Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

High triglycerides can be related to you not quite reaching your ideal weight yet but can also be related to you eating too many grains, fruits (>4 cups daily or so) or overeating at your meals or snacking, etc. But, the level isn’t concerning since it is at the upper side of normal and your other numbers are so good. You may want to check it again in the future once you have lost even a little more weight and modified your routine, just to notice more improvement.

Having high triglyceride levels is almost always a marker for insulin resistance, which leads to endothelial dysfunction, inflammation, and vascular disease.

Yes, if the person gets healthy with Nutritarian eating and gets rid of their stroke risk factors. That means they have to achieve a normal weight, blood pressure, and lipid profile without medications. At that point, the risk of the blood thinning agents can be greater than the supposed benefits.

Yes, there would be less risk with lower blood pressure, however, frequently, after years and years of salt intake, the sympathetic tone in the central nervous system flips and you suddenly have high blood pressure. Then, people say, "that’s strange, I always had low blood pressure my entire life and now suddenly it is running high all the time." Then, cutting back or cutting out the salt is too late. In other words, just because you have low blood pressure now, does not mean you have permission to use excess salt.

In fact, this is how most people operate. They are told by the media and health professionals they only have to watch salt intake if they have high blood pressure. Then, later in life when they develop high blood pressure, they cut back on salt, but the blood pressure does not come down from all those years of self-abuse. So, now you have a correlation between low salt intake and higher risk of cardiovascular disease from all those individuals that had a high salt intake in their past but are not using much salt once they developed serious cardiovascular pathologies.

The most important thing you can do to save your life is to lose at least eight pounds each month for the next year. That means follow the program consistently day after day, without faltering. Whether it is a holiday, a birthday or a stressful day, just do it; follow a Nutritarian eating style no matter what (you can find guidelines on following a Nutritarian diet in my books The End of Diabetes or The End of Dieting.

Eat G-BOMBS almost every day, and make it simple to stay on track: make a few salad dressings you like and use a variety of raw vegetables in your salads, including red cabbage, collards or kale, onion, arugula, and tomatoes. Top your salad with homemade dressing from my recipes and (no salt added) beans. Then, make plenty of lightly steamed string beans, artichokes, broccoli, and kale. Make fresh, no-salt tomato sauce with fresh tomato, garlic, onion, and basil. Let it simmer on a low flame for hours and use it as a topping for cooked vegetables and a base for dressings. Mix water, sautéed onion, mushrooms, and spinach, and use it cold all week on salads. Use frozen berries. Also, visit the Vitamin Advisor page on my website for guidelines on appropriate supplements to take.

Don’t forget about exercise: when you wake up in the morning, have a full glass of water and get out of the house and walk in the fresh air for at least 30 minutes every day. You can change your whole life, and never have heart disease again, starting now. Many people have found this is easy, delicious, and fun, especially when they have the camaraderie and communication with others doing it too. Consider joining the Member Center at DrFuhrman.com for more information, motivation, and support.

Yes, I have seen some improvement in heart function in congestive heart failure patients, including dramatic improvement in ejection fraction over time. It depends on the degree of permanently dead heart muscle and if there is some "hibernating myocardium" or diseased tissue that is not totally destroyed. Let’s see if we can work together to do whatever possible to prolong your life. Since we are discussing such a serious condition, I would suggest you set up an appointment in my office.

It depends on the cause. If it’s caused by something such as hyperthyroidism, then reversal is possible, but, if it is related to coronary artery disease, hypertension or heart valve problems, the heart chambers enlarge and often scar, making complete reversal less likely. A Nutritarian diet with targeted supplementation reduces inflammation, lowers blood pressure, and reduces the propensity for arrhythmias and clot formation. All of this improves cardiac reserve and function over time.

Yes, you may be able to see considerable progress in your condition, however, there is no room for compromise. Stick strictly to natural plants (mostly greens), avoid too much spinach (sodium), not a speck of salt in anything, and do not drink more than a few sips of water a day. That should allow you to reduce your diuretics and meds somewhat quickly. You should weigh yourself every day. If you are losing or staying the same day to day, fine. If you ever put on any weight you may need some more diuretic. The risk here is to follow my advice and be over-medicated which could cause dehydration and excessive blood pressure lowering, leading to kidney damage, so you need to work with a doctor to decrease your diuretics as you begin this program. You may need to set up an appointment in my office for more guidance. Careful adherence to the program should continue to unload fat weight and excess water weight pretty rapidly if you stay strictly on the program. Remember, this can be a delicious way to improve your health.

I agree with you that a healthy diet with higher cholesterol is much healthier than a less healthy diet with lower cholesterol or medicated lower cholesterol. Plus, total cholesterol is not a good measurement of risk. One needs to consider the LDL particle number and size. The LDL particle size on a Nutritarian diet is much more favorable too, as are other markers demonstrating low inflammation. In conclusion, you are in phenomenal health, even if your LDL cholesterol does not drop below 100 as favored on those guidelines, whether it is recognized by your company’s standards or not.

Stopping the LDL and the increased stress can play a role, but most likely, this is caused by the recent weight loss and burning off more body fat (full of cholesterol). You must consider that you had plenty of stored saturated fats on your body that you autolysized, contributing to your continued utilization of those fats for cholesterol metabolism. In other words, you burned body fat for energy. Remember, you lost weight. The fat that was burned was animal fat (you are an animal). That fat was highly saturated and contributes to your high cholesterol production. Once that fat is off your body completely the picture will be different. In other words, once your weight has stabilized at this lower level, you will see an improvement in your cholesterol results, including a better LDL particle size and number.