Comments on: What Causes Heart Attacks? (continued)

by: Bill

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:53:40 +0000

here is a Framingham link:

Castelli; Archives of Internal Medicine; July 1992: 152;1371-1372

no correlation of CHD and cholesterol

by: www.topbloodpressureadvice.info » What Causes Heart Attacks? (continued)

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:35:08 +0000

[…] seth wrote a fantastic post today on “What Causes Heart Attacks? (continued)”Here’s ONLY a quick extractThat the heart disease clinical trials failed to clearly show benefits of omega-3 supplementation had large and unfortunate consequences. Not only because heart disease is the leading cause of death in many places, including America, … […]

by: Melissa

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:33:56 +0000

Also the omega-3 studies didn’t lower omega-6 consumption, which is important since omega-6 competes with omega-3 in the body. Too much 6 will drown the three out. The letters following the omega-3 studies have a lot of interesting info about this problem.

by: Tom

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:34:33 +0000

Infection is a key source of inflammation, hence the association between heart and periodontal disease.

Another important reason to keep drinking your flax oil!

by: Varangy

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:51:53 +0000

Something to think about - infection as a root cause of heart disease, not cholesterol:

Some researchers have also found tentative links between H. pylori and heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. Others think the villain might be either cytomegalovirus, a herpes virus, or even the bacteria in dental plaque.

But the strongest evidence implicates another bug, called Chlamydia pneumoniae, in heart disease. Discovered in the 1980s, C. pneumoniae is now known to be widespread in the environment, causing, for example, at least 10% of all cases of pneumonia. It is also a close relative of Chlamydia trachomatis, the most common cause of sexually transmitted disease in this country.

The idea that bacteria and viruses can damage the heart is not farfetched. The streptococcal bacteria that cause rheumatic fever also attack the heart, causing lingering damage. Several viruses attack the heart directly, causing myocarditis, which is often fatal.

by: Varangy

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:41:45 +0000

But to dismiss diet and cholesterol as causes of heart disease goes against everything we know. Exactly. Paul Ewald, for one, has been challenging the medical status quo as to the root causes of various diseases and ailments. I strongly recommend his book Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease.

by: Jill

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:30:57 +0000

The Framingham Heart Study originally showed a strong but non-significant trend. I can’t speak to any results after the early 1960’s, but I remember being struck by the graphs showing lowest overall mortality for women with cholesterol between 220 and 260.

by: www.topcholesteroladvice.info » What Causes Heart Attacks? (continued)

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:37:55 +0000

[…] seth wrote a fantastic post today on “What Causes Heart Attacks? (continued)”Here’s ONLY a quick extractOne of his empirical points was that there was no relationship between cholesterol level and atherosclerosis growth. One reviewer commented:. Lack of relationship can be explained by more factors that only absence of it: small numbers, … […]

by: seth

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:07:50 +0000

Well, the MONICA data I described show that cholesterol levels — at the population level — predict nothing. China and Japan are obviously different from European countries in dozens of ways; that they havelower heart disease AND lower cholesterol means almost nothing. Then there are all the other countries where there is no correlation. As I said I haven’t studied the matter enough to have an opinion. But the data I do know about imply that the answer is not obvious and that the effect, if any, must be small relative to other causes. One view is that high cholesterol is caused by inflammation, which also causes heart disease.

by: Dennis Mangan

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:55:43 +0000

Here are a few items from the Framingham Heart Study homepage. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/framingham/timeline.htm

“1961 Cholesterol level, blood pressure, and electrocardiogram abnormalities found to increase the risk of heart disease

1987 High blood cholesterol levels found to correlate directly with risk of death in young men

1988 High levels of HDL cholesterol found to reduce risk of death

1990 Homocysteine (an amino acid) found as possible risk factor for heart disease [The significance of this is that homocysteine levels are diet-related; specifically, eating meat raises serum homocysteine.]

1997 Report on the cumulative effects of smoking and high cholesterol on the risk for atherosclerosis”

Obviously, research is ongoing. But to dismiss diet and cholesterol as causes of heart disease goes against everything we know.