5 Strategies for Preventing Heart Disease | Jonny Bowden | Big Think

5 Strategies for Preventing Heart Disease

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Contrary to popular knowledge, cutting cholesterol is not the best way to protect yourself from America’s leading cause of death. From reducing inflammation to acknowledging the implications of the “Rosetta Phenomenon,” Jonny Bowden outlines the five most effective things you can do to keep your heart strong.

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Jonny Bowden:

Jonny Bowden, PhD, is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health, and best-selling author of seven books including “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”, “Living Low Carb: Controlled Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss” and “The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth”. A member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Men’s Health magazine and the health columnist for several magazines, Dr. Bowden has written or contributed to articles for dozens of publications (print and online) including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, America Online, Forbes, Time, Oxygen, Marie Claire, Diabetes Focus, GQ, US Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Self, Fitness, Family Circle, Allure, Men’s Heath, Prevention, Natural Health, and many others. Dr. Bowden has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS as an expert on nutrition, weight loss, fitness and health. He’s a member of the American College of Nutrition and the American Society for Nutrition, is adjunct faculty at Clayton College for Natural Health, and is a much in-demand speaker at conferences and events across the country. His most recent book is “The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer”.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What are the five most effective techniques for preventing heart disease?

Jonny Bowden: If I had to pick five strategies to reduce the risk of heart disease, I’m going to start with one that every conventional doctor in America that hears this is going to roll their eyes. But all the doctors that I work with, the cutting edge people are going to be nodding their heads. And here’s the first one. Stop worrying about cholesterol. Cholesterol does not cause heart disease. Cholesterol is a bad predictor of heart disease. Fully half the people with elevated cholesterol have perfectly normal hearts and half the people who get heart attacks have normal cholesterol. It’s a lousy predictor, it’s a $20 billion a year industry. We’re focused on the wrong thing.

Inflammation, number one with a bullet in terms of strategies that will help prevent the risk of heart disease is to reduce inflammation. Inflammation is the key here. Omega 3’s, the number one anti-inflammatory compound on the planet. That’s why even orthodox medical organizations have you eat fish twice a week. I would go further, I would say eat fish more often than twice a week and take Omega 3 supplements. These are very anti-inflammatory. Even cholesterol is not a problem until it becomes oxidized and until it becomes damaged. And so I think we’ve way, way over-concentrated on cholesterol and way under concentrated on real risk factors, like inflammation. So, that would be number one with a bullet.

The second would be to exercise every day. Even 30 minutes a day of walking, which will not make you look like Mr. Olympia, it’s not necessarily going to create a weight loss, but it has been shown to completely reduced – well not completely reduce, but significantly reduce the risk from dying from heart disease. It also has been shown to actually grow new brain cells; the gray matter of the brain actually gets larger in volume. So, walking 30 minutes a day would be top strategy for reducing the risk of heart disease.

Number three would be eating a lower sugar diet. Less calories, less sugar, less processed carbohydrates, more vegetables, fruits, proteins, fat, and I say good fat. My definition of good fat is not just any fat that is not saturated because there’s plenty of very healthy saturated fats. Non transfats, non fried foods. So, any of the mono unsaturated fats, any of the Omega 3’s, some saturated fats from whole foods like eggs, all of these things are part of a good diet that can certainly reduce heart disease but particularly when calories can be cut back a little, like we talked about earlier.

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