Ooooowwwww, I like this!  I'm looking forward to the TYP diet book - not only for myself as a diet plan to follow for heart health, but also for weight loss.  will it be possible to buy signed copies?  I'm thinking ahead to the holidays and gift giving season.

Hi, JT--

Actually, not a book, just a lengthy Special Report on the website. However, as our program gains a brand recognition, there may be such a book opportunity.

In all honesty, most of the concepts that are articulated in our program have already been well said by Art Agatston in South Beach and Loren Cordain in Paleo Diet. The Track Your Plaque approach adds the sophistication of lipoproteins, but the basic food practices are very similar.

Hi Dr. Davis,

Thanks for the honest reply.  I'm going to take a look at the South Beach and Paleo diet books mentioned.  I've heard of them, but always being relatively thin never took the time to learn what they have to teach.  

Talking with my father yesterday, I told him that I wrote about his "unexpected" weight loss while following the TYP diet/ supplement program.  He had a chuckle over it and told me he told my mother my thoughts that the weight loss came from following the TYP program.   Because of that she is now raiding his fish oil & vitamin D capsules    , adding that I better order him more.

Bravo!  

Thank you for sharing your personal experience, and reasons for now discouraging the ultra-low-fat dietary principles articulated by Dr. Ornish.  It's critically important that we abandon the myths and start to seriously talk about the facts and data so we can move forward and help people learn how to optimize their health.

Thank you for that.  My 36yo daughter has followed an utlra-low fat lifestyle(cites Ornish frequently). Eating entirely fruits, veggies, whole-grain high-fiber cereals and lots of water (for 10 years!), she has been proud of her "healthy eating".  Her “extra meal” of vitamins and supplements made up for anything she felt she was missing (she believed). However,  after years of excellent total cholesterol readings, VAP testing revealed her LDLs and triglycerides have been going up and HDL going down.  (HDL: 37; VLDL3:16; Tg:148!).  To top it off, her period stopped, skin got worse, and bone density test came back bad.  Thank you for raising the red flag on ultra low-fat diets from the perspective of heart health!

Dr. Davis, I think we need to make the distinction between Ornish and other low-fat diets, like Fuhrman, which might be vastly better. Joel Fuhrman claims his diet will lower triglycerides and improve all the other health markers rapidly.

Unlike Dean Ornish, Furhman limits grains. They are at the top of his food pyramid (0-20% of calories), and he stresses the importance of unbroken grains, not flours. Brown rice and oatmeal, for example. He would not allow any type of bread, except sprouted flour-less breads. Here's a photo of his food pyramid. Veggies are the base. Half-raw and half-cooked. Next level has fruits, beans, raw nuts, and raw seeds. At the top are unbroken whole grains.

http://www.nutritionforwellness.org/img/food_pyramid.gif

Here is an article pointing out how highly perishable whole grain flour is. It quickly become rancid and it loses vitamins. Animals fed a whole grain flour stored for 15 days were infertile after 3-5 generations. At the same time, the animals getting fresh-ground flour (or bread) were still fertile. Weston Price pointed this out in his book, too, but many people ignore

http://eap.mcgill.ca/Publications/EAP35.htm

Weston Price reversed dental decay in children by feeding fresh-ground whole wheat rolls (along with other things). Price: "The wheat for the rolls was ground fresh every day in a motor driven coffee mill." It is clear that most people nowadays are not eating flour of this quality or whole unbroken grains like Fuhrman suggests. Maybe this is a factor in why infertility and various chronic diseases are now so prevalent.

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price16.html

Moreover, the Ornish Diet made Dean Ornish fat. Ornish's Diet is a poor diet, period. Dr. Fuhrman's is much better. Not that I endorse low-fat diets, but I think some people will do well on Fuhrman's plan. Few, if any, will do well on Ornish's Diet. Pretzels, bagels, and pasta are all highly processed foods, compared to brown rice, oatmeal, etc. Fuhrman's diet discourages grains, esp flour,  and Dean Ornish allows them.

http://www.nutritionforwellness.org/guidelines.html
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-lowfat-vegan-vs-eat-to-live.html

Here is a debate between Ornisn and Gary Taubes. Ornish looks pudgy and pasty. Taubes is lean and muscular. Who would you rather look like? Dr. Ornish's diet made him fat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyme62niYM

the Ornish diet is definitely not for me; I need my fat - BUT as far as being critical of Ornish's looks (you said pudgy,etc) Dr. Oz is a vegetarian and low fat; so looks cant really be counted here.

I'm thriving by eating using WAPF principles (3 years), and I cut all gluten-containing grains out of my diet (1 year).  I'm not overweight, and I have better color in my skin than I've ever had.  I feel wonderful.

http://www.westonaprice.org

If you read his books, you'd learn that Dr. Ornish used to be much more overweight than he is now. And severely depressed. His diet and other lifestyle changes cured both.

My husband and I were on the McDougall diet for 3 or 4 years.  Our most common meal was rice and beans with hot sauce for flavor and lots of bread.  McDougall(his diet is similar to Ornish's)said it
was impossible to have a heart attack on his diet because there was NO fat!  Guess what!  My husband had a massive heart attack
and lost half his heart.  I don't know whether to be angry with McDougall or with myself for my
extreme gullibility.  Hy husband has passed away now and I'm on the
Weston Price diet (without the grains) and am thriving.

sorry about your husband. if memory serves me correct dr mcdougall does not recommend bread or flour unless you are interested in gaining weight.

So should go the misadventures of the ultra low-fat diet, as articulated by Dr. Ornish. His day came and went. We learned from our mistakes. Now let's do something better.

This post is (most likely) a great example of lying on the internet for personal gain or ideological reasons. Don't believe everything you read people!

The original poster is probably leaving off some key information.

He or she probably did not actually follow the recommendations.

It is difficult for many people to stick to the Ornish diet. Those who do stick to it usually get overwhelmingly good results.

If you stick to it, it is really hard to get too many calories, since fat contains more than double that of protein and carbs per gram.

If the poster actually did what they said they did, especially with the running, they would have withered away to nothing. Unless, of course, he or she ate wheelbarrows full of food.

If you eat less calories than you are burning, you will lose weight. On an Ornish plan, it is very hard to eat more calories than you burn.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

Whoever wrote this article simply wasn't following the Ornish plan. They said that they required large quantities of coffee to function. Coffee isn't on the Ornish menu because it's a stimulant. Therefore, if you were consuming coffee, you weren't on the ornish diet.

Would this compromise the interpreted results of a recent heart scan from Milwaukee Heart Scan?

why isn't carotid artery imt study augmented by NMR Lipoprotein study good enough?

Mbyrnes--

No, it should not, though I cannot vouch for the quality of readings that occurred after we left last year.

You need to update your profile on the "Meet our Experts" page in Track Your Plaque website. It still says that you are the Medical Director of Milwaukee Heart Scan.

Thank you for the updated information.

I just got an appointment in Wichita for a $10 heart scan.  Wonder what the pitch will be?

xtronics..

Ooops!

Thanks for catching that, Anne.

After finishing reading Track Your Plaque recently, and noting the date of publication, I had assumed that EBT was now available everywhere in the States and that probably there were even better imaging technologies available now. But are you saying the technology has just been scrapped? That's a tragedy.

I don't know enough about Milwaukee Heart Scan to comment on the specifics, but as a general idea doesn't it make sense, where the existing medical/insurance system isn't meeting people's needs, to come up with a subscription service where people get, say, a scan a year for five years, so that they can monitor their progress? Of course, they need to be given a chance to find out the total costs involved in anything they sign up for.

Hi, Rick--

Actually, I think the Milwaukee Heart Scan people hit on a useful idea, that of subscription discounted imaging services. However, I disagreed with the way they went about it.

Perhaps someone else will be able to construct a program that is honest and truly an advantage to subscribers.

Those of us who were originally involved in the EBT technology lost many nights of sleep when GE unexpectedly scrapped this technology for no reason other than financial advantage. They didn't have to buy Imatron; they just could have let them continue while competing against them in their own arena. But, no, they wanted to clear the path. Very, very bad policy on the part of GE. Yet another example of excessive corporate greed that has plagued American business over the past few years.

If the existing EBT scanners go out of service, will there be any alternative?

Sorry to hear about the business problem.

To amortize the machine at 6% all you needed to do is take only 2 patients a day charging 200$.  With 4 doctors and two people - the original investors available for work, I presume, you could probably take ten times as many patients, working out a decent profit for all of you.  I am curious why it did not happen, what has gone wrong?

Did GE default on service and warranty? That would certainly kill the biz.  

Why hiring a push saleseman if a good advertising campaign in the greater Chicago area of ~10 million people, might probably suffice?

Why as you said, did it take long to process each scan, I thought that the machine itself would just spew out a number:  Agatson's Calcium Score which a patient would then use him/herself to tweak their own therapy using your published guidelines, periodically retesting their ACS at let's say 200$ per visit, with or without a doctor's consult.  
Regards,
Stan

Dr. Davis wrote: But, no, they wanted to clear the path. Very, very bad policy on the part of GE. Yet another example of excessive corporate greed that has plagued American business over the past few years.

I disagree, this was a prime example of corporate incompetence destroying their own business!  If they were truly greedy and wanted to make money they would be still selling this technology.  As it happens GE is a glamorous corporate shell that owns thousands of derelict rusted factory building all over the North America, that they bought years ago but never invested in.  One is near the place where I live, I see their ruin almost everyday each time I drive by.

I use the knowledge of their true condition, to short this corporate loser on the stock market periodically, to profit out of their decline. People like me do the society a favor by helping eliminate the corporate waste like you the plaque.  8-)

Dr. Davis, there is nothing wrong in making money through own your honest work and creative skills.  You deserve your pay and a greed like that is good!

Regards,
Stan

where do you recommend getting a heart scan in Milwaukee?

haven't they reclassed the radiation those things put out ?
I suppose if you are dying then the risk is worth it.

Vital Imaging, LLC is now performing EBCT heart scans. Located at 10500 W. Loomis RD. (414) 774-7600  We are in the busines of early cornary artery disease detection. $199 with no strings attached. 5 to 10 times less radiation than conventional multi-detector CT scanners and much faster with higher resolution for organs that never stop moving

But in 2008, some business people from Chicago contacted Steve Burlingame with prospects of applying a contract model of long-term scanning to patients,i.e.,getting people to sign a several-year contract for discounted imaging. They proposed that Milwaukee Heart Scan offer heart scans for free to get people in the door.

i am one of the unsuspecting idiots who signed the contract and now do not get what i paid for and am still paying for......unfortunately i do know that i am not alone-that is the suckiest part!

We also got suckered into a 3 year long contract.  We finally decided to go for it when a friend of mine who is a nurse said she had worked with and really respected some of the doctors who were reading the scans.  Unfortunately for us, even the doctors were unaware of what was going on at Milwaukee Heart Scan.

Dr. Davis,

Do you have any opinion on Vital Imaging, LLC?
I was a patient at Milwaukee Heartscan before their downfall and am looking for a 5 year update heartscan.  Should I go to Vital Imaging for the EBT, or use one of the many new CT providers?  Thanks!
A

I signed a contract with Heartcheck America in the summer of 2010. My contract included one virtual colonscopy and granted me the right to assign any of my ten annual full body scans to any relative or acquaintance. That made the deal worthwhile to me, as I had no interest in a scan that often. By the next summer they were gone. But from what I've read they did not go out of business. They were put out of business by lawsuites from states including Colorado. From what I understand, those suits complained that a potentially dangerous medical procedure was being performed without being ordered by a physician ...  and besides, the results were not all that useful ... and also some people complained that they had been pressured into signing expensive contracts. I don't want my money back, I want what I signed for and paid for, but I'm not going to get it. Thank you, Colorado.

So who is taking over the contracts from Milwaukee heart scan?