Death from Heart attacks didn't begin to escalate until shortly after 1900. The 1950's and 1960's experienced the highest death rates from heart disease.
Cholesterol has been around for thousands of years. So what was it about those two decades that was so different, that may have been an attributing factor to the high rates of heart attacks?
If you think about it long enough, you can get the answer.
It is true that hydrogenated fats were invented shortly after 1900. And it is true that this additive was present in the 50's and 60's. But it was also equally present in the 70's and 80's when death rates from heart disease were dropping.
There is something else that was created shortly after 1900. Death rates from heart disease climbed in the 20's, 30's and 40's as its presence continued to rise. It was worst in the 50's and 60's. Then in the 1970's it gradually began to go away, and the death rates from heart attacks declined with it.
Actually, several major changes happened in 1970. But they are all related to one central thing. And the death rates from heart disease took a sudden turn downward. Do you know what these changes were?
Back in the thirties I read in the funny papers, of all places, that the increase in heart disease in the U.S. as stated by a British doctor was due to our over consumption of sugar.
Good thinking Big Al. There was a considerable increase in sugar consumption. And some people blame the increase in sugar consumption for heart disease. While it may be partly to blame, high sugar consumption continued into the 70's while death rates in heart disease began dropping. So what could it be?..
Keep thinking... someone will get the answer sooner or later.
Clue #1: It has proven to cause vascular damage.
Clue #2: It comes from multiple sources.
Clue#3: It was at its worst in the 50's and 60's, when death rates from heart attacks were at their highest.
I remember in 1971 cars started to get pollution control equipment, earlier in California. Shortly after, catalytic converters were mandatory, which meant lead was removed from gasoline.
Various things changed around that time, but one of the biggest changes was the regulation of pollutants, from industrial and consumer sources. Carbon Monoxide pollution had to be pretty bad prior to, and during that time.
Shortly after 1900 the automobile and the airplane were invented. The manufacturing of internal combustion engines skyrocketed, and along with it the refining and burning of fossil fuels rose dramatically.
By the 1950's and 1960's a new problem was created. Heavy smog from cars and industry blanketed our cities. Smog alerts were issued. People protested with gas masks.
The smoking rate also peaked in the US in 1968 at 42%. An all time high. Along with the high rates of smoking and excessive air pollution came the highest rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease.
Then things took an abrupt turn. Americans began ditching their cigarettes in the 1970's.
Automobiles started getting pollution controls. Industry also started cleaning up its act and the dirty smokestacks slowly started to disappear.
Along with it, death rates from heart disease declined, hand in hand, point for point.
The sudden drop in death rates was immediate.
Today, the death rate is less than half of what it was in 1968. Smoking cigarettes has dropped from 42% down to roughly 20%. Today cars burn 90% cleaner. Industry isn't perfect but its a heck of a lot cleaner than it was 40 years ago.
More recently in history, whenever a city creates no smoking rules in its public areas, The first year yields impressive drops in hospital admissions for heart attacks and chest pain related complaints.
We all know cigarettes are a major risk factor. Thats no secret or nothing new. But cigarettes are not the only source of emissions. Cars and industry emit toxic pollution which enters the lungs, and then the blood stream. Damage to the blood vessel walls from Carbone monoxide, sulfur dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and ozone occurs. And then we ask "what happened? my cholesterol was only 150! This should not have happened!"
Mother always said "you are what you eat" and she was right. We should all eat a healthy diet. But we are also what we breath.
The last ten years of research has yielded impressive data supporting the evidence that we inhale a heart attack. You won't hear much in the media about it. Instead, you will hear about the latest "study" funded by the drug industry showing how great their drug is in the battle against heart disease. There is no pill to protect us from air pollution. No economic incentive to address the issue. But cholesterol? Thats commercially viable. So thats whats crammed down our throats.
Breathing in pollutants can slow down our body cells methylation, which can cause damage to our cellular DNA and increase cancer and heart disease risk. In the case of heart disease,this 'slowing down' of cellular methylation can cause increased homocysteine levels and subsequent heart disease.
Natural treatments to restore methylation include vitamins B6,B12, Folic acid and TMG.
There are over sixty species of Nicotiana. Apart from a few which appear to be native to Australia,7 most are indigenous to America.8Nicotiana tabacum, the plant now raised for commercial tobacco production, is probably of South American origin and Nicotiana rustica, the other major species which was carried around the world, came from North America. In 1492, Columbus found Native Americans growing and using tobacco, sometimes for its pleasurable effects but often for treatment of various ills. Some of his sailors observed natives of Cuba and Haiti smoking the leaves,9 and subsequent European explorers and travellers corroborated both these observations. The name tobacco was originally applied to the plant in error. In fact this term referred to the cane pipe, called a tabaco or tavaco, with two branches for the nostrils, which was used by the Native Americans for sniffing tobacco smoke.10 The tobacco itself was variously called petum, betum, cogioba, cohobba, quauhyetl, picietl or yietl, and these names sometimes appeared later in herbals or pharmacopoeias.10,11
As early as 15 October 1492 Columbus noted that dried leaves were carried by a man in a canoe near the island of Ferdinandina because they were esteemed for their healthfulness.9 In the same year, two members of his crew observed people in what is now Cuba carrying a burning torch that contained tobacco, the purpose of which (it later emerged) was to disinfect and help ward off disease and fatigue.6 Snuffing of cogioba through the tabaco caused loss of consciousness, Columbus observed, and it is tempting to speculate that this property was used as an anaesthetic for the trepanning operations which were frequent at that time.
Tobacco, probably mixed with lime or chalk, appears to have been used in these Native American populations as a toothpaste to whiten the teeth, as observed by Nino and Guerra in 1500 and by Vespucci at about the same time in Venezuela.11 This practice continues today in India, where powdered tobacco, or masheri, is rubbed on the teeth for this purpose and tobacco toothpaste is marketed commercially.12
It was perhaps in 1500 that the notion of tobacco as a panacea became prevalent. In that year, a Portuguese explorer, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, in Brazil, reported the use of the herb betum for treating ulcerated abscesses, fistulas, sores, inveterate polyps and many other ailments, and said it was called the holy herb because of its powerful virtue in desperate cases.6 Also, reports on medicinal use of tobacco by Native American populations continued to emerge in quantity. For example, in 1529, a Spanish missionary priest, Bernadino de Sahagun, collected information from four Mexican physicians about use of tobacco for medicinal purposes. He recorded that breathing the odour of fresh green leaves of the plant relieved persistent headaches. For colds and catarrh, green or powdered leaves should be rubbed around inside the mouth. Diseases of glands in the neck could be cured by cutting out the root of the lesion and placing on it crushed tobacco plant hot and mixed with salt, on the same spot.9
Later reports of tobacco use by the Native Americans might be less reliable than those from contemporary sources, but in 1934 Fernando Ocaranza summed up the medicinal uses of tobacco in Mexico before 1519 as antidiarrhoeal, narcotic and emollient; he said that tobacco leaves were applied for the relief of pain, used in powdered form for the relief of catarrh and applied locally to heal wounds and burns.6 There are many other reports of medicinal uses of tobacco by precolumbian Native Americans, but the foregoing list is sufficient to indicate the wide usage6,9,13 and to explain why travellers wished to take the plants and seeds back to Europe.
I have to wonder if its actually the tobacco that causes the medical problems or the garbage that the cigarrette companies are putting into the tobacco to make a so called better cigarette.
__________________ God is and all is well
~John Greenleaf Whittier~
Arrowwind, I would agree there is no question that stress contributes to poor health. In fact, there is a doctor who blames stress for cardiovascular disease. High stress Type A personalities do suffer more heart attacks, so they say, and that doesn't surprise me one bit.
The big question here is WHAT caused the incidence to skyrocket after 1900, and WHY heart disease was such a problem in the 50's and 60's, and WHAT caused it to start declining in the 70's and thereafter.
I appreciate everyone brainstorming here. The cool thing is we have a 100 year timeline to look at and make observations.
One observation I noted that really caught my attention was the rise and fall of oil production in the United states parallels the rise and fall of heart disease. When ya stumble upon data like that, it grabs your attention.
Heart attacks: Million Dollar Question
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