Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 Most recently, national health organizations—the american heart association, the National Cholesterol Education Program, and the National Research Council—have decreed that serum cholesterol should be below 200 mg/dL.1 These same organizations suggest limiting fat consumption to no more than 30 percent of the calories consumed each day.
But that level of fat consumption has never been shown to arrest or reverse coronary artery disease. |
Michael Pollan
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 After all, the american heart association had already taken the same short link-linking step and had been advocating a prudent diet low in fat and cholesterol since 1961. Still, the committee was not unaware of the controversy surrounding the research on which it was basing its recommendations. It had received a strongly worded letter of dissent from the American Medical Association, arguing that "there is a potential for harmful effects for a radical long-term dietary change as would occur through adoption of the proposed national goal."
Still, the national goal was adopted. |
| What had been regarded as huckster ism and fraud in 1906 had begun to look like sound public health policy by 19 73. The american heart association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to "modify" various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that "any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed. |
| The "lipid hypothesis," as it was called, had already been embraced by the american heart association, which in 1961 had begun recommending a "prudent diet" low in saturated fat and cholesterol from animal products. True, actual proof for the lipid hypothesis was remarkably thin in 19 7 7—it was still very much a hypothesis, but one well on its way to general acceptance.
In January 197 7, the committee issued a fairly straightforward set of dietary guidelines, calling on Americans to cut down on their consumption of red meat and dairy products. |
Tori Hudson, N.D.
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 Interestingly, when soy intake (30 grams of soy, including 4 grams of phytosterols) was studied in the setting of a low glycemic index diet (a diet that does not raise blood sugar levels quickly), it demonstrated more improvement in lipid parameters than the standard american heart association Diet.118 It may in fact be that soy is most effective as part of an overall healthy diet and lifestyle plan. |
| However, approximately 75 percent of treated hypertension patients are receiving inadequate care, as defined by their inability to achieve and maintain their target blood pressure.
The american heart association (AHA) offers 10 ways to control your high blood pressure:
1. Know your blood pressure and have it checked regularly.
2. Maintain a healthy weight.
3. Avoid using salt in cooking or the salting of your foods. Avoid packaged salty foods.
4. Eat a diet low in saturated fat according to the AHA recommendations (see nutrition section).
5. Limit your alcohol intake to one drink per day. |
| AHA Recommendations. The american heart association dietary recommendations are designed to reduce high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and excess weight. These are the dietary guidelines:
• Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. Choose five or more servings per day.
• Eat a variety of grain products, including whole grains. Choose six or more servings per day.
• Include fat-free and low-fat milk products, fish, legumes (beans), skinless poultry, and lean meats.
• Choose fars with 2 grams or less of saturared fat per serving, such as liquid and tub margarines, canola oil, and olive oil. |
| The Step 1 and Step 2 diets were created by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Association's National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) and have been endorsed by the american heart association (AHA). These diets were designed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by focusing on reducing elevated cholesterol levels.
The Step 1 diet advises to reduce total fat intake to less than 30 percent of daily calories, with 8 to 10 percent of calories coming from saturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats should comprise less than 10 percent of daily calories. |
| Lowering the level of dietary fat has been in the news for a long time now. The american heart association says that 30 percent or less of our total calories should be from fat. Many alternative practitioners advise even lower intakes because of some of the additional benefits, such as reduction of breast, ovarian, and uterine cancer risk.
In addition to amount of fat, the type of fat is also important. Understanding the harmful effects of some fats and the beneficial effects of others can be confusing. A little explanation of terms and concepts may go a long way in clarifying the issue. |
| In 2001, the National Cholesterol Education Program released new guidelines for the management of cholesterol in the "Third Report of the Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults, Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP)." The american heart association has adopted the NCEP III guidelines, calling for more intensive life-habit interventions to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk for heart disease and of heart attacks. They call this the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet. Its target is to lower LDL cholesterol. |
Steven V. Joyal
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 C-Reactive Protein Test
In January 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the american heart association both endorsed the C-reactive protein (CRP) test as a screening tool for coronary artery disease. Even before their endorsement, however, my colleagues and I had been recommending this test because of the importance of inflammation as a risk factor for coronary artery disease as well as stroke and various age-related diseases. Hopefully, highlighting the importance of this test will translate into more people being screened and more heart disease being prevented. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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 HEART HEALTH: Researchers from Loma Linda University and New Mexico State University discovered that adding 1 % ounces of pecans a day (27 to 30 pecan halves) as part of a heart-healthy diet reduced LDL ("bad") cholesterol twice as much as those who did not add pecans to their american heart association Step I diet. Triglycerides were also reduced and HDL ("good") cholesterol rose for those who consumed the pecans. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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| On average, they ate a diet that the american heart association describes as "comparable to what is typically consumed in the United States." It derived about 34 percent of its calories from fat—12 percent from saturated fat, n percent from monounsaturated fat, and 6 percent from polyunsaturated fat—and included about 312 milligrams a day of cholesterol.
After a little more than a year, the researchers noted that those following the Mediterranean-style diet were doing much better than the control group. The results, they reported, were "striking. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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| Sacks FM. American Heart Association's annual meeting in Dallas, 2005.
Velie EM, Schairer C, Flood A, He JP, Khattree R, Schatzkin A. Empirically derived dietary patterns and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer in a large prospective cohort study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Dec;82(6):1308-1319.
Blackberries www.oregon-berries.com
Ding M et al. Cyanidin-3-glucoside, a natural product derived from blackberry, exhibits chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic activity. / Biol Chem. 2006 Jun 23;281(25):17359-17368.
Feng R, Bowman LL, Lu Y, Leonard SS, Shi X, liang BH, Castranova V, Vallyathan V, Ding M. |
Michael Pollan
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| McGovern "Goals" but also in the National Academy of Sciences report, the dietary guidelines of the american heart association and the American Cancer Society and the U.S. food pyramid bears direct responsibility for creating the public health crisis that now confronts us.
Even if we accept the epidemic of obesity and diabetes as the unintended consequence of the war against dietary fat— collateral damage, you might say—what about the intended consequence of that campaign: the reduction of heart disease? |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 The american heart association estimates that by comparison, only one in twenty Americans will have coronary heart disease. Similarly, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, one in fourteen American adults will have cancer at some time in their life. This means that an American is more likely to get an autoimmune disease than either cancer or heart disease. Yet we hear much more in the press about heart disease and cancer than we do about autoimmunity. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Even the extremely conservative american heart association recommends 2 to 4 g of the two omega-3 fats found in fish oil (EPA and DHA) for patients who need to lower triglycerides.
Another major risk factor for heart disease is hypertension, or high blood pressure. Fish oil lowers blood pressure, albeit modestly. But its effect on cardiovascular disease overall is anything but modest. Study after study has shown that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish reduce the risk of death, heart attack, stroke, and abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). |
Andreas Moritz
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 In addition to still getting a significant amount of caffeine, drinking three cups or more of decaffeinated coffee may cause an increase in harmful LDL cholesterol by increasing a specific type of blood fat linked to the metabolic syndrome, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2005. Decaffeinated coffee is made from more acidic beans than regular coffee. These strong acids have shown to increase the incidence of heartburn, osteoporosis, Glaucoma and rheumatoid arthritis. |
| A recent study revealed that more than 70 percent of health care workers failed to use the proper arm position established by the american heart association. This position calls for the elbow to be slightly flexed and held at heart level.
In a study from the University of California, San Diego, 100 subjects' blood pressure was taken in six different positions. The researchers found that when the subjects were seated with the arm perpendicular to the body, hypertension was recorded in 22 percent. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 It was cited as the top advancement in cardiac treatment by the american heart association in 2001. The cypher was not the one implanted in the Vice President. Nonetheless the two stories, the Vice President and Dr. Fischell's stent, are covered jointly.
In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration issued two warnings about excessive mortality after cypher implantation. Dr. Fischell denied that the stent posed a health risk. "I don't know what they are doing," he said of the FDA "They must have some other type of agenda. |
Bill Sardi
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 This is very puzzling, given the fact that the american heart association says the inclusion of soy protein foods as part of an otherwise healthy diet is well justified. Good for the heart but unclear for breast health. [Endocrinology 1:293-311, 2002]
Another report says: "Of current concern is the effect of phytoestrogen compounds on the growth of pre-existing breast tumors. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Bottom line: The american heart association recommends no more than one egg per day from all sources. If your doctor has warned you to watch your cholesterol, cut down on eggs or eat egg whites, which have no cholesterol.
MARGARINE
Margarines do have significantly less saturated fat and cholesterol than butter, so a non-hycirogenated (no trans fats) margarine is a healthy alternative. It certainly is cheaper than butter. But if you are not eating much of either, this decision isn't going to have a major effect on your health. Personally, I prefer butter. I just don't eat much of it. |
Michael Pollan
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| When corn oil and chips and sugary breakfast cereals can all boast being good for your heart, health claims have become hopelessly corrupt. The american heart association currently bestows (for a fee) its heart-healthy seal of approval on Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, andTrix cereals, Yoo-hoo lite chocolate drink, and Healthy Choice's Premium Caramel Swirl Ice Cream Sandwich—this at a time when scientists are coming to recognize that dietary sugar probably plays a more important role in heart disease than dietary fat. |
| Play your cards right and you can even get the american heart association to endorse your new breakfast cereal as "heart healthy." As I write, the FDA has just signed off on a new health claim for Frito-Lay chips on the grounds that eating chips fried in polyunsaturated fats can help you reduce your consumption of saturated fats, thereby conferring blessings on your cardiovascular system. So can a notorious junk food pass through the needle eye of nutritionist logic and come out the other side looking like a health food. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I also explain why disease organization like the American Diabetes Association, the american heart association and even the American Cancer Society are, in my opinion, little more than Big Pharma front groups that are far more interested in pushing drugs than curing disease. In my book, I discuss how these groups actually ignore known cures for these diseases and attack alternative medical treatments that offer real solutions. |
Melody Petersen
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 I found the medicine promoters at the mall, on college campuses, and sitting on the board of a local chapter of the american heart association. In a library used by the public schools I stumbled upon a storybook created by a company to promote its antidepressant. I discovered the drug companies screening Iowans for diseases, while their salespeople stood nearby, handing out brochures touting the product that just happened to treat the malady they were being tested for. The companies had moved far beyond being merely the providers of medicines. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Understanding the complexity of trans fatty acid reduction in the American diet: american heart association trans fat conference 2006: Report of the trans fat conference planning group. Circulation 115, 2231-2246.
65. Mensink, R. P., and Katan, M. B. (1990). Effect of dietary trans fatty acids on high-density and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in healthy subjects. N. Engl. J. Med. 323, 439^145.
66. Kromhout, D., Menotti, A., Bloemberg, B., et al. (1995). |
Hyla Cass
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 Here are some nutritional interventions to consider:
Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Studies show that omega-3s from fish oil helps decrease the inflammation associated with cardiovascular disease. The american heart association began recommending it as a treatment option in 2003.
Fish oil also lowers triglycerides. It protects against heart failure, irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), heart attack, and sudden death. Studies show that fish oil supplements can be as effective as statins—and without any side effects. Regular intake of fish oil has been shown to lower the risk of cardiac-related death. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 This study was presented at the american heart association meeting in 1991. When coenzyme Q10 was used as an adjunct to traditional therapy, improvements confirmed significant enhancement in exercise tolerance and patient quality of life compared to traditional treatment alone. This study, like the one cited above, shows the complementary support coenzyme Q10 affords when it is added to conventional medical treatments.
Another larger, double-blind trial was performed with 641 patients receiving placebo or coenzyme Qiq in a dose of 2 mg/kg body weight for one year. |
Dan Buettner
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 Since their findings were published in 1992, at least four major studies have confirmed that eating nuts has an effect. The american heart association has a positive recommendation about nuts. "So now everybody's asking, what is it about nuts?" Fraser said. "I'm not sure we have all the answers, but one thing certainly is that they have an effect on lower blood cholesterol."
"What about nuts that are roasted in oil?" I asked, glancing quickly behind Butler to see if there's a bag of cashews or almonds beside his jug of water.
"Doesn't matter," Fraser replied. |
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