Discussion Board

I was just watching some videos on morbidly obese people. One guy weighs over 700 pounds and eats about 14000 calories a day. Another guy weighs 1072 pounds and a whole ambulance crew had to get him to the hospital where I think he underwent by pass surgery. Both of them ate every kind of buttery, fatty, meaty sugary kind of food and lots of it. So who has the heart attack? I do. Because although on a mostly plant based diet, a couple of times a week I ate a couple of ounces of fish? Something isn't adding up here.

Didi

Didi, I think you're getting hung up on the few pieces of fish as the main cause. Remember most of the humans on this earth with a few exceptions DO eat some kind of animal food and fish (esp those living near water). That just can't be it by itself.

I know you monitor lowcarb communities as well and there are many who've been eating LC for many years (some as long as Dr. McDougall, like Dr. Michael Eades and his wife) or Dr. William Davis, and also many unprofessional, ordinary people. There's just more to it than a little meat once in a while....just my 2 cents worth.

I'm not a doc, but I think it's genetics. Some people simply must adhere tighter to 100 percent than others. My husband is one of the 100 percenters. He wasn't very heavy, didn't eat super but it was better than most, but he had his heart attack. Until he McDougalled 100 percent, and I mean 100 PERCENT, he couldn't get his total cholesterol under 150. At total adherence, his cholesterol runs in the 130s.

Even back when his cholesterol stuck in the 170s, we thought we were 100 percent McDougalling, only to find new ways to tighten the program. Once we got 'er tighter, boom... the numbers would go down.

Yesterday I was listening to the McDougall podcast with Thomas Grayboys (It might have been Julian Whitaker I listened to both on my walk) and he addressed your concerns. I'd find and download those podcasts.

Beth

P.S. Funny story. On the Pritikin podcast, a caller mentioned he wasn't getting results following Dr. McDougall's recommendations 100 percent. As they spoke, turned out his triglyceride were sky high. They spoke longer until the man finally remarked, "You mean I can't have my frosted flakes and soymilk anymore?"

Yeah. 100 percent.

Study what "100 percent" is and find out how close you are to it. Personally, I've found Katydid's journal to be an invaluable resource (and a great example of great adherence to the program) for losing my last few pounds. Check it out.

I agree, there are factors (other than diet) that cause a person to have a heart attack. the reaction of many friends and relatives to my recent heart problem was "Donna was the last person I'd have thought would have a heart attack!" because everyone knows I've been a vegetarian for many years, am careful what I eat, have lost the extra weight. another reaction was the thought if not for the above I would have been dead a long time ago!

bethannerickson is on to it. Some people can eat the worst diet and not gain a pound. Some can smoke for decades and never get cancer. Some can breath around a poor diet and have any of these things in a heartbeat. Genetics is a big part of all this. How that poor diet expresses itself in you is a very individual thing. It's never fair and it doesn't care about your individual wishes. The good news is the answer is the same almost every time.
I think it's perfectly normal to ask "why me." But do we ask this when we hit the lotto or find money on the street? Also, you are now imbued with knowledge about these conditions that many don't get. Maybe that's unfair, too! After 5 years of this I still pass by a pizza place and in my head I bemoan the fact I can't just walk in and go for it. But it passes quickly when I remember the angina and the doctors, tests, and all that followed. Life is much better now.
f1jim

Another thing to consider is the fact that we really don't know what's going on inside us until a symptom gets really painful, and then someone has to go in and take a look. Those folks you saw in the show may have HAD heart attacks and mini-strokes, and not even known it. I had a gall bladder attack for the first time after two years of McDougalling, and I was appalled at the sight and size of those marbles they took out of me. The gall bladder was inflamed and blocking the ducts to everything else, and I never had symptom one, until the day it hit me. Those gallstones had been growing for YEARS, and probably most recently fed by the South Beach Diet that I followed, fruitlessly, for about 5 years before coming to this way of eating, but I had no clue.

Didi, did you not mention you have had diabetes for the last 20 years? That's a big one for heart disease. I have no clue how anyone would quantify what effect that has had on you. I also don't pretend to know what you're going through.

Frozenveg, there are so many things that influence the necessity for GB disease. Were you mainly sedentary and overweight/obese for the last years before losing weight?

I don't know everything *haha* but a family member (at age 72) had gallstones that did or did not require surgery. They were afraid of having another attack, so thought it was better to have the surgery. (This person was a retired medical professional.) They had a heart attack in the hospital quite a few hours after the very successful, very uneventful laparascopic cholecystectomy. They were independent/vibrant before. Brain injured after. Long rehab and lived another 10 years, but never independent again. Very long story.

Didi, have you considered getting yourself into cardiac rehab (I assume you're in the US and it's readily available to you) courtesy of Medicare? (I took my family member to all of their cardiac rehab sessions and I don't know how anyone could pass something like that up.) Yeah, the rehab people may still be preaching the AHA line for some of it, but you know in your mind/self what you want and how you want your life and health to be--no one can take that from you!

You're changed after a heart attack--duh--what do I know, I haven't had one. To be fair I've had close calls--ending up in the ER with symptoms and then elevated cardiac enzymes, watched/monitored and then retested to rule out heart attack--two times.

I can see in your entries how angry you are about this, and you want answers. I would be no different. I'm 53 and still PO'd about the onslaught/aftermath of perimenopause and now menopause. Doctors/hospitals have not been my first choice until I REALLY needed them. I have needed them more in the last 3 years than I did in the previous 20 or 30 years before that. (I feel sick writing that sentence . . . that I needed them for anything but the routine--at all.)

Your family wants you as whole and intact and independent as possible. You have to want it for yourself too. I don't know you obviously, but I completely see myself and my skeptic self in many of your posts. Feeling out of control is awful.

I hope this post of mine hasn't been out of place. I just couldn't leave it without trying:-)

didi every woman I know that has had a heart attack has died from it, including my mother. None of them were eating healthy. You've been eating healthy and have survived a heart attack, I didn't even know that was possible. Sometimes we can't fight genetics, and our previous WOE may have something to do with our health problems, but maybe we can improve our chances with good nutrition. I'd like to think so anyway, that why I'm here.

Actually the shift is from: Why me? to Why not me? And some questions only God (of your understanding) can answer. It is a miracle in my perception is you got out of the hospital alive. It is like the alcoholic it doesn't matter how much you drink, it is what happens to you when you drink? And as Dr. McDougall shares, they don't offer more alcohol to the alcoholic or drugs to the drug addict to heal them . When washing dishes the oil from the fish sits on the side of the sink.

Dr. McDougall on his MS online video, and it is free;) shares about dying a natural death, where the heart shuts down and the rest of the organs follow. We are all in the process of dying a natural death. Some a little sooner than others, with multiple circumstances, because whatever the circumstance is, it is natural to the recipient. As a child I was verbally traumatized where in hindsight I am able to recognize that it was no different than someone who had a stroke where their left brain was affected. My speech is effected, and my thinking is very spacious. So it is not just fish:) that effects us, it is the cortisol, while living life on life's terms.

Again you have survived, and with your best thinking you are back and posting. Dr. Esselstyn shares the same plague that runs through our blood vessels to our heart, runs through the blood vessels to our brain. The skill is each day to die consciously, to the best of our ability, because it is not only alcohol, drugs, food that shuts down our immune system, it is also our thoughts. I can't imagine what it was like hearing someone tell me I had a heart attack. The cortisol won't kill us but it opens the portal where heart attacks/strokes happen. Doctors at one time could tell a patient they would be dead in 3 months and they would be.

Dr. McDougall shares 80% of the money made in hospitals is from heart disease. When feelings of Why me? come in let it be to shift to Why not me? Because we all have that 300 lb. gorilla on our back, no matter how much we weigh, and it is waiting to feed off the next unconscious person. Is that a bad thing? No, it is like the caterpillar who feeds off everything in sight, till it cocoons itself, its guts yield to liquify to restructure into a butterfly. It is a process we are all waking up to know each of is a self-organizing living system that is inclusive to hold the vista I am that I am and We are We in the Eternal Now.

Aloha, patty

But you had/have diabetes no? If so, that means you ate the wrong foods for a very long time, no? You must have abused your body repeatedly until you got to this point. I can have 10 servings of fruit a day without a problem, but a diabetic can't. A diabetic can't because every time he/she ate the wrong foods a conscious choice was made that I am putting my health at risk.
Some people pay early in life, some pay later. It's the same thing in other areas. And so what if one or two or even 100 people get away with eating high fat, unhealthy foods?
For every person that doesn't have health problems from unhealthy eating, there are hundreds who do.
For most people, high fat junk foods will hunt you, eventually. When and how? You just have to wait and see for yourself.
It's like a teenager playing with fireworks, right? Some will lose a few fingers, some will be VERY LUCKY.

Quoting the whole thing because it's worth doing. This is a great post. Unless someone has been McDougalling since babyhood (which may be the case in a few years but right now there aren't too many middle-aged folks who can say that!), your body has undergone some abuse--how much depends on what you ate, how long you ate it, how much it affected you, what else you did (smoking, second-hand smoke), etc.

I'm fortunate that I went vegan 20+ years ago -- BUT I did not McDougall that entire time. Much of the time I was eating added fats and a lot of them. I know that more than a year of McDougalling has improved my numbers and my health--but it would be foolish to think that doing so has made me somehow invulnerable. I can't know what damage was done by how I lived before, I can't know my genetic tendencies, and I can't know how chemicals I've encountered have affected me.

If I were you I would be happy I survived the heart attack (many don't!) and move on. Keep doing the best you can--that's all you can do!

Yes, I am very happy to have survived. And next Tuesday I have an appointment with the nurse practitioner and will find out about cardiac rehab. Evidently you don't start to exercise other than walking for two weeks after an MI. However, I continue to question because I do not want a repeat performance! I have to also say that I think it is possible that Dr.s McD and Esselstyn might be a bit more optimistic about the plant based diet than might be warranted. I hope not.

I always question and question until I get answers that satisfy me. Bye the way, my mom had bypass surgery at 77 (and believe it or not she elected to do it.) and died with dementia at 91. She was on beta blockers--maybe even before the surgery and remained on them. I have just been reading that you do not give beta blockers to someone with peripheral artery disease which she had. Thus, an amputation and dementia. She did not have diabetes.

Didi

Didi when you say Dr McDougall and Dr Esselstyn are too omptimisic about a plant base diet. That is the disease talking. The part of us that doesn't want to win.

Aloha, patty

Didi my heart goes out to you. Our health is something that is so precious to us, something we cherish so dearly.
I would feel exactly like you. Let down. Confused. Heartsick. What do I do now???
You have been through a traumatic event. Just let some time pass. Don't try to figure everything out right now.
You are entitled to your feelings, regardless of what they are.

Dr. McDougall offers a way of eating you don't have to think too much about. Stay on it, if only for that reason. You are accustomed to it, and it's easy. It requires very little thought once you are in the groove, which I'm sure you are.

Let more time pass. Your mind and heart need to settle a bit.

Take Care,

Didi, I wish I had magic words that would make this all better for you. I, too, have been spending some time wallowing in the "life isn't fair" pit, but well, life isn't fair. Like others have said, there are so many variables going on in our bodies, that everyone is different....and what happens today truly may be the result of years of things building that we just had no idea of. My focus today is to pull myself out of this "life isn't fair" pit and get back to my normal "life is too darn good to be real" mode of living. I am focusing on all the really great things in my life and letting go those other things... Hang in there.

Oh, and don't go on a site like LinkedIn and see what your classmates are now doing... : )

Sharon