E-BOOK - Heart Disease: What Your Doctor Won't Tell You

By Dr. Rodger Murphree - 192 pages Almost one million Americans die each year from cardiovascular related illnesses. This number accounts for 41 % of all deaths in the United States each year. In fact, cardiovascular disease claims as many lives as the next eight leading causes of death combined, including cancer, accidents, and AIDS. And, despite an aggressive campaign launched by the American Heart Association to counter the epidemic of heart disease, one person dies from it every 33 seconds. For nearly four decades, we have relied on medical myths to guide us in our attempts to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease. We have been told to reduce our cholesterol, saturated fat intake, and to take lipid-lowering medications. Unfortunately, these recommendations have been shown to actually increase the risk of premature death, suicide, senile dementia, heart attack, strokes, and death. The material in this book comes directly from medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, The British Medical Journal, and The Lancet.

Medical Myths You’ll Read About In This Book: Myth One: Prescription drugs are a safe and effective way to manage high blood pressure and heart disease. Fact: Calcium channel blocking drugs increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death by 500 percent! While heart attacks have slightly declined, CHF (congestive heart failure) has more than doubled since Lipitor and other statins were first prescribed in 1987. Taking statins for one year raised the risk of nerve damage by about 15%. Men whose cholesterol levels are lowered through the use of prescription medication double their chances of committing suicide.

Myth Two: Cholesterol causes arteriosclerosis. Fact: Most individuals with arteriosclerosis have normal cholesterol levels. Forty percent of all heart attacks occur in those without a known risk factor, including elevated cholesterol. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that there is no evidence linking high cholesterol levels in women with heart disease.

Myth Three: Eating a low-fat diet reduces blood cholesterol levels. Fact: Reducing dietary cholesterol will only trigger the body to make more.

Myth Four: Angiograms are a safe and accurate tool to measure blocked arteries. Fact: The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that the angiogram is largely an expensive and useless test.

Myth Five: Life-saving heart surgery has been proven to be safe and effective. Fact: Neither bypass or angioplasty stent surgery have ever been proven to do anything. The National Institute of Health estimates that 90% of Americans who undergo bypass surgery receive no benefits! In fact, 90% of the time, a person is more likely to die from heart surgery than if they elect not to have the surgery.

Myth Six: Low cholesterol levels increase life expectancy. Fact: Low cholesterol increases the risk of death. The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, reports that those with low cholesterol die twice as often from heart attacks as those with normal cholesterol levels.