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What Causes Heart Attacks?
23 Jul 2019
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I found it instructive to understand how heart attacks are caused. Explanations by Whole Food Plant-Based doctors:
Dr Esselstyn

Making Heart Attacks History (TED Talk from 2011) by Dr Esselstyn is the best video I've come across that explains how heart attacks are caused. The explanation starts at offset 7:20.

"Only 10% of heart attacks are caused by severely clogged arteries! 90% of heart attacks are caused by inflamed but not necessarily clogged arteries (less than 20% to 30% blockage, which is often not accompanied by angina (chest pains))."

Source: Making Heart Attacks History (TED Talk from 2011) by Dr Esselstyn. Watch for 3:30 mins at offset 7:19.

(14 mins, 2011) Making Heart Attacks History: Dr Esselstyn TED Talk

An excellent TED Talk. I encourage all of my friends to watch it. At offset 7:19, Dr Esselstyn (former heart surgeon from Cleveland Clinic) explains how 90% of heart attacks are caused. This is the the best explanation that I have come across.

Dr McDougall

How are heart attacks caused (watch for 98 seconds from offset 1:22 to 3:00). Dr McDougall paints a nasty visual picture of "festering sores" inside our arteries that repeatedly pop open to cause us heart attacks:

Inside the artery walls, there is a lining. This lining gets sores. In fact, I call them "festering sores" on it, like pimples on a teenager's face. These festering sores are consequence of damage from your fork and spoon — cholesterol and fat — been attacking these arteries. So you get these little pimples.

These little pimples — whenever you have an injury like you cut your hand, what happens is the blood clot forms on top — so the pimple pops; blood clot forms on top. If it just forms a small blood clot, then that organizes into scar tissue. So you've got a little layer inside; a layer of blockage

What happens a couple months later? Another pimple pops, another blood clot forms on top of that and then fibrous tissue — scar tissue — sets in. It builds up a little bit more.

Finally you get these big blockages through these repeated ruptures of these volatile plaques as we call it. But sometimes, one of these volatile plaques ruptures and the blood clot is so big that it blocks the whole heart artery. Then you have that sudden heart attack!

So this explains to people why perfectly healthy people drop dead of heart disease. A half of them think there's nothing wrong. You put your husband to bed at night, you wake up the next morning, shake him and he's not there! "He was perfect! He was perfect last night when I put him to bed!" What happened? He had thousands of tiny sores and one of them popped!

So what people need to know that it's a very unforgiving disease and this is the way it occurs, and that you have close to 100% control over the formation of those sores! It's due to the the cheese and the chicken and the beef and the garbage you keep shoveling down those arteries! As soon you stop doing that, these little tiny pimples: they quieten down and then the heart attack risk goes away.

(23 mins) Eat Your Way Out of Heart Disease

Dr McDougall explains how heart attacks are caused from offset 1:22 to offset 3:00.

Dr Greger

The videos below have further details pertaining to heart attacks:

(2 mins) Arterial Acne

Transcript. Dr Greger's summary: "Atherosclerotic plaques in coronary arteries may be more aptly described as pimples, initiated by the infiltration of cholesterol into the lining of our arteries. The ending — should blood flow to our heart muscle be cut off by a clot formed by the rupture of one of these inflamed pockets of pus in our arterial lining — is a heart attack.

(4 mins, 2015) Cholesterol Crystals May Tear Through Our Artery Lining

Transcript. Dr Greger's summary: "Crystallization of cholesterol may be what causes atherosclerotic plaque rupture, the trigger for heart attacks."

An interesting video that explains that cholesterol crystallization may be the mechanism that ruptures the endothelial layer, leading to thrombosis and heart attacks. First few minutes are based on this paper: Atherosclerosis: The New View by Peter Libby, Scientific American, 2008.

Sudden Death

Heart attacks are often fatal and often occur in those who have no prior history of heart disease.

Source: Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (20 mins, 2019) by Dr Steven Lome

A related statistic is from this video by Dr Greger:

"To review, more than half of all heart disease deaths are sudden … up to 55% of men and 68% of women have no clinically recognized heart disease before sudden death."

© Copyright 2008—2024, Gurmeet Manku.