Why is the epidemic of heart disease particularly strong in the U.S.A.? If you are the average American, your diet is probably unbalanced and is very likely to lead you towards obesity, regardless of whether you know it or not. Drs. Louis Katz and J. Stamler, prominent researchers in this field, called it “a pernicious combination of over-nutrition and under-nutrition -excessive in calories, carbohydrates, lipids and salt; and frequently substandard in certain critically important amino acids, minerals and vitamins.” This makes sense, since the study of nutrition, which is relatively new to the medical field, has focused almost entirely on not having enough nutrition until recent years. People have been encouraged to “eat the right foods” and to provide plenty of meat, eggs, milk, and cheese for their children. In most areas of the world, the problem of getting enough food to eat for nourishment and survival is still existent, but this is not the problem in America. Our problem is actually more like the opposite: eating too much, especially the foods that are bad for us. Our diet is high fats, calories, refined sugars and starches, while low in essential nutrients, minerals and other vital supplements. The relationship between the amount of fat in your diet and the amount of cholesterol produced in your body is still not very clear. Research disagree on some points, but all one aspect of the problem, though, we all concur: the cholesterol found in the blood is produced mainly 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 definitely monitor is fat in our food.

What is the situation in other countries of the world? We have evidence that the reason for the large difference between health of Americans and peoples in various other countries is their diet. For example, in Norway, during the war years of 1940-1945, the consumption of butter, milk, cheese and eggs (which are all high in fats) had to be greatly reduced. Did the reduction of fat content in the country’s 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 also coronary attacks decreased. The Norwegians reported that deaths related to heart disease were reduced by 31% each year among the urban population. In addition, there was a 22% drop in heart disease-related deaths among the rural population. France, which also to cut down on high-fat content foods during the war years, had similar results. Mr. Marcel Moine, from the French Ministry of Health, reported to me that from 1941 to 1945, when the French population was on a low-fat diet, the death rate from heart disease was reduced to an average of 20.6 for each 100,000 persons. In the postwar years, when the diet returned to normal fat consumption, the death rate rose to 25.5 per 100,000, which was the death rate prior to the war. Italy provides another example, in which they studied two neighboring provinces. In one neighborhood the daily diet included pork products rich in fats, the occurrence of coronary and generalized artery disease ended up being much higher than in the neighboring town where the population followed the comparatively low-fat diet of the country as a whole. Related studies have been conducted in all across the world-countries such as Finland, Denmark, South Africa, China, and Japan. Statistically, the results all reveal the same conclusion: high-fat diet means a high rate of heart deaths. Prominent figures, as Mark Twain and Marilyn Monroe have shown, sometimes have a way of deceiving us, by interpreting cause and effect relationships where the health of whole populations is concerned. For example, you could claim, on 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, the soap (which is a fat) was to blame for the disease. In a more scientific perspective, however, the evidence weighs heavily on the side of fat consumption as the primary 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? Some people have more cholesterol in their blood than others. There is not enough evidence regarding this topic to conclude an answer, but there is information known of some important factors, such as heredity. Some families are affected by what physicians call hereditary familial hyper-excessive cholesteremia. Developing high cholesterol in common in these families and it is evident throughout the generations. Individuals who suffered from heart attack and strokes are common as well. If you do not have history of heart attacks or strokes in your family, you are lucky, but what is totally in your hands is how you eat and how much you eat. While we can choose our genetic inheritance, we do have control over our diet. By avoiding foods high in fat and cholesterol, we can help offset any negative inheritances.

Women have better natural protection against atherosclerosis. If you are female, you are less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke until well after you pass 50 years of age. After that, your protective female hormones give out, and you become at the same risk to the disease as men. Can men take female hormones to protect themselves? They can, but if they do, they will develop a high voice, full enlarged breasts, and other feminine characteristics. As you can imagine, this approach is neither practical nor desired. Can anything else help? Yes, there is something that everybody can do without much trouble, and still get the benefits of improving their overall general health. In fact, it’s also very simple: choose foods and eat meals that will keep your blood fats down to normal levels.

Can you reverse damage done to your arteries by excessive fat? Only recently have medical research teams produced dependable evidence supporting that excessive fat in our diets increases the risk of heart disease. If you are past the age of thirty, you have probably already started wonder whether the harm done to your arteries is permanent, or if it is reversible. Right now, as our current level of research, we doctors cannot answer the question with certainty. However, we can convey the hopeful fact that experiments have shown that the condition is reversible in animals. We have data that verifies cholesterol in the arteries is absorbed in adolescents, as proposed by Dr. Russell Holman and others. However, this metabolic gift disappears as we age. There are many qualified experts in this field who hypothesize that since atherosclerosis is reversible in animals, the same can be true for humans as well. However, we should be careful when drawing conclusions from animal testing, as their metabolism is quite different from ours.

Another question that patients often ask is: “Can you tell if I am already affected by this degenerative artery disease?” Unfortunately, there is not a test yet that can predict accurately whether you are vulnerable to such heart diseases. However, there is a test that does produce accurate results related to heart disease. If your doctor can detect a minimal amount of cholesterol in your blood, your risk of heart and blood vessel disease, such as heart attack or stroke, is quite low. However, if there is a substantial amount, you face a greater chance of developing such disease. If you are past 30, you should have your doctor check these levels of cholesterol routinely, as part of your check-up. All too often, middle-aged men are so involved in their fast-paced life that they dangerously neglect the importance of their own health.

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 per cent, 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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