Having experienced a heart attack in the past, a very common emotional response besides fear and anxiety – is survivor’s guilt and shame and embarrassment. The latter occurs because cardiology, the American Heart Association, nutrition “science”, and the media have created an imaginary world where heart disease is caused entirely by your lifestyle choices.
If only you had eaten oatmeal for breakfast and never had beef, this would not have happened. A heart attack is literally your fault.
Of course, I have never smoked, I never drank alcohol, I am not pre-diabetic or diabetic, and 4 of the 5 prior years I had mistakenly eaten vegetarian (which led to serious health problems associated with B-12 deficiency). I also exercised (life long jogger, and long time weight training), but was overweight – that being my risk factor on the official lists. My cardiologist said she saw nothing in my records that indicated this was going to happen or that there was anything she would have treated. Indeed, my 10 years of lipid panels were normal – except for 3 years where my triglycerides had been high (in the distant past). But triglycerides measure only make sense when done as a fasting blood test – triglycerides are sort of like blood sugar. Eat food and 3 hours later your triglycerides are +100 to +200% higher than baseline.
At hospital discharge they hand you a stack of paper work telling you how to “eat right” and exercise and keep your LDL down. Even if you’d already been doing that.
The implication is your heart attack was under your control. Many still believe that, but some doctors note this may not be true at all. See Unblame the Victim: Heart Disease Causes Vary – The New York Times
When former President Clinton had heart surgery, the media ran photos of him eating cheeseburgers – see, that was the cause!
Many “experts” and the media morons run these stories every day – check out the MSN Start “Lifestyle” page – “5 Foods cardiologists recommend”! If only you did this, you’d not have a heart attack (or probably cancer too!)
I have a long list of (typically) experts who “Did everything right but had a heart attack”. Doctors, vegetarian marathon runners, nutrition experts, or professional athletes – who each had done everything right yet had a heart attack or cardiac arrest. See Heart Health: “They Did Everything Right” – Coldstreams
We blame the patient for health problems likely outside their control. The media created a myth that if you only did everything right, this would not have happened. But vegans and vegetarians and athletes and experts who “did everything right” have heart attacks.
Corollary: Modern health care is today so advanced that there are no more healthy people! (Think about that for a bit if you don’t get it)
