The South Beach Heart Program: The 4-Step Plan that Can Save Your Life [Hardcover]

 

 

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This book is essential reading.

Have you ever been to a cardiologist? I've been to lots. The South Beach Heart Program will teach you more valuable lessons about what you can do to improve your health than if you consulted every cardiologist you could find.

Why do you need to learn those lessons? Most of what you've been told about heart health is wrong. For example, most people have been told that the higher your cholesterol level the more likely you are to have a heart attack. Yet, more people with low cholesterol have heart attacks than those with high cholesterol. Like most things, the answer is more complicated. It all depends on what kind of cholesterol you have: And you probably don't know how to interpret or ask for the right kinds of lab tests. This book will cure those kinds of misunderstandings.

Basically, there's been a shift in what we understand about heart disease in the last few years. The older (and incorrect) view is that you need to sluice out the arteries and all will be well (much like what a plumber does). The newer (and more correct) view is that arteries become damaged and need to be healed. This book explores the implications of the newer view.

How can you tell what kind of cardiologist you have? If they favor heart bypass surgery, balloon catheterization, and stents, you've got a plumber. If they oppose those methods, you've got a healer.

Long before he was taking dozens of pounds off millions of people with his South Beach Diet, Dr. Agatston was a well-respected cardiologist. In this book, you see the four elements that he prescribes for his patients to virtually eliminate heart disease:

1. Follow the South Beach Diet.

2. Exercise according to the South Beach Heart Workout.

3. Get the right diagnostic tests.

4. Use the right medications, as appropriate for your situation.

If you don't know what the South Beach Diet is, the principles are pretty simple:

a. Avoid bad carbohydrates (ones what are quickly processed by your body)

b. Avoid bad fats (ones that create harmful cardio-vascular conditions, especially trans fats)

c. Increase good carbohydrates (ones that are slowly processed by your body)

d. Increase good fats (such as omega-3 fatty acids found in fish)

The process for doing this first involves withdrawing from carbohydrates for two weeks and then gradually shifting to healthy carbohydrates (such as oat bran).

This book contains a thumbnail section with the key elements of the diet, but I recommend you also get the full book on the diet.

The exercise regimen isn't bad at all. It will take you about 45 minutes a day, including 30 minutes of brisk walking. You don't need to go to the gym. Your shape will improve as you diet, which is a nice side benefit.

The medical testing is also quite reasonable. You'll get an annual physical examination, simple blood tests, an electrocardiogram, a heart scan, an occasional stress test, and occasional ultrasounds. Only the stress test is any kind of a big deal at all, and most physicians will have you do those every so often once you are past certain ages. The heart scan is quick and painless and can provide lots of advance warning of heart attack risk: Dr. Agatston is famous for his measurements in this area which are well explained in the book.

As for medication, obviously your physician will decide. He argues in favor of statin drugs to lower cholesterol (such as Zocor and Lipitor), niacin (vitamin B3), cholesterol-absorption blockers (like Zetia), fibrates for reducing triglycerides (such as Lopid and TriCor), blood pressure reducing drugs, aspirin, and dietary supplements. Armed with this list, you can have a good discussion with your regular physician or cardiologist (if you are already under treatment).

I think the key lesson of this book is that you need to choose your cardiologist carefully. That alone can be worth a great deal to you.

Bravo, Dr. Agatston!

I can't give this work 5 stars, because to some degree, it takes away from the message of others. That heart disease is essentially the result of food poisoning! You only need to look around the world to the places it doesn't exist, and didn't exist, to know this is true. Yes, smoking plays a part, as does obesity and lack of fitness, but at the root of heart disease in North America, is the nutritionless and poisonous North American diet.

There is no denying animal-based foods fuel heart disease, as do all the nutritionless fragments of food consumed in North America today. But as others have pointed out, there are examples of primitive populations whose diets centred around meat, yet had no heart disease. This makes me wonder if there is an unknown, or underappreciated, initiating factor at play in the modern world. I guess it's largely a moot point for the vast numbers of North Americans who already have moderate to severe heart disease.

If you have even moderate heart disease, and are unwilling to completely give up meat and dairy, Dr. Agatston is probably the doctor you should listen to. I bought two copies of this book on enhanced audio CD. One for my stepfather's brother who fairly recently suffered a heart attack, and the other for a neighbour who also fairly recently underwent quintuple bypass surgery. I had already exposed them to Dr. Esselstyn, and the profound vascular healing benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet.

I find it interesting that the co-authors of the "You" series of books, Mehmet Oz MD. and Michael F. Roizen MD., both endorse the plant-based approach of Caldwell Esselstyn's Prevent And Reverse Heart Disease. In fact, Dr. Oz wrote the Forward for Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat To Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss But Dr. Oz also strongly supports Arthur Agatston's "South Beach Heart Program".

One thing all of these medical doctors agree upon is that the plaques being treated with angioplasty, stents, and bypass surgery, are not the ones that are most likely to rupture. These older plaque blockages can be relatively stable, and in the course of time a network of collateral vessels can develop around a blockage. Plaque blockages may completely occlude an artery, yet no heart attack occurs, because the downstream heart muscle is able to survive solely off the blood supplied by these tiny collateral vessels.

Somewhere between 70% and 90% of major heart attacks are caused by the rupture of plaques that don't get treated in the traditional "plumbing model" sense, because they provide no symptoms. They can't even be detected on a stress test!

The people mentioned above with severe heart disease, are in their early seventies and not likely to change too much, or embrace a style of eating that's comprised entirely of whole plant foods. I think Dr. Agatston's "South Beach Heart Program" is designed for this segment of our population.

While waiting for an appointment with my family doctor to get his view on my test results from cardiologist clinic, I'm reading this South Beach Heart Program book and so far has given me helpful insights and explanation to my hypertension & chest pain complaints.

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