27 Lifetime Protection for Your Heart
27 Lifetime Protection for Your Heart
The sad story I am about to tell should be as familiar as the back of your hand once you have read the rest of this book: An individual with metabolic vulnerability to weight gain eats the sugar-filled, nutrient-impoverished diet of the Western world. It doesn ' t make him feel great, but he assumes his various complaints are a natural part of getting older. Pounds begin to gather; then a few more, then a lot. Now he acquires the risk factors that set him apart from most people who don ' t have a weight problem. Yes, those risk factors. Let ' s hear them one last time:
• Insulin levels that are far too high.
• Blood pressure that is rising, ever rising.
• Triglyceride levels that have gone absolutely ballistic.
• Total cholesterol that ' s through the roof.
• HDL that ' s down in the cellar.
• Blood sugar that ' s gone straight up.
What ' s next? There ' s an excellent chance that he is heading for diabetes. He-or she-is far from happy now and grasps for one variation or another of the typical carbohydrate-saturated American diet. Along the way, he may even push his dietary fat down to where the government says it should be. Victory? Well, no. That achievement won ' t prevent an eventual visit to the cardiac ward of the local hospital. After all, dietary fat never was the primary source of the problem.
That snapshot of a life depicts the lifestyle of many people, but it need not be yours. You now have the tools to correct and control your vulnerabilities-the risk factors for heart disease. You ' ll know why these tools work once you ' ve read this chapter. You ' re doing a heart health plan that is precisely tailored to the needs of a person who ' s susceptible to weight gain. Atkins is the deliverance from your susceptibility.
What Didn ' t Happen, and Then What Did
Ten years ago, I used to smile somewhat painfully at the blasts of anger aimed at me by my attackers. They said I didn ' t respect the low-fat gospel. " Eating a controlled carbohydrate, high-fat diet was dangerous," they said. " Cholesterol would elevate wildly. Heart attacks would sprout like mushrooms in the rain "
Then something strange happened: The last decade of the twentieth century transformed everything. Millions of people did Atkins. Physicians could not ignore the fact that not only
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