"It is increasingly a shameful national embarrassment for the United States to have constructed a billion-dollar cardiac healthcare industry surrounding an illness that does not even exist in more than half of the planet. If you, as a cardiologist or a cardiac surgeon, decided to hang your shingle in Okinawa,[3] the Papua Highlands of New Guinea,[4] rural China,[5] Central Africa,[6] or with the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico,[7] you better plan on a different profession because these countries do not have cardiovascular disease. The common thread is that they all thrive on whole food, plant-based nutrition (WFPBN) with minimal intake of animal products."

Question: Can heart disease be stopped or even reversed?

Answer: Yes. First we must look at the lessons learned from cultures where there is a virtual absence of coronary artery heart disease such as rural China, the Papua Highlands of New Guinea, Central Africa, and the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico. Their nutrition is plant based without oil.

"Plant-based nutrition provides us with a pathway to escape the coronary artery disease epidemic. For persons in central Africa, the Papua Highlanders of New Guinea, the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico, and inhabitants of rural China as described in the Cornell China Study, coronary disease is essentially non-existent while hypertension, Western malignancies, obesity, and adult onset diabetes are rarely encountered."

The Okinawans

"In 1949, a government survey found that in Okinawa, known to have the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, the population consumed about 85% of their total energy intake from carbohydrates, with the staple at the time being the sweet potato. The dietary survey also showed that the Okinawans derived about 9% of their energy intake from protein and less than 4% of energy from all sources of animal foods combined (Table 1).¹⁰ These findings were largely consistent with previous dietary surveys dating back to 1879 and 1919.¹¹"

"In 1946, Steiner examined autopsies of 150 Okinawans, of which 40 were between the age of 50 and 95. Steiner noted only seven cases of slight aortic atherosclerosis, all of which were found in those over the age of 66, and only one case of calcification in the coronary arteries. In 1946 Benjamin reported similar findings from a study of 200 autopsies on Okinawans.¹²"

"Even in 1995 the observed rates of coronary heart disease and dietary related cancers, including that of the colon, prostate, breast and ovarian in Okinawa were not only many fold lower than that of the United States, but even significantly lower than that of mainland Japan.¹⁰ This may be explained by the likelihood that these diseases are slowly progressive diseases and therefore the more traditional Okinawan diet consumed several decades prior would still have played a major role in the development and manifestation of these diseases.^{13 14 15}"

"Okinawa is to Japan, what Hawaii is to USA. Okinawans were famous for having lots of centenarians, when they ate a 97% plant based diet, with lots of sweet potatos. Many of them were farmers, and they walked a lot. The had close communities & good social support. They had tremendous respect for their ancestors. They had picnics near graveyard as a sign of respect for ancestors. An Okinawan farmer told me these things. The children are told they have more opportunity than their parents, and are expected to try to become more educated than their parents. Now that fast food is widely available in Okinawa, they are starting to become fat & sick like all populations that eat the SAD diet."

"Okinawan longevity is now a thing of the past. Okinawa now hosts more than a dozen KFC restaurants. Okinawans’ saturated fat levels have tripled. They went from eating essentially no cholesterol to a few Big Macs’ worth. They tripled their sodium and are now as potassium-deficient as Americans, getting less than half of the recommended minimum daily intake of 4,700 mg a day. In just two generations, Okinawans have gone from the leanest Japanese to the fattest. As a consequence, there has been a resurgence of interest from public health professionals in getting Okinawans to eat the [traditional] Okinawan diet too!"