Smoking and heart disease
I have been reading a great little book, In Search of Burningbush, about the adventures of a couple of golf buddies in Scotland. I came across the following paragraph:
We stopped in Longniddry, at the local “chipper” (fish and chips and every other manner of deep-fried animal parts)/pizzeria/video store, for the first of what I expected would be many servings of grease-soaked, artery clogging Scottish cuisine. I read somewhere that Scotland has the highest incidence of heart disease in the world [the highest in Western Europe] – and I’d be willing to wager it’s not because of stress or lack of exercise. They love to smoke and they love to eat unhealthy things, as though two decades of alarming news-magazine cover stories somehow slipped their collective attention.
Remember in my recent post on statins I noted that most people who have heart attacks smoke or were smokers. It’s strange how people never seem to correlate smoking to heart disease. In the above quote, the author recognizes that smoking is a cause, but what launches him off is the ‘greasy’ food.
When most people (not readers of this blog, thank God) see someone eating eggs and bacon or a big juicy steak they comment on the notion that those things cause heart disease. They call them things like ‘heart attack on a plate.’ When these same people see someone light up, do they think heart disease? I doubt it.
It’s amazing because there is no evidence that the eggs, bacon or steak cause heart disease, but there is a mountain of evidence that smoking does. Yet no one talks about artery-clogging cigarettes.
If there were as much money spent on educating people to the negative health effects of smoking as there is on the promotion of statins, which are little better than worthless, we would probably see heart disease rates tumble.
With all the folderol you hear from the statin worshipers about how deaths from heart disease have fallen over the past decade (with the implication that statins are the cause for this decline), just remember that the rates of smoking in the US have fallen markedly over the past 25 years. And even though smoking, a known and serious cause of heart disease, has fallen, the incidence of heart disease is about the same.
The statin worshipers never talk about that.
In one of your replies, you said, “The medical literature shows no clear relationship between cholesterol and the progression of heart disease. So why does everyone insist on treating heart disease by trying to reduce cholesterol?”
My guess is that it’s because they want to be seen to be doing something. My father has had bypass surgery twice (about 15 years ago, he’s now in his early 70s). He’s never smoked, never been overweight, nor had high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Now he takes statins to reduce his normal cholesterol levels, and something to reduce his normal blood pressure. And warfarin and aspirin just in case. He knows that his muscles are slightly weaker because of the statins, and that they slightly impair his kidney function – both are tested regularly by his cardiologist, but he just accepts that as the price that has to be paid for reducing the risk of future heart problems. The cardiologist gets no financial benefit from any of the drugs, because they are issued from the GP’s surgery. The GP doesn’t like having to pay for the drugs that someone else prescribes, so there’s no obvious financial incentive, it seems that the cardiologist genuinely wants to do the best he can, but doesn’t really know what that should be, so he prescribes a bit of everything.
I keep quiet about my views on all of this because he’d end up still taking the same drugs, but worrying about it more.
My father’s the only one in the family who really has a sweet tooth. The rest of us would generally skip sweets in favour of more main course, whereas he feels a meal isn’t complete if it doesn’t finish with something sweet. And he had a lot of stress in his work over the decade before the heart problems. Or maybe it was just a random thing – I don’t know of any other heart disease in the family.
Hi Janet–
Sorry to hear about your father. He is one of the unusual ones in that he has never smoked.
I’m sure you’re right about the cardiologist wanting to appear to be doing something. And I’m sure the cardiologist truly believes that the statin drugs are God’s gift to people with heart disease. It takes going beyond the information that the drug companies provide or the ‘research’ they underwrite to understand what’s really going on, and most busy physicians have neither the time nor the inclination to ferret the information out. Consequently, they go with the flow. If everyone is giving statins, and at every conference they attend the speakers all recommend statins, and if everything they read in their journals (sponsored by the drug companies) indicates that statins are the way to go, they prescribe statins, too. And think they’re doing a fine job.
And, although your father is probably at a little excess risk for all-cause mortality thanks to the statins, you’re probably right in not badgering him about it. I would imagine he would continue the course laid out by his own physician and would simply add a layer of worry on top of everything else.
Best–
MRE
My brother gets also statins, but it makes no sense. He suffers from a myocardiopathy and gets a lot of drugs, some I can understand (beta-blockers and such) but for the simvastatin, there is no rational explanation. Even the study done in the same hospital he’s treated found not much benefit for heart failures. I try my best to inform him, but the problem is, that the best books and articles on the subject are written in english, which he doesn’t read well enough to understand.
Hi gallier2–
Yeah, it’s a sad situation. Too bad some of the books on the subject aren’t translated into French.
Best–
MRE
The actual figures on long cancer are these – rounded off -
One person in a 10,000 who don’t smoke – get it
One person in a 1,000 who do smoke – get it
A ten fold increase for smokers
So what – ten times almost nothing is still almost nothing
—— .1 percent doesn’t seem all that high to me
The current phraseology on studies involving smoke on rabbit’s – goes something like this -
‘It appears that smoking favors plaque buildup -
and although we refuse to give you a percentage on how much it does so – trust us – to us – it just looks as though it does favor it.’
‘It also seems to be non-linear – or gee-wizz and josh-darn we certainly hope so’
Because then they can use the study to outlaw second hand smoke.
It might appear here that I am pro-smoking – but only if you consider that I have no intention of ever stopping smoking – for any reason or anybody.
However I am in favor – oh that word favor again – of accurate information on the real effects of smoking – instead of this insanity that ‘smoking is bad – therefore the science must exist to support the statement’.
I have just about concluded that people who are anti-smoking are some how insane – or mentally perverted and quite possibly incurable.
So – keep raising my taxes and when the day comes I can no longer afford to smoke – then it will become necessary for me to leave this insane planet.
Of course there’s always the .1 percent chance I will get lung cancer first – so at least there’s some hope there.
I agree smoking is an irritant – a very enjoyable irritant – but other than that I doubt it causes anything on it’s own.
Except maybe some real pissed off rabbit’s.
My own opionion on plaque buildup is this -
a general lack of anti-oxidants in the diet -
*green tea – peppers – real fruit juices
combined with -
a general lack of green raw foods -
*lettuce and all the others -
combined with -
excess sugars minus small amounts of the honey family and ‘excess’ high calorie carbs -
combined with -
oxidized vegetable oils – minus whole olives-coconut- and peanut butter
and oxidized meat oils – beef and chicken
combined with -
the lack of green legumes – peas – green beans – or lima beans
combined with -
excessive total fat intake – although coconut and perhaps cheese and some degree of raw eggs to a lesser extent are exempt from this in whole or in part
a systematic lack of good protein – and other from
*raw eggs-tuna fish-dairy-honey products
The bodies immune system seems too be problematic in both plaque buildup and cancer -
Which I attribute too the lack of large amounts of yogurt in the diet and the daily lack of green legumes.
Honestly – the bodies immunne system seems to go haywire in both plaque buildup and cancer – or it goes too far -
Hi Jeff–
If your comment were a little more articulate, I would suspect it was written by a hack from one of the tobacco companies.
As to your statistics about the rates of lung cancer due to smoking, I think you’re a little off. But even if you’re not, what about the increased rates of heart disease and vascular disease? And how about the chronic bronchitis and emphysema? And what about the bad teeth and periodontal disease? And the Berger’s disease? And esophageal cancer? And laryngeal cancer? And the misery and aggravation (not to mention increased risk of disease) that smokers cause to those non-smokers who have to be around them.
Have you ever seen these middle-aged and older people who have to carry oxygen around with them just to be able to lead semi-normal lives? Next time you see one of these folks, Jeff, ask them if they ever smoked. I’ll give you 20 to 1 for any amount of money you want to bet that the answer will be yes.
If you believe that the effects of heavy smoking can be overcome with the diet you recommend, you don’t have to wait until the taxes ‘drive you from this insane planet.” It sounds to me like you’re already on another planet far, far away.
Cheers–
MRE
Continued from above -
I thought it would be interesting instead of explaining how too avoid plaque buildup – to explain what I would consider the best way too -
create it in a human -
*inflame the arteries as highly as possible
*confuse the white blood cells – too make them behave abnormally
*flood the body with oxidized vegetable oils from low fat sources
*create an abnormal bacterial environment by ingesting large amounts of man raised yeast and feeding that yeast with large amounts of refined sugar
*raise serum lipids as high as possible by including large what would be reasonable levels of grain fed – fried beef and chicken – but fried in vegetable oils
*create powerful oxidized cholesterols by frying the above and eggs in low fat source vegetable oils
*eat no antioxidants from raw green food sources
*eat no raw eggs
*eat no fish
*eat no dairy
*include refined sugar in everything eaten
*eat no coconut
*eat no olives
*eat no natural peanut butter
*create a low good protein-very high total fat and oxidized cholesterol-and zero anti-oxidant diet
*load the body with high calorie carbs in excess
*protein 60 grams or below to maximize poor tissue repair – including the repair of the arterial muscles – when 100+ to 200 grams are really what’s needed
*total fat well above 40 percent on a systematic and continuous basis
*total carbs well above 40 percent of mostly high calorie refined cooked carbs
*include very little raw plant proteins in the
diet
*no natural fruits or juices
This is my recipe to create plaque -
Even this diet would create life threatening plaque in only a percentage of people -
It is interesting that a diet high in beef and chicken or eggs and dairy(including yogurt) – but very low in refined low fat source vegetable oils and refined sugars -
could be somewhat or very less damaging – even with the high amount of oxidized cholesterol and fat -
such a diet would probably lead too a slow buildup of plaque but be not life threatening – dependent to at least some degree on the fat/protein ratio
*But as the beginning source of arterial damage is the inflammation and then the white blood foam cells
*the initiation of arterial inflammation would be best accomplished with large amounts of vegetable oils from low fat sources and by getting the white blood cells behaving abnormally by confusing them with unnatural yeasts and no good bacteria -
*Of the course the relative size of the fat fractions are also important
This is a far from a scientific explanation – of plaque buildup
The removal of arterial plaque is also necessary -
A long relatively slow correct diet to reduce excess body fat – combined with large amounts of raw greens -raw green legumes and plain low fat yogurt and enough raw eggs-fish-dairy-honey to provide at least a 100 grams protein may reduce or remove the plaque -
As for testing this diet or providing practical examples -
How many people eat two heads of lettuce a day plus spinach and other greens – ?
How many people eat a can of green peas daily ?
How many people include a small amount of raw peanuts or natural peanut butter – plain coconut and olives daily in there diet ?
How many eat people eat a can of tuna or more- and raw eggs – and four or more cups of plain yogurt daily ?
To remove plaque I think a 12 percent total fat diet is best – and for ordinary living 25 percent and for just good clean fun eating large amounts of good fat like cheese occasionally -
But to remove fat – I think the body needs to burn it’s fat stores while depositing any within the arteries -
Hence the 12 percent fat diet
Hello Jeff–
I didn’t realize that there was a continuation of your first post when I responded.
First, there is no doubt that nicotine is an ‘irritant’ to the arterial lining. Where we differ is a) in the idea that a good diet can overcome the effects of smoking; and b) that a 12% fat diet will do anything but make the situation worse.
A high-fat diet is the diet of choice for people who have lung disease because a high-fat diet produces less carbon dioxide than does a high-carbohydrate diet. The less carbon dioxide produced, the less difficulty the damaged lungs have getting rid of it.
Cheers–
MRE
In reply to MRE -
I would like too respond – in a friendly way -
My main points were – smoking is an irritant – but all the problems you mention are the result of other things -
Removing the irritant is perhaps a suitable course for some – but untenable for me
I prefer to get to the basis of problems and diet is the basis
People climb everest and smoke – yes they do
Only one in a 1000 gets lung cancer -
I think diet is of extreme importance but smoking only a choice of self-medication
I may be from another planet but I hoped I could at least state my case without creating what appears to be outright anger -
As I have stated my case and yes in an unscientific manner I suppose -
All I have left to do is wish you well – have a nice day – may you prosper in insight and well being – and may the gods protect you -
What I am trying to do here is manipulate you from being angry at me – it’s probably not good for you and I really don’t much enjoy it either -
But I do enjoy trying to be nice to people – gentle – kind
But – I stand by what I wrote but am more than willing to change my mind if I see a reason – an honest scientific reason free of propaganda and deceit -
Hello Jeff–
I still disagree. Diet will not overcome the effects of smoking. Doubtless a good diet is better for smokers than a lousy diet, but the best diet in the world doesn’t negate the effects of smoking.
There is a huge amount of medical literature showing that smoking is harmful. Unlike the medical papers supporting various drugs that are underwritten by the pharmaceutical companies, where is the money that underwrites the studies showing tobacco is harmful. If all the studies showed that tobacco was good for us, and if those studies were underwritten by the tobacco companies, it would make sense that it was all propaganda. But who profits from anti-tobacco studies? No one, as far as I can tell. Consequently, I tend to believe studies showing that tobacco is harmful. Plus, in almost 30 years of medical practice I’ve seen the effects up close and personal.
I wish you well in your quest to find medical justification for smoking, but I doubt that you’re going to have a lot of success.
Cheers–
MRE