Be Careful What Doctors Tell You About Heart Disease. The Answer To Cardiovascular Health Is Nutrition, Not Drugs!
“Once there is an active heart problem the importance of magnesium actually increases considerably. This has actually been noted in medical research since the 1950s.” — Christopher Barr
Almost all adults are concerned about the condition of their heart and cardiovascular system. Some live in constant fear wondering whether any ache, cramp or pain in their upper body is a sign of a heart attack. There isn’t an adult living in North America that hasn’t lost a loved one or a family member to heart disease. The fact is, heart attacks kill, and they kill by the millions every year!
Just recently we witnessed the sudden death of TV news anchorman Tim Russert from a massive heart attack. Tim was only 58 years old. It came as a complete shock to the world. Since Tim was internationally recognized, our society tends to give deaths like his more attention than others. What happened to Tim Russert is only a microcosm of what is happening on a massive scale every year. Generally we expect people in their seventies, eighties and nineties to die from heart attacks. When it occurs with people in their twenties, thirties, forties or fifties, it’s usually considered a tragedy.
There’s a reason why statin drugs, high blood pressure drugs, and diabetes medications are the best selling drugs on the market. Drug companies have done a masterful job of instilling fear into virtually everyone alive that if there are any imbalances, their risk of dying from heart disease greatly increases. What they haven’t told you is that these numbers have been deliberately manipulated so they can sweep in millions and get them on a regimen of drugs for life on the false assumption that they will live longer by taking them.
What you will rarely hear is that most heart disease is caused by nutritional deficiencies. You won’t get well or live out the years you were created to live until you know what’s causing your heart condition or how to prevent one altogether. Of all the organs in the body the heart is the one most often damaged by nutritional deficiencies. It is also the most responsive organ to nutritional therapies.
Over the course of the past year, our readers have been blessed beyond measure by the incredible insights and pearls of wisdom that Christopher Barr has shared with us on a number of important health topics. We continuously get calls and letters all the time from readers who have followed his advice and have seen the results in their own life. In this issue of Crusador we have a special interview that is over the top. If you, a loved one, co-worker, friend, or associate ever wanted to know the full truth about heart disease and what you need to do to avoid becoming another victim, the following interview below is one of the best ones you will ever come across.
Crusador: Chris, it is truly a pleasure to interview you again. I want to give more coverage to heart health than we have in previous issues since heart disease is the #1 killer in this country. You have spent many years doing some amazing research to distill out truth people need to know to stay well. What pearls of wisdom can you share with our readers and why should someone listen to what you have to say on this subject as opposed to anyone else?
Well, Greg, pearls are formed over time from an irritant. It is through a lifetime of research by way of science, history and journalism that I have come to a variety of pearls of wisdom with inestimable value – considerably by way of my being an irritant to both medical and nutritional mainstreams.
You’ve heard of the proverbial “between a rock and a hard place”? That is where I do my work. The “rock” is modern medi$in and the “hard place” is nutrition. Either of these is filled with erroneous biases and neither of these is open to being challenged due to their “love of money” which as the Scripture notes “is the root of all evil”. I do what I do due to the Scriptural precept of “love of the truth” rather than for “love of money”.
“The proof of the pudding” as they say “is in the eating”. More and more people all the time taste for themselves the proof of my knowledge by way of the interviews provided by me to Crusador over the past year or so.
Crusador: Mainstream medicine’s answer to heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes/blood sugar issues is to treat it with drugs. Why do they have it all wrong?
The simplest answer is that neither heart disease, high blood pressure nor diabetes/blood sugar issues are due to “drug deficiencies”. The reasons for each of these problems are due to complexities of nutritional deficiencies. The most complex of these matters you have mentioned is heart disease. A variety of nutritional deficiencies are what leads to heart disease. These deficiencies come from a few very bad dietary habits that have only become common place over the last 100 years.
100 years ago cardiovascular disease was not even among the top ten causes of death. Today it is the number one cause of death and has been number one more than half a century.
Crusador: So much bad press has made headline news lately regarding the ineffectiveness and outright dangers of statin drugs. Some have even argued that statin drugs are the biggest scam ever. Where do you stand on this issue and why?
If statin drugs are not the biggest scam ever they are at least right near the top.
The whole purpose of statins is to lower cholesterol levels in order – allegedly – to protect the heart. Cholesterol levels are reduced due to statins interfering with normal liver processes. Liver problems are one of the two most common and most serious side effects of taking statins which should not be surprising since statins work by interfering with normal liver processes.
The other most common and most serious side effect of taking statins is muscle damage. Isn’t the heart a muscle? Why, YES, it is! “Sometimes it is just a matter of asking the right question,” my good friend Dr. Kenneth O’Neal, M.D. said with a smile when I put forth this question to him in a discussion of statins when he was a guest on my daily radio broadcast, ‘VOICE OF CHANGE’.
Additionally, cholesterol is not an issue because one has too much cholesterol but rather because one has too little of the essential trace mineral element chromium.
Chromium manages cholesterol. In the absence of chromium cholesterol is unmanaged and goes haywire. Low density lipoproteins (LDL) increase which are commonly regarded as “bad” cholesterol while high density lipoproteins (HDL) decrease which are commonly regarded as “good” cholesterol.
High HDL levels are so much more important than low LDL levels that even a recently published medical research study noted that if HDL levels are high enough then LDL levels are irrelevant when it comes to heart disease.
Statins are very effective at reducing the “bad” LDL cholesterol but do not increase the “good” HDL cholesterol. Medical options – in other words DRUGS – for increasing the “good” HDL cholesterol are limited both in number of options and in their effectiveness, PLUS they have serious side effects so that they are barely used at all. Of course, statins also have serious side effects but since they are very effective in their targeting of the “bad” LDL cholesterol they are prominently used anyway. The use of statins is so prominent that they are the number one most prescribed class of drugs in the world.
Now back to chromium. Increased chromium does two things; it increases the levels of “good” HDL cholesterol and decreases the “bad” LDL cholesterol. The nutrient option provides the best of both worlds with no side effects as well as numerous other benefits. However, only 100 per cent whole food, grown varieties of chromium are significantly utilized by the body. Meanwhile, the drug options are many though limited in application and with many side effects.
The nutrient answer to the cholesterol question is superior in every way to the multitude of drug answers. Yet, the nutrient answer of 100 percent whole food, grown chromium is too little known and even less addressed.
Dr. Henry Alfred Schroeder received the highest award of The American Heart Association and established the dietary and drug protocols used for high blood pressure. He was one of the greatest researchers of the 20th century – if not the greatest – yet his considerable researches on the mineral chromium were almost entirely ignored.
Dr. Schroeder wrote that “we found that chromium in the aorta was not detected (too low to be found) in almost every person dying of coronary artery disease, one manifestation of atherosclerosis, and was present in almost every aorta of persons dying accidentally.”
How does this happen?
Refined white flour and refined white sugar made up a negligible part of the average American dietary 100 years ago at which time such began to increase in American dietaries. Through the 1920s and 1930s there was a dramatic escalation of these “foods” and cardiovascular disease cracked the Top 10 causes of death. That dramatic escalation continued and cardiovascular disease has been the number one cause of death now for more than 50 years. Refined white flour consumption now averages more than 150 pounds per person per year in America and refined white sugar consumption is about the same.
Whole grain is an abundant source of chromium but refining it into white flour removes 91 per cent of that chromium. Whole sugar cane is also an abundant source of chromium but refining it into white sugar removes 98 per cent of that chromium.
Recent U.S. government figures note that refined white flour is 20 per cent of the typical American diet. That means that refined white flour and refined white sugar now makes up almost half of the typical American diet.
Schroeder wrote of “the typical American diet, with about 60 per cent of its calories from refined sugar, refined flour, and fat”. He noted that this diet “was apparently designed not only to provide as little chromium as feasible, but to cause depletion of body stores of chromium”.
“The result is a prevalent disease, in this case, atherosclerosis,” concluded Schroeder about chromium deficiency.
You do not have high cholesterol and heart disease because of a deficiency of Lipitor! Artificial means (DRUGS) do not fix the problem. They may delay the problem although at what cost in both dollars and cents, and in side effects?
Regarding chromium Schroeder wrote that “the most effective way of avoiding the atherosclerotic-diabetic syndrome is by prevention.” He looked for the day that “this essential micronutrient so necessary to the integrity of arteries” would no longer be removed by refining. Either that “or if the public insists on white flour and white sugar” that chromium would be “restored in sufficient quantities to those foods to ensure their adequate metabolism.”
Schroeder has been gone now for more than 30 years and that day he longed for has yet to arrive.
“Modern man makes many mistakes through lack of knowledge, but there is no excuse for his continuing his mistakes in the face of knowledge,” Schroeder wrote in his writing on chromium more than 30 years ago.
I agree with Schroeder. There is no excuse for modern man to continue removing chromium from his food supply and not add it back.
Crusador: CoQ10 is a naturally occurring compound that is found in every cell of the body. It also plays a major role in protecting the heart, hence the reason why millions of people take it regularly. There is a real interesting side to this story that is rarely discussed though. You stated in a previous interview with me that selenium is more important than CoQ10? I found that rather shocking since it flies in the face of accepted nutritional dogma. Why Is that?
There are many reasons. First, CoQ10 is produced in the body from selenium. Second, selenium is relatively inexpensive and CoQ10 is one of the more expensive products on the market. Plus the superior, whole food varieties of CoQ10 are rare and hard to find, and even much more expensive than the commonly available varieties. It is a matter of common sense and dollars and cents – as well as scientific sense – to concentrate more on selenium supplementation than on CoQ10 supplementation.
There is also no better antioxidant than selenium. Antioxidants protect against free radicals that damage the arteries, thereby setting up the basis for plaque build-up.
Selenium deficiency is also at the root of hypertension (commonly called high blood pressure) that also increases cardiovascular risk. This is a very technical matter that a whole article could be devoted to but I’ll just sum it up here.
It was Dr. Schroeder who discovered the connection of salt to hypertension and devised the low salt for high blood pressure that continues to be used today more than 50 years after his discovery of this. However, his later, more advanced finding that salt was not actually the culprit have been ignored.
Schroeder found that refined, white salt was a carrying agent for the mineral cadmium and that a build-up of cadmium was the real agent for causation of hypertension.
Cadmium is a heavy metal and as such is stable against the processing that removes other minerals when refining salt deposits to the pretty, white, sodium chloride salt so popular with almost everybody – thereby setting up an exaggerated imbalance of cadmium in the body that results in high blood pressure so very, very common to so very, very many.
Cadmium displaces zinc due to some technical matters of physics. The only normal means by which the body has to remove cadmium is the mineral selenium. Selenium physically bonds with cadmium to escort it out of the system. Of course, selenium is sacrificed in this role so that it is then unavailable to protect the heart, prevent cancer, or to perform any of the other myriad functions that it nutritionally performs.
Cigarette smoking is documented to dramatically increase high blood pressure risk. Cigarette smoke is very high in cadmium. The subsequent loss of selenium due to such cadmium increase also explains why cigarette smokers have so much more heart disease as well as cancer.
The processing of whole cane sugar to refined, white sugar has the same cadmium problem as with salt refining noted earlier.
Whole grains can be very high in selenium, although there is a wide disparity due to modern farming practices and geographical distribution of selenium in the soil, In any case, refined, white flour removes 92 per cent of selenium from the whole grain and leaves a similar exaggerated imbalance of cadmium, as with white salt and white sugar.
Dr. Alexander Schauss is noted to have said that practically the only mineral left in white flour and white sugar is cadmium. Dr. Schauss is the author of the book, ‘Diet, Crime and Delinquency’, and has been researching physical, mental, and social effects of nutrient mineral deficiencies and toxic element build-ups for many decades.
Selenium is important for so many functions in the body that it just makes sense in so many ways to concentrate on selenium supplementation rather than CoQ10 supplementation.
Crusador: What effect do statin drugs have on the body’s CoQ10 levels?
The artificial means by which statin drugs interfere with the production of cholesterol also interferes with the production of CoQ10 from selenium.
So, if you are so brainwashed and/or brain dead as to use a statin drug then you must supplement with the very expensive supplement of CoQ10 because this very important substance for heart health (and so much more) cannot be produced from the more economical selenium due to the interference from the statin drug.
Crusador: Isn’t it true that Merck, the maker of Zocor, originally patented this drug with CoQ10 but never brought it to market?
“Speaking of the devil” to coin a phrase, and speaking of brainwashed and brain dead, yes there is quite a story regarding Merck and the FDA when it comes to statins and CoQ10.
Indeed, the Merck magicians who first opened the cursed Pandora’s Box — that is statin drugs — did know from the outset that the Merck black magic of statin drugs – subsequently copied by most every other black magic sorcerer of the pharmaceutical world and the number one most prescribed drug in the world today – prevented the body’s own production of CoQ10.
Please note again that CoQ10 is expensive and Merck chose not to utilize the patent for statins with CoQ10 since there was no demand from the marketplace for it. Of course, how can there be demand if almost nobody knew – other than those at Merck?
Just the normal course of business practices at Merck.
Almost 20 years ago internal memos at Merck noted dangers of mercury in vaccines – a BIG part of Merck’s murky business – but they took no action for more than a decade. It was only after mercury in vaccines began to become a common news item that Merck “volunteered” that they were going to stop adding it to vaccines. Even at that it took some years before they actually stopped adding mercury to vaccines – or at least to mostly stop adding most of the mercury in most of their vaccines – even though they knew about the problem for a very long time before it gathered considerable attention from others.
Then there is the whole Vioxx illicit affair in which there was years of delay after its connection to increased heart deaths before Merck finally “volunteered” to remove it from the marketplace.
Back to CoQ10, statins, Merck and the FDA.
Dr. Julian Whitaker, M.D., is a fairly well-known doctor who has at least attempted to integrate nutrition extensively with his practice of medicine. Sometimes I’m amazed at how much he doesn’t know about nutrition considering how much that he does know about nutrition.
Anyway, Dr. Whitaker spent considerable time and expense preparing and submitting a petition to the FDA regarding statins and CoQ10. He had quite a combination of lawyers, researchers and documentation compiled and submitted on the matter.
Dr. Whitaker was calling for one or more of several options regarding statin drug usage. One option was to require CoQ10 with all statin drug usage. Another was to at least recommend CoQ10 with all statin drug usage. Yet another was to place a black box warning on statin drugs about the interference of these drugs with production of CoQ10.