Anabolism and Catabolism Part III

The first function is creating tissue and cells. Each moment, our bodies are creating more cells to replace dead or dysfunctional cells.

For example, if you cut your finger, your body (if it’s functioning properly) will begin – without even wasting a moment or asking your permission –the process of creating skin cells to clot the blood and start the healing process. This creation process is indeed a metabolic response, and is called anabolism.

On the other hand, there is the exact opposite activity taking place in other parts of the body. Instead of building cells and tissue through metabolism, the body is breaking down energy so that the body can do what it’s supposed to do.

For example, as you aerobically exercise, your body temperature rises as your heart beat increases and remains with a certain range.

As this happens, your body requires more oxygen; and as such, your breathing increases as you intake more H2O. All of this, as you can imagine, requires additional energy.

After all, if your body couldn’t adjust to this enhanced requirement for oxygen (both taking it in and getting rid of it in the form of carbon dioxide), you would collapse!

Presuming, of course, that you aren’t overdoing it, your body will instead begin converting food (e.g. calories) into energy. And this process, as you know, is a metabolic process, and is called catabolism.

So as you can see, the metabolism is a constant process that takes care of two seemingly opposite function: anabolism that uses energy to create cells, and catabolism that breaks down cells to create energy.

Indeed, it’s in this way that the metabolism earns its reputation as a harmonizer. It brings together these apparently conflicting functions, and does so in an optimal way that enables the body to create cells as needed, and break them down, again as needed.

Metabolism And Weight Loss

By now, you already have a sense of how metabolism relates to weight loss (catabolic metabolism, or breaking cells down and transforming them into energy).

To understand this process even more clearly, we can introduce a very important player in the weight loss game: the calorie.

Calories

Calories are simply units of measure. They aren’t actually things in and of themselves; they are labels for other things, just like how an inch really isn’t anything, but it measures the distance between two points.

So what do calories measure?

Easy: they measure energy.

Yup, the evil calorie – the bane of the dieter’s existence – is really just a 3-syllable label for energy.

And it’s important to highlight this, because the body itself, despite its vast intelligence (much of which medical science cannot yet understand, only appreciate in awe) does not really do a very intelligent job of distinguishing good energy from bad.

Actually, to be blunt, the body doesn’t care about where the energy comes from. Let’s explore this a little more, because it’s very important to the overall understanding of how to boost your metabolism, particularly when we look at food choices.

In our choice-laden grocery stores, with dozens of varieties of foods – hundreds, perhaps – there seems to be a fairly clear awareness of what’s good food, and what’s bad or junk food.

For example, we don’t need a book to remind us that, all else being equal, a plum is a good food, whereas a tub of thick and creamy double-fudge ice cream is a bad food.

Not bad tasting, of course; but, really, you won’t find many fit people eating a vat of ice cream a day, for obvious reasons. So what does this have to do with calories and energy?

It’s this: while you and I can evaluate our food choices and say that something (like a plum) is a healthy source of energy, and something else (like a tub of ice cream) is an unhealthy source of energy, the body doesn’t evaluate. Really.

It sounds strange and amazing, but the body really doesn’t care. To the body, energy is energy. It takes whatever it gets, and doesn’t really know that some foods are healthier than others. It’s kind of like a garbage disposal: it takes what you put down it, whether it should go down or not.

So let’s apply this to the body, and to weight gain. When the body receives a calorie – which, as we know, is merely a label for energy – it must do something with that energy.

In other words, putting all other nutrients and minerals aside, if a plum delivers 100 calories to the body, it has to accept those 100 calories. The same goes for 500 calories from a (small) tub of ice cream: those 500 calories have to be dealt with.

Now, the body does two things to that energy: it either metabolizes it via anabolism, or it metabolizes it via catabolism. That is, it will either convert the energy (calories) into cells/tissue, or it will use that energy (calories) to break down cells.

Now the link between calories/energy, metabolism, and weight loss becomes rather clear and direct.

When there is an excess of energy, and the body can’t use this energy to deal with any needs at the time, it will be forced to create cells with that extra energy. It has to.

It doesn’t necessarily want to, but after figuring out that the energy can’t be used to do anything (such as help you exercise or digest some food), it has to turn it into cells through anabolism.

And those extra cells? Yup, you guessed it: added weight!

In a nutshell (and nuts have lots of calories by the way, so watch out and eat them in small portions…), the whole calorie/metabolism/weight gain thing is really just about excess energy.
When there are too many calories in the body – that is, when there’s too much energy from food – then the body transforms those calories into stuff.

And that stuff, most of the time, is fat. Sometimes, of course, those extra calories are transformed into muscle; and this is usually a good thing for those watching their weight or trying to maintain an optimal body fat ratio.

In fact, because muscles require calories to maintain, people with strong muscle tone burn calories without actually doing anything; their metabolism burns it for them.

This is the primary reason why exercising and building lean muscle is part of an overall program to boost your metabolism; because the more lean muscle you have, the more places excess calories can go before they’re turned into fat.

A Word About Fat

There’s a nasty rumor floating around out there that fat cells are permanent. And the nastiest thing about this rumor is that it’s true.

Yes, most experts conceded that fat cells – once created – are there for life. Yet this doesn’t spell doom and gloom to those of us who could stand to drop a few pounds. Because even though experts believe that fat cells are permanent, they also agree that fat cells can be shrunk. So even if the absolute number of fat cells in your body remains the same, their size – and hence their appearance and percentage of your overall weight – can be reduced.

What is Metabolism? Part II

Some people think that the metabolism is a kind of organ, or a body part, that influences digestion.

Actually, the metabolism isn’t any particular body part.

It’s the process by which the body converts food into energy.

Hence, you’ve likely heard of the phrase metabolic process used synonymously with the term metabolism, because they both mean the same thing.

The Medical Mumbo Jumbo


This isn’t a complicated medical text (which should be great news to most of you!), and so we don’t need to spend an unnecessary amount of time and space focusing on the layered complexity of the human body and its extraordinary intelligence.

Yet without drilling deeply into medical details -- which are not relevant for our general understanding purposes -- it’s helpful to briefly look at the biological mechanisms behind metabolism.

Metabolism, as mentioned above, is the process of transforming food (e.g. nutrients) into fuel (e.g. energy). The body uses this energy to conduct a vast array of essential functions.

In fact, your ability to read this page – literally – is driven by your metabolism.

If you had no metabolism – that is, if you had no metabolic process that was converting food into energy – then you wouldn’t be able to move.

In fact, long before you realized that you couldn’t move a finger or lift your foot, your internal processes would have stopped; because the basic building blocks of life – circulating blood, transforming oxygen into carbon dioxide, expelling potentially lethal wastes through the kidneys and so on – all of these depend on metabolism.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone say that they have a slow metabolism.

While they may struggle with unwanted weight gain due to metabolic factors, they certainly have a functioning metabolism.

If they didn’t, they wouldn’t even be able to speak (because that, too, requires energy that comes from, you guessed it: metabolism!).

It’s also interesting to note that, while we conveniently refer to the metabolic process as if it were a single function, it’s really a catch-all term for countless functions that are taking place inside the body. Every second of every minute of every day of your life – even, of course, when you sleep – numerous chemical conversions are taking place through metabolism, or metabolic functioning.

In a certain light, the metabolism has been referred to as a harmonizing process that manages to achieve two critical bodily functions that, in a sense, seem to be at odds with each other.

How To Boost Your Metabolism? - Part I

Metabolism

There isn’t perhaps a more frequently used word in the weight loss (and weight gain) vocabulary than this.

Indeed, it’s not uncommon to overhear people talking about their struggles – or triumphs – over the holiday bulge or love handles in terms of whether their metabolism is working, or not.

Doctors, too, often refer to metabolism when they try and explain why starvation and water-loss diets aren’t scientifically of medically responsible; since, alas, they do not influence or take into account metabolism (there’s that word again!).

So, for all of the usage that this rather daunting and biologically-charged word enjoys in our world, you’d comfortably assume that people understand it, right?

Or, at least, they have some fundamental information when it comes to how to speed up their metabolism, right?

Wrong!

Towards Understanding Metabolism

Regrettably, many people simply don’t understand the concept of metabolism and metabolic change. This, equally as regrettably, is hardly their fault.

There is so much information floating around out there, much of it over the ‘net or through a “friend of a friend who has a personal trainer”, that there’s bound to be some confusion and conflicting messages.

Furthermore, many people (quite understandably) mistake their own weight gain and loss episodes as a matter of metabolic change. Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn’t.

For example, as we will discuss in this book, there are scientific ways to increase the rate of metabolic change, and thus enable the body to burn more calories.

Eating certain foods more frequently is one way to do this (again, we look closer at these in this book). Yet another way to visibly lose weight – at least on a perceived, temporary level – is to sit in a steam room for a few hours.

Whereas the former method (eating the right foods) is a real, proven weight loss method through increased metabolic change, the latter method (the steam room) is just temporary because the lost weight is merely water, and will return as swiftly as it “melted away”.

The point to remember here is that some people mistake their own weight loss attempts as being related to metabolic change; and, as you can see with the steam room example, that isn’t always the case.

Low Fat Labels

Another big reason that people don’t have clear, consistent information on this topic is because, unfortunately, there are a lot of food and supplement companies on the market who don’t want you to know fact from fiction.

They want you to believe that constantly buying “low fat” foods is going to somehow speed up your metabolism.

While, yes, some low fat foods can play a role in an overall eating program that is designed to speed up metabolism, merely eating foods that come from packaging that screams “LOW FAT!” won’t do anything.

In fact, believe it or not, but many people actually gain weight when they eat too many “low fat” products. Many of these products are laden with calories from carbohydrates or proteins (which are still calories and still must be burned off or they turn into body fat).

As you can see, and probably feel from years of trying to unravel this whole metabolic mystery, this is a confusing, stressful, and indeed, potentially depressing situation.

Each year, tens of millions of people attempt to retake control over their health and the shape of their body; and each year, tens of millions of people feel that they’ve “failed” because, try as they might, they just can’t speed up their metabolism.

This book is the antidote to that way of thinking and feeling because the perceived failure is not a failure in any of these hard working dieters and exercisers (of which you may be one).

The failure is with the medical and nutritional sector as a whole, which has simply not provided people with the information that they need to know in order to speed up their metabolism.

And given the size of the nutritional field and the fact that so much of it is influenced by money-making enterprises (not all of the field, of course, but enough of it to make a difference), there’s really no sense in playing a “wait and see” game for when clear, consistent, and helpful information starts to flow out to people like us.

Clogged Pipes To The Fountain Of Life

WHEN A SPANISH-SPEAKING FRIEND wants to wish you the very best that life can offer, he will often lift his glass with the following toast:
"To health and wealth — and time to enjoy both."
Embodied in this simple salute are the three basic desires common to people everywhere in all ages.

Why can't we live longer? Everyone wants to live longer. It is one of the most deeply rooted instincts of mankind. Every¬one wants to live a life of usefulness and abundance, free of disease and unhappiness. As we grow older, we look forward even more anxiously to increasing our lifespan. We want time to enjoy our achievements, time still to make plans. By the time we reach 60 we realize with the great French painter Gauguin that "life is a split second." We begin to think about all the things we still want to do before we reach our seventieth year. If we are fortunate enough to pass our seventieth birth¬day, we wonder whether we can't live even longer—perhaps to be 80.

Well, why can't we? We are living much longer than did our ancestors a century ago. We have added 20 years to the average life expectancy in America since 1900.

Advances in medical science have outlawed many dis-eases* These golden years are ours because of advances made by tireless research in medical science. They represent a decisive victory over the contagious and infectious diseases which sometimes wiped out whole sections of our population a generation ago.
Thanks to the new knowledge provided by recent research, we no longer need fear the ravages of such diseases as diphtheria, scarlet and typhoid fever, syphilis and—to a great extent— tuberculosis. All these pestilences, however, were caused by those invisible but ever-present enemies of health—germs.

Today the picture has changed. With the victory over deadly microorganisms, a new threat has emerged in clearer and more frightening perspective.
The 20th Century epidemic. A single, fundamental dis¬ease of the human body can now be held accountable for much of the illness and more than half of all deaths occurring each year in the United States It is a disorder known by the general term of "arteriosclerosis," which means a hardening and thickening of the arteries.
It is now so widespread that Dr. Paul Dudley White, the noted heart specialist, recently described it as "a modern epidemic."

As the disease progresses—sometimes over a long period of time—the vessels that carry the blood from the heart to the body's tissues become stiff, and their inner surfaces roughened and thick. These conditions lay the groundwork for the three most common causes of death and disablement in America: heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

Is there anything that can be done to vanquish this number one killer, whose favorite victims are men in their middle span of life, and even the very young, sometimes those in their twenties? The answer is "yes"—provided you will take the time and the trouble now to learn a few simple rules.
Much of the exact nature of arteriosclerosis is still unknown.

But during the past 10 years we have learned a great deal in the fields of pathology, chemistry, biology, and nutrition that has provided us with clues to the mystery, and a practical approach to treatment for the first time.
Widespread popular interest in the heart and in the aging process has helped immeasurably in the conquest of disease. But at the same time, it has been responsible for a good deal of fear and confusion among lay people. Some of these misconceptions are reflected in the questions my patients ask after reading articles of the kind that now appear in many newspapers and magazines.

Take diseases of the heart and blood vessels, for example. Terms such as atherosclerosis, coronary thrombosis, and cholesterol are today fairly commonplace, even in publications for the general reader. But few non-medical people know exactly what these words mean.

What is the cause of this new epidemic? Before taking up our discussion of ways to forestall a heart attack, it might therefore be well to understand more clearly the basic physiology involved.

Let us start with a closer look at the arteries, the vessels that carry fresh blood from the heart to the billions of cells in our bodies that are in constant need of nourishment. Upon careful examination, we find that the arteries are not the simple tubes we have pictured them to be. Viewing them in cross section, we see that their structure is more like that of a garden hose, containing three layers of tissue in the walls.

The inside layer or lining of the artery, which doctors call the intima9 consists of a slippery membrane somewhat similar to the mucous membrane on the inside of your mouth. The in-be¬tween layer, known as the media, is formed of muscle fiber. This enables the blood vessel to expand and contract with the heartbeat, to facilitate the flow of blood through it. The outer layer, called the adventitia, is composed of coarse strong fiber& which provide added strength to the artery.

In both the outer and the intermediate layers, there are tiny intrinsic blood vessels which nourish the artery itself. The thickness and exact composition of the three layers vary, depending upon an artery's size and location.

Of the changes that may occur in the arteries as a result of disease, there are two types which concern us here. Both kinds have traditionally been known by the general term, "arteriosclerosis," which means hardening or thickening of the arteries.
Actually, however, there are two kinds of hardening of the arteries. One occurs when calcium deposits in the middle layer of the artery cause it to become brittle and hard. For this reason, it is sometimes called a "pipestem" artery. Such calcification does not necessarily obstruct the blood flow, and is usually harmless from a clinical point of view.

The other type of change, on the other hand—and it is the more frequent one—has serious consequences. It consists of a thickening of the inner wall of the artery by deposits of fats: cholesterol (a fatty alcohol), fatty acids, and the like, together with calcium.

As these deposits grow, the passageways or canals of the arteries become narrower, much in the same way as the drain from your kitchen sink becomes clogged with grease deposits. The result is that less and less blood can flow through the narrowed opening to the tissues or organs that depend on it for life. Your "pipes" have become clogged.

At the same time, the swelling of the lining cells and roughening of the inner surface provide sites for formation of blood clots inside the narrowed artery. If the blockage is complete in vital arteries that feed the heart muscle, a heart attack—or as we physicians call it, a coronary thrombosis—occurs. If this dis¬aster occurs in the cerebral arteries of the brain, a "stroke," sometimes called a heart attack in the head, results. When the small arteries of the kidneys are affected, Bright's disease, formerly called "dropsy," and other diseases ensue.
But whether the thickening and blocking process takes place

in the heart, head, or kidneys, it is essentially the same disease. Doctors refer to it as atherosclerosis. About a century ago, during an autopsy, a German pathologist named Rudolph Virchow laid open an artery to examine its interior wall. Along the lining he observed deposits of mushy fat that he called atheromata, a Greek work meaning "porridge." It was from this word that we derived our term, atherosclerosis.
Embedded among the cells of the artery wall along with the fat, Virchow observed some glistening crystals. These turned out to be cholesterol. But how did these fats get into the artery walls? This question has puzzled scientists for the past 100 years, and it is still being pursued in various fields of research. The first theory advanced by researchers was that of "imbibition," which held that fat droplets were absorbed directly from the blood stream through the lining of the artery walls. When a weakening of the "ground" substance or actual structure of the artery wall occurred, cholesterol—the main offender—and its related fats were deposited in the artery wall. This theory has been supported by the recent discovery that these fatty deposits, especially cholesterol, exist in the same proportion in the artery wall as in the bloodstream itself.

Another theory that seeks to explain the way in which the fatty deposits get into the artery walls held that they did not come from the blood stream primarily, but were manufactured within the cells of the vessel wall.

It has also been claimed that fat molecules are normally absorbed by the artery wall without leaving a harmful residue of acid crystals. But some abnormal condition, such as high blood pressure, may force an excessive amount of the fat mole¬cules into the wall. Then the artery cannot absorb the full amount, and deposits gradually build up.

Other researchers have believed that the fat droplets find their way into the artery wall through the tiny vessels that supply blood to the artery itself. According to this theory, a hemorrhage or series of small hemorrhages may occur in these tiny vessels.

A clot is formed, which deposits fat particles in the artery wall when the small vessels break down.

My own conclusion, based upon years of animal, laboratory, and human research, plus experience with innumerable patients, is this: Atherosclerosis results from an impairment of the body's ability to utilize (or metabolize) normally not only the fats eaten in the diet, but also those that are in the body itself. This im¬pairment is further aggravated by the body's inability to with¬stand stress or tension; and by deficiencies in the supply of hormones from vital glands such as the thyroid, the adrenals, and the sex glands.

In addition, there are other factors that influence the individual's susceptibility to atherosclerosis, or death from a heart attack or stroke. These include such things as inherited or constitutional factors, and the coagulability of the blood.
It is easy to see how complex the problem really is. The danger of oversimplification is great. However, one causative factor that stands out continuously above and beyond all others, important as they are, is fat in the diet. And it is this factor that we can control.

These fats from our foods enter our blood stream where, like sharks cruising about, they seek out the weak or vulnerable spots in the arteries. Here they attack, enter, and deposit or nest themselves. These fatty deposits then acquire calcium, and the hardening process begins in the arteries. Each particle becomes a captain around which rally the silent "Men of Death," who wage a relentless struggle. Soon they begin to throttle our life flow.

Our blood vessels then engage in a vain effort to halt the armada of killers we now harbor within our arteries. Special fat-eating cells are rushed to these spots, where the fats and cholesterol have breached the barrier or wall and entered the artery. In the life-and-death struggle that ensues, the fat-eating cells try to engulf the cholesterol and fat particles, and may succeed temporarily in the "counter-attack."

Dr. Timothy Leary, the distinguished Boston pathologist, in 1933 first devised ingenious methods of lighting up, refracting, and photographing this deadly drama. It was seen that inevitably the special fat-fighting cells are themselves engulfed by the repeated tidal waves of cholesterol and fats washed into the blood and artery walls by fat-containing foods such as butter, eggs, cream, milk, meat fats, and other animal fats in our diet.

Why is the epidemic particularly strong in the U.S.A.? If you are a typical American, whether you know it or not you consume an unbalanced, obesity-producing diet. Drs. Louis Katz and J. Stamler, prominent researchers in this field, called it "a pernicious combination of overnutrition and undernutrition excessive in calories, carbohydrates, lipids and salt; and frequently substandard in certain critically important amino acids, minerals and vitamins."

It is not surprising that this situation exists. The science of nutrition, a comparative newcomer to the medical field, has up until recently been concerned almost exclusively with under-nutrition. People have been urged to "eat the right foods" and to provide plently of meat, eggs, milk, and cheese for their children.
In most areas of the world, this problem of getting enough nourishing food to eat is still of primary importance. But it is not the problem in America. Our problem is somewhat the opposite: "living too high on the hog." Our diet is too rich in fat as well as calories, refined sugars, starches, and oils. At the same time, it is low in essential nutriments, minerals and other vital requirements.
The exact relationship between the amount of fat you eat and the production of cholesterol in your body is still a very complex question. Investigators differ on some points.

Concerning one aspect of the problem, though, we are all agreed: the cholesterol found in the blood is made largely in the liver from fats in the diet.
It is also believed that cholesterol is produced in the arterial walls themselves.
But the main source and the one that we can to a great extent control is fat in our food.

What is the situation in other countries of the world?

We have evidence that a prime factor for the great difference between Americans and peoples in various other countries is diet. For example, let us see what happened in Norway during the war years of 1940-1945. Consumption of butter, milk, cheese and eggs (all of them high in fats) had to be sharply curtailed. Did the reduction of fat content in the national diet have any effect on the number of deaths from heart attack? The Norwegian Ministry of Health, which kept accurate records, answered that question with an emphatic "yes."

With the reduction in fat consumption, the death rate from coronary attacks declined also. The Norwegians reported that heart deaths were reduced by 31 percent during each year among the urban population. At the same time, there was a 22 per cent drop in heart deaths among the rural population.

France, which also had to tighten its belt during the war years, had similar evidence to offer. Mr. Marcel Moine, of the French Ministry of Health, reported to me that from 1941 to 1945, when Frenchmen were on a low-fat diet, the death rate from heart disease was reduced to 20.6 for each 100,000 persons. In the postwar years, when normal fat consumption was resumed, the death rate rose to 25.5 per 100,000 population, or a return to the old, prewar death rate.

Italy provides another example. There studies were made recently in two neighboring provinces. In one area, where the daily diet included pork products rich in fats, the incidence of coronary and generalized artery disease was found to be much higher than in the adjoining province where the population fol¬lowed the comparatively low-fat pattern of the country as a whole.

Similar studies have been made in various parts of the world—countries such as Finland, Denmark, South Africa, China, and Japan. Statistically the results all point in the same direction: high-fat diet means a high rate of heart deaths.
Figures, as Mark Twain and Marilyn Monroe have shown,

sometimes have a way of misleading us. This is admittedly true of interpreting cause and effect relationships where the health of whole populations are concerned. The long arm of coincidence can sometimes reach around corners or do a juggling act. For example, you might claim, an the basis of statistics, that since the use of soap was also sharply reduced in some countries during the war, with a corresponding drop in death rate from cardiovascular disease, it was the soap (which is a fat) that caused the disease. In a more scientific view, however, the evidence weighs heavily on the side of fat as a prime factor in causing atherosclerosis.

Is the epidemic confined to older people? What has happened to our way of life to make men between 30 and 45 the preferred victims of the "silent killer" that strikes without warning? And why are more and more young women, long believed to be virtually immune to this disease until after menopause, now falling prey to it?
We do not know the entire answer to this enigma, or even whether there is a single answer. But research that has been carried on by my colleagues throughout the world, and by myself during the past 10 years, has provided some valuable clues.

Only recently, we discovered to our amazement that over 90 per cent of our adult population has, to a greater or less degree, a degenerative disease of the arteries that doctors call atherosclerosis. That, as you know, is the term meaning the thickening and narrowing of certain vital blood vessels. It is the way in which the stage is set for heart attacks and strokes.

Medical people once thought that it was a result of aging, but the disease is now being found in infants and children. As children, however, we have the power of absorbing the fatty deposits that attach themselves to the artery walls. As we grow older, we seem to lose this power of absorption. That is when the real trouble begins. At what age does this happen? Much earlier than we might expect.
For example, my associates and I made a study of the arteries of 600 patients who had died of various diseases. About 100 of them had met sudden death from accidents or acute illness. To our amazement we found that atherosclerosis, a disease of the arteries, was present in many of the young people before they had reached their thirtieth year.

By the time they were 40 to 50 years of age, the fatty deposits and embedded crystals of cholesterol were inside the artery walls. Such thickening and narrowing of the blood vessels interfered with the nourishment and vitality of the tissues in the heart, brain, or kidney.

Striking evidence of how widespread the disease is among our younger people today came also from Korea. There Army doctors autopsied 300 American soldiers who had died while serving in Korea. It was the first time such a study had been made of a cross section of the country's youth; their average age was only 22. A report of the mass autopsies contained startling information that 77 per cent of the young U.S. servicemen already had atherosclerosis! Balanced against this shocking total was a mere 11 per cent incidence of the same disease among Koreans and Orientals who had died on the same battlefield under the same conditions.

Does heredity have anything to do with the problem? At this point you are probably wondering: why do some people have more cholesterol in their blood than others? At present we do not know the whole answer to that question. We do, however, know some of the predisposing factors.

One of them is heredity. Some families are affected by what physicians call hereditary familial hyper-(excessive) cholesteremia. In such a family the tendency to high levels of cholesterol in the blood is passed on for several generations. Among members of such families we usually find a large number of individuals who suffer heart attack and strokes. If no heart attacks or strokes have occurred in your own family line, you have at least one protective factor in your favor from the beginning.

The second factor is one that is pretty much up to you. It con¬cerns what you eat and how much you eat. Unfortunately, it is too late for us to choose our parents.

But it is not too late to choose our diet. By learning how to avoid food excessive in fat and cholesterol content, we can help minimize the effect of heredity.
Women have better natural protection against athero-sclerosis. If you are a woman, you are less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke until well after you pass the half century mark. That is when your protective female hormones give out, and you become as susceptible to the disease as men.

Can't men take female hormones to protect themselves? They can, but if they do, they will "cross the border" and develop a high voice, full enlarged breasts, and other feminine characteristics. So that approach to the problem is not practical.
Anything else? Yes, there is something everyone can do with¬out great inconvenience, and with the added reward of improved health in general. It is this: select a diet that will keep your blood fats down to normal levels.

Can you reverse damage done to your arteries by excessive fat? Only within the last few years have medical research teams produced reliable evidence showing that excessive fat in our diets may lay the groundwork for heart disease. If you are already past 30, it naturally occurs to you to wonder whether the damage done to your arteries is permanent, or whether it is reversible.

At the present stage of our research, we doctors cannot answer the question with certainty. We can cite the hopeful fact that experiments with animals have shown that the condition is reversible in animals. We have evidence that the cholesterol in the arteries is absorbed in children, as shown by Dr. Russell Holman and others. However, this metabolic gift seems to be lost as we grow up. There are many authorities in the field who do believe that since atherosclerosis is reversible in animals, it can also be eliminated even after it is established in humans as well. However, we must proceed cautiously in basing our conclusions solely upon studies of laboratory animals, because their metabolism is different from that of humans.
Another question that patients often ask me is: "Can you tell me whether I am already a victim of degenerative artery disease?" Unfortunately, we do not as yet have a test that can predict with certainty whether you are susceptible to coronary disease, or are likely to have a heart attack.

One fact, however, is certain: if laboratory tests show that you have an excessive amount of cholesterol in your blood, your chances of avoiding heart and blood vessel disease, which can lead to heart attack or stroke, are much smaller. You are then much more susceptible. If you are over 30 years of age, you ought to have your physician include such a measurement of cholesterol level in your routine check-up.
Too many men in the dangerous middle years are so busy playing for high stakes in the fast-moving game of life, that they forget that "hearts are trumps."

What is the solution for us? The many studies that have been made do not prove conclusively that heart disease is caused solely by diet. But they do heavily underscore much of the information that I have gathered from my own quarter of a century of practice and laboratory research.

Taken together, the evidence points strongly to this fact: If everyone in the United States would reduce his fat intake by 25 percent, we would cut the number of heart deaths in half within another 20 years. Moreover, the low-fat diet will add immeasurably to your general health and well-being.

"But," you ask, "how can I go about reducing the fat in my diet? Where do I begin?" In the following pages you will find a safe guide; it includes low-fat menus and directions for using simple and inexpensive nutritional supplements that I employ in my own practice to help my patients forestall heart attack, and to treat those who have already had one or more.

If you follow these directions carefully, you will not only add years to your life, but life to your years.


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This article is part of the ebook "The Low-Fat Way To Health And Longer Life" for which the owner of this blog site has the PLR to distribute without restrictions. Please do not redistribute this article unless you are licensed to do so.
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