Do Vegetarians Have Healthier Hearts?

Interview:   Andreas Moritz and Raena Morgan  (2011)

Raena Morgan: There are actually studies that show vegetarians have less heart disease than carnivores.

Andreas Moritz: Absolutely. And that’s not necessarily because of the fats. Initially, many years ago, people were told avoid fats like butter.

RM: Saturated fats.

AM: Yes. And they then introduced margarine, which in fact turned out to be the worst thing for the heart. So refined hydrogenated vegetable oils are now a leading cause of heart disease, and they got that. Then they thought cholesterol is caused by fat,-

RM: The big villain.

AM: -so they banned fat from the diet and they found that backfired too. So fat is not- if it’s healthy fat, they have nothing to do with heart disease. In fact, coconut oil, which they banned in the early years and replaced with margarines, that turned out to be a great protector for heart disease. So it helps with heart disease. Olive oil is a great protector of heart disease. That’s why in the Mediterranean diet they use a lot of olive oil, they have very low incidence or used to have- until they started overeating protein as well,-

RM: Okay.

AM: -that they had very, very, very low incidence of heart disease. So fats are really out of the equation except the harmful fats, which can definitely cause heart problems. The protein factor, when you eat meat and you heat it you create very harmful chemicals. Particularly when you have these outdoor-

RM: Right.

AM: -where they make the- they found that when you heat the meat and the oil or fat drops into the fire, that creates gases that are then trapped in the meat, and they found that they are one of the leading causes of heart disease now. So they can damage blood vessels and cause cancers and diabetes.

RM: And inflammation, right?

AM: And it creates an inflammatory response. Now when you have the protein coming into the body, typically the liver tries to break down as much protein as possible so it doesn’t enter the bloodstream or enter the blood vessel walls. But many of the proteins that are left over in the blood, they will be dumped into the connective tissues surrounding the cells. And once they have saturated that, you are affecting the oxygenation of the cells, which can cause cancer. So it’s the same causes that cause diabetes, cancer, heart disease, same causes, so they’re not separate illnesses. In the early days of the 40s or 50s, they considered all three diseases the same disease.

RM: They did?

AM: Yeah.

RM: So they just manifested it?

AM: They started saying let’s make it a separate illness, we can treat it separately.

RM: Okay.

AM: So originally they were the same illness because they have the same causes and they have the same things that cause them. So the blood vessel wall is getting too thick, the membranes accumulate all that protein, and then the damage occurs in the blood vessel walls. So let’s say a coronary artery, where the blood pressure is the strongest, will start stressing that thickened artery wall, that stiff wall, the blood pressure is starting to rise because the blood vessel no longer dilates properly.

RM: All right.

AM: And then you have the wounds and lesions create, the breakages, the little damaged parts of the blood vessel, and then that can release a blood clot which can enter the bloodstream, enter the heart or the brain and cause a stroke or heart attack. Now heart attacks are caused by blood clots that are released from the wounds and lesions, so in order to prevent that from happening, the body will use cholesterol, the so called bad cholesterol, to start bandaging those wounds so that they don’t release blood clots.

RM: Okay.

AM: And so the bandage is what we call Atherosclerosis. Again it is very far-fetched in my opinion to call that a disease when it is a protective mechanism to prevent multiple heart attacks from occurring. So what we call disease is actually a survival mechanism to prevent heart attacks. Now, heart attacks occur not because people have an occluded blood vessel, where the blood vessel is like 80 percent occluded, they think that causes a heart attack, but it doesn’t.

RM: It doesn’t?

AM: No. The heart attacks are caused by the early patches, the initial patches, the soft patches not the hard crusty occlusions, the soft patches where the cholesterol has attached itself to the artery wall to prevent a blood clot from escaping and causing a heart attack. But if the blood pressure is high and you are, let’s say, over exercised or you get stressed and you have a shortage of blood flowing in certain parts of the body and in others you have too much, that’s the fight or flight response, then you may suddenly have a heart attack because that patch of the cholesterol piece is coming loose and the blood clot behind is escaping and causing the heart attack or a stroke. So this doesn’t happen with the occlusion. The occlusion may make you feel a shortage of breath, you may have angina, pain, but you don’t develop a heart attack from that. The body will eventually create its own bypass operations; it will use the capillaries from one part of the artery and create several bypasses to the part behind the blockage so that now you have an increased blood flow and you continue having a normal blood flow. They first discovered that in Korean soldiers that had one hundred percent occluded blood vessel totally blocked that didn’t die from heart attacks, they died from bullet wounds, and they had no sign of infarction, so they didn’t die from heart attacks ever. So they made their bypasses, they found they had more blood after the occlusion than before because of their own bypasses.

RM: By their internal bypasses?

AM: Yes. The body makes that. So again that’s not the main reason for heart attacks. That’s why when they put stents into the arteries or they have a balloon put in or they have a bypass operation, it doesn’t change the mortality rate from heart attacks whatsoever; it has never gone down. So the reason is because it doesn’t change the thing with the little initial wounds and lesions that are patched up by the cholesterol. It doesn’t change that because the main risk is the inflammation in the artery wall itself; that’s why the C-Reactive Protein is a much better indicator for heart disease than cholesterol levels-

RM: Okay.

AM: -or any other measure. So when you have inflammation in the artery wall, that shows there is something in there the body’s reacting to, and in most cases it’s protein, in some cases it’s trans fatty acids that you react to, or cigarette chemicals from smoking and damaged proteins, plasma proteins that get caught up in those areas when you eat certain foods that are so acidic, like drink a coke, you put yourself at risk for heart attacks. Or there’s a study to show that if you eat a steak at night, in the evening, and the digestion is so low compared to at lunchtime, you have a much higher risk of dying from a heart attack the next morning.