Health for a Lifetime

Deadly Plaques

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Don Mackintosh (Host), Hans Diehl

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Series Code: HFAL

Program Code: HFAL000229


00:49 Hello, and welcome to Health for a Lifetime.
00:50 I'm your host Don Mackintosh.
00:52 Today we are going to be talking about deadly plaques.
00:56 This has something to do with heart disease.
00:58 Talking with us today is Dr. Hans Diehl.
01:02 He is from Loma Linda, California
01:04 He is a cardiovascular epidemiologist.
01:07 He is the founder and originator
01:10 of the Coronary Health Improvement Project.
01:15 Welcome, we're glad you're with us today.
01:17 Glad to see you again, Don.
01:18 The CHIP program, I'm kind of emotionally attached
01:23 to this program as well, aside from hosting here.
01:26 I've been a pastor in a local church in Wichita, Kansas
01:29 for the last 13 years, we've actually done 16 programs now.
01:33 I just want to thank you for that program.
01:37 It's turned the health around of my congregation and also
01:41 about a thousand people in my city.
01:43 I'm so glad that you embrace these concepts.
01:47 Today we are talking about deadly plaques.
01:50 What are you getting at here, deadly plaques?
01:55 Well, we want to talk about the number one killer
01:58 in our society today, which is heart disease.
02:01 It is responsible for every second death in our society.
02:05 People wonder why am I getting it?
02:09 Why is it hitting me?
02:11 It's just like a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky.
02:14 It really isn't.
02:15 I want to talk about heart disease
02:17 and the underlying disease process-deadly plaques.
02:21 Where do these plaques come from?
02:24 What are we really talking about?
02:27 We're talking about the heart
02:28 For instance, as you look at this heart here,
02:30 there is usually nothing wrong with the heart itself.
02:33 But the coronary arteries, you see those arteries,
02:36 these are the pipes that are being obstructed.
02:39 They're narrowed down with a plaque build-up.
02:42 I want to show you a roll-in that will illustrate the kind of
02:49 cause of heart disease these deadly plaques create.
02:52 Let's take a look.
02:55 ...woke up so to speak when I was working on the anesthesia
02:58 service learning how to put people to sleep.
03:00 I was seeing my patients for the next day's surgery
03:03 for coronary artery bypass surgery in order to bypass
03:06 clogged arteries in their heart.
03:08 Because it was late at night I drew the man's blood test
03:12 and when I took the blood to the laboratory and had it processed,
03:15 I couldn't believe my eyes.
03:16 Normally, this liquid layer floating on top
03:20 of the blood clot is quite transparent.
03:22 It's yellow but quite clear.
03:23 You can see right through it.
03:24 The blood in this patient's tube however, was anything but clear.
03:29 The serum floating on his clot was thick and greasy white.
03:32 It looked like glue, in fact, it stuck to the sides
03:35 of the blood tube when I shook the tube.
03:37 I went back to the patient.
03:39 I said, Mr. Phillips did you eat
03:40 before you came to the hospital tonight?
03:42 He said, Yes.
03:43 I said, What did you have?
03:44 He said, I had a cheeseburger and a milkshake.
03:47 When he said that I realized that what I was looking at
03:50 in his tube was all the fat in the beef burger,
03:54 all the butter fat in the cheese and the butter fat
03:56 in the ice cream and in the milkshake.
03:58 All this fat had oozed out into his blood and actually turned
04:02 his blood fatty.
04:03 Well, 30, 40, 50 years of keeping your blood very fatty
04:08 creates changes in the blood vessels that are very dangerous.
04:11 Over the years arteries can become clogged
04:15 with fatty material.
04:17 Then a blood clot can form blocking the blood flow
04:20 completely.
04:21 If the artery leads to the heart, the lack of oxygen
04:25 can cause heart muscle to die, that's a heart attack.
04:28 If the clogged artery leads to the brain, the patient
04:32 has a stroke.
04:33 The next morning we took Mr. Phillips to the
04:38 operating room and I put him to sleep and the surgeon
04:40 opened up his chest.
04:41 From these arteries he began pulling out yellow greasy
04:48 deposits of fatty material called atherosclerosis.
04:52 Can just 30 days bring a drastic change for the better
04:56 in your health?
04:58 That is incredible!
05:02 You know the first time I saw that clip in the first
05:06 CHIP program that we did, I couldn't believe it
05:09 and every single time I see it since that time,
05:12 it still is quite shocking.
05:13 All that stuff can build up, and he said that's the fat
05:18 in the cheeseburger and all the different things
05:20 that we are eating.
05:21 - Every time I see it, it really brings home a message too,
05:24 and that is what surgeons see every day who do
05:27 bypass surgeries.
05:28 These are the kind of things that cause obstruction
05:31 and narrowing and hardening of the arteries,
05:33 and that's of course what we call atherolosclerosis,
05:35 or hardening of the arteries.
05:37 - So when does this start, I mean, I don't have worry
05:39 about this until 40 or 50?
05:41 - Well that's what we thought, but we know differently now.
05:45 When it comes to Chinese peasants, they have to worry
05:51 about them when they are about 80.
05:52 - When they are 80. - Maybe 70!
05:55 - So I need to move to China. - That's right!
05:57 - So the Chinese, they don't struggle from this as much,
06:00 but when does this process start?
06:04 - This is basically a Western disease, and we find this today
06:08 in young people by the time they are teenagers
06:11 when some young people have been killed in car accidents,
06:16 autopsies are being done. It's absolutely shocking!
06:18 You see about 20% narrowing, look at the next roll in here:
06:22 You can see a graphic, by the time you are 20 years of age
06:26 you already have 20- 25% narrowing.
06:28 By the time you are 45 years of age, you have more like
06:31 50% narrowing, by the time you are 70 years of age
06:34 there is hardly anything left.
06:35 - Wow, so I am right in between the 20 and the 45 there so I
06:39 am right in the middle.
06:40 But that's a serious thing, so what does this lead to?
06:45 What does this cause?
06:46 - It's a very very serious thing because this is the
06:49 underlying disease process that leads to heart attacks,
06:51 to angina pectoris affecting the heart, it can lead to
06:56 the narrowing of the arteries to the ear, so you have
06:58 hearing loss, visual loss, memory loss, it can lead to
07:03 strokes, it can lead to gangrene, impotence.
07:07 These are all problems that are actually related to
07:10 this underlying disease process called atherolosclerosis,
07:13 that's what you saw there.
07:15 - So it's not something to take lightly, we have to really
07:19 take it seriously.
07:20 - Yes, we do, we do. You know these plaques,
07:23 and they come in two different forms as you see on the
07:26 next one, on the left side on the plaque you begin to see
07:30 a plaque that begins to increase to about 50, 60, 70, 80%.
07:37 By the time it is 80% narrowing the coronary diameter of the
07:42 artery, that's when you developed the first sign of
07:44 often what we call angina chest pain.
07:47 - Ok! - So this is a very common
07:49 plaque that grows in American arteries,
07:52 but there is another kind and that's the next one here
07:55 and this one is not quite as extensive, you can see...
07:58 - It's a smaller on the side there.
07:59 - Yeah, that's right, you can see on the left side there
08:02 it's smaller but it's much more devastating
08:06 because this is what we call a soft plaque.
08:09 It's a vulnerable plaque, it's squishy, and it is filled
08:13 with cholesterol on the inside and that can much easier,
08:16 what shall we say, break open.
08:19 When it breaks open, on the right hand side you'll see this
08:22 formation there of blood clot, when that opens up,
08:25 when that breaks it is usually quite often fatal consequence,
08:30 so that is responsible for 90% of all the heart attacks.
08:34 So the second kind of plaque that you saw is responsible
08:38 for heart attacks, the first one for angina pectoris.
08:42 - So the first one we saw filled up most of the artery
08:47 that's the one where when we looked at the other graphic,
08:49 it wasn't the person at birth or at 20 or 45 but it was
08:53 when they were very old.
08:54 - Correct! - And that is kind of more
08:56 stable and it's kind of calcified, it's kind of hard,
08:59 but the young ones, the little baby ones that we have to
09:04 worry about and so it's probably more dangerous
09:07 for someone younger.
09:08 - Yeah! These are the vulnerable plaques and often times
09:11 they don't even show up on our x-rays on angiograms.
09:16 These are very vulnerable, like you said, they are baby plaques
09:21 but they can break very easily, it depends on the amount of fat
09:25 and cholesterol and the inside, that is why it is so important
09:28 to bring the cholesterol level down in your blood stream,
09:30 because it also brings down the cholesterol inside the plaques.
09:32 - We hear a lot about this, it's on cereal boxes,
09:36 it's on the news, all different types of things, but it seems
09:40 like especially in America where I live,
09:42 everyone knows about it but they don't do to much about it.
09:45 - Yeah its tragic, we could avoid these plaques,
09:50 we could postpone them to be sure, we can even reverse them
09:55 but we haven't always know this, it took about 30 years
10:00 to do this large Framingham Study and here you see
10:05 there is over 1,000 research papers published,
10:08 it took the government about $43 million.
10:12 What they really found is that this disease doesn't just strike
10:16 blindly but there are certain risk factors, the factor
10:20 characteristics that we have that place us at a higher risk
10:24 for this disease.
10:25 - So what are some of those risk factors and how do they
10:27 discover them?
10:29 - Well they observed a whole town near Boston for 50 years
10:36 actually and they began to count the deaths,
10:40 they began to count the heart attacks, then they tried to
10:44 correlate this with certain characteristics,
10:45 and this is what they found, take a look.
10:48 You see this risk arch, and you look at the red and orange
10:53 colored risk factors. - Obesity and diabetes.
10:56 - That's right! That is smoking, cholesterol,
11:00 high blood pressure, triglycerides, inactive
11:02 life style, and stress.
11:03 These are factors that we can change but many of us don't,
11:08 if you go back to this arch you will notice here again
11:12 that the closer these factors are to the center the more
11:16 powerful they are in driving this disease.
11:18 - Ok, so cholesterol is the big thing.
11:21 - Cholesterol is the big thing followed by smoking and
11:23 triglycerides, so these are the big things, if you go back
11:26 one more time to the risk factors you will see something
11:29 very interesting.
11:30 In addition, most of these factors are under control
11:32 of our lips. - Our lifestyle, in other words
11:36 what we can do something about. - Take a look, cholesterol is
11:38 largely determined by what we eat, high blood pressure,
11:41 largely determined by what we eat.
11:43 Triglycerides, diabetes, obesity, so our food supply
11:49 is playing a major role in this kind of a disease
11:52 which is largely found in western society only.
11:55 - Ok, so this is probably your life work, I know it is because
11:59 we have seen in the Chip program that this is really what you
12:02 focus on, helping people understand this risk arch
12:04 and focus on, helping people understand this risk arch
12:06 then recognizing that they have some responsibility
12:09 - Yeah, actually opportunity don't they.
12:13 But you know when you look at the next graphic
12:14 you see on the left hand side, those people who have a high
12:20 cholesterol, take a look, that are suffering from
12:25 high blood pressure, they are smokers, diabetes, and they have
12:28 a positive general test.
12:29 These people in the red column they have 140 times higher
12:35 risk on the next one, as the one in the green column.
12:38 I mean you can determine your chance of a heart attack
12:42 in this extreme illustration by 140 times higher likelihood
12:47 by making some simple lifestyle changes.
12:49 - So in other words if you get your cholesterol down on the
12:52 one side it said it was 310, you get it down to 150 or below.
12:57 - Right! - And that decreases your risk
13:00 - Dramatically! - 140% you say.
13:02 - Well, - Or 100 times.
13:03 - Well if you add all these kind of things.
13:06 If you take the aggregate 140 times.
13:09 - So your blood pressure its 160, you get it down to 120 or
13:13 whatever less. - Yes!
13:14 - This is what happens as you help people through education
13:18 they start seeing these changes?
13:19 - Yes, we begin to realize that heart disease is not just
13:23 a random act, but rather it's something that comes to us
13:28 based on lifestyle habits that we adopt or accept
13:33 or practice.
13:34 For instance when you look at the next graphic you will see
13:37 that many of these risk factors are diet related.
13:40 Here you see a health column, this is a typical food column
13:43 in a developing country, you notice there that most
13:45 of the calories in this kind of a diet comes from starch.
13:50 These are usually corn, beans, grains, simpler foods,
13:55 you have some protein, and some fat, and some sugar.
13:58 - Well this is good, this is good then.
14:00 - This is very good. - This is what they would eat
14:03 in China, and in these countries where you don't see
14:06 heart disease. - That's correct!
14:07 So this is the more ideal diet a simpler diet.
14:11 - Ok, now we're talking with Dr. Hans Diehl,
14:13 when we come back we will look at what's bad,
14:15 you've seen what is good, we'll see what is bad,
14:18 and hopefully you will make the right choice
14:19 so you don't have to have these deadly plaques.
14:22 Join us when we come back.
14:26 Are you confused about the endless stream of new and often
14:29 contradictory health information, with companies
14:33 trying to sell new drugs, and special interest groups
14:35 studies that spin the facts, where can you find a
14:39 common sense approach to health?
14:40 One way is to ask for your free copy of:
14:46 Dr. Timothy Arnott and the Lifestyle Center of America
14:50 produced this helpful book of 24 short practical health tips
14:59 for example, did you know that:
15:13 If you are look for health not hype, then this book is for you
15:16 just log on to:
15:25 Welcome back, we are talking to Dr. Hans Diehl from Loma Linda
15:29 California, he is a cardiovascular epidemiologist,
15:32 which is a big way of saying that he deals with the heart
15:35 and looking at the studies in research to help people
15:40 first of all understand heart disease and hopefully avoid it.
15:43 I might say something else to our listeners as well,
15:48 chiphealth.com, isn't that right, that's your web page
15:53 and you can learn more about what we are talking about today
15:55 about the CHIP Program, about all of these different
15:58 risk factors... I have seen your web page
16:01 you have a lot of different little clips that can be played
16:04 and people can really get an education just by going through
16:07 that web page. You spent a lot of time
16:09 on that, we appreciate that.
16:10 We were talking about deadly plaques in our first half.
16:17 We talked about the fact that in America, or the western
16:21 countries, it's not a matter if whether or not they
16:25 most of them had these plaques because they are eating
16:27 this western diet.
16:30 But you've had good news for us, they don't necessarily
16:34 succumb to the risk factors, there are some diets and
16:39 there are some things they can do that can stop and perhaps
16:42 even reverse these things.
16:44 - Yeah, actually it's true Don, you can turn them on,
16:47 you can turn them off.
16:48 So it all depends on the choices that we make.
16:50 I want to maybe focus on the diet column once more.
16:55 - Ok, go back to what we were looking at.
16:56 Remember what we talked about, what is a good diet?
16:57 A good diet is probably a diet which is high in unrefined
17:01 starch such as corn, brown rice, beans, potatoes, simple foods,
17:07 right, now move to the next graphic and you see the
17:10 dramatic change over time as the income increases,
17:15 from the left to the right side.
17:18 You are no longer eating the corn and the brown rice
17:24 and the beans and the potatoes, but instead on the right hand
17:28 side now you are going to be - eating more sugar, more fat,
17:32 more vegetable fat, animal fat.
17:34 - Let's stay on that graph for just a minute here,
17:37 take a look, from the left side lots of potatoes,
17:40 now we eat Pringles, left side, lots of corn, now we eat Nachos,
17:46 left side, lots of beans, now we eat some steaks.
17:50 With affluent comes a change in our diet,
17:55 we are now engineering our food, we are now eating
17:58 more animal products, we are no longer eating a diet that's
18:01 high in starch, but now it's high in fats and sugar,
18:04 When ever you have this kind of a diet, within ten years
18:09 you find in that society that is adopting this kind of a
18:12 affluent dietary pattern, especially when you smoke
18:16 and you don't exercise, you will see within ten years
18:19 heart disease.
18:20 - So are you concerned about what they call globalization
18:23 about everybody kind of eating the same thing or hearing about
18:27 the same things because of the media.
18:29 - There was a time when heart disease was largely restricted
18:32 to 10% of the world's population,
18:35 that was fifty years ago, now it's probably at 45%
18:39 of the world's population, we see a globalization of
18:42 the western diet.
18:43 Everybody wants to eat like an American, people don't realize
18:47 they also die like Americans.
18:50 We didn't have heart disease 100 years ago, this is a new
18:53 disease, it has to do with not genetics so much,
18:56 as it has to do with our culture and what we are driven to do,
19:01 the choices we make in what we eat, and how we live and diet.
19:08 - So you said something interesting, 100 years ago this
19:10 wasn't anywhere except 10% an how do you know that?
19:14 - Oh, 100 years ago you couldn't find it in North America,
19:18 they've done autopsy studies that were recorded,
19:21 it was difficult to find this atherosclerotic plaque
19:24 in the arteries.
19:25 1950/1960, you began to see it everywhere,
19:28 after World War II major epidemic,
19:31 and today it has come down just a little
19:33 bit, but is still the number one killer in our society.
19:36 - People back then ate these foods that were not good
19:41 for them, what's the difference, the exercise?
19:43 - You mean 100 years ago? - Yea, 100 years ago.
19:46 - Oh no, people used to have some meat,
19:50 they had some of these specialty cakes perhaps
19:55 100 years ago, but it was a minority item.
19:58 You had a big steak probably on Sunday coming out of church,
20:01 today, every day is Sunday in our society.
20:04 - Umhum! - We didn't have those
20:07 candy bars, we didn't have those refined foods,
20:11 we didn't have potatoes coming in little chips, we didn't have
20:14 crinkly bags, this is a new invention.
20:18 This has increased the intake of fat, sugar, and salt
20:23 to the extent that it is now contributing to these
20:27 modern diseases.
20:28 - Ok, so this American diet, the western diet is toxic.
20:36 - That's a strong word but you are right.
20:41 - Ok, so what do you do to address these deadly plaques?
20:47 - Well, what we try to do through education is to help
20:53 people to move towards a simple diet, more foods as grown
20:58 maybe we need to get back to eating more potatoes, more corn,
21:05 more bean, fruits, and vegetables, there would be
21:09 less of these snacky items. Right!
21:12 There would be less of these crinkly bag items,
21:16 maybe we ought to cut back on cholesterol foods,
21:20 the animal products, and maybe use them occasionally
21:24 rather than every day.
21:25 Now in the CHIP program how do you go about doing this?
21:28 I kind of know, but I want our viewers to hear because this
21:32 is a powerful... it's actually, I don't know
21:37 you can probably update me but there are five or six
21:40 scientific studies now done on the CHIP program itself
21:43 that are showing that it is effective, so what exactly
21:47 is happening?
21:48 - Well we talked about these risk factors didn't we?
21:51 We talked about this risk arch. - Umhum
21:53 - So the CHIP program tries to help people through a 40 hour
21:58 education program to begin to make some simple lifestyle
22:02 changes so that your cholesterol drops on the average 15%.
22:06 So when you drop your cholesterol 15%,
22:08 you drop your risk of heart attack in half right there.
22:11 We help people to begin to eat more food of the right kind
22:15 and the weight comes down 6 to 10 pounds in 4 weeks
22:18 without even trying.
22:19 We help people to recognize that maybe we should cut back
22:23 on our salt consumption, and what you begin to see is
22:28 the blood pressures come down.
22:31 We get people into an exercise program and all of a sudden
22:34 they begin to feel muscles they haven't felt in years,
22:36 they began to become more energetic,
22:38 they feel we can do this, and some people that are still
22:42 smokers, we try to help them stop smoking.
22:44 We also do something about the diabetes by increasing
22:47 more of the fiber in the food intake.
22:51 - Now when you say we help them is it through education
22:54 primarily or through example?
22:57 - Yeah, we have groups of thirty people, groups of 500 people
23:03 that meet every night Monday thru Thursday
23:06 by in large, for 4 weeks and they learn the concepts
23:09 step by step looking at all the scientific studies
23:12 that we have out there.
23:13 We are all filling up libraries but how do really you make it
23:17 available to people and to translate this in such a way
23:23 that people can really take it in and then through
23:26 shopping tours and food demonstrations and
23:30 walking exercises, get them inspired.
23:33 As you know as time rolls on after two or three weeks
23:38 the people are popping up in the audience,
23:40 my daughter had to reduce my insulin,
23:43 my daughter had to reduce my blood pressure medication.
23:45 I lost 6 pounds by now, I am feeling great and so
23:49 it begins to spread and so as they come in to the
23:52 alumni program after the program is finished
23:55 there we have an opportunity to sustain these
23:59 lifestyle changes.
24:00 - So it's through education, I guess the big word for it
24:04 if you were a psychologist, or if you were someone that
24:07 is dealing with mental health would be cognitive
24:10 behavioral therapy.
24:12 - It sounds like a pretty big word but it is sort of a...
24:16 yes, you understand it is a rational approach to making
24:20 some simple instructions based on evidence,
24:22 not because of some emotion, or because you heard some body
24:26 talk about it on a talk show. No! No!
24:28 This is based on epidemiology, the study of epidemics.
24:33 - So that gets their attention, they say ok, it's not just me
24:36 it is not just my wife saying you shouldn't eat that
24:38 but there were thousands of people that ate this and
24:41 this is s what happened to them I don't want that
24:42 to happen to me.
24:44 They get their cognitions, their thoughts are changing let's say
24:48 boy, if my thoughts change then my behavior will change
24:53 and I won't have the same angina any more,
24:55 or I won't have what he says I will have.
24:58 - You see we take them through many of these large studies
25:02 for instance you can go to Japan 1950 Japan, difficult to find
25:07 heart disease in Japanese.
25:09 As a matter of fact the Japanese Medical School in Tokyo
25:13 imported coronary arteries from Johns Hopkins University
25:18 in Baltimore, we said we need to have some of these plaques,
25:22 some of these specimens so we can show our medical students
25:25 what kills every second American.
25:28 - Because they didn't have any of that.
25:29 - They didn't have any, can you imagine?
25:31 But you know all of this has changed, today Japan has become
25:34 westernized, today Japan enjoys fish.
25:36 - They don't have to import these any more, its gone.
25:39 This is exciting actually, where you have 40, 50, 60,000 people
25:45 that have now gone through the CHIP program,
25:47 and they all these same results.
25:50 You are a Christian clinician as well, how does the power
25:54 of God factor into this?
25:56 - Well I think we recognize that God is the creator
26:03 and He gave us a circulatory system of some 60,000 miles
26:09 per body. - Umhum!
26:11 - You think about this, I mean we are wonderfully,
26:14 fearfully made and as we recognize God is the owner
26:18 of our bodies, we can now respond to that gift
26:24 entrusted to us and say what can I do to return this gift
26:28 to you, how can I maintain the beauty of this organism?
26:34 So faith then comes in to empower for us to do that
26:38 which is not easy to do. - So this group activity
26:43 helps us but really the power of God must be available to us
26:47 personally to make these kind of lifestyle changes.
26:50 - If you can rely on God who empowers you, you can swim
26:54 against the current.
26:56 - Let's go back and look at one more,
26:59 there is a graphic back there, see if you can find that of that
27:02 optimal diet way back. This graphic is good too:
27:22 This is the Killer Diet and that is what we want to avoid.
27:25 Instead, getting back to the original diet that God had
27:29 planned for us fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables.
27:32 - Simple foods, foods as grown, simply prepared.
27:35 - Well thank you so much for being with us,
27:37 the people that are watching can go chiphealth.com, right?
27:42 - That's right! - Learn more about the
27:43 CHIP Program, it's an exciting program, it's changed my life
27:47 and the life of others and many others across the country.
27:50 We hope that as a result of this program you'll have health
27:53 that lasts for a lifetime.


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Revised 2014-12-17