Are you more like a dog or a rabbit?

20. December 2006 William Davis (11)
Dr. William Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology and cardiovascular pathologist, is a perennial source of clever ideas on heart disease.
In a recent editorial, Dr. Roberts comments:








"Because humans get atherosclerosis, and atherosclerosis is a disease only of herbivorers, humans also must be herbivores. Most humans, of course, eat flesh, but that act does not make us carnivores. Carnivores and herbivores have different characteristics. (1) The teeth of carnivores are sharp; those of herbivores, flat (humans have some sharp teeth but most are flat for grinding the fruits, vegetables, and grains we are built to eat). (2) The intestinal tract of carnivores is short (about 3 times body length); that of herbivores, long (about 12 times body length). (Since I am 6 feet tall my intestinal tract should be about 60 feet long. As a consequence, if I eat bovine muscle [steak], it could take 5 days to course through those 20 yards.) (3) Body cooling for carnivores is done by panting because they have no ability to seat; although herbivores also can pant, they cool their bodies mainly by sweating. (4) Drinking fluids is by lapping them for the carnivore; it is by sipping them for the herbivore. (5) Vitamin C is made by the carnivore's own body; herbivores obtain their ascorbic acid only from their diet. Thus, although most human beings think we are carnivores or at least conduct their lives as if we were, basically humans are herbivores. If we could decrease our flesh intake to as few as 5 to 7 meals a week our health would improve substantially."



You can always count on Dr. Bill Roberts to come up with some clever observations.

I think he's right. Some of the most unhealthy people I've known have been serious meat eaters. Most of the vegetarians have been among the healthiest. (I say most because if a vegetarian still indulges in plenty of junk foods like chips, crackers, breakfast cereals, breads, etc., then they can be every bit as unhealthy as a meat eater.)

Should you become a vegetarian to gain control over coronary plaque and other aspects of health? I don't believe you have to. However, modern livestock raising practices have substantially modified the composition of meats. A steak in 2006, for instance, is not the same thing as a steak in 1896. The saturated and monounsaturated fat content are different, the pattern of fat "marbling" is different, the lean protein content is different. Meat is less healthy today than 100 years ago.

Take a lesson from Dr. Roberts' tongue-in-cheek but nonetheless provocative thoughts. Pardon me while I chew on some carrots.
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Comments (11) -

  • Jeff

    12/20/2006 4:48:00 AM |

    Fascinating and funny. Thanks for the post. I'm glad I found your blog

    Jeff Brailey
    http://wordworks2001.blogspot.com

    Check my blog and find out why I refused to have a quintuple coronary artery bypass in the spring of 2004 and am alive to tell about it almost three years later.

  • Regina Wilshire

    12/20/2006 8:52:00 PM |

    Dr. William Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology and cardiovascular pathologist, is a perennial source of clever ideas on heart disease.


    He's also on the advisory board of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) - an organization with a very clear agenda.

  • Anonymous

    12/21/2006 11:06:00 PM |

    (2) The intestinal tract of carnivores is short (about 3 times body length); that of herbivores, long (about 12 times body length). (Since I am 6 feet tall my intestinal tract should be about 60 feet long. As a consequence, if I eat bovine muscle [steak], it could take 5 days to course through those 20 yards.)

    I can't believe a physician thinks the human intestine is "about 60 feet long". At most, it's about 25 feet long.

  • Terri

    12/22/2006 3:00:00 PM |

    Provocative thoughts, yes....

    By way of full disclosure, the leadership and advisory board of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) includes:

    PCRM Board of Directors: Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President; Roger Galvin, Esq., Secretary; Andrew Nicholson, M.D., Director.

    PCRM’s advisory board includes 11 health care professionals from a broad range of specialties:

    T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. Cornell University
    Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D. The Cleveland Clinic
    Suzanne Havala Hobbs, Dr.PH., M.S., R.D. The Vegetarian Resource Group
    Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., Sc.D. The Heimlich Institute
    Lawrence Kushi, Sc.D. Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente
    Virginia Messina, M.P.H., R.D. Nutrition Matters, Inc.
    John McDougall, M.D. McDougall Program, St. Helena Hospital
    Milton Mills, M.D. Gilead Medical Group
    Myriam Parham, R.D., L.D., C.D.E. East Pasco Medical Center
    William Roberts, M.D. Baylor Cardiovascular Institute
    Andrew Weil, M.D. University of Arizona

    Clearly, as a comment mentioned, they have a viewpoint or agenda, however that doesn't mean they are wrong, anymore than carnivore-type programs may be right for everyone.

    In my opinion, there's plenty of room for 'novel' thoughts in the field of preventive cardiology and I appreciate Dr. Davis bringing them forward.

    And most clearly of all, there's plenty wrong with the conventional "standard American diet" no matter which end of the dietary spectrum one embraces.

    Whatever WORKS to help with plaque reversal!

  • petite américaine

    12/31/2006 3:08:00 AM |

    "However, modern livestock raising practices have substantially modified the composition of meats."

    Is patient education difficult on such subject matter?  Curious; had to ask.

  • Sue

    1/5/2007 1:38:00 AM |

    And how about the flesh of grass fed beef and wild game?  Is that good, better, more acceptable but still bad?  How about the folks who believe anthropologically we were meant to to eat a hunters and gatherers diet?

  • d.rosart

    11/15/2007 5:42:00 PM |

    Polar bears have the longest intestine of all the bears. I'm like a polar bear.

  • Anonymous

    6/22/2008 8:38:00 PM |

    Hi Dr. Davis,
    Your favorite internet TYP promoter checking in. : )  Thought to mention a possible opportunity - a friend of mine mentioned that he printed out and passed on a copy of your latest blog posting, the Big Squeeze, to his friend, Congressman Jim Marshall.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Marshall_%28U.S._politician%29
    Don't know if much will come of it, but being an opportunity thought to bring to your attention.  
    You might want to delete my mentioning of this.

  • Anonymous

    4/4/2009 5:53:00 AM |

    Just found your blog and am enjoying it.

    On this topic, I read such a comparison by a veterinarian who had cared for sheep, dogs and cows for 30 years.  Unfortunately I can't find it at the moment

    His take was the opposite.  

    Some things I remember were that humans, like carnivores, can swallow very large chunks of food that would kill a herbivore.

    Humans don't have 4 stomachs and don't chew cud.

    Human stereo vision is much more like all types of predators (eagles, cats, dogs, hawks, predatory fish) than almost any herbivore (eyes almost on the sides of the head)

    If you look at human hands, they look a lot like the Bonobo monkey's hands and NOT at all like a gorilla's hands.  Bonobos eat a lot of meat - insects, rodents, birds, and gorillas eat a lot of fruit and vegetables.

    That's basically what I remember.

    I'll post a link later to the fill thing if I can find it.

    Sam in Toronto

  • Anonymous

    4/5/2009 5:04:00 AM |

    Another thing I remember - the intestine length argument goes both ways - some carnivores do have long intestines.

    Something that does not go both ways - human intestines have the enzyme systems needed to degest lots of chemicals that ONLY exist in MEAT.

    As far as I know, you cannot get these from plants, or from only 1 or 2 plants in the world  

    Heme iron (not a big deal these days, but this was huge in the past, where every human, even kings, had dozens of blood-extracting parasites on the skin, in the hair and intestines)

    creatine (vegetarians can be synthesize this out of plant methionine)

    EPA/DHA (from fish oil - in ancient times, in meat - none in vegetables - there's no plant source for EPA, and only seaweed for DHA)

    B12

    also, as an efficiency measure over and above the efficiency of digesting individual amino acids, human digestion can grab large chunks of protein, many of which occur only in meat ( very, very large peptices -  but I forget what these are called - globulins or antigens)  

    Sam in Toronto (that's me, the author, not a chemical that humans can digest and that does not occur in vegetables)

  • Tuck

    7/2/2010 1:39:24 AM |

    Robert's comment is interesting, it's also grossly in error.  

    We're not rabbits or dogs, we're humans, and we're omnivores.

    The anthropological record is quite clear at this point.  We evolved large brains to hunt prey, and the fat of that prey allowed our brain to get larger, making us better hunters.  We sweat because we could outrun our herbivorous prey, using our naked skin as a superior cooing mechanism.  We have smaller teeth because we've been cooking our food for 1.5 million years, or so.

    We do seem to need some vegetable matter in our diets.  Even the Eskimos eat some.  But we do fine on a primarily animal diet.  A cow would not.

    It'd be nice if a physician was a little more familiar with the species he's treating.  A veterinarian couldn't get away with this degree of ignorance.

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NY Times Jane Brody misses the mark

NY Times Jane Brody misses the mark

9. October 2007 William Davis (6)


NY Times' health columnist, Jane Brody, recently wrote a bit of fluff for her paper:

"CT Scans of the Heart Come With Trade-Offs


In her report, she says:

Coronary CT scans are being sold directly to the public, and they have found a market in health-conscious people who can afford them. But screening exams can have downsides. They can cause needless worry, and they sometimes reveal other potential conditions that require invasive procedures like biopsies to diagnose.

I soon learned that among the strongest proponents of CT scans of coronary arteries were physicians with financial ties to drug companies that make statins and others connected to imaging centers that would profit directly from widespread CT screenings.


She then goes on to discuss how the Framingham scoring calculation can tell you whether or not you are at low-, intermediate-, or high-risk for heart disease. She therefore concludes that heart scans are therefore irrelevant for the majority of people. She then proceeds to take a statin agent.

This sort of nonsense continues to get published, despite the clear lack of real "digging" for the truth. She clearly fell for the conventional arguments that continue to mis-guide the majority of people, myths like:

--the Framingham scoring system is reliable--Reliable it is NOT; it is susceptible to substantial "misclassification" bias, meaning people who appear low risk can actually be high risk, and people at high risk can actually be low risk. Among the latest studies that question the scoring system is Family history of premature coronary heart disease and coronary artery calcification: Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). This study pointed out how the Framingham scoring system, which leaves out family history, can cause people classified as low risk to actually have substantial heart scan scores. This is crucial. A heart scan gets beyond the uncertainties and shows with >95% certainty whether or not hidden coronary atherosclerotic plaque is present.

--"Coronary risk" is a dynammic phenomenon, subject to changes in a person's life. What if, for instance, a person smoked for 20 years, quit 10 years ago, lost 30 lbs, dropped their blood pressure as a result of the weight loss, then relied on the Framingham Risk Calculator to determine risk. They would likely be classified as low- risk, since risk factors now appear favorable. This person could easily have a heart scan score of 500, or 700, or 1000, levels that carry a cardiovascular event risk of 5-25% per year, hardly low-risk, because much of their risk accumulated earlier in life and is no longer revealed by an assessment of risk factors.

--There are sources of risk that have nothing to do with Framingham, such as lipoprotein(a), which is often revealed by family history; the presence of small LDL, which co-varies with HDL and triglycerides, but can behave independently also; and, my favorite, deficiency of vitamin D. This would explain part of the 60-70% of people who are typically mis-classified by Framingham.


Where did Ms. Brody get the idea that proponents of heart scans had ties to drug companies? I think she's barking up the wrong tree on that one. Of course, she ends up on a statin drug. For my part, I am a critic of statin drugs. Yes, they play a role, but they are miserably misused and abused by practicing physicians, based on the endless onslaught of drug company-sponsored trials that have served to distort their usefulness.

If I were Ms. Brody, I would be quaking in my shoes, not knowing what my true risk for heart disease was, relying on the--at best--30% reduction in heart attack risk of Lipitor or other statin drug. Ms. Brody: You are not cured, you're simply wearing a superficial Band-Aid. If you want to know your true risk for heart attack, and you want a precise value that you can track over time, the answer is simple: Reject the conventional notion and get a heart scan.
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Comments (6) -

  • russb324

    10/9/2007 1:02:00 PM |

    However, John Tierney wrote an interesting column in the same issue of the NY Times in which he expressed skepticism about the AMA's recommendation of low fat diets based on what socialists called a "cascade" effect thus causing a mistaken consensus.  He also favorably cited to Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" while acknowledging that Mr. Taubes' hypothesis regarding low carb, higher fat diets are only theories as there have not been rigorous scientific studies to prove or debunk these theories.  Article is definitely worth a read:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

  • Anonymous

    10/9/2007 7:33:00 PM |

    I've just found your website and I'm extremely interested.  My doctor said my LDL was 565.  I'm starting a study at the cooper institute next month.  But in the meantime I don't want to die of heart disease like my doctor said I would if I don't change my diet.  What diet should I follow?  Is there a site that you recommend with a diet on it that doesn't ask for payment?

  • Dr. Davis

    10/9/2007 8:04:00 PM |

    I'm afraid with hetero- or homozygous hypercholesterolemia (to account for such high LDL's), this information needs to come from your doctor.

    Also, if you are entering a clinical trial at the Coooper Clinic (an excellent facility), they may ask you to follow a specific diet program.

  • Anonymous

    10/9/2007 9:17:00 PM |

    from dan.
    The Framingham scoring system shows
    potential 'risk' (maybe), whereas the CT scan shows the "actual" condition of the heart. I think there is a huge difference between showing a risk and what is real. If you have a gun in your hand you are potentially a murder, that is a long way from murdering someone. One is a possiblity, whereas the CT scan shows was exist - right now.

  • Dr. Davis

    10/9/2007 9:37:00 PM |

    Thanks, Dan.

    I couldn't have said it better myself.

  • Anonymous

    10/20/2007 11:48:00 PM |

    Hello Dr. Davis, and anonymous

    Have you seen the article by Drs James Wright and John Abramson  published in a recent Lancet? Perhaps Dr. Davis will post a summary.





    Anon2

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"How often do you call an ambulance?"

"How often do you call an ambulance?"

17. August 2007 William Davis (1)
I asked one of the CT technologists at Milwaukee Heart Scan what quesetions are often asked by people undergoing their first CT heart scan.

"That's easy," she said. " 'How often do you call an ambulance?' "

She went on. "People are very scared when they have their heart scan. In fact, some people don't even want to see their heart scan images and don't want to know their score--even after they paid $200 for the scan!"

I think she's right. People often remember the headlines that some heart scan centers have used: "Heart scan saved so and so's life!," when a high score led to a heart catheterization, stents, or bypass surgery. It's the sort of headline that gives people the impression that ambulances pull up to the scan center whenever a score is high.

So, how often is an ambulance called to the scan center? Never. Not once. A CT heart scan score is NEVER an emergency.

Emergencies occur in other places when people can't breathe, or are having pain in their chest, or pass out, emergencies that should not take anyone to a heart scan center. When heart scans are used properly, it is the person without symptoms who undergoes a scan to look for hidden heart disease. This cannot lead to an emergency.

Of course, that doesn't mean that a high score shouldn't prompt quick action in the next few days or weeks, like seeing your doctor to discuss the results, undergoing a stress test, discussing how to stop the score from progressing.

But call an ambulance? Forget about it.

If you are contemplating a scan but are scared that it could lead to a 911 call, don't let that stop you. But, in the event that you go to an unscrupulous center or get bad information, be sure to be armed with the best information possible. One good start would be to take look at our free downloadable book, What does my heart scan show? available for free on the www.cureality.com website.
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  • Anonymous

    11/27/2008 1:51:00 AM |

    Thats funny Dr. At the Torrance CA location for the scan, they are doing a two for one in Feb so hubby and I will go for it. I am scared however.

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