Consider this: in every grocery store there is one aisle that has all the snack crackers. You know, it has the vegetable crackers and the wheat crackers, it also has the cookies. This entire aisle is so contaminated with hydrogenated oils that it should really be called the hydrogenated oil aisle.
There is virtually no food product in this entire aisle that does not contain hydrogenated oils. You have to go way down the aisle to the unpopular section -- often it's located near the kosher foods -- to find crackers such as Wasa Crackers, which are made without hydrogenated oils and are baked, not fried (at least in the U.S.).
But practically everything else on that aisle contains hydrogenated oils. That means every snack chip, every cookie, every cracker, every pastry, and every baked good, whether it's sweet or not, is made with this dietary poison.
The thing is, most Americans are consuming massive quantities of hydrogenated oils without even really recognizing it because they're eating potato chips, nacho chips, and all sorts of other snack foods found in the hydrogenated oil aisle.
As a result, they are getting atherosclerosis, or a built up of plaque in their arteries. And over time, of course, it leads to widespread cardiovascular disease. But more importantly, it can lead to strokes, heart attacks, and the need for heart bypass surgery, which will set you back at least six figures, if not more.
This is, then, perhaps the single most important thing you can do to prevent the buildup of plaque in your arteries. Avoid eating any food product made with hydrogenated oils.
Despite all the advances in cardiology, Americans are still having heart attacks at the rate of more than one million each year.
Usually, these are caused by a blockage (most often a blood clot) that dramatically diminishes blood flow to a section of the heart, sometimes cutting it off completely.
Without blood and oxygen, heart tissue quickly dies. Without immediate medical intervention, sadly, some patients die, too.
While heart attacks can be fatal, modern medicine has developed effective tools that often save lives. People having a heart attack are currently treated with an immediate combination of clot-dissolving drug therapy, balloon angioplasty (to open the blocked artery) and stenting (to ensure the artery remains open).
It would seem obvious that if unblocking an artery saves the life of a person having a heart attack, doing so in individuals with clogged (or nearly clogged) arteries whose lives are not currently hanging in balance should be helpful in preventing a heart attack (or having another one).
However, an important new study finds otherwise -- and the president of the American Heart Association has said he expects it will change the way doctors handle such cases in the future.
Additionally, a recent article in The New York Times even went so far as to question if bypass surgeries were "poised for a comeback," especially for the sickest heart patients, for whom the less invasive stenting procedure turns out to be perhaps more dangerous in some.