What you believe about heart disease is about to change. Many Americans, including medical scientists, have a one-track mind when it comes to the condition. In the past, fats and cholesterol in the diet were blamed for causing heart disease. But years of medical research have produced no convincing evidence that these components of foods actually cause hardening of the arteries. In fact, scientists have proven that pure cholesterol does not cause arteriosclerosis and that elevation of blood cholesterol is a symptomânot a causeâof heart disease. Discoveries about a substance in our bodies, homocysteine, are revolutionizing our understanding of the cause of the nationâs number one killer. We have learned that deficiencies of B vitamins in the dietâfolic acid, vitamin B6, vitamin B12âtrigger heart disease by raising the level of homocysteine in the blood. Now there is a way to prevent heart disease and to achieve a longer, healthier life. All you have to do is improve your diet.
These simple yet revolutionary discoveries and concepts are very different from what weâve been told for years. Heart disease has been studied, researched, and discussed, and yet itâs still the number one killer in this country. How could all the medical experts be wrong about something this big, this important? Could we experience a revolution in our thinking in this day and age? We understand how Copernicus changed the way we viewed the Earth, not as the center of the universe, but as a planet revolving around the sun. Thatâs how the word ârevolutionâ took on its profound meaning. But that was five hundred years ago, and there was less information available in those days. Certainly today we would know if the experts were off base. Maybe not.
There is a revolution going on. The way we look at disease and aging, especially heart disease, is changing. The previously touted dangers of dietary fats and cholesterol need to be reconsidered, and existing theories need to be revised because of the new discoveries about homocysteine and heart disease.
In the past few decades, deaths from heart disease have actually gone down. Why? The National Institutes of Health canât explain it. Our eating habits have not improved; in fact theyâve gotten worse. We eat more fat and cholesterol than ever and our blood cholesterol levels are up. The experts canât explain declining deaths from heart disease in terms of medical therapy, or changes in smoking or exercise patterns. Is it possible the cholesterol theory is just plain wrong?
There are more unanswered questions. How do we explain that a large percentage of patients with heart disease have normal cholesterol levels? Or that the French, who love pâtÊ de foie gras and red wine, have a much lower incidence of heart disease than do abstemious Americans? Or that Eskimos of Greenland or the Masai of Africa who eat meat-based diets have almost no heart disease? No one has been able to explain these paradoxes. Until now.
The millions of research dollars spent trying to prove the cholesterol theory have all come up empty-handed. The eighty-five-year reign of the cholesterol theory of heart disease is coming to an end. Our thinking has to change.
In this book I will present a totally new way of looking at the nationâs number one killer, heart disease. Homocysteine, an amino acid present in our bodies, has been identified as the cause of heart diseaseâas well as blood clots, stroke, and gangrene. The homocysteine theory of heart disease has gained attention because it has been provenâsometimes by the very studies that were trying to validate the cholesterol theory. Whatâs more, keeping homocysteine levels in the safe range doesnât require expensive medication or any drugs at all, only adequate amounts of certain vitaminsâB6, B12, and folic acidâfrom fresh whole foods.
Iâll explain how homocysteine causes heart disease and the role of B vitamins in keeping homocysteine levels in check. Iâll show how the processing and refining of foods destroys these vitamins. Iâll document that the U.S. population overall is deficient in B vitamins as a result. Iâll show that the reason the cholesterol in LDL is dangerous is that it carries homocysteine to arteries. Itâs a matter of life and death that we control the level of homocysteine in our blood.
This book will also look at the relationship between homocysteine and the risk factors we know about, such as smoking, heredity, lack of exercise, hormones, and aging. But this book is not just about heart disease. Homocysteine is intimately involved in the aging process and certain other diseases, including Alzheimerâs, arthritis, and cancer.
Since I began my research thirty years ago, hundreds of research papers have been published that validate my homocysteine theory. If youâre interested in knowing about the revolution thatâs been taking place, youâll be fascinated to learn about homocysteine and the role it plays in the body. You donât have to worry that itâs speculation, or some untested idea. Itâs proven.
The best part is that you can do something about your homocysteine level. Easily. I will show you how to eat a diet that is rich in B vitamins, phytochemicals, minerals, and other nutrients that prevent homocysteine buildup. As a result, youâll completely avoid heart disease and all the related conditions. Itâs that simple. You can find out your current homocysteine level by asking your doctor to do a blood test. If your homocysteine is low (6-8 micromoles per liter), you are at low risk of developing heart disease. If your homocysteine level is elevated (anything over 12 micromoles per liter), you can reduce it to a safe level by eating the nutritious Heart Revolution diet.
The Case for the Heart Revolution Diet
Before I explain the creation of the homocysteine theory of heart disease, the following case studies will illustrate how two individuals have improved their health by following the Heart Revolution diet. These experiments show how eating an optimal diet and taking simple B vitamin supplements (folic acid and vitamin B6) were successful in causing weight loss, lowering blood pressure, lowering blood homocysteine levels, reducing heart disease symptoms, and improving general health.
How It All Began: The Creation of the Homocysteine Theory of Heart Disease
Itâs not enough for a scientist to be observant. He must be able to understand the significance of a discovery. Louis Pasteurâs famous dictum, âIn scientific research, chance favors the prepared mind,â emphasizes this ability. In the case of the homocysteine theory of heart disease, I was ready. I had the experience and education in biochemistry, genetics, and pathology that enabled me to understand the significance of something I observed in 1968.
At a human genetics conference that year, I learned about a newly discovered disease, homocystinuria, in which the amino acid homocysteine, normally present in trace amounts in our blood, is found in large amounts in the urine of mentally retarded children. The mother of a nine-year-old girl with the disease told the pediatricians that the girlâs uncle had died in childhood of a similar disease in the 1930s. The uncle was an eight-year-old mentally retarded boy who had died of a stroke in childhood. How could an eight-year-old have died the way old people do? His case was so interesting that it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1933. The pathologist found that the arteries to the patientâs brain were narrowed and blocked by a blood clot, causing the stroke that killed him. The pathologist commented that the arteries looked like arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) usually found in the elderly.
Coincidentally, the case from 1933 had been published from the department where I was currently working at the Massachusetts General Hospital, so I decided to restudy it. The archives contained the original autopsy report, microscopic slides, and small fragments of his organs preserved in paraffin. My study confirmed that the boy had arteriosclerosis in many arteries throughout his bodyâsimilar to the arteriosclerosis that I had seen in elderly patients. But it was amazing that there was no cholesterol or fat deposited in the arteriosclerotic plaques in this child. This boy had the disease homocystinuria, and I reasoned that the amino acid homocysteine could have produced the arteriosclerosis and stroke by damaging artery walls. I interpreted this fascinating case to indicate that rapidly progressive severe damage to arteries can occur before fats and cholesterol are deposited in arteriosclerotic plaques.
Several months later, I learned of another recent case of homocystinuria in a two-month-old baby boy. The child hadnât been growing properly and had died of severe pneumonia. This baby also had homocysteine in his urine and was found to have a previously unknown form of the disease caused by a problem with the function of vitamin B12 and folic acid in his body. An autopsy had been performed when the child died, and the completed report was filed in our departmental archives. Because the case from 1933 was caused by a different problem with another vitamin, vitamin B6, the condition of the arteries in this recent case was crucial. If the arteries were found to be free of arteriosclerosis, the case would show that blood homocysteine could be highly elevated without damaging the arteries. If the arteries were found to contain arteriosclerotic plaques, it would prove that homocysteine causes damage to arteries regardless of which condition caused elevation of blood homocysteine.
When I read the second crucial case, I found no mention of the arteries in the description of the findings. There were two possibilities. Either the pathologist who completed the case had not found the changes in the arteries, or the arteries were in fact normal. But when I made a detailed study of this second case, I discovered that this child also had rapidly progressive arteriosclerosis, just as I had predicted!
I barely slept for two weeks. I became very excited because my analysis of these two cases of homocystinuria proved that the amino acid homocysteine was causing arteriosclerosis by directly damaging the cells and tissues of the arteries. Since one case resulted from a lack of vitamin B6 and the other from a deficiency in B12 and folic acid, I could pinpoint the one constantâa high level of homocysteine in the bloodâas the factor responsible for the arteriosclerosis. If this amino acid produced arteriosclerosis in these patients, then why couldnât homocysteine cause the disease in the rest of the population?
I immediately thought of other well-known experiments that were relevant. In 1949 the California pathologist James Rinehart did some experiments on monkeys showing that when vitamin B6 is limited in the diet, the result is arteriosclerosis. Rinehart had linked a B6 deficiency with the disease, but he couldnât explain exactly how they were related. Suddenly I realized that the missing link was homocysteine. The B6 deficiency raised homocysteine levels, and thatâs how arteriosclerosis was caused in Rinehartâs monkeys. In other studies from Canada, involving experiments with rats, vitamins B12 and folic acid prevented arteriosclerosis. Again the missing link was homocysteine. I knew that B12 and folic acid controlled homocysteine, and if there were enough of these vitamins, homocysteine would be kept low, therefore preventing the disease.
This was a powerful discovery. It showed that vitamins could help prevent heart disease by controlling homocysteineânot only in rare cases of homocystinuria and in experimental animals, but also in the rest of us. If you look at the American diet, itâs easy to see that we donât get enough B vitamins. We eat processed foods that donât provide the vitamins our bodies need. As a result, homocysteine goes up, arteries are damaged, and heart disease takes over.
The biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgi described scientific discovery as a process that begins with analysis of the same facts that other scientists examine, but concludes with a new concept based on fresh observation. Certainly, this was a new way of looking at an old problem.
The Heart of the Theory
In 1969 I first proposed the homocysteine theory of heart disease. When there is too much homocysteine in the blood, arteries are damaged and plaques form. The result is arteriosclerosis and heart disease. This happens when we donât get enough of certain vitaminsânamely B6, B12, and folic acid. These B v...
