Infection Has Been Found To Be The Cause Of Heart Disease and Stroke

A cover story from the Santa Barbara News-Press last fall reported that viral infection has been found to be the cause of heart attack and stroke. The story reported that Cytomegalovirus (CMV) may be the culprit. It is highly infectious and 40% of all adults have it by the age of 40.

My family has a significant history of heart attack and stroke - our #1 killer, not cancer. I've been struck by how my paternal grandparents died like bookends, almost identical deterioration and death. My parents also suffered almost identical long, slow deaths from heart attack and stroke.

Viral infection would explain this phenomenon. My grandparents were infected with the same virus and my father contracted it from them and passed it on to my mother.

My father had cholesterol levels over 300. Whenever his doctor got his levels under 200 with cholesterol-lowering drugs, he would have a series of lacunar strokes, where tiny blood vessels disintegrate. When he would quit the drugs due to their side effects, he would stop having strokes.

It occurs to me that the body may raise blood cholesterol to repair the damage to the blood vessels caused by this viral infection. Cholesterol plaques occur in blood vessels where they experience the most trauma, e.g. high-flow areas. Cholesterol deposits may actually plug the holes that form in blood vessel walls, like plugging the leaks in a retaining wall.

Lowering my father's cholesterol levels actually harmed him. He apparently needed sky-high levels to maintain the integrity of his blood vessels, to prevent disintegration of the vessels resulting in stroke. He also had an abdominal aortic aneurysm that enlarged only when he was on cholesterol-lowering drugs.

My father and paternal grandmother both developed adult-onset diabetes after becoming seriously ill with congestive heart failure. When I pulled a jar of jam out of the back of my fridge and found it was still good after being back there a long time, it occurred to me that sugar is a very effective preservative. It burns microorganisms just like it burns the walls of blood vessels in diabetics.

It seems plausible that when the virus that causes heart disease inflames and damages blood vessels, the body responds defensively. Triggering insulin resistance, thus elevating blood sugar levels, may be a defense mechanism, scorching viral particles in the blood stream like napalm. Too much blood sugar ultimately damages the blood vessels, but this side effect may not be as harmful as allowing the viral infection to progress unopposed.

When people with high cholesterol and blood sugar levels improve their diets and exercise regularly, their numbers usually improve. Healthy diets and exercise greatly strengthen the immune system and increase antioxidants in the body. I believe diet and exercise help normalize cholesterol and blood sugar levels by fighting the underlying viral infection. When the infection improves, the cholesterol and sugar levels improve.

I believe elevated cholesterol and blood sugar levels are a response to the viral infection that causes heart attack and stroke; they are not diseases in and of themselves. The severity of these levels is an indicator of how severe the infection is. It can serve as a useful marker.

I believe that if we find an effective treatment for this viral infection, cholesterol and blood sugar levels will normalize on their own. We need to focus on treating the underlying infection to improve these levels.

Aggressively lowering cholesterol levels prevents blood vessel repair and leads to vessel disintegration and stroke. Cholesterol-lowering drugs are the #1 prescribed class of drugs in the world. We're on the wrong track here. It'll cost the big pharmaceutical companies a lot of profit, but we need to stop the cholesterol-lowering drugs and focus on curing the underlying infection.

Until a cure for viral infection is discovered, we must help ourselves with diet, exercise and antioxidants like Omega-3 and CoQ10 to fight the infection.