What causes heart attacks?

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For decades, heart patients have been treated with stents, bypass procedures, low-fat diets, and drugs to lower their cholesterol. The theory that heart attacks are caused by blockages in the arteries is accepted as the last word on heart disease. And this explains why doctors work tirelessly to unblock them. But what if the theory is incorrect? What if blockages aren’t actually the cause of heart attacks?

Dr. Tom Cowan brings some surprising data to light that puts into question the cause and treatments of cardiovascular disease, and heart attacks, in particular. He explains how the heart can effectively create its own “bypass” when major arteries are clogged. He points to remarkable studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of a little-known plant to treat angina. And he gives some sound advice about how to avoid heart disease altogether–including eating a nutrient-dense diet, avoiding stress, and living in a way that nurtures the parasympathetic nervous system.

This show will make you question conventional wisdom related to the heart. And you will be very glad it did.

Notes

For decades, heart patients have been treated with stents, bypass procedures, low-fat diets, and drugs to lower their cholesterol. The theory that heart attacks are caused by blockages in the arteries is accepted as the last word on heart disease. And this explains why doctors work tirelessly to unblock them. But what if the theory is incorrect? What if blockages aren’t actually the cause of heart attacks?

Dr. Tom Cowan brings some surprising data to light that puts into question the cause and treatments of cardiovascular disease, and heart attacks, in particular. Below are highlights from our conversation.

Dr. Cowan touches on:

• the different kinds of heart disease – arrhythmias, and congestive heart failures, etc.
• the usual therapies recommended for heart patients which include: statins, having stents put in, bypasses, and low-fat diets.
• Current heart disease theory has been espoused since the 1940s—that you have these four major vessels and plaque formation blocks one of the major arteries and this prevents blood from going where it should flow and causes eschemia (lack of oxygen and food to certain heart cells)
• specifics of treatment  are as follows: bypasses (to get around that blockage), angioplasty (like roto-rooter to get through the blockage and putting a stent in to keep it open),low-fat diets (to avoid cholesterol in the blood), Lipitor and statin drugs (to reduce the plaque which we thought was cholesterol)
• the thrombogenic theory was embraced by both conventional and alternative doctors. What started him considering that the thrombogenic theory could be incorrect
• email that was the turning point for Dr. Cowan’s perspective
• how he spent years digging into this to see if it had any merit
• if the problem were plaque in the blood, why is it accumulating in one place, but not in the artery leading to the foot or the spleen?
• how only two organs get attacks: the brain (stroke) and the heart (heart attack)
• how he looked at studies of hearts with plaque (those who had heart attacks and young, healthy people)
  18% of heart attack victims (who die w/in one hour) have over 90% blockages (stenosis) so what does this mean for the other 72%?
• you get more blockages the longer you live (after a heart attack) which suggests that the blockages are a consequence, not the cause of the heart attack
• how when they studied the hearts of the black men injected with syphilis, they saw blockages and waited to see if they’d have a heart attack in the quadrant with the blockage and less than 10% did
• how diabetes and smoking, stress and high blood pressure are known risk factors for heart attacks but how they don’t affect plaque; they only affect small blood vessels
• how the heart has a flexible rhythm (not a metronome, but not off-beat, exactly either)
• people who have heart attacks (over 95% of them) had a decrease in their parasympathetic nervous system just prior to the event (could have been stress, diabetes, poor food, not enough human touch, or time in nature…)
• how if you’re normal and you have psychological, physical or emotional stress, that’s just life. But if you have a constantly stressed parasympathetic nervous system, you’ll have a parasympathetic insult and there will be a shift from the heart getting its fuel from fat to getting its fuel from glucose (and that’s inefficient and leads to lactic acid accumulating)
• how to avoid this we need to shore up our parasympathetic nervous system
• why he recommends the medicine from the plant Strophantus; it’s a copy of a hormone we make and it converts lactic acid into the main fuel for the heart
• a German study where out of 150 people, in one week 124 were angina-free and in two weeks, 146 were free just taking the extract of the Strophantus seed or the chemical made into a medicine
• how the traditional lifestyle nurtures the parasympathetic nervous system and is parasympathetic-friendly: work 18 hours a week, laugh, tell stories, eat for fun, connecting with nature and others
• how our modern lifestyle is the opposite. We’re lucky if we get 18 hours a month doing those things. Life is stressful, there’s economic insecurity, diabetes, smoking, etc. We set ourselves up for parasympathetic nervous system collapse.

Resources:

humanheartcosmicheart.com – studies on heart attacks, resources, Tom’s book

Heartattacknew.com – video describing these things, print version: find book at the bottom of the site:

Baroldi, G.: „The Etiopathogenesis of Coronary Heart Disease: A Heretical Theory Based on Morphology“

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