Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life (11 page)

Physical activity cannot counteract the effects of a fat-filled diet, but it can
add
to the benefits of a healthful life-style. A simple program for getting your muscles moving again is found in
Appendix I
.

During World War II, the prevalence of heart disease dropped in some populations. This suggested to some that stress has nothing to do with heart disease, since there is probably more stress during wartime than at any other. The truth is, heart disease was rarer during World War II because meats and other fatty foods were greatly restricted. If one looks carefully at the effects of stress alone, it is clear that stress contributes to heart problems.

Researchers in Lebanon
³⁴
found a clear relationship between exposure to the ongoing battles in that country and the demonstration of plaques on angiograms (X-rays of the heart). But you don’t have to be dodging bullets to be under stress. Daily life is full of events that cause our hearts to beat a bit faster and drive our blood pressure up. When we are emotionally stressed hormones are released in our bodies that prepare us for rapid action. Over the long run, they take a toll on the heart. Even such tasks as performing arithmetic problems or public speaking cause our hormones to respond. In patients with heart disease these effects show up in bouts of abnormal heart function, often without the patient being aware that the stress has had any effect on the heart at all.
³⁵

The same thing occurs at the workplace. Stress drives blood pressure up and, over the long run, causes measurable changes in the heart.
³⁶
The problem, researchers found, is not just a demanding workplace. The problem is a combination of high demand and little worker control over the workload. Reducing stress means keeping your challenges within the range you can manage. In addition, you cope better when you have had adequate sleep. There are special techniques that can help melt tension out of the body; these are found.

Most people do not have a hereditary tendency toward heart disease. Even in families where heart disease occurs in many members over more than one generation, the problem is not usually due to genetics, but to eating or smoking habits that persist across generations.

A small fraction of the population, about 5 percent, does have a true genetic tendency toward heart disease. Your doctor can tell you if you are in this group. If so, proper diet is vital. Since you are at particular risk of heart problems, you will want to follow the most healthful strategy you possibly can.

It is a mistake to conclude that you have a hereditary cholesterol problem just because a cholesterol-lowering diet prescribed by your doctor did not work. If the diet included lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, or dairy products, it was not a good test. Many people who try a low-fat, pure vegetarian diet see dramatic results in a rather short time.

High blood pressure is potentially dangerous. And it is not only a risk factor for heart disease. It can also lead to strokes and other serious problems. Happily, certain foods can have a beneficial effect on your blood pressure.

When your blood pressure is measured, two numbers are checked:
systolic
blood pressure is the surge of pressure during each heartbeat;
diastolic
is the pressure in the arteries between beats. A blood pressure of 120/80 means that each surge of blood causes as much pressure as 120 millimeters of mercury within the artery, and that a pressure of 80 millimeters of mercury remains between beats.

By now everyone is aware that salt has an effect on blood pressure. It is easy to reduce your salt intake. Salt is an acquired taste, and you will adapt to a lower intake very quickly. When I was a medical student, one of my professors told me that he was following a no-added-salt diet. At the time, this struck me as quite a deprivation. However, somehow I inadvertently did the same thing. I stopped adding salt at the table. Then I gradually reduced the amount used in cooking. Today I seldom add salt to anything, either in cooking or at the table. While this may sound ascetic, it was a gradual change and I never actually miss salt at all.

But salt is only the beginning of dietary changes that lower blood pressure. Numerous studies have shown that vegetarians have lower blood pressures than nonvegetarians. It is not just that vegetarians tend to have healthier life-styles overall. There is something about the vegetarian diet that lowers blood pressure. For example, researchers have compared Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians with Mormons. Both groups avoid coffee, alcohol, tea, and tobacco, but Mormons eat meat, while about 50 percent of Adventists are vegetarians. The vegetarians had blood pressures that were eight to nine points lower, systolic, and six to eight points lower, diastolic.
³⁷

Researchers in Australia began a series of experiments in which they put patients on a vegetarian diet for six weeks. The result was a definite lowering of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. They then switched the subjects back to their previous diet and their blood pressure promptly went up again. The researchers concluded that a vegetarian diet clearly lowers blood pressure, but no one part of the diet is responsible for this benefit.
³⁸
Even without restricting salt intake, a low-fat, high-fiber diet can lower blood pressure by as much as 10 percent.
³⁹

Why does it work? It is not because people who eat vegetarian meals tend to be slimmer than meat-eaters, although that is certainly true. The drop in blood pressure occurs before any substantial weight change. The change in blood pressure may be due to the fact that high-fat diets increase the tendency of blood cells to clump together, and make the blood thicker (more viscous).
^40
,
41

Another part of the explanation may relate to the reduced iron storage that vegetarians enjoy. The Finnish researchers who found a strong link between iron and heart disease also found that iron contributes to hypertension in their study of nearly 2,000 men.
¹⁶
Vegetarians do not just avoid the fat and cholesterol of animal products; they also skip much of the risk of iron overload.

The omega-3 oils that are common in soybeans, as well as several kinds of vegetables, also seem to contribute to the blood pressure lowering.
⁴²
And vitamin C, which, of course, is packed into vegetables and fruits, can also lower blood pressure slightly. Mild hypertension can be reduced by as little as one gram of vitamin C daily.
³

High blood pressure can be extremely dangerous and some people do need medication. If you are on medication currently, be sure to discuss any dietary changes with your physician, because your need for medication may change.

Plaques do not form only in the heart. They also form in the arteries leading to the brain. When a part of the brain dies from the lack of blood supply, it is called a stroke. A person may suddenly lose the capacity to form words, or to move a part of the body. When I first worked in hospitals, I found strokes much more frightening than heart attacks. To see a patient struggling to remember simple words, or to have to learn to become left-handed as his right hand hung limply by his side, was truly heart-wrenching.

Strokes can occur for reasons aside from accumulating plaques. A blood clot may lodge in an artery to the brain, choking off the blood supply, or arteries can break open and bleed into the brain. In addition, some strokes are caused by inborn defects in the blood vessels.

A stroke can be a dramatic, and sometimes fatal, event. Or small, barely perceptible strokes can occur repeatedly over months or years, each one killing a small part of the brain. As parts of the brain are sequentially killed off, the net result is dementia, often indistinguishable from Alzheimer’s disease.

Most strokes are preventable. Controlling your blood cholesterol level and blood pressure can dramatically reduce your likelihood of stroke. And avoiding tobacco is important, too. There is a strong relationship between smoking and strokes,
⁴³
as there is between smoking and heart disease.

Plaques form in the arteries to the legs, causing leg pains, called
claudication
, which comes from the Latin word meaning “to limp.” This pain comes on when a person walks or climbs the stairs, and is relieved by resting. It progresses so that less and less activity is possible, and eventually pain can even occur at rest.

Plaques also form in the arteries to the genitals. By age sixty, one out of four men is impotent. Researchers in France examined 440 impotent men and found that the risk factors for impotence are essentially the same as for heart disease.
⁴⁴
In other words, just as high cholesterol levels, high blood
pressure, and smoking cause plaques to form in the arteries of the heart, the same process occurs in arteries throughout the body.

There are other ways that diet can lead to impotence. Fatty diets contribute to diabetes, which in turn can lead to impotence by accelerating atherosclerosis. (As we will see in
Chapter 5
, the New Four Food Groups are dramatically effective for diabetics.) Meat-based diets also contribute to high blood pressure, which aggravates atherosclerosis and, in turn, impotence. And some drugs (e.g., methyldopa [Aldomet] and guanethidine) used to treat high blood pressure also interfere with sexual functioning.

The threat to sexual potency may be a greater motivator than the risk of a heart attack. People do have trouble picturing their coronary arteries, while other parts of the male anatomy have a tremendous psychic presence. It might have been easier to convince men of the need for dietary change if I were to have titled this book
The Male Sex Power Diet
. Evidence shows that claudication is reversible, just as coronary heart disease is. Is impotence reversible through life-style changes? No researchers have investigated that question, but there is no reason to believe these plaques are different from those in the conditions we know more about—in which case the answer will prove to be a resounding yes.

On July 21, 1990, a revolution took place in medicine. That was the day the prominent medical journal
The Lancet
published the findings of a young, Harvard-educated doctor now on the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Dean Ornish demonstrated that heart disease can actually be
reversed
without medicines.
⁴⁵
At the time he published his findings, heart disease was the commonest cause of death (and still is), but most doctors were not even attempting to reverse the disease. Most believed that the plaques of cholesterol and other substances that clog the arteries to the heart could not go away. The way to get rid of them was to wait until they were severe, and then send the patient to the hospital for a bypass or angioplasty. Many doctors would prescribe a diet of lean meat, chicken, and fish. With this dietary regimen, heart disease usually was not stopped. It went on, ever so gradually, to kill the patient.

At Fort Mason in San Francisco, Dr. Ornish tested a new theory. He
believed that if a more potent diet was prescribed along with other life-style changes, plaques might stop growing. Even better, the plaques might actually begin to dissolve. To test this theory, he selected patients who had plaques that were clearly visible on angiograms. He split the patients into two groups. Half were referred to a control group in which they got the standard care that doctors prescribe. That would usually mean an American Heart Association-recommended diet, advice not to smoke, and often various medications.

The special intervention group, on the other hand, got a very different kind of treatment. The patients began a totally vegetarian diet. And vegetable oils were kept to a minimum as well; the prescribed diet was less than 10 percent fat (by calories). They were also asked to begin a program of modest exercise, walking about a half-hour a day, or one hour three times a week. They had to learn to handle stress through breathing exercises, visualization, meditation, yoga, or other techniques. And, of course, they were not allowed to smoke.

The patients met as a group twice a week in sessions that combined education and group support, and they brought their spouses or companions along. They talked together about their successes with the new program, but also about their problems and how to integrate the new program into their day-to-day lives. In cooking lessons, they learned to make healthful foods at home, and take-home meals were also provided.

Early on there were hints that something was changing. Dr. Ornish’s patients started to feel better, and they continued to improve over the course of the year. Even though they had been struggling with the crushing chest pain of heart disease, that changed very dramatically. “Most of them became essentially pain-free,” Dr. Ornish said, “even though they were doing more activities, going back to work, and doing things that they hadn’t been able to do, in some cases, for years.”

Their cholesterol levels dropped. And dropped. And dropped—lower than had ever been found in any previous diet experiment. “We found reductions in blood cholesterol levels that were comparable to what can be achieved with cholesterol-lowering drugs,” Ornish said. With no side effects.

The people on the more traditional medical routine did not do so well. They followed the diet their doctors recommended, but their chest pain did not go away. It became more severe, and it struck more often. After a year, Dr. Ornish put the patients to the real test. They underwent another
angiogram so the plaques in their coronary arteries could again be measured. Most of the patients on the standard treatment were not getting better.