Working women are equal to men in a way they’ll wish they weren’t. Female workers with stressful jobs were more likely than women with less job strain to suffer a heart attack or a stroke or to have clogged arteries, a big federally funded study found.

Worrying about losing a job can raise heart risks, too, researchers found.

The results seem sure to resonate in a weak economy with plenty of stress about jobs — or lack of them. The mere fact this study was done is a sign of the times: Past studies focused on men, the traditional breadwinners, and found that higher job stress raised heart risks. This is the longest major one to look at stress in women, who now make up nearly half of the workforce.

“The reality is these women don’t have the same kind of jobs as men” and often lack authority or control over their work, said Suzanne Steinbaum, director of the Women and Heart Disease program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “It’s not just going to work, it’s what happens when you get there.”

Steinbaum had no role in the study, which was led by Michelle Albert, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Results were reported Sunday at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago.

The research involved 17,415 participants in the Women’s Health Study, a long-running trial looking at heart disease and cancer prevention. The women were healthy, 57 years old on average, and had worked full or part-time when the study began in 1999.

Most were health professionals, “anything from being a nurse’s aide all the way to a Ph.D.,” Albert said. They filled out surveys about their jobs, rating statements like “My job requires working very fast,” and “I am free from competing demands that others make.”

Researchers put them in four groups based on stress they reported and looked 10 years later to see how they fared.

Women with demanding jobs and little control over how to do them were nearly twice as likely to have suffered a heart attack as women with less demanding jobs and more control. The high-stress group had a 40 percent greater overall risk of heart problems, including heart attacks, strokes or clogged arteries needing bypass surgery or an artery-opening angioplasty procedure.

Women worried about losing their jobs had higher blood pressure, cholesterol and body weight.

Stress can harm by releasing “fight or flight” hormones, spurring inflammation and raising blood pressure, Steinbaum said.

It did a number on Jackie Morgan, 46, a suburban Boston woman who is on her second medical leave of absence in two years from a teleconference center, where she managed 16 operators running corporate conference calls.

“Dropped calls? Somebody’s line not open? You’re running from operator to operator to handle problems that occur during the call,” she explained. “It’s very stressful. When I tell people about it, they look at me like I have three heads. I feel like I should have Rollerblades on.”

Her heart problems started in the summer of 2008, with a crush of calls related to auto company bailouts.

“I just started getting chest pains” and collapsed while out walking one night, she said. Tests found no signs of heart disease, but doctors gave her nitroglycerin pills, which can relieve chest tightness due to constricted heart arteries.
“Sure enough, when the pain came again a few other times I took the nitro and boom, the pain was gone,” Morgan said.

Doctors should ask about stress along with traditional heart risk factors like smoking and blood pressure, Albert said. “We need to start taking that seriously.”

She has these tips for workers:

—Exercise. It clears the mind, lifts the mood and curbs other heart risks, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
—Limit bringing work home.
—Get a life. Do things with friends, whether they’re folks you work with or not.
—Build “me time” into every day. “It can be as little as 10 or 15 minutes to meditate, pray or take a walk,” Albert said.

It is hard to self diagnose yourself with high blood pressure because the symptoms are not physical ones that you can see or necessarily feel. Some symptoms associated with this problem are; headache, dizziness, blurred vision, nausea and vomiting, chest pain, and shortness of breath.

If you let it continue too long without bring those numbers down, then you could suffer from a heart attack, heart failure, eye damage, kidney failure, stroke, aneurysms, and possible peripheral arterial disease. These are all type of problems that could cause organ damage in your body.

While you are pregnant, it could result in what is called preeclampsia and is very dangerous if it is not taken care of throughout your entire pregnancy. When you go to your doctor appointments, you always have your blood pressure checked by the nurse.

This is done for good reason. They want to see what is normal for your blood pressure to use as a signal for later on if it increases.

They perform this little routine from the very beginning to help them determine what is normal and what could be abnormal for your body. Since every woman is different and has a different “normal range”, they regularly check you to note any differences each time you come in.

Even if you are diagnosed with this, you will probably not feel sick at all because these symptoms are similar to other general symptoms in pregnancy. Usually if you are diagnosed with it, you will be prescribed bed rest.

This can be very frustrating to most women because they do not feel sick so they do not feel like they need to spend their whole day in bed for the rest of their pregnancy. The important thing to remember is that you want to do what is the best thing for your baby and getting proper prenatal care is essential for your baby to be healthy.

There are a couple of other things that your doctor will ask you about to determine if you might have preeclampsia or not. They will ask you to urinate in a cup to test it for protein which is a symptom.

You will also be weighed, not only to keep track of how much weight you should be gaining, but also to make sure that you are not gaining weight too quickly. Women cannot prevent this from happening and the only way to get rid of it is to deliver the baby.

There are only about six to eight percent of pregnancies that develop preeclampsia in the United States every year. It is also known as gestational hypertension and toxemia.

There are some factors that are known to increase your risk for developing it throughout your pregnancy. These include women with; chronic hypertension (before getting pregnant), previous pregnancies where they had preeclampsia, an age under twenty years old or over forty years old, diabetes, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, multiples (more than one baby in the womb), and who were obese prior to conception.

Even though there are some women who might be at a higher risk than other women for toxemia, it can occur in any healthy pregnancy and needs to be watched for continuously. They might also have abdominal pain and sensitivity to light.

How can you further prevent any problems in your pregnancy after being diagnosed with it? You can make sure you keep your blood pressure under control by making lifestyle changes such as; obtaining regular prenatal medical care, avoid alcohol and tobacco, keeping your blood pressure under control as best as you can.

Taking care of yourself before you become pregnant is equally important. There are a few things that you should do before you decide to have a baby.

These things include; limiting salt intake, participating in physical exercise, losing weight (if you are overweight to begin with), and talking with your doctor about what to do if you were to get pregnant. Remember that you want your baby to be healthy but that your health is also just as important.

It is a metabolic disorder that people usually develop in their adult years. It means that you have high blood glucose and insulin deficiency.

It is the most common form and millions of people have been diagnosed with it. The dangerous part is that there are many Americans that are unaware that they are at high risk for getting it and do not get it diagnosed early on.

There are two different things that could be happening with your insulin levels. Your body may not be producing enough insulin on its own to keep up with your diet or the cells in your body are ignoring it.

When you eat food, you put it into your mouth to first break it up into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces of food then enter into the rest of your body and your stomach and intestines break down all of the sugars and starches into glucose.

Glucose is the basic fuel for the cells in your body and insulin is the transporter that takes the sugar from the blood into your cells. When that is not working, the glucose builds up in the blood and does not get into the cells which lead to diabetes complications.

How can you know if you have this disorder? There are some symptoms to look for and it is important to note that type one is different from type two.

You can get dehydrated very easily because the buildup of sugar in your blood can cause an increase in urination. Your body is trying to get rid of the sugar from the body and will cause you to use the bathroom more often.

If the dehydration becomes too severe, you develop hyperosmolar nonketotic diabetic coma and can turn into a life threatening complication. It is where you cannot drink enough fluids to make up for all of the fluids you are losing.

This disorder also causes damage to your body. It can hurt the nerves and blood vessels in your eyes, kidneys, and heart.

It can also lead to heart disease called atherosclerosis which causes your arteries to harden. This will lead to heart attack and stroke.

You can suffer from increased hunger, dry mouth, nausea, fatigue, blurred vision, frequent infections of the skin or urinary tract, and numbness or tingling of the hands or feet. These vary between different people, but most exhibit a few of these symptoms at some time.

People can develop abnormalities in the eyes related to the disorder. You must control the sugar in your blood pressure and cholesterol so you can stop eye disease from progressing.

The longer you have this disorder, the more your risk of kidney disease is. It can cause kidney failure and heart disease.

When your nerves and arteries harden, it leads to decreased sensation and bad blood circulation especially in your feet. This causes more infections and ulcers which raise the risk of amputation.

Cutting your toenails can be a dangerous thing to do because if you cut it down too low, you can start bleeding and get an infection. Infections in the feet tend to take a long time to heal and may not heal properly if you do not take care of it the right way.

It may be in your best interest to have someone else that is a professional nail cutter and has a better view of your feet to clip your nails. Take good care of your feet and be very careful with them.

Scientists are not sure why this disorder has a genetic link and runs in some families. But they do know that you can help prevent from getting this disorder yourself.

It all comes to healthy living. Making sure that you get the exercise you need daily which is at least twenty to thirty minutes doing a physical activity.

Your diet is also important to keeping healthy. Just because diabetes runs in your family does not mean that you have to get it or that you will get it eventually, it just means you may have to work a little harder to stay away from it.

It kills more Americans than cancer does every year and the rates are continually rising in a lot of countries. The interesting thing that most people do not know is that it accumulates from adolescence.

It becomes a problem way before you hit adulthood and start noticing symptoms. This means that taking preventative steps in childhood is extremely important.

This is usually related to atherosclerosis which is a type of arterial disease. Only after atherosclerosis has advanced for a few decades are you able to find any heart problems.

You can be treated by cardiologists, thoracic surgeons, vascular surgeons, neurologists, or interventional radiologists depending on what organ system has been affected. Many of these specialists are trained in other areas so that they can perform more than one type of procedure at once.

There are at least five different things that you can do to help prevent this problem. The first one is to lower you LDL cholesterol.

This can be done by reducing your saturated fat intake. Saturated fat is found in foods such as; dairy products (like cream, cheese, butter, and ghee), animal fats (suet, tallow, lard, and fatty meat), coconut oil, cottonseed oil, palm kernel oil, chocolate, and some other kinds of prepared foods.

The second thing you can do is to lower your triglyceride levels by reducing the amount of sugary and processed foods that you consume. Some examples of sugary and processed foods are; white bread, pasta, potatoes, chips, canned fruits, jellies, salad dressings, fruit drinks with added sugar and your basic junk food (cookies, cake, doughnuts, and crackers).

The third thing that you can do to help prevent heart problems is to reduce your homocysteine levels. You can accomplish this by supplementing your diet with vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid.

These vitamins are also highly recommended for pregnant women to take daily as well. The vitamin B6 helps significantly with your metabolism and prevents plaque buildup in the vessels linings in your body.

It lowers blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels by keeping the blood platelets from sticking together. All of these benefits help keep you at a low risk for heart disease.

Where can you find some of these vitamins naturally? They are found in leafy vegetables, legumes, liver products, breakfast cereals, certain fruits (like orange juice, cantaloupe, and strawberries), and vegetables (such as broccoli, romaine lettuce, corn, and tomato juice).

The fourth thing that you can do is to increase antioxidant activity by consuming more fruits and vegetables. By eating more fruits and vegetables, you are also doing the first three steps that were mentioned above.

The fifth thing that you can do to help prevent atherosclerosis is by lowering fibrinogen and growth factors. This is achieved by cutting out certain foods from your diet including; red meat, dairy products, poultry and eggs.

Cardiovascular disease is a chronic medical condition that is easily treatable and reversible. Even if you have a long history with the disease, you can fix the problem and stop it from happening again.

What is the treatment? The treatment for heart disease is simple.

Reduce the stress in your life, exercise, and eat well. Come up with a diet that includes all of the before mentioned foods that you should be consuming and get rid of all the unnecessary junk food and processed food that contains saturated fat and a lot of sugar.

You need to exercise regularly so that you can enjoy the many benefits that come with it. Not only will it help keep your weight under control but it will keep your arteries from clogging up and help you to feel really good about yourself.

A couple of other things that you can do to prevent atherosclerosis is to avoid drinking alcohol and to stop smoking. All of these preventative measures are simple but they will take a lot of self control to overcome and they are strict guidelines that need to be followed for the rest of your life.

First of all, your blood pressure is the amount of force that blood exerts on the walls of the blood vessels as is passes through them. There are two numbers that they tell you when you are having your blood pressure measured.

How is your diastolic pressure measured? Usually doctors or nurses will measure it with a device called a sphygmomanometer which can read your blood pressure.

The first number is known as the systolic blood pressure. This is the pressure that is measured while the heart is beating.

The second number (the one on the bottom) is known as the diastolic blood pressure. This is the pressure that is measured while the heart is relaxed in between heartbeats.

When the diastolic pressure is reading below 60, then it is considered too low. When the diastolic pressure reads about 90, it is considered high.

Your diastolic pressure changes frequently throughout the day. So what causes these changes?

Diastolic pressure is affected by the way you sit, stand, walk, and exercise. It can also be affected by the amount of tension you have in your body and if you use any nicotine.

Overall, your blood pressure is determined by your health, lifestyle, and diet. The only thing that you do not have control over is your family history.

But you do have plenty of control over everything else. Exercise that freedom to help lower both your diastolic and systolic blood pressure.

Why is your diastolic pressure so important to keep at a normal level? Because your diastolic blood pressure is created to send it to all other parts of your body.

When blood vessels travel away from the heart, they break off into several smaller branches. Some of these branches may go to the brain, while others may go to your kidneys.

Diastolic pressure keeps the blood flowing through all of these branches to help your body’s cells get all the oxygen and nutrients that they need. It also helps the waste matter that is in your body to be removed.

Since your blood pressure changes so many times each day, to get an accurate reading you need to measure it a few different times of day and come up with an average number.  This will give you a good idea of what your blood pressure is really like.

When you have low diastolic pressure (reading of 60 or lower), then it is known as hypotension. That means that your blood is not able to bring enough oxygen and nutrients to all the body cells.

When you have high diastolic pressure, it is known as hypertension and the pressure reads as more than 90. High blood pressure causes the small blood vessels to become scarred, hardened, and less flexible or elastic over time.

This means that they are more susceptible to getting blocked or ruptured. This can lead to major organ damage and/or failure.

You increase your chances of getting a heart attack or stroke if your blood pressure continues to remain too high for a long period of time. As you get older, your vessels may deteriorate a little bit on their own even if you do not have high blood pressure.

The last thing you want to do is speed up that process. Do not make your health problems worse than they need to be.

So if you can keep it in between 65 and 85, then you are in pretty good shape. What are some high blood pressure symptoms that you recognize?

Some things you might experience if you have hypertension are: headache, lightheadedness, and nausea. If your blood pressure becomes this severe, then you will require emergency hospitalization to prevent any brain bleeding or a possible stroke.

What can you do to lower these numbers? Look at your lifestyle first and see what kind of changes you can make.

Do you need to lose some weight and start exercising? What if you followed a diet plan that reduced fats, cholesterol, salt and alcohol?

If you follow these simple guidelines, you will become a healthier you. And you will prolong your life.

The nurse will then bring you back to a private room where he or she will check your temperature and your blood pressure. They ramble off some numbers that you are not sure what they mean and if they are good or bad.

The first number that they tell you is called the systolic blood pressure. You want this number to be in between 90 and 120. Keeping it within this range means that you at least somewhat healthy and do not have hypertension.

Hypertension is a chronic medical disease that means the blood pressure in your arteries is too high.  About 90% of these cases are called primary hypertension because there is no medical cause that can be found.

The remaining 10% or so of these cases are called secondary hypertension which is caused by other medical conditions that affect the kidneys, heart, endocrine system, or arteries.  Having hypertension consistently will lead to strokes, heart attacks, and other heart failures.

Obviously these kinds of medical conditions will have a negative impact on your overall health and well being as they can lead to death and shorten your life expectancy. Keeping track of your blood pressure will help you figure out when you need to lower it so that you can prolong your years here on earth.

So what are some ways that you can lower your systolic blood pressure or the “number on top”? There are several ways that you can accomplish this by taking some very easy steps.

The first thing you can do is to lower your sodium intake. Most commonly you find sodium in the salt that you add to the foods you eat.

A lot of times, salt is already added to food to help preserve the product. So avoid adding any “extra” salt that you do not really need.

It is really hard when you go out to eat and the waiter sets a bowl of tortilla chips in front of you that do not have enough salt to make them more flavorful. Instead of sprinkling on that excess salt, dip it into the salsa to give them a good taste.

You can find low sodium food products that taste just as well as the normal product. There are also many soups and other kinds of snacks that have no salt added.

These foods may taste a little bit more bland, but most of the time you cannot tell the difference. And you will not feel as guilty when you eat them.

If you are the primary care giver in your home and are the one who gets to go grocery shopping, then make these healthier choices so that they affect your whole family. Do no continue to buy everyone else those salty chips while you get the low sodium kind.

Encourage the rest of your family to join with you in your quest for a healthier life and have them eat the same food that you do. This will help them start healthy habits when they are young and hopefully this will teach them how they should be eating for the rest of their lives.

Your children grow up watching you and what you eat. Make sure you are putting food down on the table that will help their little bodies grow strong and not shorten their life.

Like with the tortilla chips and salsa, find other dips, spices, and sauces that are low in sodium when cooking. The more you cook without salt, or at least reduced salt, the less you will notice its absence from the food and the less you miss it.

One last tip is to cook from scratch as much as you are able because processed foods already have a lot of salt in them to help preserve them. It may take a little bit more time, but eventually it will help add more years to your life in the end.

The only way to figure out whether or not you have high blood pressure is to go to the doctor’s office to have it measured. Making sure that you visit your doctor every year for a wellness checkup will keep you on the right track to being healthy and informed about your body.

Basically, blood pressure is the force in your arteries that is created when your heart beats. A normal reading should be below 120 (systolic pressure) and below 80 (diastolic pressure).

If you have your blood pressure measured and find that it is too high, there are some things that you can do to try to reduce it. Before you take any medication, try to bring it down in a more natural way.

The most obvious way to lower your blood pressure is to exercise. No matter what age or what kind of condition you are, there are physical activities that you will be able to do.

There are a lot of people in America with different types of jobs. Some jobs are very physically demanding while other jobs require you to work in an office or an environment that offers very little physical exercise.

Walking is something that you can do with any job and a great way to keep in shape and stay moderately active. Instead of spending 15 minutes cruising around the parking lot looking for that “perfect spot” right next to the door, park further back so that you are forced to walk a few extra feet.

This is not only beneficial to you, but to the other people that may be in your car. Plus, parking away from most of the traffic might keep your car from accidently getting scraped by a shopping cart.

If you work in an office, you are probably used to sitting down 8 hours a day and not getting much movement. Put the trash can a little farther away from where you sit so that you have to get up to throw something away.

Instead of bringing a water bottle to work, make it a point to periodically get up from your desk to walk to the drinking fountain once every half hour or so. Get into the habit of drinking water instead of soda drinks.

It will you save money on those cans from the vending machine and keep you better hydrated. Drinking enough water will also force you to get up from your desk every once in a while to go to the bathroom.

During your lunch break, take a walk outside (if the weather is cooperating) and enjoy eating in a different setting than the place you work. Designating a specific spot outside of your office for eating lunch will help you stay away from snacking at your desk.

This is very similar to the concept of only using your bed to sleep instead using it for a variety of other things such as working on your computer or watching television while in the bedroom. It will help train your body to know when it is time to sleep so you won’t have such a hard time at night.

Modern conveniences have made us lazy and will continually encourage us to live a more sedentary lifestyle. Think about things in your life that make it a little easier for you, but aren’t necessary.

For example, a lot of people use elevators in multi-story buildings. It gets you to where you need to go a lot faster, but do you really need to use it that often?

Why not leave your house five minutes earlier so that you can walk to your floor on the third story instead of using the elevator? Just make sure you don’t push the snooze button on your alarm that morning so you can have those few extra minutes to use later in your day.

Whether you work in an office, drive a mail truck, or sit at home watching television all day, there are little things that you can find to increase your physical activity. And when you increase your physical activity, you can help decrease your high blood pressure.

A good diet and exercise is important for health but it may not be enough.

My situation was that of correct eating, good exercise and much else now known to be good for retaining health. However, my arteries on the CAT scan I had at age 37 reflected an arterial system that looked like an 80 year old. My father at 42 had his big stroke and never worked again.

I have a gene that brought this on for me. It took a Nobel Prize and time for me to develop ProArgi9 plus, that is constantly reversing the continual fight against inflammation of my arteries. I don’t know what it takes for everyone else but I live nicely with arteries of a 15 year old by taking 20 gm daily.

It’s my time.

“Dr. Joe” Prendergast

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Without inflammation, cholesterol won’t accumulate in blood vessel
walls and cause heart disease

Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake!

By Dwight Lundell, MD

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong.

So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong.. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human
body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your
body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood
vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein.

Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.

Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.]

That’s according to research from Intermountain Healthcare, which today at a national conference is presenting three abstracts that bolster the growing link between vitamin D levels and a wide range of health issues.

While the vitamin has long been known to promote calcium absorption and strengthen bones, it has also been increasingly linked to diseases, from heart disease to autoimmune diseases and some cancers.

Using its vast database of electronic medical records, the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray posed the questions: What effect do vitamin D levels have on the development of cardiovascular disease? On depression among patients with heart disease? On risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes and hypertension?

A lot, according to the abstracts, which will be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Conference in Florida. The studies were funded internally by Intermountain Healthcare.

Researchers examined records from 27,000 patients over age 50 who had no history of cardiovascular disease. Patients were considered to have “very low” levels of vitamin D in their blood if it measured below 15 nanograms per milliliter.

When compared with those with normal levels, those with a low level of the vitamin were Two times as likely to develop heart failure;

» 78 percent more likely to have a stroke;
» 77 percent more likely to die;
» 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease.

The link between the vitamin and heart disease is just an association for now, said Brent Muhlestein, director of cardiovascular research of the Heart Institute at IMC.

But if it is proved to be true, that would mean that the deficiency is as powerful a risk factor for heart disease as hypertension or high cholesterol.

“This new risk factor is amazingly strong,” he said.

The other studies found that among general patients 55 and older, those with very low levels of the vitamin were twice as likely to have diabetes. They were also more likely to have hypertension.

Among older patients with cardiovascular disease, deficiency was associated with having a diagnosis of depression.

It’s no surprise Utahns’ vitamin levels are low: The vitamin is present in few foods and it mainly comes from sun exposure. But sunscreen blocks absorption, and Utah’s latitude reduces the UV radiation exposure needed for vitamin D synthesis.

“We were fascinated that about two-thirds of everybody — young or old, male or female — is low on vitamin D in Utah,” Muhlestein said. “We don’t go out in the sun as much as we used to. I don’t know that’s necessarily bad,” he said, referring to the risks of skin cancer.

Instead, he recommends patients learn their vitamin D levels — it takes a blood test that is typically covered by insurance if it is deemed medically necessary — and take a supplement.

He puts his deficient patients on 2,000 to 5,000 international units a day. The official recommendation, under review by the Institutes of Medicine, is 400 units for people over age 50. But that is just a “drop in the bucket. It’s not going to do anything,” he said.

“Right here in Utah it takes 2,000 to 5,000 units to maintain adequate levels,” he said.

Researchers still need to determine whether boosting levels reduces the risk of heart disease. But Muhlestein noted that supplementation has already been proved to reduce the risk of bone fractures.

“If indeed it turns out vitamin D replacement resolves this added risk, that’s fabulous because it’s really easy to do,” he said.