The combined role of atheroma, cholesterol, platelets, the endothelium and fibrin in heart attacks and strokes.

In 1920 the typical American diet was rich in cholesterol and fat, especially saturated animal fat, with one-third the polyunsaturated vegetable fat as now; yet in that year, death from myocardial infarction (MI) in the United States was so rare that it had no name or medical recognition. In 1960, when MI deaths in the United States had soared to an alarming rate of 600,000, orthodox medicine concluded that cholesterol and saturated animal fat in food caused elevated cholesterol in blood, which caused cholesterol in atheroma, which in turn caused death from MI and strokes. It is suggested that human atheroma is made up mostly of fibers of either collagen or fibrin, smooth-muscle cells or dead smooth-muscle cells, that it contains but little cholesterol, and that it is present in both men and women and in populations having little or no MI as well as in those where MI is the greatest cause of death. It is suggested that MI is largely caused by coronary blood clots formed at the site of a break in the coronary artery endothelium; that the introduction of a new, unnatural dietary fatty acid--trans-trans linoleic acid--in margarine and refined vegetable oils in the 1920s, by inducing a deficiency of beneficial prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) while greatly increasing harmful thromboxane A2 (TXA2), caused vasoconstriction while the clumping of platelets was greatly increased, giving rise to the coronary blood clots that either cause or are part of the fatal process of MI. It is suggested that in fostering the increase of dietary trans-trans linoleic acid in polyunsaturated vegetable fats at the expense of saturated animal fat, orthodox medicine is fostering a principle cause of MI as the cure.