"Modern cardiology has given up on curing heart disease."

-- Caldwell B. Esselstyn, M.D.

This is a shocking statement considering the impressive array of treatments available to today's cardiologists. With coronary artery bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty and stent implantation, plus many sophisticated high-tech tests, the odds would seem to favor 21st century heart patients.

But not only are all of these techniques aggressive and expensive, the real problem is they don't work. They don't correct the causes of heart disease. They don't stop the processes that create atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries) and, in most cases, they don't help people live longer since the basic causes persist.

There is, however, an alternative called reversal therapy. Conventional treatments focus on the symptoms of heart disease, such as chest pain due to narrowing of the arteries. But this narrowing is the end product of a long, complex process of cholesterol accumulation in the wall of the artery. Even before significant narrowing occurs or symptoms, the cholesterol plaque may break or rupture and cause a clot or thrombosis in the coronary artery. This clot blocks blood flow to the heart and leads to a heart attack, sudden chest pain and stroke despite no previous warning signs. Reversal therapy is different. It treats the underlying causes of cholesterol accumulation and plaque rupture such as high cholesterol levels, smoking, excess weight, an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, high blood pressure, diabetes and stress.

By catching coronary heart disease early, reversal therapy can stop and roll back the progress of the disease, years before dangerous, expensive and invasive procedures become necessary. Reversal therapy makes use of PET, or positron emission tomography, a noninvasive test that gives a better picture of a person's real risk of suffering a heart attack. PET testing can diagnose coronary artery disease early on, when treatment can make more of a difference for the patient's long-term survival. Not only is reversal therapy safer, more effective and less invasive than conventional treatments, it is far cheaper.

Atherosclerosis is the process of cholesterol accumulation, along with inflammation, scarring and calcification (hardening) of the coronary arteries, which lead to plaque rupture and heart attack or narrowing that causes chest pain.

Conservative estimates suggest that 20% to 40% of middle aged people in the United States today have early coronary atherosclerosis or silent heart disease. Unfortunately, the way many of them find out is by having a heart attack. Statistically, as many as 60% to 85% of heart attacks and sudden deaths from heart disease occur without any warning from rupture of the cholesterol plaque without previous narrowing. Most victims never knew they were at risk and never sought any kind of treatment. Chest pain and other symptoms that send people to the doctor tend to be caused by slowly developing severe or partial blockage of the arteries. In contrast, most heart attacks happen suddenly without warning in people whose atherosclerosis has not caused slow or partial narrowing but rather sudden complete blockage because of rupture of the cholesterol plaque where there was no significant narrowing previously.