevention Protocol. I’ve just put the finishing touches on it and will let you know as soon as it’s ready for you.
I’m also wrapping up another new online learning protocol that will provide natural ways to manage blood sugar. I’ll give you more details on that soon. So — stay tuned!