New Dr. Rath Interview: Cutting The Death Rate From Heart Attacks In Half – In Just One Generation

Cardiovascular disease – namely heart attacks and strokes – is still the number one cause of death in the world. In many countries, every third man and woman is dying prematurely from this disease, almost 18 million people each year worldwide. This number is comparable to the depopulation of some of the largest metropoles in the world – each year; cities of the size of Mumbai, Moscow, Cairo, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Teheran, Lagos, Paris, London, and others.

It is an intriguing fact that while almost 18 million people worldwide are dying each year of cardiovascular disease, this disease is essentially unknown in the entire animal world. Atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries that causes heart attacks and strokes, can be experimentally induced in animals, but an epidemic of cardiovascular disease does not occur in other species – it remains a hallmark of the human race. Our research over the past decades has focused on shedding light on this phenomenon and provide insight in order to significantly reduce the death rates from heart attacks and strokes with the goal of saving millions of lives. Already 30 years ago, I published several scientific publications together with Dr. Linus Pauling that laid the groundwork for an entirely new understanding of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Pauling was one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20^th century. His discoveries included principles of immunology, the basic structures of proteins, as well as the first identified genetic disease, sickle cell anemia. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954, and in 1962 he received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his humanitarian commitment to helping bring about the first nuclear test ban treaty. In his later years, he became interested in the role of vitamins and other micronutrients in the fight against cancer, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other diseases.

In 1989, Dr. Pauling invited me, based on my earlier work, to join him at his institute in California to start a research direction on the role of micronutrients in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Shortly before his death in 1994, Dr. Pauling asked me to continue his life work in the field of vitamin research.

We were able to show for the first time that the phenomenon that animals do not suffer from an epidemic of cardiovascular disease is closely related to their ability to produce rather high amounts of vitamin C in their bodies. In contrast, this ability was lost by a genetic mutation in the ancestor of man. All human beings today are entirely dependent on getting an optimum amount of this vitamin in their daily diet.

As shown in this graph, vitamin C is required for the production of collagen and other reinforcement molecules that provide basic stability to our entire body, including the walls of our arteries. The left column answers the question why animals do not get heart attacks and strokes: The internal production of vitamin C in optimum amounts protects the stability of their blood vessel walls – so no blood vessel hardening or clogging occurs. In contrast, the column on the right-hand side shows what happens in the human body under extreme conditions such as scurvy. Centuries ago, seafaring nations tried to circumnavigate the globe in ship voyages lasting a year or more. After a few months, the deadly consequences of complete vitamin C depletion in the human body could be observed in the sailors aboard – they began to die. Unable to produce vitamin C in their bodies and the fresh vegetables aboard rotten after only a few weeks, the production of reinforcing collagen in their bodies ceased, their blood vessels became leaky, and most of the sailors died from unstoppable blood loss. Finally, the column in the middle shows what happens in the bodies of hundreds of millions of people in the world today: Most of them get some vitamins in their diet – so open scurvy is rare today. But it’s not enough – and almost all people get too little micronutrients in their diet in the form of fruits and vegetables and, consequently, suffer from what is called chronic vitamin deficiency. Thus, over years and decades of too little micronutrient intake, our blood vessels become weak and develop millions of tiny cracks and lesions. Our body reacts to these microscopic ‘wounds’ along the inside of our blood vessel pipeline and tries to repair them, just like it tries to repair a wound in the skin inflicted by a knife cut. If this repair process inside the blood vessel wall continues over years and decades, it eventually overshoots, and the dangerous deposits develop inside the blood vessel walls that we call ‘atherosclerotic deposits.’ These deposits, or plaques, eventually clog our arteries and cause heart attacks, strokes, and other forms of cardiovascular disease.

This new understanding about the nature of cardiovascular disease provided important answers to very basic questions that could not previously be answered by doctors anywhere in the world:

1. Why do people suffer from infarctions of the heart (heart attacks) but not of the nose, ears, or knees? Answer: The heart is the only organ of the human body that is constantly active, day and night. As the pump of our blood circulation, the heart muscle contracts with every heartbeat – about 100,000 times each day. With every heartbeat, the coronary arteries on the surface of the heart are literally squeezed flat. The blood vessel pipeline in a human body is very long – with all the arteries, veins, and small capillaries, it measures about 60,000 miles or about 100,000 kilometers. So, we have to explain why this extremely long pipeline clogs primarily in the short segment of the coronary arteries – about the 300 millionth part of the entire blood vessel pipeline. The answer to why millions of people suffer heart attacks from the clogging of the short coronary arteries can be logically explained. The mechanical stress on the walls of the coronary arteries from the continuously pumping heart exposes the underlying structural weakness of the blood vessel walls caused by vitamin deficiencies. Therefore, it is right here, in the coronary arteries of the heart, that the repair process begins, ultimately leading to the development of dangerous atherosclerotic plaques.

The next open question was: Why do people develop atherosclerotic deposits in the arteries but not in the veins?

Again, our research provided the answer: The relatively high pressure in the arterial part of our blood vessel system exposes the underlying structural weakness of the blood vessel wall first in the arterial system. In the venous system, by contrast, the blood pressure is extremely low, explaining why ‘veno-sclerosis’ – the hardening of veins – is essentially unknown. The same understanding, of course, now also provides an explanation for the increased risk for heart attacks, and in particular strokes, associated with high blood pressure or hypertension. The increased blood pressure overstretches the blood vessel walls, thereby further exposing their underlying structural weakness.

And finally: Why do people get heart attacks, but animals don’t? As mentioned before, most animals produce vitamin C in their bodies in amounts to provide optimum stability and elasticity to their blood vessel walls. Humans, unable to produce vitamin C in their bodies and frequently getting insufficient micronutrients in their diet, generally suffer from weakened blood vessel walls and are prone to the development of cardiovascular diseases.

This new concept also provided entirely new definitions for the atherosclerotic deposits as well as for cardiovascular disease itself:  Atherosclerotic deposits are an overshooting repair mechanism of the human body trying to repair the weakened blood vessel walls. This implies that these deposits are no longer needed when the structural integrity of the blood vessel wall is fully restored by an optimum supply of micronutrients. This logical explanation demands a new definition of cardiovascular disease itself.  Cardiovascular disease can no longer be seen as a fatalistic process randomly affecting millions of people; it is rather a regulatory repair process that has overshot and led to the formation of deposits. Most significantly then, this disease is in principle reversible – at least in its early stages.

In a clinical study, we have proven that these discoveries are not just theory. In patients with beginning coronary atherosclerosis, we measured their coronary calcification by means of computed tomography before and during a one-year follow-up with optimum micronutrient supplementation. This measure was able to hold the progression of calcium deposits in the coronary arteries. In some cases, the coronary deposits were even reversed or disappeared completely – as seen in this patient. This was the first clinical documentation of the natural reversal of human coronary artery disease. The publication of this study can be found on the website of our foundation.

https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2017/10/solution-to-the-puzzle-of-human-evolution/

https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2017/10/unified-theory-of-human-cardiovascular-disease-leading-the-way-to-the-abolition-of-this-disease-as-a-cause-for-human-mortality/

The original scientific publications I wrote together with Linus Pauling are titled ‘Solution to the puzzle of human cardiovascular disease’ and ‘A unified theory of human cardiovascular disease.’ Both of these landmark scientific articles can be accessed via the website of our foundation.

For a detailed description of this medical advance for the general public, I refer to my book entitled ‘Why animals don’t get heart attacks – but people do’, which is available in more than 20 languages online and for free. So no one can say “I did not know.”

The cholesterol theory postulates that elevated levels of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream of a person damage the walls of the blood vessels and, thereby, induce the process of atherosclerosis. But there is something fundamentally wrong with this model: cholesterol levels are the same throughout the entire bloodstream, the arteries, veins, and the small capillaries that are many kilometers long in a person. If cholesterol would damage the blood vessel walls, this would happen first in the tiny capillaries and would inevitably lead to infarctions in our fingers, toes, and other remote parts of our body, causing what is called peripheral vascular disease. This is not the case.

Elevated levels of cholesterol can never explain the very localized occurrence of infarctions in the rather short coronary arteries and the primary manifestation of cardiovascular disease in the form of heart attacks. Any plumber is familiar with this phenomenon: If the water quality in the pipeline of any city is poor, for example, by too high calcium concentrations, the water pipeline clogs along its entire length. In the same way, if cholesterol would damage the walls of the blood vessel pipeline, it would clog along its entire length of many kilometers – not just in the relatively short portion of arteries supplying blood to the heart or the brain. This fact logically excludes cholesterol as a primary cause of cardiovascular disease.

But there is an even more convincing argument for discarding high cholesterol levels in the bloodstream as a primary risk factor. Bears and other hibernators, animals that sleep during the winter months, enter hibernation with blood cholesterol levels of 600 to 800 mg/dl (15-20 mmol/L). If cholesterol were toxic to the blood vessel walls, these animals would have become extinct from epidemics of heart attacks and strokes long ago. The reason why they are still around, despite seasonally very high cholesterol levels, can now also be explained. These animals produce optimum amounts of vitamin C in their bodies and get additional micronutrients in their diet, so their blood vessel walls are optimally protected during the hibernation months, and elevated cholesterol levels cannot affect them. To be clear, trying to keep cholesterol and other fats at a reasonable level is a good health advice. However, any recommendation to artificially lower cholesterol levels below 240 or even 200 mg/dl needs to be revised in light of this new understanding. Such recommendations would arbitrarily define hundreds of millions of people in the world as ‘patients,’ without any scientific and logical basis. The primary beneficiaries of such unwarranted recommendations would be the multi-billion pharmaceutical investment business with cholesterol-lowering drugs.

One of the first letters of recognition came from the head of the Cardiac Unit of Harvard University at that time, Dr. Valentin Fuster. On July 6, 1992, he wrote to me: ‘I just read your article written with Dr. Pauling on the role of ascorbic acid deficiency in vascular diseases. It is an excellent article that points out the many roles of vitamin C in the regulation of vascular processes. You may be interested to know that our own group is getting involved in this line of research. You may be quite correct in your predictions of the importance of ascorbate. Thank you very much again for your confidence in writing to me. I wish you the best.  Valentin Fuster, M.D. Ph.D.’ Unfortunately, the majority of cardiologists I met in the following years were less enthusiastic. Of course, there was a reason for this reluctance. Many of these doctors and researchers were financially or dogmatically dependent on the cholesterol dogma and have remained reluctant to accept the compelling logic and growing scientific evidence. It is only during the last decade that more and more scientists and medical doctors from around the world are publicly advocating the health benefits of vitamins and micronutrients in the fight against cardiovascular disease and other health problems.

Early in 1992, it was clear to Dr. Pauling and me that the new scientific concept of cardiovascular disease was so compelling that – beyond publishing it in a scientific journal – we had to actively promote these discoveries in order to save human lives. We contacted the executives of the world’s largest producer of vitamin C, Hoffman LaRoche, in Basel and informed them about this scientific breakthrough. I even was invited to give a scientific presentation at the company headquarters. They acknowledged our research but declined any official collaboration with the argument that they had cholesterol-lowering drugs in the company’s pipeline. In early April 1992, Dr. Pauling gave a lecture at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto to a large audience of scientists, health advocates, and politicians, including the representative of the Queen of England. Significantly, the government of Canada should come to play an important role in drawing world attention to the problem of micronutrient deficiency.

We had worked out a ‘Call for an International Effort to Abolish Heart Disease,’ which we presented at the Toronto convention. This historical document is preserved in Dr. Pauling’s own handwriting and ends with the following words: ‘The goal of eliminating heart disease as the major cause of death and disability is now in sight!’ It was signed in both our names. Based on this new understanding of the nature of cardiovascular disease we had just published, this call was an international appeal to the scientific community, political decision-makers, and the people of the world to embark on a vigorous effort to make the breathtaking perspective we had outlined a reality – that is, ending the cardiovascular disease.

In order to bring the message about this scientific perspective of lastly eliminating cardiovascular disease to the attention of the world, we even organized a press conference at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco on July 2, 1992. A video clip from this historic press meeting has survived and is accessible on the website of our foundation. This ‘Call for an International Effort to Abolish Heart Disease’ should become the last public appeal of the two-time Noble Laureate, who passed away merely two years later. You can download the complete text of this historic Call from the website of our foundation.

At the same time, in April 1992, Time Magazine, one of the journals with the greatest impact on public opinion in the US, published the title story ‘The Real Power of Vitamins – New Research Shows They May Help Fight Cancer, Heart Disease and the Ravages of Aging.’ This lead story of Time Magazine signified a turnaround in the anti-vitamin position upheld for almost a century by mainstream media influenced by pharmaceutical interests. But the US media were not the only ones reacting to this scientific breakthrough. Here are some reactions by international organizations – starting the very same year, 1992: In spring of this year, the government of Canada, together with few other organizations, launched an international project called ‘Micronutrient Initiative.’ It was later joined by UNICEF and other international organizations and became known as the ‘Vitamin Mineral Deficiency’ Initiative. In December 1992, the World Health Organization and the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) held an International conference in Rome and issued a comprehensive ‘World Declaration and Plan of Action for Nutrition.’ In 2009, the WHO published a ‘United Call to Action on Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies’. In 2015, the US National Institutes of Health published a document entitled ‘The epidemiology of global micronutrient deficiencies’ recommending that ‘multidimensional, coordinated, and sustainable strategies are needed to combat micronutrient deficiencies’. You can get full access to these documents, too, via the website of our foundation. Over the past three decades, similar national programs to combat micronutrient deficiencies were announced in many countries. It is, however, noteworthy that none of such international programs to combat the global epidemic of vitamin deficiencies had been launched prior to the publication of our scientific discoveries on the role of micronutrients in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

In the early 1990s, the desire of tens of millions of people in the US to take full advantage of this new health information on the natural prevention of cardiovascular disease reached the level of the US government. Little more than two years after the publication of these breakthrough discoveries, US Congress unanimously passed the ‘Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)’ of August 1994. This federal act lifted a century-old legal ban that largely blocked the dissemination of the health benefits of vitamins and other natural therapies. This ban had been imposed by the political stakeholders of the pharmaceutical investment business to protect its monopoly on human health with patented drugs. This US legislation, also known as the ‘Vitamin Freedom Act,’ allowed for the first time scientifically proven health information in relation to vitamins and other natural therapies to be freely published. The decades-long censorship on the health benefits of vitamins and other natural therapies had been broken. Significantly, this new legislation triggered an explosion of micronutrient research at universities and research centers around the world over the following decades.

In 2004, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, joined by other international organizations, took their global ‘Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency Initiative (VMD)’ to a new level. They drew attention to the fact that one-third of the world’s population – at that time more than two billion people – suffered from chronic micronutrient and mineral deficiencies. These deficiencies, the VMD policy paper notes, sentenced hundreds of millions of children, especially in developing countries, to grow up with preventable physical and mental deficiencies, many of which would cripple them for life.

This call was heard across the globe. On September 3, 2004, the Chinese government issued an official response to this initiative entitled ‘Vitamins and minerals for children fortifies economic development in China,’ predicting that “The protection of 250 million people in China from ‘hidden hunger’ could boost the Chinese gross domestic product by USD 86 billion over 10 years.” The joint press statement by the Chinese Ministry of Health and UNICEF further read: ‘China’s massive drive to reduce the damage done by vitamin and mineral deficiency, particularly to children, is paying rich dividends for its economy. Food fortification is an internationally recognized means of bringing vitamins and minerals to the majority of a country’s population. In poor communities, providing supplements via low-cost vitamin and mineral capsules, syrups or tablets can be a critical tool to bring down child mortality and improve quality of life for millions.’ In retrospect, these public health strategies announced in 2004 sound like a prophecy about China’s economic development over the forthcoming decades.

The global call to fight the so-called ‘hidden hunger’ – that is, vitamin and mineral deficiency – was also heard in the developing world. A policy paper developed specifically for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa was entitled ‘A Partnership Drive to End Hidden Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa.’ The title page emphasized: “Vitamin and mineral deficiency affect a third of Sub-Saharan Africa’s people—affecting minds, bodies, energies, and the economic prospects of nations.” Unfortunately, in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions, these well-founded health initiatives were soon abandoned due to a lack of funding and other constraints. In many cases, the logical approach to providing basic health to millions of people through effective, safe, and affordable vitamins and micronutrients was sacrificed under the growing influence of the multi-billion-dollar interests of the pharmaceutical export business with patented drugs.

To answer this question, I would like to share with you three graphs that express the developments over the past decades better than many words. Graph A documents the explosion of scientific research publications about the health benefits of vitamins in cardiovascular diseases since our publication of the new understanding of cardiovascular disease in the early 1990s. Graph B shows the more than 20-fold increase in global vitamin C production over the past three decades, a precondition to meet the increased need to cope with widespread vitamin deficiencies. The third graph – C – documents the global decline of heart attacks and strokes exactly parallel to the increasing scientific information and increased global production of essential vitamins. While these statistical data are already impressive, only a closer look at the actual research and clinical studies on the health benefits of micronutrients can adequately reflect the significance of this development for the health and lives of hundreds of millions of people.

We documented some of the most important research and clinical publications in the prevention of heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, arrhythmia, heart failure, diabetes, and other diseases in an online library on the website of our Foundation. We did this in order to assist people around the world in informing themselves about the options of science-based natural health.

But couldn’t there have been other factors involved too, for example the increased use of cholesterol-lowering drugs?

Of course, there were other factors involved, too, in reducing the frequency of cardiovascular disease. The implementation of public health programs, nutritional consultation of people at risk, and other measures have been important contributors to the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease. The role of cholesterol-lowering drugs, however, has become increasingly controversial for several reasons: firstly, as mentioned before, high cholesterol levels can no longer be considered the primary cause of cardiovascular disease. Secondly, the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis has been feeding the pharmaceutical investment business with global revenues for cholesterol-lowering statin drugs alone of several hundred billion dollars. Thirdly, and most importantly, during the past decade, the devastating side effects of long-term use of statins have become public knowledge.

These statin drugs, while promising to reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease, have been shown in recent clinical studies to actually accelerate the calcification of the coronary arteries of the heart by up to 4 times – compared to patients who did not take statins. Large doctors associations, for example, those working with dialysis patients, are publicly debating to ban statins from their practices.

Significantly, even these serious side effects of statin drugs, the accelerated calcification of blood vessel walls, can be inhibited by vitamin C. The research team of our institute under its director, Dr. Aleksandra Niedzwiecki, documented that this vitamin is able to prevent the dangerous side effects of statin drugs and reduce the over-production of calcium by the cells of the artery walls. Thus, doctors associations and health authorities in many countries are currently re-evaluating the benefits and risks of recommending statins to a wider public.

In Western Europe, in the US, as well as in certain other pharmaceutical export countries, the influence of this investment business on medical education and the medical profession in general has been devastating. The closeness to the pharmaceutical investment business is an official criterion for the appointment of department heads in medical schools. The education of young doctors at medical schools of these countries is synchronized with the multibillion-dollar export interests of patented pharmaceutical drugs. Consequently, generations of young doctors leave their medical schools as a ‘salesforce’ for patented pharmaceutical drugs, trained in the interest of a global investment business. Fortunately, there is now an increasing number of young doctors who grow up with the new scientific facts and are open to embracing science-based natural health approaches as part of a comprehensive new health approach. But, considering the fact that billions of people today are still dying from heart attacks and strokes, there exists an obvious necessity to remove all unnecessary obstacles and embrace new, life-saving health concepts. This is why we addressed our ‘International Call’ to end heart disease not only to scientists but also to political decision-makers and, above all, to the public at large. After all, this new understanding of the nature of cardiovascular disease is so logical and clear that it can be understood by anyone anywhere in the world.

In 1978, the World Health Organization held an international conference on primary health care and issued the ‘Declaration of Alma Ata.‘ This declaration emphasizes the fact that comprehensive health on a global scale can only be obtained by a focus on the prevention of diseases and by the involvement of the general population as architects of preventive healthcare. Unfortunately, this important global public health program has remained largely a declaration. In the meantime, the once independent World Health Organization has been turned into a private-public partnership with the pharmaceutical investment industry having an undue influence on current global health policies.

Public health education about the comprehensive health benefits of vitamins and other plant-derived micronutrients is the basis for effective preventive healthcare anywhere. Strategic healthcare policies towards prevention should include basic information about the health benefits of fruits, vegetables, and their micronutrient ingredients, to be provided at all levels of education from kindergarten throughout the entire school system to general public health education programs. Fruit and vegetable gardens should be initiated at schools, health institutions, senior homes, and throughout the communities in order to provide theoretical knowledge and practical experience about the benefits of nutritional health and the power of agricultural-based medicine.

We have launched such a primary health program in one of the poorest countries in the world, Uganda. 10-year-old schoolchildren are being taught in the classroom about the benefits of certain fruits to protect their hearts and their entire body; the students then apply this knowledge by pledging these fruits and vegetables in an adjacent school garden; a ‘student health parliament’ takes the decisions on organizing and maintaining this garden; and, finally, the students take their experiences from the school back to the communities where they come from to launch a multitude of ‘community garden’ projects. This ‘Movement of Life‘ project has positively influenced the health and lives of over 100,000 people in a relatively short time. If a self-sustaining project like this works in some of the poorest countries of the world, it will work anywhere.

During recent decades, medical research into the comprehensive health benefits of vitamins and other micronutrients has become one of the fastest-growing fields of medicine in general. It is visible today that before long, the knowledge about the effective and safe health benefits of non-patentable micronutrients will replace entire groups of patented pharmaceutical drugs that are merely covering symptoms but do not treat the underlying disease. Everyone should understand: The multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical export business – operating primarily out of Germany, some other EU countries and the US – is not a health industry but an investment business. This entire business model has been built over the past century on the patenting of synthetic drugs because the patent royalties represent the return on investment for this industry. Now, advances in the field of non-patentable, science-based natural health are threatening to replace entire categories of such patented drugs, each of which caters to global markets worth billions of dollars.

Here you see the explosion of scientific publications for two areas of utmost relevance for global human health. On the left, you see the increase of scientific publications in connection with the health benefits of vitamins in cardiovascular disease. On the right, you see the increase in publications on the health benefits of vitamins in the global fight against infectious diseases. The pending demise of the pharmaceutical investment business – largely triggered by the breathtaking advances in the field of science-based natural health – is also the greatest threat to world peace today. The military provocations currently occurring around the world are being primarily led by a handful of countries representing more than 80% of the global pharmaceutical export business. Their contingency plan: Continue the unscrupulous investment business with patented drugs under global martial law. The unscrupulous ‘game plan’ of these special interests to provoke regional or global conflicts must be exposed. This is why I publicly warned about the pending dangers of a major war. Exposing the financial interests behind these war plans is the only way to make them impossible – because the entire world would point with their fingers at the perpetrators.

The people and the political decision-makers of the world need to understand the global transition in health care – from managing diseases with patented drugs to their prevention and possible elimination based on effective, nonpatentable health approaches. The latter is incompatible with the continuation of the investment business with patented pharmaceutical drugs. Every political leader in the world has to make a decision. Do they want to continue serving a small group of financial stakeholders in the pharmaceutical investment business based on the expansion of disease – or do they want to serve the health interests of their people in further reducing the death rates from cardiovascular disease. Considering the fact that the vested financial and political interests behind the multi-trillion-dollar pharmaceutical investment business will not give up their privileges voluntarily, the world is entering its most perilous phase in the nuclear age. For responsible political leaders to fully embrace the breathtaking advances of natural health research in the fight against cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other health problems is an essential political tool to secure world peace – in addition to any military preparedness.

Three decades ago, I was privileged to help contribute a scientific discovery that created the basis for this major health advance for all humankind. By calling on scientists, doctors, politicians – and above billions of people – Dr. Pauling and I defined a goal that promises to unite all mankind in the forthcoming years: – The goal of eliminating heart disease as the major cause of death and disability is now in sight! With millions of lives each year at stake, no time should be lost!