"Can Oatmeal Reverse Heart Disease?"
Fiber continues to be singled out
as a nutrient of public health concern.
There is a fiber gap in America.
These are the minimum recommended daily intakes of fiber
for men and women at different age groups;
this is how much we’re actually getting.
We’re only getting about half the minimum,
considered a public health concern for all Americans.
Well, not ALL Americans.
Less than 3% meet the recommended minimum,
meaning less than 3% of all Americans
eat enough plant-based foods,
the only place fiber is found,
though a nominal 0.1 is thrown in for the meat category
in case someone eats a corn dog or nibbles on the garnish.
If even half of the adult population ate 3 more grams a day,
like a quarter cup of beans or a bowl of oatmeal,
we could save billions in medical costs,
and that’s just for constipation.
The consumption of plant foods,
the consumption of fiber-containing foods
reduce risk for diabetes, heart disease,
stroke, cancer, and obesity as well.
The first to make this link between fiber intake and killer disease
was probably Dr. Hugh Trowell many decades ago.
He spent 30 years practicing in Africa
and suspected it was their high consumption of corn, millet,
sweet potatoes, greens, and beans
that protected them from chronic disease.
This kind of got twisted into the so-called fiber hypothesis,
but he didn’t think it was the fiber itself,
but the high-fiber foods that were so protective.
There are hundreds of different things in whole grains
besides fiber that may have beneficial effects.
For example, yes the fiber in oatmeal can lower
our blood cholesterol levels so less gets stuck in our arteries,
but there are anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant phytonutrients in oats
that can help prevent atherosclerotic build-up and
then help maintain arterial function.
Visionaries like Trowell were not entrapped
by the reductionist “simple-minded” focus on dietary fiber
and insisted that the whole plant foods should receive the emphasis.
Fiber intake was just kind of a marker for plant food intake.
Those with highest fiber intake, and the lowest cholesterol,
were those who ate exclusively plant-based diets.
Risk factors like cholesterol are one thing,
but can these individual foods actually affect the progression of heart disease?
We didn’t know, until this study was published.
Hundreds of older women were subjected to coronary angiograms,
where you can inject dye into the coronary arteries of the heart
to see how wide open they are.
They got an angiogram at the beginning of the study,
and then one a few years later,
all while analyzing their diets.
This is what they found.
The arteries of women eating less than a serving
of whole grains a day significantly narrowed,
whereas the arteries of women who ate just a single serving
or more also significantly narrowed,
but they narrowed less.
These were all women with heart disease
eating the standard American diet,
and so their arteries were progressively clogging shut—
heart disease is the #1 killer of American women,
but there was significantly LESS clogging
in the women eating more whole grains,
significantly less progression of their atherosclerosis.
In fact, almost as much slowing of their disease as one might get
taking cholesterol lowering statin drugs.
Statins can also slow the rate at which our arteries close.
But do we want to just slow the rate at which we die from heart disease,
or NOT die from heart disease at all?
A whole food, plant-based diet has been shown
to REVERSE the progression of heart disease,
opening our arteries back up.
Whole grains, like the drug, can help counter
the artery-clogging effects of the rest of the diet.
Having oatmeal with bacon and eggs,
is better than just eating bacon and eggs,
but better,perhaps, to stop eating an artery-clogging diet altogether.