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Dr. Dwight Lundell MD is a cardiologist who beat the drum of a low-fat diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs to prevent heart disease for over 25 years.
He has performed over 5,000 open heart surgeries and trained with prominent “opinion maker” physicians who considered any deviation from the recommended therapy of severely limited fat intake and cholesterol-lowering meds to reduce heart disease risk complete heresy that could possibly result in a malpractice lawsuit.
Dr. Lundell now admits that this long-held notion is wrong. Not only is it completely and utterly wrong, but it is also scientifically and morally indefensible.
Following the recommended mainstream diet low in saturated fat and high in grain-based carbohydrates has created an epidemic of obesity and diabetes “the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences”.
By following the recommended low-fat diet, Dr. Lundell says that people are unknowingly causing “repeated injury to their blood vessels”. This repeated injury, day in and day out, is what is causing rampant inflammation across all population groups which has resulted in the epidemic of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Inflammation the True Cause of Heart Disease
Dr. Lundell explains that a slow paradigm shift that identifies inflammation as the true cause of heart disease is occurring.
He goes on to say that the conventional low-fat diet which warns against saturated fats and promotes polyunsaturated vegetable oils as a healthier alternative is the biggest culprit in causing chronic and deadly inflammation.
Unless inflammation is present in the body, cholesterol is unable to accumulate in plaques in the blood vessels causing heart attacks and strokes. In an inflammation free body, cholesterol moves freely and causes no health problems.
In other words, it is inflammation caused by a low-fat diet that causes cholesterol to become trapped in the body. Cholesterol-lowering drugs have been a dismal failure to eliminate or reduce the problem as 25% of the population now takes statin drugs and yet more Americans than ever will die of heart disease this year.
In short, blaming cholesterol for heart disease is like blaming fire fighters for fires.
How One Innocent Donut Causes Deadly Inflammation
Dr. Lundell explains the deadly 3 step process of how eating a simple donut or sweet roll causes a cascade of inflammation in the body:
Step One: Refined Grains and Sugar Consumption Spike Blood Sugar
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
Step Two: Omega 6 Vegetable Oils Produce Cytokines
It’s not just the refined grains and sugar in the donut causing spiking and crashing blood sugar that is the problem. Dr. Lundell continues by describing additional inflammation caused by the rancid omega 6, polyunsaturated oils (usually soybean) in the donut:
That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Step Three: Excess Weight Pours Out Pro-Inflammatory Chemicals
The final nail in the coffin for producing exorbitant levels of inflammation when that innocent-looking donut is consumed is the excess weight that most Americans are carrying:
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
Ditch the Lowfat Diet and Get Off the Inflammation Freight Train
Dr. Lundell counsels that mainstream medicine has made “a terrible mistake” by advising people to avoid saturated fats in favor of grain-based foods containing vegetable oils. This flawed and dangerous recommendation is a direct contributor to the epidemic of inflammation that is plaguing the Western world in the form of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and numerous other ailments.
Dr. Lundell advises to leave manufactured vegetable oils and other processed foods behind and return to the whole, unprocessed diet of our ancestors.
As for the ideal fats in the diet, Dr. Lundell recommends olive oil and grass-fed butter. He says the science that saturated fat causes heart disease is non-existent and the science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol as very weak.
Given that inflammation and not cholesterol cause heart disease, any concern about saturated fats in the diet is nothing short of “absurd” according to Dr. Lundell.
Sources and More Information
Heart Surgeon Speaks Out on What Really Causes Heart Disease
The High Risks of Low Cholesterol
Cholesterol Myths to Wise Up About
What Oxidizes the Cholesterol in Eggs?
The 9 Irrefutable Benefits of Cholesterol in the Diet
I’m not talking about being vilified on the internet. I’m sure even Gandhi has been vilified on the internet at some point (probably by FoxNews 😉 ).
The article below talks about serious charges of patient negligence that resulted in the revocation of Dr. Lundell’s license. Pretty serious stuff.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2008/10/16/20081016gr-baddoctor1017.html
@Kenny one thing to realize is that any prominent doctor who takes a stand against the lipid hypothesis or other conventional diet dogma gets crucified personally. Dr. Blaylock (neurosurgeon) has loads of negative stuff on the internet about him as he has courageously spoken out against aspartame, msg etc and what these excitotoxins do to us. Dr. Wakefield who discovered the connection between autism and the gut has suffered a similar fate although he may yet be exonerated of all the false accusations he has suffered (his colleague was recently cleared of everything in court). I would take anything you read negative about Dr. Lundell with a grain of salt for this reason given that he is taking such a courageous stand against Big Pharma and the edible oil industry which have billions at stake in this argument.
Dr. Lundell was investigated and had his licensed pulled way before he came out publicly about his changed philosophy. So I wouldn’t doubt that some of what he is being scrutinized for could have stemmed from reality vs a witch hunt. Not everything is a conspiracy. I’m happy he is coming out with his rational, but it certainly doesn’t help his case when he does have a checkered past.
I too dread going to the doctor’s office and arguing about statins which I refuse to take. I no longer let them check my cholesterol. I told them I don’t care how high it is and I won’t go on a low fat diet. I am considered noncompliant and a pain in their arses. I finally got two doctors (one I haven’t seen in 5 years) just so I could tell one that the other was taking care of whatever concern arrises. I have been traditional for 2 years and I won’t go back to any processed crap for any reason!! BUTTER!!! BACON!!! CREAM!! Love it!
I DID IT! I took my non capsule FCLO this morning. It was no where near as bad as I thought it was going to. I struggled more with HVBO, it is a texture thing. A question about soft boiled eggs if I may. When I break it open I have noticed a clear liquid surrounding the yolk that comes out. Is this uncooked egg white? This is for a baby and I am trying to make certain that no egg whites are in there. Thank you and LOVE butter.
You might need to cook it a bit longer. Have you seen my video on this (first foods for baby .. click on video classes in the top part of the blog header). There wasn’t any clear liquid that came out after I finished soft boiling the egg.
Hi Sarah, I watched the video. In it there is a little white material left on the right side of the egg yolk right before you break it apart. Is that different white than egg white or were you just trying to get most of it off for the video? I have had some white things on the yolk that appear different than the egg white. When I have tried to remove this the egg yolk breaks. Thank you.
Yes that is the lining of the egg. It’s fine if the egg yolk breaks. Just remove that bit of lining.
As a heart patient, thank you for taking up the charge on this again. I will keep repeating it until I am blue in the face but people still fight me including my doctors. Because my cholesterol is high, they put me on statins which I kept taking until now. No more. I’m fighting the inflammation fight now. Trying to find all I can about anti inflammation. Please everyone keep spreading the word especially to your docs. I may be moving out of mainstream medical care for the first time in 54 years. Not doing anything but make me sicker. I am grateful to all of you.
If your doctor is still spouting the lowfat/cholesterol nonsense, get a new doctor as it shows that he/she is far behind in keeping up with current research and is behind the times.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!!!! I saw this doctor’s interview and I almost fell over I was so excited. I called my children down to watch with me which they did and just rolled their eyes knowing that their mother was excited over yet another triumph for traditional foods. I said to them, “I KNOW THIS DOCTOR WILL BE BLOGGED ABOUT ON THE SITES THAT I VISIT”. I was so so excited. See, finally the world in making sense!
I am concerned for Dr. Lundell. I hope the Big Pharma dogs don’t come after him and destroy his career like what has happened to others in the past who tried to speak up about the cholesterol/lowfat nonsense.
Oh but they will… Unless they can find a way to financially benefit from this, you know they are out to get him.
After my dad’s diagnosis of atherosclerosis in the seventies, I watched as our family’s diet drastically changed. No more butter. Margarine in the squeezable bottle replaced our delicious butter. No more fat allowed on our homegrown meats. The amount of eggs, from our own chickens, that we consumed was reduced drastically. Dad’s health never got better, and he continued to have surgery after surgery related to his atherosclerosis. In the nineties, dad had a quadruple bypass. Dad is still with us, but his quality of life is very low. I will forgive Dr. Lundell, but one man’s mistake can be very far-reaching.
Yes, it is good that Dr. Lundell has admitted his error but no doubt he killed many patients in the 25 years of believing in the lipid hypothesis which was disproven decades ago by an intrepid few (one of them being Mary Enig, Board Member Emeritus of the Weston A. Price Foundation) but few would listen back then.
That is a pretty strong statement…as a cardiac SURGEON(not a cardiologist) I believe he saved quite a few lives not ended them. I assume you do not work in the healthcare industry because if you did you would know that any recommendation made by a doctor must be in line with current best practice guidelines as put forth by organization like the American Heart Association, etc. unless otherwise contraindicated. So perhaps we should give MD’s a break as this information about the dangers of the low fat was not understood by mainstream medicine until recently and is still widely unknown by most. Dr. Lundell is a pioneer to admit the medical community is wrong.
Great post Sarah, I posted this article a week or so ago on my FB page, and I’m going to share your post today on my FB page too. I am so glad this information is coming out, and yes, it’s great that the cardiologist admitted he was wrong. He’s so brave to spread this information and I hope more people will wake up and listen. 🙂
“There’s nothing like butter” ~ Julia Child.
I remember one of Julia Child’s potato recipes and lard was one of the ingredients and in the cooking instructions, she stated, “you must use lard and if you are not going to use lard, then don’t even bother making this”! LOL! ?
Talk about a smack upside the back of my head.. I haven’t had a donut in years, and my husband had a little health scare this weekend and I ate one.. then there was a birthday party with a few more on Monday. So your use of that particular pastry is particularly personal to me, and thanks for that.. even as I was eating them at the party, I knew I needed to stop (I even threw half of one away)
Thank you for this..
Connie, donuts are my absolute favorite junk food. I spent many a midnight hour at a Krispy Kreme during my college years with my friends wolfing a few down after long hours of studying. I don’t eat them anymore either but boy do they taste good. Knowing exactly what they do to our insides (sandpaper to our blood vessels? Yikes!) makes it a much easier decision to just say no when a big box is beckoning at a party or whatnot.