心脏外科医生的病毒性口供：心脏病的真正原因

 "Heart Surgeon Declares On [sic] What Really Causes Heart Illness,"

　

 

现在大约有237000人在他们的Facebook墙上有了德怀特·伦德尔博士的供词。他的文章题为《心脏外科医生口供：心脏病的真正病因》，于12月在一个名为“TUNED BODY”的网站上发表。在过去的一周里，它在社交媒体上以惊人的力量迅速崛起。

 

　

　

在这篇文章中，Lundell描述了他的新发现:天然的、未经加工的食物可以预防和逆转心脏病、高血压、糖尿病和阿尔茨海默病。他回忆说，作为一名心脏外科医生，他在过去的几十年里，一直给他的病人开降胆固醇药物，并推荐低脂饮食。他说，他最近意识到了自己的错误，停止了行医，并将自己的事业奉献给了心脏病预防。

 

“我们医生，由于我们所有的经验和权威，”他写道，“往往变得相当的固执己见，使我们很难接受自己的错误。”所以,在这里。我公开承认自己错了。作为一个有25年经验的心脏外科医生，已经做了5000多个心脏手术，今天是我纠正医学和科学证据错误的一天。

 

这篇病毒性文章接着说，推荐降胆固醇药物和低脂饮食“在道德上已经不再合理”。他解释说，这是因为低脂、高碳水化合物（Low Fat & Refined Carbonhydrates)饮食正通过引起慢性炎症，积极破坏我们血管壁。这种炎症使胆固醇粘附在墙壁上，形成斑块，最终阻塞它们，导致心脏病发作或中风。

　

　

 

他写道:“当你每天数次令你的血糖水平飙升时，它就像把砂纸放进你纤弱的血管里一样。” 

他有一双曾经剥离过成千上万动脉壁的外科医生的冰冷的手， “凝视着成千上万条动脉。” 他在书中写道:“花点时间想象一下，在柔软的皮肤上反复揉搓，直到它变得非常红，几乎要流血。”“这是一种很好的方法，可以让你的身体看到炎症过程。”

 

Lundell认为，不仅是精制碳水化合物，还有西方饮食中欧米茄-6 对欧米茄-3脂肪酸的比例。过量的欧米茄-6脂肪酸会引起炎症，而美国人的饮食中玉米和大豆油的含量通常都与欧米茄-6有关:大约在15:1左右。Lundell并不是唯一一个认为比例应该在3:1左右的人。他进入了流行的狩猎者-采集推理，即“人体不能加工，也不是设计成消化用糖加工并浸泡在欧米茄-6脂肪油中的食物的。

 

“缓解炎症只有一个办法，”Lundell写道，“使食物回归到更接近自然的状态。”不要吃你祖母认不出的食物。他建议吃蛋白质和复杂的碳水化合物，比如五颜六色的水果和蔬菜。他建议放弃对饱和脂肪的担忧，选择橄榄油或食草肉类或奶制品作为脂肪的来源，而不是高欧米茄-6的加工食品。

　

　

 

他写道:“既然我们现在知道胆固醇不是心脏病的病因，那么现在对饱和脂肪的担忧就更加荒谬了。”“当主流医学建议人们避免饱和脂肪，而选择富含欧米茄-6脂肪酸的食物时，他们犯了一个严重的错误。”

　

　

 

A Heart Surgeon's Viral Confession

Behind the beloved idea that processed food is "slowly poisoning everyone"

 

Around 237,000 people now have Dr. Dwight Lundell's confession on their Facebook walls. His essay, headlined "Heart Surgeon Declares On [sic] What Really Causes Heart Illness," was published on a website called Tuned Body in December. Over the past week it has taken off across social media with phenomenal force.

 

In the essay, Lundell describes his purportedly newfound understanding that a diet of natural, unprocessed food can prevent and reverse heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. He recalls two and a half misguided decades as a cardiac surgeon prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications and recommending a low-fat diet. He says that he recently realized the error of his ways, stopped practicing, and dedicated his career to heart disease prevention.

 

"We physicians with all our experience and authority" he writes, "often acquire a rather large selfishness that tends to make it hard to accept we are wrong. So, here it is. I openly admit to being mistaken. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having done more than 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific proof."

 

The viral essay goes on to say that recommending cholesterol-lowering medications and low-fat diets is "no longer morally defensible." That's because the low-fat, high-simple-carb diet is actively destroying the walls of our blood vessels by causing chronic inflammation, he explains. That inflammation makes cholesterol stick to said walls, forming the plaques that eventually block them, resulting in a heart attack or stroke.

 

"When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels," he writes, with the cool hand of a surgeon who has "peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries." His eye for imagery is also hardened. "Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding," he writes. "This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now."

 

Lundell blames not only the refined carbohydrates, but the proportion of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in Western diets. Excessive omega-6 acids create inflammation, and American diets that are high in corn and soybean oils often involve omega-6:omega-3 ratios around 15:1. Lundell is not alone in saying that the ratio should ideally be around 3:1. He gets into the popular hunter-gatherer reasoning there, that "the human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils."

 

 

"There is but one answer to quieting inflammation," Lundell writes, "and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state." Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. He recommends eating protein and complex carbohydrates like colorful fruits and vegetables. He recommends abandoning concern about saturated fat, choosing olive oil or grass-fed meat or dairy as a better source of fat than high-omega-6 processed foods.

 

"Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today," he writes. "Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats."

 

The thing is, like so many viral posts, this is a rerun. It's an old one. That's fine, except that learning it makes the "Today is the day" framing feel disingenuous. Lundell's same confession was also very popular when it was published on the website Prevent Disease in 2012. At that time it openly included a plug for his book, The Cure for Heart Disease, which made the same argument. That was published in 2007.

 

Lundell since came under fire from consumer advocate Dr. Stephen Barrett who runs the blog Quackwatch. In "A Skeptical Look at Dwight Lundell, MD," Barrett offers a profoundly skeptical look at Dwight Lundell, MD. Barrett digs into Lundell's past, which is fraught with legal issues including having his medical license revoked in 2008 on several counts of professional misconduct and negligence, issues with bankruptcy, and pleading guilty to three counts of willful failure to file income tax returns. Barrett concluded, "Dr. Lundell would like you to believe that he has special knowledge of heart disease prevention. I do not trust his advice."

 

 

Beyond questions of credibility, Lundell's essay does make some overreaching claims. There is not "but one answer to quieting inflammation." I'd add exercise and reducing stress. Also, his invocation of moral defensibility loses gravitas in light of his criminal history. Still, the basic tenets of what he says in the essay are sound. Since his original writing in 2007, this way of thinking about nutrition and heart disease has become more mainstream. Statin medication guidelines are being reevaluated, as is understanding of the relationship between dietary fat and heart disease.

 

That said, this type of eating isn't a panacea. His book's website, The Great Cholesterol Lie, sells oversimplifications that range from potentially defensible on grounds of empowerment ("Heart disease has a cure. ... You can beat it without harmful medications and painful, risky surgery") to all-out overreaching medical advice not to be taken from a commercial website ("Before You Start Taking, Or If You Are Taking Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, Mevacor, Provachol, Altocor, Lesacol, or any other statin medication—STOP!!").

 

More interesting to me is just how popular this essay has become this week despite its lack of new insight. Medical advice is everywhere. Diet advice, in particular, is in even more places than everywhere. It comes from all kinds of credible experts who cite evidence. What made this essay take off? The voice of a physician "with all [his] authority and experience" in the context of a candid confession? The always-engaging "we've been lied to" tonality? That visceral image of sandpaper on skin? My thought is that this diet is something many of us have already internalized. Since its introduction years ago, these ideas have seeped into us. We actively want to support and believe this narrative, even enough to incorporate this man into our Facebook aesthetic.

 

A Heart Surgeon's Viral Confession - The Atlantic  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/a-heart-surgeons-viral-confession/283413/