Do you ever wonder about the history of heart disease, and when it was first diagnosed? Read an excerpt from Nina Planck in her new book, due out in April: “Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods“.
Some real foods, such as red meat and butter, have been blamed for modern diseases, especially heart disease. More precisely, experts said that too much fat, and saturated fat in particular, was killing us. On closer inspection, this theory, known as the lipid hypothesis, has some notable weaknesses. One problem is timing. We've been eating pork and butter for millennia, but heart disease is a modern problem. The first heart attack was diagnosed in 1912. Epidemiological evidence also contradicts the assertion that traditional foods cause chronic metabolic conditions. People who (still) eat traditional diets, diets rich in real food – saturated coconut oil, whole milk, and red meat – don't get fat. They don't get diabetes and heart disease, either – that is, not until they switch to industrial foods, like white flour and corn oil.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
That was just from the first chapter, there's more great stuff further in – if you know someone who is pregnant, you may want to get them this book. (Or even better, someone who would like to become pregnant soon!)
There is so much I wish I had known before our children came along!
Kelly says
Good discussion, and thanks for all that scoop, Anna!
Anna says
Some historical perspective…
Diabetes was known and diagnosed as long ago as the time of the Ancient Greeks, hence the name diabetes mellitus, which literally comes from Greek works meaning “honey siphon”, because it was noted that the afflicted produced sweet urine (the body dumps excessiely high blood glucose into the urine). Diagnosis of diabetes was made by tasting the urine, which continued as a diagnostic practice until relatively recently (really). Until personal glucose meters became commonplace in the past two decades, the only testing/monitoring diabetics had at home in the middle of the 20th century were urine test strips that detected glucose in the urine (which is a high blood glucose level indeed).
Diabetes was basically a death sentence until the late 19th and early 20th century, when more was understood about the endocrine system and the role of insulin. Sugar and starch restriction were the only effective treatments until canine insulin was used as a treatment, later changing to bovine and porcine insulin (now synthetic insulin analogs are available, too).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes#History
Dissection of cadavers to learn about human anatomy and physiology isn’t new at all either, dating back to at least 300 BC, usually performed on criminals, though there have been varying attitudes toward the practice (often done in secrecy due to societal attitudes toward souls and deceased bodies, not to mention issues involving rapidly decaying bodies before preservation with embalming was enhanced). In fact, in the Renaissance, artists also dissected bodies to learn about anatomy, to better recreate the human body in their art.
In the 18th and 19th century in England and Scotland “body snatching” was not uncommon, as there was a shortage of cadavers for the many anatomy schools. The poor were particularly vulnerable to being body snatched as their graves were not very secure. In 18th and 19th century London there were bounties paid for dead bodies (& a lot of poor urban families willing to sell the bodies of their dying relatives). Listening devices existed for heartbeats, and study of the pulse was common, too. It was known in the 19th century that “weak hearts” could be a congenital congenital condition or result from infectious disease, such as strep throat, rheumatic fever, and scarlet fever.
As macabre as it might sound, the study of cadavers in the 18th and 19th century contributed greatly to knowledge about anatomy and physiology, including heart and circulatory that advanced modern science and medicine, and resulted in many cures and treatments (though much of the advances in public health in the last 200 years is at least as much due to improve hygiene, sanitation, and nutrition (especially increased dietary protein). Heart and circulatory anatomy and function were studied as much as other body parts and systems.
While early study of cadavers was accompanied by a great deal of relative ignorance about how all the parts worked together (compared to now), conditions like atherosclerosis would most definitely have been noted by anyone dissecting the pertinent parts and seeing arterial plaques. By the late 19th century-early 20th century, the medical benefits from knowledge gained via cadavers and dissection changed societal attitudes and medical education became more formalized, with cadaver dissection and autopsy becoming routine. Autopsy rates have decline from 50% in the mid-20th century to about 10% in the US today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection
https://www.medicinenet.com/autopsy/page5.htm#8whatis
https://www.bsls.ac.uk/?page_id=65 (Heart fascination in British Literature)
The first ten years of the 20th century included both the development of the electrocardiogram and the ability to measure blood pressure, enabling new ways to detect cardiac disease and illness.
Hydrogenation of vegetable oils was developed in the 19th century, with growth of the vegetable oil industry expanding in the late 19th and 20th century. It probably takes at least 20 years or more of “incubation” from a high vegetable shortening diet to develop symptoms of heart disease. Urban populations adopted vegetable shortenings and oils long before rural people, and the disease patterns follow this, too. By the mid 20th century, MI were very common, perhaps because a significant number of people not only smoked, and ate too much concentrated sugars and industrially processed grains, but also over the decades reduced their intake of natural fats (high in Vit A, E, and K2, and some D3) and greatly increased their intake of unnaturally saturated, vitamin-deficient vegetable oils and high omega-6 PUFA industrially refined vegetable oils.
Angie says
I think when people back then mentioned “heart trouble” they weren’t talking about the same heart trouble we’re talking about now, which is coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis. Those really weren’t seen back then, and lack of diagnostic tools aren’t the reason…those things are clearly seen at autopsy, and while I’m not sure what the autopsy rate was then, they were performed and as far as I know CAD and athero weren’t noted.
There are all kinds of other heart diseases that physicians back then knew of because of autopsies and were able to diagnose in their living patients, CAD wasn’t one of them, because it just didn’t exist.
Shauna says
The nutrients to turn genes on/off is VERY interesting to me……. it would stand to reason (from a layman’s perspective of course! 😉 ) that most people consume a diet that would ALLOW those disease causing genes to be ON. That may explain why we see so much more of it these days.
I’ve heard the argument too, that “we just couldn’t diagnose” before…. but honestly – when I think of my great-great grandparents…… they were ranchers, who lived on what they grew/raised/preserved themselves – including lots of raw milk, butter and lard. They lived until they were VERY old and they were never in “nursing homes”. I still remember my great-grandma, cooking her magnificent “farm food” on her wood stove when she was well into her 80’s. They were strong people who died of very old age, and were not on “medications”. I contrast that with people I know personally, now who are on blood pressure and cholesterol medications in their 30’s, who are diabetic or pre-diabetic and already having lots of problems with their bodies and organs……. Guess what they eat?
I don’t think my great-grandparents were sick and just “didn’t know it”. They were hearty, strong, healthy and happy – and lived on their own farm until they died in their 90’s.
I realize that’s an individual case – but it shapes my “stereotype” of that era compared to now.
Shauna
Shauna
Kelly says
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I believe that there are a lot of factors to heart disease as Debi mentioned – some genetics, some environmental, some stress, some due to our sedentary lifestyles, etc., but I would put diet as a KEY factor.
The main point I always want people to leave with, though, (and the point Nina emphasizes, too) is that saturated fat is not the villain many still think it is. Here’s a quote from my “Does fat make you fat” post:
An excerpt from an article titled, “Why Butter Is Better” (notice the many references listed at the bottom of the article at this link):
Rosy says
I wouldn’t buy the genetics rules all thing. There is scientific evidence that our bodies can choose which genes are active, by what nutrients are available.
So maybe I have the genes to have a heart attack, but with out the precursors to have one I won’t, but with a poor diet, and toxic overload I could.
We also have to think about the toxins in the environment now too. After all the industrial revolution was before the first official heart attack.
Laura says
This is something that I wonder about with the connection between modern diets and modern diseases made by the traditional food camp. How much of the connection is due to a lack of diagnostic ability for these diseases before modern times? Was it possible to diagnose heart disease, diabetes, etc before the 20th century?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that “real food” as Nina Planck calls it is better for you because I trust that it is wiser to eat closer to the way God produced the food. I just wonder if it is quite the cure all that is claimed.
Debi says
That is something to think about…There are MANY contributing factors to heart disease..genetics,and just the good old aging process are still relevant problems today.
Shauna says
One thing to think about though, and what I’ve gathered from all the reading I’ve done,is that before 1912, “heart trouble” was due more to genetic inheritance or simply old age, NOT caused by diet.
Shauna
Shauna
Debi says
Hi Kelly
Althougth I have not read the book, and perhaps she gives more information…I think It is misleading to suggest people did not have heart disease until 1912. Even in literature before that time you will read authors description of “heart trouble or problems” in characters, they just did not know the cause. I do think our diet/lifestyle now does contribute to earlier onset of heart disease though,which is so, so sad!.