Health Concerns

Heart Disease Can be Reversed – Apply These 3 Principles to Banish America’s #1 Killer

You’ve heard a lot about the scientific and medical communities’ efforts to rid the world of the deadly coronavirus. It makes sense; COVID-19 is a disease that’s killing hundreds of thousands of people in our country and across the globe. But did you know that there’s another disease spreading in the U.S. right now that has historically been America’s #1 Killer? It’s heart disease. While this may sound dismal, there is a scientifically proven cure for heart disease. The cure is not a vaccine or a drug, and it is available to everyone. We’re happy to tell you that heart disease can be reversed.

Before we get to the cure, let’s take a minute to understand a little bit more about what heart disease is and what causes it. Heart disease generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to a heart attack, chest pain (angina), or stroke. It’s caused by a variety of factors, including high blood pressure, stress, high levels of lipids (or fats) in the blood, diabetes, obesity, and smoking.

If your doctor diagnoses you with heart disease, you might be prescribed several medications that have been shown to help slow potentially deadly results. In severe cases, you may have to undergo invasive surgery. However, a little-known alternative is available and it’s not a drug, an expensive regimen of supplements, or an invasive surgery. It’s actually much simpler than that. Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, sums it up perfectly in three easy phrases:

• EAT FOOD
• NOT TOO MUCH
• MOSTLY PLANTS

That’s it? That’s it! Three simple principles. How could those three principles reverse heart disease—the number one killer in the U.S.? Let’s look into each phrase to better understand it.

EAT FOOD

When Pollan says to eat food, he is referring to whole foods—real food, eaten as close to its original form as possible. The opposite of whole foods is processed foods. Processed foods involve changing food from its original form by adding other ingredients to it or by taking parts of it away.

Consider an apple. It’s a whole food. It’s real and it’s still in its original form. An apple is packed with fiber, vitamins, flavor, and disease-preventing/fighting phytonutrients. When you eat apple sauce from a package, you’re eating a processed version of an apple. It’s often peeled, cooked, blended, and many times, sweeteners and other chemical preservatives are added to it. When you drink apple juice, you’re tasting the sweetness of an apple, but are not getting any of the fiber and other nutrients that it originally had. Or, consider apple pie. Sure, it has apples in it, but it also has a long list of other ingredients that in many cases outweigh the potential benefits that could be reaped by eating the apple in its original form—as a whole food. The bottom line is, the less that is added to or subtracted from a whole food, the healthier it is and the more beneficial it is for fighting heart disease.

NOT TOO MUCH

This principle is just what it sounds like. Eating too much can lead to obesity, which is one of the major causes of heart disease. There are many practical ways to decrease our calorie intake, including mindful eating, decreasing the period of time that we eat throughout the day, decreasing the number of meals and/or snacks we eat, or even practicing healthy fasting. But the great news is that no one has to starve in order to be healthy. Eating whole foods is healthy and both low-calorie and still satisfying. Heart disease can be reversed, in part, by eating less.

MOSTLY PLANTS

All foods come from one of two sources: plants or animals. Choosing a diet that is made up of 95% plants and 5% animals (meat) or animal products (eggs, dairy, etc.) is the recommended way to reverse heart disease for good! One study showed that those who eat more animal-based foods are more than twice as likely to suffer from hypertension than those who eat a plant-based diet. In another study, participants who ate oatmeal, soybeans, almonds, eggplant, and okra had similar drops in their LDL cholesterol to those who took cholesterol-lowering prescription drugs!

The data is clear. Eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet is the proven cure for reversing the number one killer in America—heart disease!

Here at Lifestyle Medical, everything we do focuses on reversing lifestyle diseases like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and even cancer. Unlike other healthcare providers, prescription drugs and invasive surgeries are the last forms of treatment that use, reserving them only for the most severe and acute diseases. That’s because our team of physicians, lifestyle coaches, nutrition specialists, and medical support staff believe in educating our patients on how they can utilize simple lifestyle changes to completely reverse heart disease and some of the other top lifestyle diseases that are flourishing in our country.

Lifestyle Medical is founded on these 4 simple pillars of health:

1. Nourishment – Improving nutrition, increasing water intake, and limiting the intake of harmful substances
2. Movement – Incorporating cardiovascular and strength-training exercise, sunshine, and fresh air into daily life
3. Resilience –  Building habits that foster adequate sleep, stress management, and rest/renewal
4. Connectedness – Maintaining healthy social support and spiritual connection

The best part is that incorporating these four pillars is the proven way to prevent many lifestyle diseases. In addition, they are the pillars that not only reverse disease, but also prevent future diseases and help you live a life full of energy, well-being, and satisfaction. If you would like to reverse heart disease and/or other lifestyle diseases without taking prescription drugs or having surgery, we invite you to schedule an appointment today.

Take the first step, contact us at (951)742-7324 or [email protected] for your free appointment.

By Andrew Tyler, PA-C Andrew Tyler joined Lifestyle Medical in 2021 as our Physician Assistant. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions in Utah. As a native of the Inland Empire, Andrew is glad to back in his home community, working with patients to reverse chronic diseases through lifestyle medicine. Andrew has a special interest in working with seniors on the reversal of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. He looks forward to developing long-term relationships with his patients and accompanying them on their journey to better health.