A New Look at What Causes Coronary Artery Disease
January 28, 2017
Coronary heart disease is the number one cause of deaths the U.S. yet most people are confused about what causes it.
Coronary heart disease is the #1 cause of deaths the U.S. yet most people are confused about what causes it. We’re debunking the many misconceptions out there, for one, bacon, butter and eggs are NOT the cause of heart disease. Listen in to find out what is and how to protect yourself.
Similar Podcast Episodes
Transcript
DAR: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. I'm Darlene Kvist, licensed nutritionist and certified nutrition specialist and host of Dishing Up Nutrition. Today's show is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness, a company providing life changing nutrition education and life changing nutrition counseling. I hope each of you are listening carefully today because I have some very interesting questions I'm going to ask you today. These are life changing questions and for some of you, life changing and lifesaving questions. So, when I say lifesaving, I bet you're thinking she must be going to talk about heart disease today. And that's true. Yes, absolutely true. Before I start asking questions, please welcome Carolyn Hudson to the show. Carolyn has been a dietitian for a very long time, both here locally and in Canada and that was in her younger years. And let's say she's been around and has had that advantage of working with a variety of clients and she's ready to share her expertise in both classes and during individual nutrition counseling sessions with you. So, Carolyn, welcome to the show. So, what do you think is the biggest misconception about the cause of heart disease or coronary artery disease?
CAROLYN: Thank you for that great introduction. But a big misconception that many people have is that eating butter causes heart disease. Honestly, some people still believe that butter is bad for you, but we know from research that butter or bacon or eggs do not cause heart disease and that is what we teach our clients at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. So, you might ask then, well what the heck does cause coronary artery disease?
DAR: I think that's a great question because it's something that is one of the number one factors in people's death these days.
CAROLYN: Exactly. More and more research points to sugar. We always say that. Our listeners know that we point out sugar and processed carbs a lot. The research really says that these are the cause and a little bit later in the show, I'm sure we're going to go into more explanation of how sugar creates that inflammation and that inflammation then leads to coronary artery disease.
DAR: And that's kind of a new concept. So, today, for this very important topic, I'm pleased to have Greg Peterson join us and he always brings us current research about heart health and all kinds of other research. Greg is known as the research man because whenever I need research on a topic I called Greg and in just minutes my email is filled with more research than I could ever read, but that's good. We love it, though. So, I'm really very happy that Greg and I have been friends for about 30 years, but Greg, you’ve been studying nutrition for longer than that, what, 40 years, maybe?
GREG: Yeah, about 45 years this year, a few decades at this point.
DAR: So, I think a lot of people know that Greg and his brother, Dave, own NuriDyn, a local company that supplies professional quality supplements to healthcare professionals. And on top of that, you provide a lot of educational seminars to all of us, all of the healthcare professionals, and you're putting on seminars all the time to help people understand the importance of nutrition and your health. And we're really pleased that you're on today. And I know listeners are always pleased to hear your voice.
GREG: We really feel like we're part of the team by doing all the educational seminars and so forth that we're working along with you as the practitioners and bringing you the best possible care to our people. It’s all of our passions. I'm always amazed, too, and surprised that coronary heart disease is the number one cause of deaths in the United States. But most people don't know very much about the inflammation connection to heart disease and it's puzzling because of that the inflammation is the cause of heart disease. And yet very few people understand what causes inflammation.
CAROLYN: That is one of the reasons why we wanted to focus on this number one cause of heart disease or coronary artery disease, which is inflammation.
DAR: So, as listeners, we want to ask you, what do you think might cause inflammation in your arteries? It's really a very important question. So, let me ask you another question. Go back 20, maybe 30 years, maybe 50 years, when you were a teenager and you started smoking. Did you ever think to yourself, “Could smoking damage my coronary arteries and cause heart disease?” Well, of course not. But, we know if you continue to smoke, it most likely did cause damage to the inside lining of your arteries. Unfortunately, we didn't know that 30 or 40 years ago. I tried to smoke once or twice and didn't make me feel good. So I said, no, I don't think I'll do that one. But, sadly, people are still smoking. They know that it's damaging their body, but they're still smoking. It's crazy.
CAROLYN: Well, perhaps, you're saying to yourself, well, I never smoked so I must be safe. Maybe, but maybe not. Here's another question for you. Every time you decide to treat yourself to a large cookie dough blizzard, do you think, “hmm, how much inflammation is created from the 47 teaspoons of sugar I'm eating in that blizzard?”
GREG: That’s an ugly thought.
CAROLYN: Yes, 47! We know that sugar creates inflammation in both our bodies and our brains and especially in our coronary arteries and yes, eating excess sugar for some people can lead to coronary artery disease.
DAR: And I think that some people, probably not everyone, there's so few of those lucky people. I bet you're sitting there listening to the show today and saying, “My doctor runs cholesterol tests every year, but I don't remember seeing any test results for inflammation.” So Greg, here's a question for you. Is there a test for inflammation?
GREG: Yes, there is. It’s called CRP. It's on your lab tests that you do and so forth. It's usually called HSCRP, high sensitivity CRP. And it's a test that goes way back. We talked about that too, back to the 1930’s. So, I mean, it's pushing a hundred years almost that it's been in use, so it's not a new kid on the block at all. And it was discovered at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research and it was not until the 1990’s that it was being used now to indicate inflammation associated with coronary heart disease as well. So, that application is a relatively new one. And now they find that the high CRP values strongly predict future coronary heart disease risk in people. And I always want to look up some fun facts and when you look at c-reactive protein, that's CRP is what it is. There was this Dr. Ridker out of Harvard medical school, and he found that people with elevated CRP levels were 4.5 times more likely to have a heart attack compared to those who had low levels, significant increased risk for people. Another one, too, is this was some research that was done out of the New England Journal of Medicine showing that again, that C reactor protein to be a very sensitive marker of systemic inflammation. And they found that when you had elevation of the CRP, it was indication of biochemical marker indication for the prediction of first or recurrent coronary events. So, we know it goes hand in glove with the likelihood of you having a heart problem. And what it does, too, is it makes the inflammation, which we'll talk more about it in the program today, makes the plaque more unstable. When plaque becomes unstable, breaks off, that it can precipitate a heart attack or a stroke. Again, it's not a good thing to have.
We talked a lot about insulin resistance and blood sugar problems and diabetes. We know that the fat cells secrete large amounts of CRP, so generally people who have weight issues have higher CRP levels and this is the research done by Dr. Simon Lou out of Harvard and he found that when people consume high levels of high-glycemic foods, which we talked a lot about on the program. The sugar stuff will do it. They find that it increases their amount of CRP levels and the more the women weighed, the higher the CRP levels were, at the consumption of refined carbohydrates is linked to the inflammatory process that promotes heart disease.
DAR: So, the interesting thing is seeing clients. There's very few people that come in and say, “Here's my CRP level.” They come in and say, “Here's my cholesterol level.” And so, we want to talk a little bit more about that when we come back.
CAROLYN: You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I'm Carolyn Hudson, licensed Dietitian and I'm here with Darlene Kvist, licensed nutrition nutritionist, and we're pleased also to have Greg Peterson, owner and vice president of NutriDyn joining us today. NutriDyn is a company that provides professional quality supplements and nutritional seminars to healthcare professionals.
DAR: I think one of the things that people need to ask themselves is what can you do to prevent cardiovascular disease? The lifestyle habits that I would suggest is stop eating foods with harmful trans fats and refined oils. Eat butter, not margarine. Use heavy cream in coffee rather than artificial creamers. Avoid fast food, french fries by eating sautéed potatoes in butter. And those are the things that you can do today to help prevent cardiovascular disease. And we'll be back in a minute.
BREAK
DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Have you looked in the mirror lately and said to yourself, “Enough is enough! I gained 15 pounds over the holidays and I still haven't done anything about it!” Spring is less than two months away. It takes time to take action and sign up for Nutrition 4 Weight Loss, and lose those 15 pounds in just three months. You'll be back in your spring dresses full of energy and feeling good about yourself. So, you want more information called 651-699-3438 and you can get started.
Greg's always talking about fun facts. I've got a fun fact for you guys today. Did you know that Carolyn and Greg and Greg's wife, Debbie, who's sitting here in studio today, all went to high school together? Hey, that's a pretty fun fact. Well, I've known Greg 30 years and he's been in business 45 years.
So, let's put some more work into the CRP, Greg. Tell us a little bit more. We know that trans fats and bad fats and sugar and those things, what else causes your CRP to go up?
GREG: Well, it’s really pretty much any insult to the body. So, it could be a virus or bacteria or any kind of infective agents. It could be trauma to the body, it could be emotional trauma, stress. All those things can elevate your CRP. So, it's a very sensitive indicator that there's insults to the body that are increasing in an overall inflammation to the body, to the system.
CAROLYN: Wow, that's really interesting, isn't it? I hope our listeners really heard that.
DAR: I have a personal story. Over the past several months I've grown to realize how important that CRP number is to our health. So I'd like to share kind of a personal story. About 12 years ago my blood pressure started to go up higher and higher. So I thought, I know this one, I know what to do. I know the supplements to take. Well, guess what? It didn't work. So, I thought, OK, what will help? So, I decided to try medication and I tried several, many different ones, and none of them worked. I still had high blood pressure. So, I finally had my CRP taken. And it was seven. A normal should be around one, not above three. And so, I suggested to my doctor that a CRP of seven was too high, an indication that something was wrong, but all my cholesterol numbers were perfect, but I needed to lower my blood pressure. So December of 2015, my blood pressure went sky high, so high that I sought another specialist and discovered that I had a high level of inflammation throughout my body. In reality, the inflammation in my coronary arteries, those little arteries that go to your heart, were so inflamed that it was obstructing the blood flow to my heart, creating the high blood pressure. Different than what most people think.
CAROLYN: I bet you our listeners are thinking, “How could Dar have this coronary artery disease?”
DAR: Carolyn, I was thinking that too.
CAROLYN: I bet you were. We all know that she is not a smoker, rarely eats any sugar, stays away from foods with trans fats and refined oils, exercises four times a week, loves her work, and isn't a diabetic or was ever pre-diabetic.
DAR: None of those things.
GREG: This is a really good example that we have to look at all aspects in cardiovascular disease. That means their nutritional habits, which in Dar's case was perfect. I was as surprised as anybody because in my mind I thought, “Oh, she's going to be doing the radio show til she’s 100.” And so, I knew she had good lifestyle habits. Like Carolyn was saying, she wasn't a smoker or drinker, wasn’t a high stress person. She exercises several times weekly and she enjoys life. But with all health conditions, there is that genetic connection. And in my mind, I think of, you hear about your aunt Gert who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, drank a pint of hard stuff, and she lived to be 96. Never exercised, watched TV eight hours a day. And You wonder, “OK, what's going on here?” And she just was very fortunately blessed with great genetics so she was able to get through that. But Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who we've talked about many times on the program, he is the father of functional medicine. He comments in his book The Disease Delusion that 10 percent of your health or lack of it is contributed to genetics and 90 percent to nutrition and lifestyle habits. So, Dar had that 90 percent going for her. And so, whether it was the genetic situation, getting a bacterium, catching a virus at some point in her life, these things happen that started the cascade of inflammation. No one is really certain, but something was an insult.
DAR: Right. It's sort of interesting all the time that I used to go to the doctor, the doctor would look at me and say, “You've got perfect help, but you’ve got lousy genetics.” I heard that so many times, “You've got lousy genetics.” And I'd go, “What does that mean?”
CAROLYN: Yeah. And so many people are misinformed about that genetic piece. They say, “Oh, it's my genes. My father had this, my mother had that, so it's in my genes for sure.” So, if more attention had been paid to Dar’s elevated CRP 12 years ago, then perhaps the current inflammation response she's having would not have been the same at all. And maybe it would have been dealt with before it damaged the inner lining of our arteries. Now the challenge is to stop that inflammation, repair the damage, and rid the body of the pathogen that actually started that inflammation.
DAR: And I’m finding repair is harder than prevention.
CAROLYN: It really is.
DAR: So, last January 2016, I was finally diagnosed with a CRP of 62. As we mentioned earlier, a normal CRP number is three or lower. So, that's a lot of inflammation going on. And the artery is most impacted were the arteries in my legs and the coronary arteries leading to my heart. So I've learned a lot about this. I've learned patience, I think. I have a better understanding and compassion for people experiencing pain. It's interesting, as nutritionists we’re pretty compassionate, but when you live through it you really get it at a different level. So, you might ask the question, “Did Dar’s healthy nutritional habits, like no sugar and all the things that I've been doing in lifestyle habits really pay off?” And yes, they did because after several tests I don't have any plaque buildup in my arteries. I simply have inflammation. As you know, I eat an anti-inflammatory diet. I live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. I exercise, I get massages, I sleep eight to nine hours a night. I still have inflammation in my arteries, so I need some extra help to rid my body of inflammation. So, when we come back we'll talk more about supplements.
CAROLYN: You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. What is another lifestyle or nutritional practice you can change to protect your coronary arteries? We all know that eating excess sugar can lead to inflammation. So, here are some simple changes you can make.
Number one: stop drinking that soda and replace it with water. It does sound simple, but boy, it's hard for a lot of our clients. A simple, healthy life changing habit. Forget that stack a blueberry pancakes that turns into about 50 teaspoons of sugar and in its place have maybe a spinach omelet cooked in butter with one slice of toast. That would be about 40 less teaspoons of sugar than that stack of pancakes. So, another thing you can do is maybe let go of the chips and the french fries. Replace them with a salad with olive oil dressing. Every four chips you eat turns into one teaspoon of sugar or glucose in your body.
BREAK
DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. If you have a family history of heart disease or if you've already had a heart attack or a stint placed to open a blockage or maybe you've had heart failure, I want to tell you that food makes a difference with healing and recovery. At Nutritional Weight & Wellness,our nutritionists and dietitians can help you learn how to choose foods that will support your arteries and heart. We understand that you really need real food, good protein, like salmon and chicken and grass-fed beef and you need beneficial fats like butter and olive oil, nuts, lots of vegetables, sautéed in olive oil. We also understand that change doesn't happen overnight. You need direction and support, so we recommend monthly up appointments to help you stay on track. And our wish for you is to feel great, to be full of energy, have a sense of well-being. Something as simple as eating real food in balance can help you achieve that goal. And it's so simple, but it's so hard to do these days. So, to make an appointment call 651-699-3438. If you have a question about health insurance coverage, go to our website and you can look at our insurance options. So, we got everything covered now.
CAROLYN: Well, before we went to break, we were just about ready to ask Greg about supplements. What supplements should we be using?
DAR: Or maybe even just like what supplements should I be using to reduce some of this inflammation?
GREG: Well, that would be the most important. We’ll trickle down from there. So, I'm going to take a deep breath in and hit those. That's what Carolyn saw me doing before break. We’ve talked about this one-product, CardioAuxin, in the past on the show. It's a great product and we did research on it at the University of Minnesota a few years ago and different cardiovascular risk factors, lipids, inflammatory factors like the CRP and so on. And we found that it did reduce this CRP quite dramatically by about 30% percent in this group of people that we studied at the University of Minnesota. That's a significant amount. So, that would be probably my lead-in products. Doing those twice a day was what the research was based on. So, CardioAuxin, fish oils, you can’t beat that. Everybody needs to be on fish oils for a variety of reasons, but we know that fish oils also reduce elevated CRP. It reduces, as we know, the stickiness of the platelets that can lead to clotting and cardiovascular events, so like stroke and heart attack and so on.
DAR: I'm going to interrupt you. I think one of the things that I find a lot of times, people will be coming in and they'll be taking one fish oil. Or none. And that just isn’t enough to reduce that inflammation.
GREG: It really isn't. An understanding has become clear as time has gone on through research and so forth. You were talking about that earlier. I start out at a thousand milligrams a day that EPA/DHA was protective. Then it's become more like 2000 milligrams a day of EPA/DHA. And now kind of depending on the professional, and that's what's nice about being able to monitor a patient, too, if they can have some of the CRP’s done and so on. Maybe 2000 milligrams isn't enough. Maybe they need to double that or even more. So, you need to have a healthcare practitioner like yourselves basically monitor really what would be the ideal amount of fish oil for that person. So, that'd be my number two pick.
Magnesium, our good old friend. Magnesium, we've talked so much about. It's a godsend, really.
DAR: But, why does magnesium work so well? We know it works for sleep and other things, but when we're looking at arteries, what helps arteries with magnesium?
GREG: Well, it really helps reduce plaque accumulation. There was a great seminar that Jeff Bland did years ago that was called, “Calcium: Where it Should and Should Not Be.” Because you know how important calcium is. But, really, it shouldn't be in the arteries. It shouldn’t be in the joints. It should not be in the kidneys and so forth as well. It should be really in the muscle, the bone and so on. And so, what magnesium will do is it is able to precipitate calcium out of storage and deliberate where it's needed for heart function, for muscle function, whatever the case may be. There was a study that was done years ago by Dr. Hans Nieper where he looked at the fragility and the brittleness of your capillaries and so forth and he put them on either a placebo, a Clofibrate type of a drug, or magnesium. And he found after looking at the capillary health after, I think it was 14 months or 15 months, that every single person that took the magnesium had a normalization of vessel elasticity and strength of the capillary beds.
DAR: So, I think it’s interesting, when I look at my own personal story, even though I've had this high inflammation, but I don't have any blockages and don't need any stints or any of that stuff. No plaque. And I've always taken at least 400 milligrams of magnesium at bedtime. Sometimes lately I've been taking 600 to 800 milligrams of magnesium. So, it is really protective, at least on a study of one person.
GREG: Exactly. And like you're talking about the magnesium levels, they, like with the fish oils, the thought on that is that you can give a lot more because we are so depleted in our society, our foods. Stress bleeds off magnesium like crazy, too. So, that's one of those really more commonly deficient minerals that we really, truly need.
CAROLYN: I think I have read 70 to 80 percent of us are deficient in magnesium.
GREG: Yeah, and that's just the RDA’s. It’s not optimal.
DAR: So far, you've only talked about three main supplements. And we talked about, I think everybody should be taking fish oil and I think everybody should be taking magnesium. CardioAuxin, yes, we use that a lot. It's been around for, I don't know, several years, seven, eight, nine at least. And it works very well. It certainly helps to reduce cholesterol numbers and inflammation. So, what else you got in your bag there?
GREG: Well, I was also thinking of herbals. We're hearing a lot more about curcumin is one of the romantic nutrients right now. They kind of get focused on different nutrients at different times and now it's the tumeric or the curcumin and so forth because, again, it's such an amazing herbal, plant-based nutrient that reduces inflammation, has many other anti-cardiovascular problems, cancer and so forth, going on and on. But we're going to be talking more about it in reducing the CRP ability. And so we have a product that’s called inflavanoid intensive care that has a very high quality curcumin and a high concentration with additional ginger. We hear good things about that for inflammation. And then finally, also Boswayla, which has been used for decades or centuries really, and it's the ability to modify inflammation and reduce some health risks.
So that'd be my fourth one. And the new one that's kind of a new idea or product for our listening group is the omega-7 fatty acids.
DAR: And that’s even new to us.
GREG: It's a mono unsaturated fatty acid.
DAR: So, like avocados, olive oil, macadamia nuts.
GREG: Yup. And the good dairy, the good whole butter. Very high in the Omega-7's, too. And they will suppress inflammation, the CRP as well to have a good effect on reducing metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, we talk so much about as well, too. And on a couple of different studies on taking this Omega Seven with a CRP, one showed that it decreased the C reactive protein or CRP by 73 percent. One study. It's amazing. The other stay was 43 percent, so we know has a significant reduction effect of elevated CRP. And so that's one that I would definitely recommend for you, too, Dar.
CAROLYN: Well, believe it or not, it is time for another break. Again, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I'm Carolyn Hudson, licensed dietitian, and I'm here with Darlene Kvist, licensed nutritionist, and Greg Peterson, owner and vice president of NutriDyn, a company that provides professional quality supplements to health professionals. And we're discussing the cause and prevention of coronary heart disease. We realize the cause and prevention of coronary heart disease is very complicated and has many layers. When Dar put together the Weight & Wellness series, one of her goals was to teach people how to eat to prevent heart disease. As you may know, the Weight & Wellness series is very popular because it really gives you that really solid foundation of information to stay healthy. Check it out on our website.
BREAK
DAR: Well, welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. So, why do people need nutrition education? Here's one good reason: people need nutritional education to help prevent the shocking news that I read last week. It said that the childhood diabetes rate had increased by 12 percent in just the last couple of years. That's shocking. I think everyone needs to tune in to Dishing Up Nutrition to get educated and inspired to eat better and to teach their children and grandchildren to eat healthier. I know, Greg, you do that all the time. So, our grandkids and children, they need to make better choices so that they're not going to be diabetic in the future.
So, we had a caller that asked how to lower CRP. well, I think one of the things that we need to think about is what is causing it? We've talked about it wasn't my lifestyle, I didn't eat trans fats, I didn't eat sugar. And my blood sugars were normal. Those are the typical things that will increase your CRP. Greg, you also mentioned exercise.
GREG: Yeah. And that’s beginning to be better understood because we used to think and always told that the Americans don't exercise enough and so it's like OK good, you can't get enough exercise. Now you have some really strenuous things like your CrossFit, and some of the power lifting workouts and your kettle bells and so forth and they are good to a point, but when you're over exercising, you're in a chronically inflamed state at that point. And that chronic inflammation isn’t good for your heart function. It suppresses the immune system, as well, too. So again, yeah, that could be part of it. And that’s what happened to me early on when I was in my power lifting days is my CRP was always elevated and after a period of time I understood why. Then I had to get into my head that I can't continue to work out this heavy. So, it has to be a lifestyle change.
CAROLYN: So, it has to be moderate, right? And not really, really strenuous. OK I’m all over that one.
DAR: So, once you figure out what's causing your CRP to go up and you've got all these things, for myself it’s probably part genetics and partly they believe that probably I picked up a bacterium sometime in my life and because I had such a healthy lifestyle, it didn't take me down, but it kind of kept festering in my system until I got older. I mean, I'm very happy that it didn't hit me when I was in my fifties or sixties. It waited until I was well into my seventies before it got me. But, I'm coming back in my eighties.
The other question that she asked is how do you ask your doctor to take a CRP?
CAROLYN: I think you have to be really forceful and say, “I need a CRP.” Especially if your cholesterol numbers are either out of whack or totally in line like yours. We know that doctors are resisting this test and I think it's a relatively simple test.
DAR: It’s a blood test. Should be part of your panel. I don't think it would be any extra cost.
CAROLYN:Might want to check with your health insurance company, but I think you need to just ask as part of your lipid panel, please do a CRP. Any other thoughts on that?
DAR:It’s so Interesting. I think we developed the original Weight & Wellness series, at least 12 years ago if not 15 years ago. We were talking about the high sensitive CRP, having it taken. So we've been talking about this for a number of years. So, now let's talk a little bit about cholesterol. Personally, I knew that cholesterol was not an issue for me because my total cholesterol has always been about 179. My LDL was about a hundred. I exercised several times a week, but I didn't over-exercise. I had to exercise to keep my HDL above 50. So, by exercising I could keep it around 54. So, I knew there was some little thing going on genetically with myself. So, is inflammation more of a risk factor than cholesterol? What do you think, Greg?
GREG: I think it is. It's a complex subject, really, too, but we know that inflammation will signal factors like your CRP. This prompts the LDL, the bad cholesterol basically to oxidize, become oxidized, rusted almost if you wanna use that term. And then form plaque in the blood, leading to atherosclerosis, so the plaquing of the blood system. It’s the plaque along within the vessel inflammation that you're seeing that interferes with circulation. That's what precipitates the heart attack or the stroke and so forth. So, cholesterol, we know, is a needed substance needed for hormone production, for the immune system function, for many different aspects of the body. So, it's high cholesterol. That's the culprit when inflammation couples with cholesterol and deposits it into the blood system that can lead to plaque and problems.
DAR: It's a complicated topic. And I think that's another thing in our classes, we try to break it down so people could totally understand it when they go to their doctor. They know what they're dealing with. And even on an individual basis, that's what we try to explain in detail to people so that they really understand this. I mean, we've spent hours and weeks and months and years studying this subject.
CAROLYN: But, Dar, can I share my story? I hope we have time. So, countless families have been touched by cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke, heart failure, peripheral artery disease, or coronary artery disease. And I find that often, people kind of give up hope and they don't believe changing their nutrition and lifestyle habits will make a difference. But, I have a true story to share. And this is about my ex father-in-law that hopefully will inspire some of you out there to believe in the power of eating real food. So, my ex father-in-law had severe heart disease and he went in for a triple bypass surgery back in the early ‘80s. They actually lost him on the table before they were able to do any of the bypasses, but they revived him, closed him up and basically told him they couldn't do anything more for him. He was in his early sixties at that time, he had to retire early, but yet he was really committed to living a full and a joyful life and he wanted the best quality of life he could have. So, both of us, we sat down and we did a lot of research and we worked together to change his nutrition habits and his lifestyle.
DAR: And then he was really committed if he was really ready to work with the daughter-in-law.
CAROLYN: Yeah. My mother-in-law didn't quite understand all of that. But anyway, he was also a diabetic who was a hemophiliac. He was a recovering alcoholic and he had had polio as a child. So, he needed a cane to walk and he didn't really exercise at that time. He changed his diet completely. He eliminated trans fats, greatly reduced sugar, he ate every three hours and he’d be walking with his cane every single day. After a few years of working together, his cardiologist was stunned at the new arteries his body had produced. He had never seen that in any of his patients. In the end, it was not his heart disease that caused his death, sadly. He had acquired Hep C and ended up with liver cancer.
DAR: So, Greg, thank you. Can you put out how people could get in touch with you?
GREG: greg@nut-dyn.com.
DAR: Thank you, everyone, for listening.
