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Home » Browse All Summaries » Cholesterol & The French Paradox by Frank Cooper
Cholesterol & The French ParadoxBy Frank Cooper
Summarized with permission of Monahan Publishing.
Improved Medical Surgical TechniquesHeart attacks have declined for other reasons than improved diets and less smoking. Machines that can scan the interior of arteries have also been useful in preventing serious health episodes. Doctors have also been able to use blood clot dissolving drugs and various surgical techniques such as coronary bypass and coronary stents to unblock problem arteries. However, heart surgery has become a big business and some research has found that many surgeries were not necessary. Two recent studies showed that at least 75 percent of heart surgeries were unnecessary!
Many doctors are unwilling to try this therapy because proper studies have not been done. Insurance funding isn't available either because this procedure doesn't make big money for the pharmaceutical industry. The author spoke with a friend who had a circulatory condition in his legs and this chelation therapy improved his life tremendously. At the beginning, he could hardly walk outside his house and, after chelation treatments, he can now walk an 18-hole golf course with no problem. Irregular Heartbeats/ArrhythmiasIrregular heartbeats often make people think that they have a heart problem. Many other things can cause these, however, such as artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose and the preservative in bread called calcium propionate 282 or cultured whey. The second example is especially devious because bakeries can claim that their baked goods have "all natural ingredients" when including cultured whey, even though they are including a preservative that causes health problems. Europeans have done a good job of limiting the chemicals allowed in their foods but the U.S. and Australia have not. Take the example of a hamburger bun from a fast food restaurant. At least half of the ingredients list is chemical additives. Some people have become frustrated with all the chemicals added to food and started protest campaigns. Here is the website for an Australian mother who wants to improve the food supply: http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info French CuisineThe French have followed the same general rules for centuries, not jumping around from one diet craze to the next. They eat foods that are in season and grown locally. They rarely refrigerate fruits and vegetables, preferring to eat them soon after they are picked and purchased. Their meals are generally slow and the many courses allow all the foods to be appreciated. Wine is a regular part of meals in France, Quebec and Australia but seldom in the U.S. The prohibition of alcohol that started in 1905 had a lasting impact on the consumption of wine here. The consumption of red wine was given a boost in 1992 when French cardiologist Dr. Serge Renaud published a paper in the British medical journal Lancet stating that drinking red wine every day could reduce coronary heart disease by 40 percent. Thus the French Paradox was born -- drinking red wine along with a diet high in fat could be healthy. He followed this with a study of 34,000 middle-aged French men, which showed that they not only had low instances of heart disease, but also of cancer. Researchers then wondered whether this would be the case with all alcoholic beverages. A 12-year study in Denmark showed that it was only red wine that increased longevity while beer did not change it and hard liquor actually shortened life. Also, this only applies to red wine and not to white wine. The typical serving size studied is 1-2 glasses for women and 2-3 glasses for men. So, what is it about red wine that is healthy? The plant nutrients (phytonutrients) in it stop "free radicals" which cause oxidation that destroys cells. Some of these free radicals can come from oxidized LDL cholesterol and these are the ones that damage artery walls. Flavonoids, the antioxidants in wine, stop the oxidation process and the destruction of LDL cholesterol that would, in turn, damage artery walls. Phytonutrients, a large category of plant chemicals, are also abundantly present in fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the most colorful ones. Most of their antioxidants are in the skins, as they are in grapes. Getting nutrients from a food source is preferable to supplements because groups of nutrients cooperate to increase their effectiveness. Microwaves are quite destructive to phytonutrients. A 2003 study in Spain found that microwaved broccoli lost 97 percent of its flavonoids whereas steamed broccoli lost only 11 percent.
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