Why these 5 are myths about heart disease....

Today's post: Tuesday, 12-23-2008

I got an email that in part had an ad for their information on combating heart disease.

And, I realized that my answers to these would make a good blog post for today.

“Myth #1 -- Heart disease and heart attacks are an
inevitable part of aging.

Myth #2 -- Cholesterol is the main cause of heart disease
and heart attacks.

Myth #3 -- Blood pressure drugs help you avoid heart
problems and live longer.

Myth #4 -- Aggressive, "type A" behavior increases your
risk of a heart attack.

Myth #5 -- Low-fat, low cholesterol diets are good for you
and your heart.”

Here are my answers.:

“Myth #1 -- Heart disease and heart attacks are an
inevitable part of aging.”

Aging does help cause heart disease. But I believe that this is in part because doing the things that cause it and/or doing without the things that prevent it tends to cause damage that builds up over time. So, the longer you live like that the more time the damage builds up.

But, you can make heart disease much less likely &/or take 5 times as long to show up if you:

avoid tobacco smoke and bad air pollution;
exercise regularly every week usually including strength training and interval cardio;
you avoid the foods like soft drinks, refined grain foods, and packaged snacks and desserts; you avoid excessive amounts of fatty meats and full fat dairy foods;
eat sugar or foods containing it very infrequently and then in moderation;
you eat a variety of vegetables every day – including plenty of onions;
you eat lean protein foods and some plant protein foods;
you get health OK oils from nuts, avocados, or extra virgin olive oil and no other oils with very little butter and no margarine;
you eat wild caught fish and take omega 3 supplements;
you avoid all transfats and high fructose corn syrup;
& you take the supplements such as niacin and choline that increase HDL & supplements like beta sitosterol, other kinds of sterols, & niacin that prevent high LDL levels & antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C, natural vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid, & CoQ10;
& it likely also helps to:
take a good multivitamin and mineral supplement, a B-complex supplement, & extra B12, and about 50 mg a day of B6 in addition; an additional 2,000 iu of vitamin D a day, & an extra 800 to 1600 of folic acid a day.

In addition, drinking up to a drink a day of alcohol, particularly red wine -- for women or -- up to two drinks a day for men, also seems to increase HDL and lower heart attack risk. (Unfortunately drinking more than this seems to INCREASE heart disease risk; and it tends to cause high blood pressure & sometimes causes car and other accidents with property damage or injury or worse. So this is one to be very careful of.)

Doing this set of things helps keep your LDL cholesterol at low levels; it helps keep both your HDL and LDL from oxidation; & because it lowers your triglycerides and increases your HDL, it does a great job in lowering the small particle LDL that DIRECTLY CAUSES cardiovascular and heart disease; and doing this set of things also lowers inflammation as measured by the HS CRP tests. It also tends to prevent high blood sugar levels.

If you do these things well and long enough, you will have much less risk of heart disease at first and then a risk that approaches zero.

Your heart attack and heart disease risk will still tend to go up a bit as you get older; but you’ll likely live long enough to die of something else first!

You do NOT need statin drugs to do this. And once you do this set of things long enough, your HDL, LDL, triglycerides, and CRP readings will be far better than those of the people who don’t do these things but who DO take statin drugs. You won’t get those drug side effects; and your heart attack risk will be lower.

And, you get extra benefits too. You’ll be less fat; your aging will slow down; you will be more sexually capable; and you will be dramatically less likely to get any kind of cancer.

“Myth #2 -- Cholesterol is the main cause of heart disease
and heart attacks.”

Higher levels of total cholesterol tend to go with more risk; & levels of 180 or less tend to go with less risk.

BUT low HDL plus high triglycerides and high LDL is MUCH more dangerous and correlated with heart diseases and heart attacks. So is high CRP inflammation. And, there is also some evidence that low levels of antioxidants tends to give you oxidized LDL and HDL which is also dangerous.

Someone with all those things in bad shape but total cholesterol in the 180 to 240 range is at far more risk than someone with good readings on those things with cholesterol of 240 to 260.

And, the kind of cholesterol that it IS desirable to lower if it’s high is LDL cholesterol while you want to INCREASE HDL cholesterol.

220 cholesterol with 100 HDL and 100 LDL is extremely safe while the same 220 with 30 HDL and 170 LDL is quite dangerous.

So, the total cholesterol is much less important than once believed. That said, as your total cholesterol gets to be above 240, your LDL tends to go above 130, which IS risky.

But your lifestyle, HDL and triglyceride readings, and your HS CRP readings may show it’s still moderately safe OR horribly dangerous depending on what you do and what heredity you have.

And, high levels of blood sugar as measured by fasting glucose and HBA1C also measure cardiovascular risk because bad readings on those multiply the effects of anything that’s in bad shape. In addition, such high levels of blood sugar are indicative and diagnostic of NOT following the lifestyle above, so your other heart disease risk measures are more likely to be in bad shape too.

So, since those are the measures of the things that cause heart disease they should be what you and your doctor measure and follow much MORE than total cholesterol.

Aim for HDL over at least 36 and well over 50 if you can achieve it.

Aim for LDL of at least as low as 129 and about 100 if you can achieve it.

Aim for triglycerides of 149 or well under 99 if you can achieve it.

Aim for fasting glucose of 99 or less or always 89 or less if you can achieve it.

& Aim for HBA1c of 5.9 or less or always 5.7 or less if you can achieve it.

And, do the things in # 1 above. That will help you achieve all these readings and give you added heart and health protection too.

“Myth #3 -- Blood pressure drugs help you avoid heart
problems and live longer.’

High blood pressure even in the 130 over 85 range is bad for your heart and health with higher blood pressure even worse. THAT is true.

And, blood pressure of over 160 over 100 is bad enough that drugs are likely necessary to protect your heart and health.

BUT, their track record for use at lower blood pressures is NOT as good. The side effects tend to cause more health problems than they solve at lower levels of high blood pressure. Readings like 175 over 108 DO justify taking the blood pressure drugs. Readings like 148 over 88 tend not to. They do, however, suggest that you need to do more to upgrade your lifestyle in a health protective direction right away.

And, many of these blood pressure drugs tend to cause quality of life problems too.

Beta blockers seem to lower blood pressure without much heart attack protection and can cause congestive heart failure if taken too long in larger doses I’ve read.

Diuretics tend to delete many nutrients that are heart protective, necessary for good health, and even help keep your blood pressure low otherwise!

We’re preparing to launch an eBook on how to lower high blood pressure without drugs.

But, the summary is that if you follow all of the lifestyle in # 1. above, the chances of you having blood pressure of over 160 over 100 where you need the drugs approaches zero.

“Myth #4 -- Aggressive, "type A" behavior increases your
risk of a heart attack.”

Redford Williams, MD did the studies and wrote the books on the right answer to this one.

Hurrying and trying to do a lot tend to be safe in and of themselves if done intelligently and for good cause. (They were part of the original measure of type A.) And, a lot of high achievers do such things. But if you do them with some flexibility and without anger, they are heart safe.

However, hostility, anger, and lack of compassion and emotional warmth ARE truly deadly. They often produce traffic accidents, fights, spousal abuse, divorces, dysfunctional families, getting fired from jobs, AND they produce a MASSIVELY increased risk of heart disease and death.

So that’s the part of the original type A behavior that DOES produce heart disease.

Think of legitimate reasons to like and forgive people and turn off the reverse kind of thinking. And treat other people with kindness and courtesy even if they don’t currently deserve it. (Reserve rage for people who are actually trying to kill you. Someone who cuts you off in traffic may have put you at risk; but that’s NOT the same thing usually.)

Your heart will last longer and so will you!

“Myth #5 -- Low-fat, low cholesterol diets are good for you
and your heart.”

This has NOT proved true.

Such diets tend NOT to have a good effect on heart disease risk because:

Foods such as extra virgin olive oil, omega 3 oils from wild caught fish; and from nuts and/or avocados help to boost HDL levels and provide health benefits. Plus they help keep you satisfied on LESS calories if eaten in moderation and have abundant other health benefits. So, NOT eating them to be lowfat tends to backfire.

Some animal protein foods if eaten lean and from naturally fed or wild caught animals do have cholesterol; but eating them provides high quality protein and does the best job in keeping you from being hungry. So, again they help keep you satisfied on LESS calories. So, NOT eating them to avoid cholesterol tends to
backfire. (Avoiding excessive saturated fat intake and avoiding eating farmed fish or grain fed meats and too much fat from those kinds of animals DOES make sense, however.)

But the big reason is this one: Lowfat, low animal fat diets tend to be high in sugars, refined grain foods, and often are even way too high in whole grain foods.

Those foods tend to spike your blood sugar, make you fat, and drive your triglycerides to high levels.

So they make you fat and INCREASE your risk of heart disease in several ways. And, if you combine that kind of diet with not exercising, your heart disease risk goes up expentially.