X-Message-Number: 10823
Subject: heart disease
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 07:40:50 -0500
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <>

> From: Jan Coetzee <>
> Subject: cholesterol and exercise
> 
> I spend most of my life avoiding fats and cholesterol. I also exercised
> regularly. It did not help. My cardiologist told me every one over 45 is
> at risk. All you can hope is that you have the correct genes.

That is not true.

The evidence is pretty strong that if you radically lower your fat
intake (not just "avoid fats" -- lower your intake to below 10% of
calories or even further) and exercise, you will at the very least put
off heart disease by many years. In fact, for most people, a very low
fat vegan diet and regular exercise will *reverse* atherosclerosis --
this is the only known way to do that without drugs or surgery. There
are very rare people who produce so much cholesterol (due to gentic
defect) that very little will help them, but that is a tiny percentage
of the population. Almost everyone else can get substantial benefit.

BTW, note that the "lower your fat intake" advice produces only modest 
benefits until you *really* lower your fat intake, which is very
difficult to do on a meat eating diet. Going from 40% of calories from 
fat to 20% is certainly good if it is all you can manage, but getting
down to 10% or less is even better.

You can also do other things to help. Taking 400IU of Vitamin E per
day will, on its own, lower your risk of heart disease substantially
(I believe the number is something ridiculous like 40% but I could be
off by a big percentage -- my memory is weak this morning). Not
smoking is a giant help. Not being overweight is a giant help. These
are all fairly trivial things to do. Even the diet changes in question 
are fairly trivial.

I know lots of whiny people who say things to me like "but meat tastes 
so good" and stuff like that. Well, I can't say that I miss meat given 
that I actually seem to be eating far better flavor-wise on my current
diet, but if you really want those burgers and fries, well, just
realize that you're making a conscious decision to live a shorter
lifetime.

Perry

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