Heart Attack City - Are you heading there?

"It just can’t be true!" I said. "Why have they been telling us this? You can’t believe anyone anymore."

Here’s the story. For more than two decades we’ve had it drummed into our heads that high cholesterol causes heart attacks and of course the major cause of the high cholesterol has been the high saturated fat that most of us love so much.

Drug companies spend millions to convince us (and our doctors) that if we lower our cholesterol...with Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor or Vytorin of course, then we’ll live happily ever after.

If high cholesterol is the villain then why do half of all heart attacks happen to people with normal or low cholesterol—and two out of three occur without major artery blockages? You can have cholesterol below 200, LDLs under 100 and still have dangerous "silent" plaque deposits growing day-by-day inside artery walls.

Cholesterol and saturated fat have gotten a bad rap. New research is showing that the primary cause of heart disease is NOT too much "bad" cholesterol. There are several more dangerous risk factors for a heart attack. One of these is the smoldering inflammation that causes the cholesterol in our arteries to turn rancid and clog our arteries.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone says this in The Perricone Prescription. "I was always eager to challenge traditional thinking and I noticed that every time I looked at disease under a microscope—everything from arthritis to heart disease—inflammation was a component."

Perricone’s research focused on finding the causes of this inflammation and how to stop it. What he discovered might surprise you as it did me.

Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour (as a sweet-o-holic it pains me greatly to write this) are very inflammatory—and there is also strong evidence that they are the underlying cause of weight gain.

How can we tell if our bodies are full of inflammation? A simple blood test measures the amount of C-reactive protein (CRP) in our blood. More than a dozen clinical studies have shown that people with high levels of CRP are at greater risk of having a heart attack or a stroke.

How can we stop this inflammation? We need to cut way back on the sugar and other refined products and eat more cold-water fish, omega-3 oils and extra virgin olive oil. We also need a high quality natural vitamin with optimum amount of antioxidants. A one-a-day vitamin just doesn’t do the job.

Exercise also dramatically reduces the amount of inflammation in the blood. A study at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas compared the amount of CRP in people with varying levels of fitness. Those with the highest fitness levels had nearly a 300% lower risk of having a heart attack than those at the lowest fitness levels.

Do you want to live a vigorous, healthy and mentally sharp life? Most of us know what to do but just don’t do it. Now is the time to make those changes we have been putting off. A heart attack isn’t as much fun as you might think.