Plant-deficient diet kills pundit

[Guest guest]

This is the clearest explanation I've seen of heart disease as

the " silent killer. "

 

I *dare* any media to publish the story with my headlines:

 

 

Plant-deficient diet kills pundit

 

What no one talks about: the festering pustules, time bombs that could

have been defused by a week on a vegan diet

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/jun/russert.htm

 

A Posthumous Interview

by Tim Russert, Former Host of Meet the Press

 

with John McDougall, MD

 

McDougall: Thank you for visiting me in my office in Santa Rosa,

California under these supernatural circumstances. I am so sorry about

your untimely death from a heart attack on June 13, 2008. I read that

your end was quick, and hopefully, painless.

 

I am honored that you requested this interview. You are known

for your hard-hitting questions and for demanding truthful and

plain-spoken explanations from your guests.

 

Russert: The reason I am here is I have been gone for more than 2

weeks now, yet doctors, scientists, and the media, all seem baffled

about the cause of my death. I have listened to the evening news and

talk shows, read the newspapers and weekly magazines, and searched the

Internet-but why my life was suddenly taken in my professional

prime, at age 58, remains unanswered. In fact, my colleagues,

who are the some of the best investigative reporters in the world,

aren't even asking the right questions - so here I am.

 

I picked you to talk to, Dr. McDougall, because you are known as a

"no nonsense doctor," who speaks the truth regardless of the

economic consequences. In fact in the media business you are

considered politically incorrect, and occasionally referred to as

abrupt, and difficult, but always honest.

 

McDougall: Well, thank you, I guess, for those words. So how's

"life" in Heaven?

 

Russert: Not bad except the food's terrible. Nothing but rice,

potatoes, beans, corn, fruits and vegetables. Everything's

bland, but they say I'll get used to it.

 

When I was alive I loved to eat. As a child I ate hearty: the butcher,

I recall, had a display case that perfectly evoked Buffalo's (New

York) version of multiculturalism and good health, full of pork neck

bone, smoked pork neck bone, jellied tongue, Polish bacon, slab bacon,

double smoked hunter bacon, German-style wieners, Italian sausage,

pork roll sausage, hot or mild beef sausage, barley sausage, beer

sausage, double smoked hunter bacon . . . chopped ham, smoked hocks,

turkey gizzards, smoked turkey parts, chicken feet, chicken liver,

chicken fat, fresh ox tails, and ribs of every type. Boy

did I like to eat at those tailgates. I used to fly in wings, Buffalo

wings, from Frank and Teresa's in Buffalo because people in Boston

couldn't do a good wing.

 

I miss my diet coke and licorice, "the breakfast of champions." It

was my secret for staying up all night and alert.

 

McDougall: And you say no one has figured out why you died of a heart

attack? One look in the mirror should have given you a clue there was

something wrong with your diet and you were at risk. For centuries

feasting like a king and a queen has caused people to become rotund

and sick-why would you be any different?

 

Russert: My doctors did mention I should eat better, but they

never were specific about what to eat. Mostly, they focused on

overworking myself. Even if I ate better, don't you think all

that stress I was under would have killed me?

 

McDougall: Stress is largely used as a scapegoat. It is

non-tangible-so obscure that no one has the ability to change it, so

it can be easily dismissed. Besides, you loved every minute of your

challenging job. Take that excitement away from you and your life

would have not been worth living. Stress, in itself, is not a toxin to

the body. It is a normal natural part of life. It is a motivator

to cause us to get things done and problems resolved. The major way

that stress hurt you was by causing you to eat more fried chicken

wings.

 

Consider that in times of unthinkable mental and emotional strain;

like during the occupation of Western Europe by the Germans throughout

World War II, people became healthier-heart disease and overweight

(two of your most notable problems)-essentially disappeared.

People during these war years were being incarcerated, killed, and

displaced from their homes and families, yet at the same time common

diseases were vanishing. The reason for all this improved health

was the forced change in their foods-the butter, cheese, and meat

were no longer readily available during the war years in Western

Europe. People had to eat vegetables.

 

Russert: I had no chest pains, no previous symptoms of heart trouble.

I thought I was healthy. How could such a catastrophe happen so

suddenly to me without any warning?

 

McDougall: A tiny plaque ruptured in an artery, your left anterior

descending coronary artery.

 

That is the one that supplied the front of your heart. Think of this

plaque as a "festering sore," or as an inflamed "pimple"

filled with fat, cholesterol, and white blood cells. When a

plaque ruptures, "products of injury" are released. The response

to injury that follows causes the blood flowing inside the artery to

suddenly clot-just like when you cut your finger, a clot forms

around that injury. In your case the blood clot completely plugged

your artery lumen, the blockage suffocating the heart muscle it had

once supplied. As the muscle died your heart became an

ineffective pump and you died. According to your autopsy report,

your entire blood vessel system was in serious trouble-filled with

atherosclerosis containing probably thousands of tiny volatile

plaques. You were a walking time bomb.

 

Pharmaceutical companies, like the makers of the blood-thinning drug

Plavix, have produced animated videos for the consumer that

show this plaque rupture and clot formation. Youtube also has a

shocking animation of this event.

 

 

 

Knowing about volatile plaque rupture and clot formation is essential

to understanding how your diet caused your death, why the drugs did

not save you, and why more aggressive treatment with heart surgery

would have been unwise and unhelpful. So take some time to look at

these animations.

 

The reason you had no warning was because there are no pain-sensing

nerves in the arteries-thus, there was no feeling from the festering

sores invading these tissues. This is a completely silent disease.

However, the heart muscle has nerves and when it is injured the pain

is often described as an elephant sitting on your chest. I hope

you didn't feel that kind of pain in your final minutes.

 

Russert: I ate a well-balanced diet. I ate no worse than a lot of

people. I don't understand. Why me?

 

McDougall: You ate the American diet, and these days most Americans

over the age of thirty have outward signs of illness-they are

overweight, on medication, and/or have elevated risk factors for

future illness.

 

Why you? You were not singled out-1.2 million other Americans also

have heart attacks annually, and half of them, like you, never

realized they had a problem beforehand. Furthermore, half of

heart attack victims die within a few hours-this is not a forgiving

disease. Based on what you told me, it appears you ate meat, and

other rich foods, with extraordinary enthusiasm.

 

Your sick arteries were caused by malnutrition. A deficiency of proper

nutrients from plants weakened your arteries. Your diet was almost

devoid of vegetables and fruits. At the same time, toxic substances,

like oxidized cholesterol and saturated fat, from all the animal foods

you ate damaged your arteries. Think of pouring corrosive acid on your

inner artery surfaces at breakfast, lunch and dinner. The result:

thousands of volatile plaques, as small as the size of a pinhead; yet

the explosion of just one of them took down a giant of a man like you,

Mr. Russert.

 

Russert: But my doctors said I was a medical success: my blood

pressure and cholesterol were well controlled for more than 20 years

with medication. My last blood pressure was normal at 120/80

mmHg. My total and "bad" LDL cholesterol and C-reactive

protein were all normal. I was near perfect-on paper!

 

McDougall: People (even doctors) falsely believe that the elevated

blood pressure and cholesterol are damaging the arteries and the total

solution is to knock these numbers down with drugs. In

plain-spoken truth, these elevated numbers are not the problem. No one

dies of high blood pressure or cholesterol. These were "signs"

pointing to the real problem-your rotten arteries filled with

festering sores. But no one was paying enough attention to your

underlying disease, as was so clearly demonstrated by your fatal

outcome, Mr. Russert. Millions of "well-treated" Americans suffer

a fate similar to yours, and we accept this as "the best medicine

can offer."

 

Doctors and drug companies treat signs of disease, the blood pressure

and cholesterol numbers, also known as risk factors, with highly

profitable medications, because they can - they do sell expensive

pills that reduce these signs. They do not treat the underlying

sickness, because they can't - the only way to fix those rotten

arteries is by correcting the malnutrition with a diet based on whole

starches, vegetables, and fruits.

 

Russert: Many doctors now say, after I'm dead, that I should have

been treated more aggressively, like with heart surgery? But I had a

negative stress test April 29, one and a half months before I

died.

 

McDougall: "More treatment" seems to be the answer given for every

medical problem; even when those very same treatments kill the

patient. The families feel: "The doctors did everything possible -

my loved one got every surgery and pill they could possibly

prescribe." The doctors talk of "sound medical care."

 

Medical experts who have suggested that you should have had an

angiogram followed by angioplasty, and/or bypass surgery before you

died are ignoring the dismal scientific records for these treatments.

Angioplasty has never been shown to save lives and the benefits from

bypass surgery are only slightly better, maybe. The reason for this

failure is obvious to you now that you understand the underlying cause

of your heart attack - the tiny volatile plaques - the festering

pustules - the pimples on the verge of popping. These killers

are so small you cannot even see them with an angiogram, much less

eliminate their threat with a localized surgery.

 

The angiograms show shadows of large bulges inside the arteries. These

are the old, large, fibrous, calcified plaques-disease that is as

stable as a rock. These bulges do not rupture, they do not cause a

blood clot to suddenly form inside the artery, and they do not cause a

heart attack. They are non-lethal. But because of their visible

prominence they do lend themselves to surgery. So why do

cardiologists and surgeons operate on this stable disease? Because

they can. Why do they not fix the pinhead-size killing pustules?

Because they can't. At least they can't with drugs and

surgery. But they could, if they seriously considered their

patients' diets.

 

A stress test will only detect very large blockages-maybe after a

hard, fibrous plaque narrows 70% of the artery. Based on your recent

negative results, you had none of these big ones. Now you

understand-this test is too insensitive to identify the tiny

potentially lethal pustules lining your arteries. The stress

test provided you and your family with false reassurance. I hope you

didn't have a celebration feast after hearing the results.

 

Russert: I exercised 40 minutes a day on my stationary bike. Why

didn't that save me?

 

McDougall: Exercise does not heal the inner-artery festering sores

caused by your meat-centered diet. Exercise can aid in developing a

trim muscular appearance and has some health benefits, but it has been

over-rated when it comes to warding off premature death. People have

said exercise is such a powerful preventative that if you ran a

marathon race you would be immune from heart disease. Jim Fixx,

author of The Complete Book of Running and the person credited with

helping start America's fitness revolution died at age 52 from a heart

attack after his daily run. Cemeteries are filled with young men and

women who put too much faith in exercise-ignoring the prevailing

role of food.

 

Russert: Could I have been saved?

 

McDougall: I believe so. Even as late as a week before you died,

you could have avoided this tragedy if you had made a serious change

in your diet. Within hours your volatile plaques would have

begun to quiet down, reducing their tendency to rupture. As soon

as you had eliminated the animal (saturated) fat from your diet your

blood would have "thinned." Then, even if a plaque had ruptured,

the risk of forming an occluding clot would have greatly diminished.

Saturated fat makes the blood platelets sticky and the blood-clotting

proteins very active-all leading to the easy production of a deadly

blood clot. Over the following weeks and months of healthful eating

your diseased arteries would have healed, with some measurable

reversal of the gross plaque. With the same diet you would have lost

weight, and lowered your risk factors. Likely, I would have

recommended you stop your blood pressure medication immediately; and

over time, reduce and eliminate your cholesterol-lowering

statin.

 

With this simple change you would have regained your lost health and

appearance. But the determining factor was not whether a healthy diet

would have saved your life over the short and long run. The

question is: even if you had known better, would you have changed?

 

Russert: I would have eaten cardboard to be alive and with my wife and

son. I looked forward to every Sunday to my show "Meet the Press,"

and the upcoming presidential election. I loved life!

 

McDougall: That's what everybody says-after an event.

 

But change is difficult and we have a natural tendency to feel

invincible. Sometimes a life-threatening event will wake people up.

Unfortunately, you were not given a second chance. If instead,

you had suffered a non-fatal heart attack on Friday, June 13, I

believe, as one of the world's top investigative journalists, you

would have tracked down that killer.

 

What amazes me is that over the past two weeks none of your colleagues

have asked the tough questions and demanded truthful and plain-spoken

explanations from doctors and scientists. The published scientific

research is clear about the cause of your death. Your best

friend, Tom Brokaw, could solve this crime in an afternoon by reading

this research at the local medical library.

 

But then the hard part would be writing an unpopular story about how

the food everybody loves to eat is killing them, and how the quick-fix

medications and surgeries don't really work that well. I'm

certain the food and pharmaceutical sponsors of newspapers, magazines,

and evening news programs would not be pleased with these truths

either.

 

If you still have any influence on current events on earth, please get

the media to do their job and seriously investigate the diet that

killed you, and how modern medicine failed you, so that others can

have a chance to avoid a similar fate. If any good could come of your

untimely death, it would be that people learn the truth-after all,

isn't that the duty of responsible journalists, like yourself?