What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Heart Disease Paperback – February 6, 2012

I ordered this book as soon as I discovered its existence, as I during my life have seen how for example the ideas concerning cholesterol, and heart attacks, have changed. As Houston tells in the book, when we started looking at cholesterol, we only measured the total number for cholesterol - I still have a hospital report from way back in the year 1975, which only tells what my total cholesterol number is - and then next came the measuring of the total plus LDL and HDL, and later followed with including of other parts, and then still later with different variants for all the parts.And actual I during 4 years have been fighting with the doctors, who still, in the hospitals, only are looking at the cholesterols as "Total not higher than 200, and the HDL not higher than 50". And therefore wanted to put my wife on ducks as she were having a HDL on 114.In the start of the book, in the chapter 1, we are getting the newest knowledge, and speculations, concerning the arterial, in the connection to the probability of getting a heart attack. And this especially connected to either an intima endothelium (the inside surface in the arterials (shown in drawing)), or as a storing grown up on the inside of an arterial, under a fibrous cap (also shown in drawing). And where the grown up storing later can loosen and travel to the heart or the brain.And in the start of the book we also are getting some interesting patient cases. For example under the chapter 5, in which we are learning about cholesterol, we on the side 66 have two patients who both are having the "healthy" LDL level on only 100 mg/dL, but even though one of them getting a mild heart attack. The reason being that they were having different kinds of LDL, respective small and large LDL particles, and then the person actual having the small particles was hit by the heart attack.The book also is very detailed in what it's best to eat, among other we are learning not to eat too much bread. And it is very detailed in a plan for gymnastic-training, and in explaining why having the different connected kind of training. And what to eat (very little), and drink before training in the morning.And on the side 253 starts the Appendix VI, with 13 interesting # Attack Plans, for fighting different actual health problems, with the recipes containing vitamins, minerals, fibers, and so on. I will write down the Attack Plan #11: To Lower Blood Sugar, to a friend of mine, who is close to starting being a diabetic person.It's an excellent book with many details, and good explanation to why the science now have come to be looking at the heart diseases, and many other health problem, the way they are. I will advise, or lend, this book to the doctors which I soon am meeting.

Excellent book! After suffering a heart attack two years ago now, I was curious why it happened to me. I've been researching material, because pretty much all my doctors told me were to reduce my cholesterol and take a bunch of drugs. Cholesterol is not the dominant cause of clogged arteries that doctors make it out to be, although it is a factor. What they don't tell you are all of the other factors that are FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT -- namely the nutritional roots of the disease. If you ask your doctor, "What is the REAL cause of heart attacks", they might reluctantly admit it's arterial inflammation, which is the main cause of plaque buildup. What they won't admit is that the real reason statins have any noticeable benefit is because they're powerful anti-inflammatories; the reduction in cholesterol is modest at best. (If there's no inflammation going on, then there's no reason cholesterols in our blood should cause plaque buildup. With lots of inflammation going on, then reducing blood cholesterol levels sort of makes sense in a backwards kind of way. The truth is, ARTERIAL INFLAMMATION is the thing we want to be controlling, not cholesterol levels.) Unfortunately, they won't tell you about the damaging side-effects that statins cause. And they also won't tell you that the most significant cause of arterial inflammation for most people today revolves around our diets. Why? Perhaps because they have virtually no training in nutrition, and drug companies aren't funding research into how our diets are affecting our health. Read the book to learn more.

As a biologist, I was a bit appalled by the assumptions made in this book about our "ancestral" ways of living, and by the fact that those untested assumptions are used as guidelines for the prevention and clinical treatment of heart disease across the board.¬¬First, who are those elusive "ancestors" whose diet and exercise regimen we are attempting to follow? The population that originated chimpanzees and humans? Homo herectus? Neanderthal? The first Homo sapiens populations that supposedly thrived in Africa? Homo sapiens population that survived the ice age?Regardless, through cultural innovation and changes in habitat and ecology, there have been a number of major dietary shifts in human evolution: cooking, those associated with plant and animal domestication etc. Those shifts are accompanied by clearly detectable genetic changes. The most classical example is lactose tolerance, which is an adaptation that allows Northern Europeans to digest milk in their adulthood. The fact that our "ancestors" were not able to digest milk as adults does not mean that all modern populations should avoid this product. The book actually does not make this particular claim, but makes others that largely ignore the adaptations different populations have developed to the particularities of their environment. The assumption that there is a "universal" diet, based on the needs of some hypothetical ancestor, which will fit all, is dangerous. The same goes for the parameters used to quantify health such as cholesterol, blood pressure etc. Actually, genetic differences among populations are so largely ignored in medical research that my main criticism to this book applies to most other books on the subject.Despite those flaws, I have learned a number of things from this book. I had no problems following it, but it is possible that someone with a background that does not include biology, chemistry and biochemistry might have a problem understanding some concepts.