When we were kids, the scariest thing around (excluding the Sisters of Charity) was Godzilla. Just when the recently A-bombed Japanese felt that it was safe to go out of the house again, the big guy came storming out of the sea and stomped the living daylights out of The Land of the Rising Sun.
As if being a thousand feet tall wasn’t enough, Godzilla had an atomic heat beam to blast you with, the product of nuclear energy generated inside his body. Electromagnetic force concentrated the energy into a laser-like high-velocity projectile released from Godzilla’s jaws in the form of a red or blue radioactive beam. The monster also possessed enormous physical strength and muscularity to skwush you with if the beam missed. Sorta like the old saw, “If the right one don’t getcha then the left one will.” Little kids started looking under the bed at night to make sure Godzilla wasn’t hiding there, as if the guy could fit.
Asian people get a big kick out of scaring Americans. Not to be one-upped by the Japanese and their monsters, those merry men of mirth in China set the jaunty Covid 19 virus loose on the U.S. in 2020. There were countless deaths, of course, but most Americans claimed the worst insult was being forced to watch Korean baseball on TV.
While all this was going on, however, a much more dangerous killer lurked within, going about his business with stealth and guile, smirking at his victims as he played his deadly game. In any given year, he makes off with 500,000 to 700,000 lives, about one-third of all the deaths in the population for those older than 35. Like The Alien, this killer grows in our breast until the time comes to go for the kill. His official name is Coronary Artery Disease, but we’ll just call him CAD.
It’s Worse Than You Think
CAD uses clever smokescreens to hide his deadly work. A reasonably healthy 65-year-old who exercises regularly, doesn’t drink or smoke, maintains a healthy diet containing no red meat, has a respectable BMI and a happy home life might think he is safe from this scourge. Wrong. The above capsule describes Bill Killeen at the time of impact and I came very close to being pushed off the speeding train.
I have been a three-times-a-week gymgoer since age 55. My cholesterol hovered around 180 with a good HDL of 70. Dividing the latter into the former, you get about 2.6, well below the 4.0 you are advised to keep within. My BMI was 22. I have probably shrunk an inch from from 5-11 but my weight was still under 155. I had a heart attack anyway. I am not the only one. Most of the time, you don’t get much warning. By the time the alarm bell goes off you’re on your way to the emergency room. Or dead. “Oops!” titters CAD. “Sorry about that.” He isn’t.
If this sort of thing can happen to a person with good health practices, what about the others---the sausage-and-bacon-for breakfast crowd, the potato chip epicures, the cheeseheads? I knew a man who refused to tame his diet, preferring regular angioplasty treatment. “Haw haw, I just go to the roto-rooter man every few years!” He’s dead. CAD will not be made a fool of forever.
Then there is a gentle woman named Mazie, a lady of pleasant disposition, still a working girl in her early seventies. She felt herself flagging, didn’t have the same energy she used to, tired easily. Her cardiologist performed some tests and sent her home. A few days later, she told me she could barely walk from her workplace to her car, and once there had to sit awhile before proceeding. I said, “Mazie, you need to go to the hospital as soon as possible.” She got there in the nick of time. When doctors took a vein from her leg to replace an artery in her chest it was so occluded as to be unusable. She survived after a long rehabilitation period. If all this scares you, it should. Fear is a good motivator.
NOW What?
For victims of CAD, statins are a godsend. Lipitor promptly brought my total cholesterol down to 136 and my HDL is still 60. But some people have trouble with statins and others have passed the point of no return. What if you go to your cardiologist and he says, “Sorry, Bruce, you’ve gone over the dam. You’re totally blocked. Time to put your affairs in order.” This is not the time you tell him you’d place that one-nighter with Adele first, then there’d be Shirley, and Ramona had to be in the Top Five. No, this is the time you elevator up to the roof and turn on the Docsignal. That would bring on Doctor Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. He’s going to save your life. “Oh, no!” cries the desperate CAD. “My arch-enemy is here to foil me again!”
Dr. Esselstyn is no Spring chicken. He’s been around for awhile, 87 years as a matter of fact. The doc was a surgeon, clinician and researcher at the hallowed Cleveland Clinic for over 35 years, served as president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons and organized the first National Conference on the Elimination and Prevention of Heart Disease, not to mention a few piddling accomplishments like winning an Olympic gold medal in rowing and receiving a Bronze Star for his work as an army surgeon in Vietnam.
Fourteen years ago, Dr. E. wrote a book which somehow skipped by us. It’s called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, and you need to read it. And that’s right, we said reverse. As in pulverize the plaque, eliminate it, return your heart to pristine condition. “Surely, you jest,” you say? Not a bit. If so, why is CAD cringing over there in the corner?
Esselstyn’s book has its origins in the dramatic experiences he had with 23 men and women given up for dead by their own cardiologists. They came to him in misery and despair, the Sword of Damocles ready to descend on their unprotected napes. “A sorry lot,” he called them, patients who had already undergone repeated open heart surgeries and angioplasties aplenty, received stents and took a host of medications. All too little, too late. CAD is a fierce opponent.
Almost all the men had lost their sexual potency. Most had chest pains, angina so agonizing they couldn’t lie down. Several could not walk across a room without agonizing pain. The Grim Reaper had them at the top of his wish list. CAD called them walking dead men. But Doctor Esselstyn was not ready to throw in the towel. He had a few ideas nobody had tried before. He had, in fact, a secret plan.
Hunkering Down
The greatest allies of CAD are ignorance, indifference and lack of will power. Most people with heart disease are hit with a barrage of information, some of it conflicting, from a variety of sources. Not all cardiologists agree on the best modus operandi. Victims are often not sure what to do. Others are so tied to their atrocious diets, they wax philosophical. “Oh well, when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.” This is beyond moronic. Say you’re on a street corner and you have the option to cross the avenue in the face of speeding traffic or wait for the light to change; you choose the former and get whacked by a bus. This is not necessarily your time to go, this is idiotic behavior. You have these things called choices. Make too many of the wrong ones and you’re up in the ozone playing bass guitar for Peter & The Seraphims.
We know you hate to give up your Dunkin Donuts, your barbecue and your R.C. Cola but the hour is late and the Mexican army is vast. It’s time to tighten down the Alamo. Do it for yourself. Do it for the folks who need you. Do it for the State of Texas. Just do it. Doctor Esselstyn will now give you the tough news.
Salvation For Dummies (Intelligent people may also apply.)
Doctor Esselstyn told his barely walking wounded they could save themselves if they diligently adhered to the following rules:
1. You may not eat anything with a mother or a face. That includes meat, poultry and fish.
2. You cannot eat dairy products.
3. You must not consume oil of any kind. Not a drop. Yes, you devotees of the Mediterranean Diet, this includes olive oil.
4. Generally, you cannot eat nuts or avocados.
That’s it. We know the rules fly in the face of other advice you have heard. The word “draconian” is often bandied about. What is left to eat, you wonder. Plenty. All fruits and vegetables. All legumes. All whole grains and products such as bread and pasta which are made from them, as long as they don’t contain added fats. There is much more to Esselstyn’s suggestions, but these are the bare bones. And yes, we know, you just can’t do it. It’s too hard. Life would not be worth living without your daily installment of (place your favorite poison here). Besides, how do we know Dr. Esselstyn is right, anyway? Well, you could go ask any of those 23 doomed people, all of whom were saved. Not only were they saved, but their arteries were virtually cleared of plaque. Even Lipitor can’t do that.
Most of you, unlike Esselstyn’s 23, don’t see the hearse parked outside the house. In your case, it might be easier to wean yourselves off your regular diet gradually. Eliminate chicken one week. Get rid of dairy products the next. Slowly abandon one oil after another. Reduce fish intake to a couple of times a week. Find adequate substitutes at health food stores or organic markets. Any improvements you make are better than no changes at all. We in Pieland are taking a faster approach but not jumping in the deep end all at once. Maybe we’ll make it for six months, perhaps just one or two. Could be we’ll surprise ourselves and become converts forever. However long we ride the wave, we’ll be better for it. You can’t live forever if you don’t follow the guru who knows The Truth and The Way. If we can summon up the will power and execute the weaponry, we might even be able to drive Godzilla back to the sea.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
