According to the Center for Disease Control 600,000 people die from heart disease in the US. To put that into perspective this means that 25% of the deaths in the US are caused by heart disease. 26 million Americans have type two diabetes and it is estimated that 79 million adults have pre-diabetes. These statics make type two diabetes the seventh leading cause of death in America.
So how are American’s dealing with this epidemic? It seems as if they are putting a bandage on these deadly problems. In 2005 Lipitor was the 11th most distributed drug. Lipitor is a prescription drug that “helps” lower high cholesterol. There are over 500,000 open heart surgeries preformed each year in the United States.
Doctor Hans Diehl, a clinical professor of preventative medicine at Loma Linda University, holds conferences about how a plant based diet can regress the effects of heart disease and other chronic diseases. “We need to break our love affair with the high-fat diet,” a quote by Dr. Diehl speaking about how American’s are eating all the wrong things and patching up their health problems temporarily.
Dr. Montgomery is an advocate for a plant based diet to reverse the effects of heart disease. Montgomery pinpoints that as American’s spend more on health care the amount of heart disease and other chronic diseases go up. Threw out American history there is a clear chart that showed as our foods became cheaper and more processed the amount spent on health care went up. “To truly prevent and reverse heart disease, we must get to the root cause, which is in the foods we eat,” said Dr. Montgomery.