Plaque is the stuff of coronary heart disease. It is CONTROLLABLE, it is STOPPABLE, it is REVERSIBLE.
But you must be equipped with the right information on diet, nutritional supplements, and hopefully the avoidance of medication.
This is the blog that accompanies the 
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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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.
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.
(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.
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!
“However, modern livestock raising practices have substantially modified the composition of meats.”
Is patient education difficult on such subject matter? Curious; had to ask.
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?
Polar bears have the longest intestine of all the bears. I’m like a polar bear.
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.
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
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)
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.