| Most likely yes, but is it really his fault? According to the American Heart Association, about 62 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease, which can include high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (heart attack and chest pain), stroke,birth defects of the heart and blood vessels, and congestive heart failure, and close to a million die from such conditions every year. |  |
Heart disease is by far the #1 killer in the U. S, although 1/3 of those deaths could be prevented if people exercised more and followed better diets, the American Heart Association said in an annual report.
Cardiovascular disease kills more Americans than the next 7 causes of death combined - including cancer - the AHA report states. Overall, slightly more females than males have cardiovascular disease. Heart disease accounted for 40% of all deaths in the U. S. in 1999.(1)
Wouldn't it be interesting if almost 1/2 of all deaths (those from heart disease) could be delayed, in good health, to a later time in life - then from some other cause?
The truth is that 150 years ago, heart disease was completely unheard of. Almost no one died from heart disease 150 years ago. The truth is that heart disease is a new disease. Even though the average length of life 150 years ago was much less than it is now, there were millions of people who did live past 60 years of age. They lived long enough to get heart disease - but they didn't get it. None of those people died of heart disease even when they lived to be in their 70s.
Perhaps the greatest evil connected with the problem of heart disease is that certain powerful drug interests deliberately suppress the truth - these are the groups which stand to benefit the most from your illness from heart disease. There is nothing as profitable to a drug company as a patient who is forced to take some drug for the rest of his life - heart medications fit in that category.
These drug interests have manipulated medical education so that even your doctor is completely ignorant of the value of other therapies. Your doctor is almost as much a victim as his patients.
There is an explanation for the terrible mis-information you get from doctors. The drug interests are eager for his prescription business. That explanation starts with the education your doctor has received. That education got corrupted many years ago. Less than 2% of a Harvard Medical School student's time is spent studying preventive medicine, and only a small part of that time is spent on nutrition.
Bypass surgery for heart disease
You may have been told, and you may believe that..."bypass surgery or drugs are your only answers, and that they are effective."
That is not true!
| The truth is that although the odds of surviving bypass surgery have improved since the operation was introduced, bypass surgery kills anywhere from 2% to 4% of the patients on the operating table, and more within a few months. The truth is that even respectable medical journals are now carrying articles that say that life expectancy does not increase after bypass surgery. |  |
It takes a great leap of faith to let someone crack open your chest and put you on a heart-lung machine while they attempt to correct blockages in your coronary arteries. It is actually quite an amazing piece of surgery, but in the vast majority of cases it is a classic example of traditional medicine doing too much, too late and not treating the CAUSE of the problem.
Part of the reason that bypass patients suffer from a mental decline - this change in intellectual abilities which occurs after bypass, which studies(2) have shown can affect 50% to 80% of people who have the surgery - is that the surgeon only repairs about 2 inches of their blood vessels. They do virtually nothing to address the cause of the hardening of the arteries.
The truth is that coronary bypass surgery consumes more of our medical dollar than any other treatment or procedure. Although it is performed less frequently than the most common abdominal and gynecological operations, bypass surgery is the leader in terms of equipment and personnel, hospital space, and total associated revenues, and thousands of doctors have gotten rich from doing them. It is not unusual for heart bypass surgery to cost $25,000, or even $50,000. They often come 'undone' within months or a few years. They are often repeated on the same patient.
A decade of scientific study has shown that except in certain well-defined situations, bypass surgery does not save lives: among patients who suffer from coronary-artery disease, those who are treated without surgery enjoy the same survival rates as those who undergo open-heart surgery. Yet many American physicians continue to prescribe surgery immediately upon the appearance of angina, or chest pain.
In our next blog post, we'll discuss how you can challenge the current medical standards and begin to place your life on the path to natural health, most likely avoiding heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and many other health issues.
