Heart health
Why Roughly Half of Heart Attack Patients Have Normal Cholesterol
By [Your name]
Most of us were taught one number to watch. Keep your cholesterol down, the advice goes, and your heart will look after itself. So it comes as a shock to learn that roughly half of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.
If cholesterol were the whole story, that could not happen. Something else must be going on inside the arteries of people who did everything their test results asked of them.
A filmmaker who needed a real answer
Matt Carter is a documentary filmmaker, and heart disease runs through his family. It killed and crippled many of the people he loved. When he was eight years old, a friend’s dad, a husband and father of three, collapsed with a massive heart attack while watching a hockey game with his family. Matt promised himself it would never happen to him.
Years later his own Mom was put on cholesterol-lowering drugs, and the promise came back to him. He set out to make a film that would find out what really drives heart disease. He thought it would take six months. It took three years, and it took him to different countries to interview over 40 cardiologists, doctors, nutrition experts and heart disease survivors.
What the experts point to
Not all of the experts in the series agree that high cholesterol is the villain it has been made out to be. They explain what cholesterol actually does in the body, and why the kind of LDL particle you carry, small and dense or large and fluffy, may matter more than the total on a basic test.
They also look hard at the foods many of us were told were good for us. Low-fat products made with wheat, sugar and grains, such as breads, cereals and snack bars, may be part of the problem. Cardiologist Dr William Davis explains how wholegrains can set off a cascade inside the blood vessels, and the series discusses a 2010 study of about 350,000 people that concluded saturated fat does not increase the risk of heart disease.
[Your own view in one or two sentences: why this matters to you or your family.]
The series goes further than cholesterol. It covers blood sugar and type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, food addiction, the gut and the heart, and the modern heart tests worth asking your doctor about, because a simple lipid test is now considered outdated.
Nine steps you can take naturally
Matt turned everything he learned into Heart Disease Code, a program built around nine natural steps to fight and prevent heart disease. It includes the ebook with the nine steps, all nine episodes of The Untold Story of Heart Disease, a Heart Healthy Cookbook with over 50 easy recipes, companion guides for every episode, The Top 50 Foods for a Healthy Heart, a supplementation guide, a heart testing guide, and a bonus episode on the gut-heart connection.
It costs $19.95 at the moment instead of the usual $99.95, and it comes with a 60-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, so you can watch the series, read the guide and decide for yourself.
If heart disease has touched your family, or your doctor has started talking to you about your blood pressure or cholesterol, this is a clear and calm place to start understanding what is going on, and a good way to walk into your next appointment with better questions.
This article is general information and is not medical advice. Please talk to your doctor before changing your diet, supplements or medication. I may earn a commission if you buy through the links on this page, at no extra cost to you.