Travel Blog

We watched a special put on by CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta about how following a specific diet pretty much ensured that you would avoid having a heart attack.  This Heart Attack Proof Diet is at least for most people. If you have genes that suggest your family is prone to having heart attacks you may at least improve your chances by following this kind of diet.  The message in the interview with a variety of people who are following this particular diet is

• Eat vegetables as much as you can
• Avoid oils of all kinds or at least limit them
• Avoid Dairy, but do not forget to add calcium to your diet
• Reduce meat, at least red meat which is the kind that contributes most to heart attacks.

The people in  Papua New Guinea highlanders, rural Chinese, central Africans and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico all follow this diet and heart attacks are virtually unknown in these cultures. There has to be something to this diet, however it is very difficult to change historical eating habits of North America were everyone eats some kind of meat and dairy everyday! In addition we eat lots of prepared foods which is high on cholesterol inducing chemicals and also very high in salt. Both of these contribute to heart attacks in our society.

Getting the Message Out

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. who is and was a surgeon is trying to get the message out that if we reduce or eliminate dairy and meat based products, we will suffer many less heart attacks and be able to lead a more healthy lifestyle well into our old age.

One study of 17 people who had had 40 cardiac events before going on the diet, had no events at all after being on the diet over a 12 year period. Pretty impressive. Is this for real, who knows, but it is worth checking out. Also from a common sense perspective, just consider that the oil and fat that you drain off even lean meat is going into your body and in small amounts and apparently it ends up in your arteries as plac that builds up and prevents the blood flow. Just let the oil cool and harden at the bottom of the pan and you will get the image of what can happen with this plac in your blood stream.

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. has written a book on the subject and sure this sounds like a money grab, however if CNN is promoting it, surely it cannot be all bad. If you have purchased the book or downloaded the CD , we would be really interest in your comments on the diet and whether it is for real or not?

Heart Attack Proof Diet – Partial

In the mean time, following this diet plan on at least a partial level is only going to help. Reducing salt intake and cholesterol is also only going to help and may add years onto your life. What have you got to lose other than a longer healthy life to spend with your family and friends. Giving up some of your favorite foods or at least reducing foods is only a small thing compared to living longer.

The worst mistake that consumers can make is to eat out all of the time at restaurants. The food will taste great, however it is loaded with salt and often is deep fried at some point which adds all kinds of fat and calories to your diet. deep fried food is definitely not friendly to your heart and should be one of the first things to be eliminated or at least significantly reduced.

Most people find this really difficult to do and will just fall back to their old ways. To start with consumers have to put more time in to preparing foods that are friendly to your heart and avoid the salt laden foods that are already prepared and frozen in the store. Just read the labels and you will quickly realize just how much salt there is in these foods. For more information on dieting, click here.

Save

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.