This is from URL: http://www.ocnblue.net/heartdisease.html by Jim Sloman....I thought this is very interesting so I wanted to share. 
-- Nancy
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Heart disease
If you open a medical textbook from the 1880's and look under "Coronary atheroschlerosis" it won't be there. The disease was unknown. Indeed, the first heart attack in the United States was recorded in 1908, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What we call "heart disease" or "atheroschlerosis" is a 20th century disease. How did this come about?
In the beginning of the 20th century the mechanization of agriculture occurred. Now the farmer who could till two or three acres a day behind his horse-drawn plow could till 50 acres sitting on his new tractor.
The result was that the states in the U.S. Midwest just exploded with the production of wheat, corn, oats, soybeans and so on. Most of this new production was then fed to livestock—and millions of additional animals resulted.
Now for the first time in human history an average citizen could eat animal foods at each and every meal. The result was that the population of the United States embarked on a gigantic experiment, replacing in a few short decades a diet of mostly plant-based foods with a diet of mostly animal foods.
In 1909 the average U.S. citizen ate 300 pounds of grains and 200 pounds of potatoes each year. By 1990 the amounts of those foods had been cut in half (and eaten in mostly processed form such as white bread and french fries), and replaced with meat, fish, poultry and dairy.
Now the average American was eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, a hamburger with fries and a milkshake for lunch, steak or meatloaf or ham or fried chicken with a vegetable for dinner, and perhaps some ice cream or chips while watching TV in the evening.
In other words, we went from a low-cholesterol diet to a high-cholesterol diet, because only animal foods contain cholesterol. We went from a low-fat diet to a high-fat diet, and now most of that fat was saturated fat.
The results of the experiment can be easily seen. Now 60% of Americans are overweight or obese. We have the highest rates of heart disease in the world—the disease that didn't exist in the 1880's. Every 30 seconds another American has a heart attack, and half of those are immediately fatal.
Atheroschlerosis is a disease of animal foods. Meat, fish, poultry and dairy all contain high amounts of cholesterol and saturated fat, many times higher than plant foods. Where does this fat and cholesterol end up in the body?
If you take someone who has eaten a low-fat plant-based meal, wait for an hour or two and then draw some blood from them and let that blood sit for a while in a test tube, the red platelets will settle to the bottom and at the top will be a clear liquid—the yellowish serum of the blood. Though yellow in color, this serum will be transparent.
Now take someone who has eaten a typical American meal high in animal fat, again wait an hour or two, and then draw some blood from them. Once again let the blood sit for a while in a test tube, and see what happens.
The red platelets will again settle to the bottom of the tube, but now at the top will be an opaque, sticky, viscous, milky-white liquid—this is what the serum has become. And this is how it is in the bloodstream of the person who has eaten that meal—the bloodstream itself becomes sticky and viscous. And it stays that way for six hours.
But before that six hours is up, the person has usually eaten another high-fat, high-cholesterol meal of animal food. And so the serum of the blood becomes viscous and sticky for another six hours. And by then, they've usually eaten dinner. And then high-fat snacks in the evening.
The result is that the blood stream of that person, eating an average American diet of animal foods, stays viscous and sticky with fat and cholesterol all day long.
Over time, over decades, that viscous and sticky serum gradually gets deposited on the sides of the arteries in what's known as "plaque." This plaque, which is basically composed of fat and cholesterol, builds up on the artery walls and gradually narrows more and more the channel through which the blood flows in the artery.
This doesn't just happen in the coronary arteries. It happens all over the body. If it's first noticed in the brain, we call it a stroke. If it's first noticed in the heart, we call it angina or a heart attack. If it's first noticed in the kidneys, we call it high blood pressure or kidney failure. If it's first noticed in the penis, we call it impotence. But it's all the same disease.
Now we can take nitroglycerin for the angina, anti-clotting agents for the strokes, beta-blockers for the high cholesterol levels and so forth, but none of this gets at the cause, so the underlying disease process will continue.
The cause is the high-fat, high-cholesterol animal-foods diet that the American diet has turned into. To address the cause is simple: We must go back to the plant-based diet that we used to eat, that the healthiest peoples on the earth eat now, and that most of the human race has eaten until modern times.
People sometimes think that eliminating meat and switching to chicken and/or fish will solve the problem. It won't. It's often not realised that poultry and fish contain just as much cholesterol as meat. For instance, 4 ounces of beef contain 100 mg of cholesterol, but so does 4 ounces of chicken. And a single egg contains 213 mg.
The simple truth is that all animal foods are high in cholesterol. And only animal foods contain it. No plant contains cholesterol; it's found only in animal foods.
And even so-called "low-fat" animal foods are actually high-fat foods. For instance, white-meat chicken with all the skin taken off is still 25% fat by calories. "Low-fat" milk containing only "2% fat" is actually 28% fat by calories.
Compared with the 75% fat in salmon, the 55% fat in steak or the 70% fat in an egg, that sounds pretty low. And yet on such "low-fat" animal-food diets the disease of atheroschlerosis continues to progress. That fact has been proven in numerous experiments.
Compare those foods to plant-based foods: Beans have 4% fat by calories. Broccoli has 8% fat by calories. Rice has 5%. Potatoes have 1%. And no plant-based food has any cholesterol at all.
And in the 1990's it was proven that on a low-fat, plant-based diet the body would actually begin to reverse atheroschlerosis and slowly clear out the plaque from the arteries. That is also now a proven fact. Now we're getting at the cause. This disease can be reversed if we cooperate with nature.
For more information on this website about plant-based diets, the heathiest peoples on earth and so on, do a Search (button at left) on the words "plant-based" or "healthiest" and it will bring up other articles related to this subject.
Here's to your good health—
—jim sloman, for 2/4/02
-- Nancy----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heart disease
If you open a medical textbook from the 1880's and look under "Coronary atheroschlerosis" it won't be there. The disease was unknown. Indeed, the first heart attack in the United States was recorded in 1908, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What we call "heart disease" or "atheroschlerosis" is a 20th century disease. How did this come about?
In the beginning of the 20th century the mechanization of agriculture occurred. Now the farmer who could till two or three acres a day behind his horse-drawn plow could till 50 acres sitting on his new tractor.
The result was that the states in the U.S. Midwest just exploded with the production of wheat, corn, oats, soybeans and so on. Most of this new production was then fed to livestock—and millions of additional animals resulted.
Now for the first time in human history an average citizen could eat animal foods at each and every meal. The result was that the population of the United States embarked on a gigantic experiment, replacing in a few short decades a diet of mostly plant-based foods with a diet of mostly animal foods.
In 1909 the average U.S. citizen ate 300 pounds of grains and 200 pounds of potatoes each year. By 1990 the amounts of those foods had been cut in half (and eaten in mostly processed form such as white bread and french fries), and replaced with meat, fish, poultry and dairy.
Now the average American was eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, a hamburger with fries and a milkshake for lunch, steak or meatloaf or ham or fried chicken with a vegetable for dinner, and perhaps some ice cream or chips while watching TV in the evening.
In other words, we went from a low-cholesterol diet to a high-cholesterol diet, because only animal foods contain cholesterol. We went from a low-fat diet to a high-fat diet, and now most of that fat was saturated fat.
The results of the experiment can be easily seen. Now 60% of Americans are overweight or obese. We have the highest rates of heart disease in the world—the disease that didn't exist in the 1880's. Every 30 seconds another American has a heart attack, and half of those are immediately fatal.
Atheroschlerosis is a disease of animal foods. Meat, fish, poultry and dairy all contain high amounts of cholesterol and saturated fat, many times higher than plant foods. Where does this fat and cholesterol end up in the body?
If you take someone who has eaten a low-fat plant-based meal, wait for an hour or two and then draw some blood from them and let that blood sit for a while in a test tube, the red platelets will settle to the bottom and at the top will be a clear liquid—the yellowish serum of the blood. Though yellow in color, this serum will be transparent.
Now take someone who has eaten a typical American meal high in animal fat, again wait an hour or two, and then draw some blood from them. Once again let the blood sit for a while in a test tube, and see what happens.
The red platelets will again settle to the bottom of the tube, but now at the top will be an opaque, sticky, viscous, milky-white liquid—this is what the serum has become. And this is how it is in the bloodstream of the person who has eaten that meal—the bloodstream itself becomes sticky and viscous. And it stays that way for six hours.
But before that six hours is up, the person has usually eaten another high-fat, high-cholesterol meal of animal food. And so the serum of the blood becomes viscous and sticky for another six hours. And by then, they've usually eaten dinner. And then high-fat snacks in the evening.
The result is that the blood stream of that person, eating an average American diet of animal foods, stays viscous and sticky with fat and cholesterol all day long.
Over time, over decades, that viscous and sticky serum gradually gets deposited on the sides of the arteries in what's known as "plaque." This plaque, which is basically composed of fat and cholesterol, builds up on the artery walls and gradually narrows more and more the channel through which the blood flows in the artery.
This doesn't just happen in the coronary arteries. It happens all over the body. If it's first noticed in the brain, we call it a stroke. If it's first noticed in the heart, we call it angina or a heart attack. If it's first noticed in the kidneys, we call it high blood pressure or kidney failure. If it's first noticed in the penis, we call it impotence. But it's all the same disease.
Now we can take nitroglycerin for the angina, anti-clotting agents for the strokes, beta-blockers for the high cholesterol levels and so forth, but none of this gets at the cause, so the underlying disease process will continue.
The cause is the high-fat, high-cholesterol animal-foods diet that the American diet has turned into. To address the cause is simple: We must go back to the plant-based diet that we used to eat, that the healthiest peoples on the earth eat now, and that most of the human race has eaten until modern times.
People sometimes think that eliminating meat and switching to chicken and/or fish will solve the problem. It won't. It's often not realised that poultry and fish contain just as much cholesterol as meat. For instance, 4 ounces of beef contain 100 mg of cholesterol, but so does 4 ounces of chicken. And a single egg contains 213 mg.
The simple truth is that all animal foods are high in cholesterol. And only animal foods contain it. No plant contains cholesterol; it's found only in animal foods.
And even so-called "low-fat" animal foods are actually high-fat foods. For instance, white-meat chicken with all the skin taken off is still 25% fat by calories. "Low-fat" milk containing only "2% fat" is actually 28% fat by calories.
Compared with the 75% fat in salmon, the 55% fat in steak or the 70% fat in an egg, that sounds pretty low. And yet on such "low-fat" animal-food diets the disease of atheroschlerosis continues to progress. That fact has been proven in numerous experiments.
Compare those foods to plant-based foods: Beans have 4% fat by calories. Broccoli has 8% fat by calories. Rice has 5%. Potatoes have 1%. And no plant-based food has any cholesterol at all.
And in the 1990's it was proven that on a low-fat, plant-based diet the body would actually begin to reverse atheroschlerosis and slowly clear out the plaque from the arteries. That is also now a proven fact. Now we're getting at the cause. This disease can be reversed if we cooperate with nature.
For more information on this website about plant-based diets, the heathiest peoples on earth and so on, do a Search (button at left) on the words "plant-based" or "healthiest" and it will bring up other articles related to this subject.
Here's to your good health—
—jim sloman, for 2/4/02
