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Dr. McDougall's Comments
as much as a general doctor (See my August 2006 newsletter article: Taking Advantage of the Medical Specialist). The heart disease businesses are driven by
“intervention technology”—exercise tests, heart scans, angiograms, bypass surgery, angioplasties, heart-lung pumps, catheters, and stents, as well as a pharmacy full of expensive drugs. All of this money, technology, and power ultimately foster the legendary and grandiose egos of cardiologists. This arrogance could be tolerated except for one undeniable fact: their efforts do not translate into brilliant outcomes for the patients. Clogged heart arteries (coronary atherosclerosis) are an almost universal condition found among adults who follow the Western diet. Serious attention should first be directed to prevention with the potential to completely eliminate this problem worldwide. A high-fat, animal-food based diet is the primary cause of this epidemic. For those of us who already have diseased arteries, the answer is to correct the cause. Unfortunately, prevention and dietary treatment are not where you will find the thoughts and labors of your doctors. Cardiologists are trained to intervene with drugs and surgery, which provide few benefits accompanied by huge costs and harms. For example, a million people a year at an average cost of $64,000 each, undergo angioplasty, with or without stents, annually. Yet this surgery has never been shown to prolong patients’ lives. (See my September 2006 newsletter.) Bypass surgery has only a slightly better record: A small survival benefit—18% improvement over 10 years—for a small subcategory of patients—less than 10% of those operated on. For this trivial benefit from bypass surgery you also get brain damage—with 100% of patients who are placed on the heart-lung machine, “the pump,” showing this kind of injury to the nervous system (See my January 2006 newsletter). Once informed of the facts, you will want to confront your doctors. Ask for research papers (not opinion papers written by people who make money from procedures or products) to support the proposed treatment. By rights it should be the obligation of those making the recommendations (the sale) to provide support for the benefits, not the other way around. In other words, this is the way it is today: the customer is placed in the position of having to prove that the recommended procedure is useless and/or harmful. Don’t hesitate to fire your doctor, like Don did. In almost all cases that are not obvious emergencies, you will be better off delaying therapy in order to have time to research and obtain alternative points of view—ones that are less polluted by money and egos. For more information on effective weight loss, and the treatment of heart disease, diabetes, cholester-ol, triglycerides and hypertension visit my “Hot Topics” on my web site, www.drmcdougall.com.
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Hi, my name is Don Carrier and I am a 58-year-old, life-long vegetarian who was diagnosed with clogged heart arteries 3 years ago. In July of 2003 my Los Angeles-based MD discovered after taking an EKG that I had had a silent heart attack sometime after May of 2002. This doctor then sent me to see a cardiologist. After running tests, including an angiogram, the cardiologist found that all three of my coronary arteries were diseased. The worst of the disease was seen as a closure by 70 to 80% of the main artery supplying the front of my heart (called the left anterior descending artery). Apparently, my heart muscle had been severely damaged by the heart attack that I had never felt. As a result the amount of blood now being pumped out of my heart (my ejection fraction) was down to 27% (normal is 65% and in May of 2002 my ejection fraction had been found to be almost normal at 55%). The cardiologist strongly recommended heart bypass surgery as soon as possible, or at least having several stents placed to open my narrowed arteries. The thought of having a band saw buzzing through my chest wall didn’t set well with me. This heart specialist then prescribed for me to take an aspirin, Plavix, Coreg (a beta blocker), Diovan (an ACE inhibitor), digoxin, and Advicor (a combination of lovastatin and niacin to lower cholesterol).
All My Life I Had Been an Overweight, Sickly Vegetarian Let me take you back to the beginning in order to explain how I ended up in this trouble. As an infant I had not been able to hold down baby food that contained any kind of animal product, such as beef, chicken, fish, lamb, or even eggs. Still, the doctors recommended that my parents keep trying to feed me meat from time to time and suggested I might outgrow this problem. But every time I was fed animal products, they would just come right back up. Out of concern and desperation, the doctors told my parents to feed me lots of dairy, which did not have the same effect on my stomach. I grew up a “cheese-a-tarian.” Not a day of my life went by without me eating some kind of cheese or other dairy food. All my adult life I had been overweight. I was raised Italian-style; olive oil was used on everything. Now I can see where oil, along with the cheese, was a big part of my weight gain. In the 6th grade I weighed over 160 pounds. My fat accumulation was unstoppable, by my fifties I was over 200 pounds, and still climbing. By age 54 I was over 225 pounds and in terrible shape—unable to run even 1/8 of a mile and walking uphill made me breathless. My blood pressure was over 170/110 mmHg, cholesterol was 228 mg/dl, triglycerides were 532 mg/dl; I had bad allergies, sleep apnea, and slight arthritis in my hands. I ate Tums like they were M&Ms, and I kept a large supply of antacids in both cars, both offices, both homes, and I took them with me on all my trips. No surprise that I was in the hands of a cardiologist and facing heart surgery by my mid-fifties. The Best Investment I Ever Made In October 2003 I went to Dr. McDougall’s 10-day program. By the third day I was already feeling much better. Learning what foods our bodies are designed for was an eye opener. For the first time I realized that, yes, I had been a life-long vegetarian, but a very overweight and unhealthy vegetarian. As I followed the McDougall diet, the weight started to come off. I lost 2 to 4 pounds each month and by the end of the first year I had lost approximately 30 pounds. The second year I lost another 20 pounds. I was jogging up to 7 miles a day and loving my new energy level. All my friends who knew me before are still amazed that I have not only lost the weight, but also have kept it off. As great as the diet education was, the second greatest benefit of the 10-day clinic was the “medication education.” Even though Dr. McDougall had changed and reduced some of my medications, I left the clinic still taking too many, as far as I was concerned. I was feeling tremendous except for the bag full of pills I swallowed daily. In September of 2004, I finally told my cardiologist that I was going to slowly stop the Coreg, Diovan, and Plavix. My next step was to fire him; the reason was he refused to believe that diet and exercise had anything to do with my improved condition. It was time to say goodbye to his negativity, and his unrestrained prescription pad.
Most recently, I have stopped the Pravachol, and as of February, 2006 my cholesterol was 139 mg/dl and triglycerides 133 mg/dl on no medication. I do take a baby aspirin, CQ10 and a B-12 pill daily. I love the fact that I no longer spend huge amounts of money on a monthly regimen of drugs. I can’t say I have suffered one bit for all the health I have gained—I never feel that I am missing out on any of the foods that I used to love—I have new favorites. I live by the recipes in Mary’s Quick and Easy cookbook. I am also pleased that some of my close friends have converted to the McDougall Diet after seeing my results. The time and effort I put into changing my diet and exercising was the best investment I have ever made in my entire life.
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It was then I remembered a doctor I
had heard about from Hawaii. Dr. John McDougall was a
board-certified internist, an MD, who promoted a healthy vegan
diet just for my kind of problems. I wasted no time looking him
up on the web and as fate had it, he had a 10-day clinic
scheduled two weeks away. I talked with both of my Los Angeles
doctors and neither of them gave me any hope that a diet change
would help me in any way. They insisted that I was wasting my
time, and possibly placing myself in jeopardy of another heart
attack, or even worse. I didn’t let them discourage me.
By the fall of 2004 I was taking
half of a 20mg tablet of Pravachol for my cholesterol, and a
baby aspirin daily, both prescribed by Dr. McDougall. I was down
to 168 pounds, my blood pressure without medication was 106/62
mmHg, and I was doing a 5-mile slow jog daily. I experienced
many other benefits, such as being able to sleep like a baby
again, all my allergies disappeared, the slight arthritis in my
hands was gone, and I no longer had energy highs and lows.
There was no more acid reflux, bloating, or any other kind of
digestive problem. I attribute the improvement in my digestive
health to getting off the dairy. 
