Guardian Australia spruiks the tedious fulfilment of New Corporate thought - An open letter to J R Hennessy

Dear J R,

When I saw your recent article I nearly fell of my chair with disbelief. Seems we're all idiots for not trusting our kindly corporations and their political servants, quote . . .

"Gibson tapped into the nebulous mindset also shared by anti-vaxxers and the paleo set: distrust of governments, agribusiness, and pharmaceutical companies, with the solution being both more “natural” and less coercive."

Wow, I guess that's done and dusted then. One young woman lied about her medical history for personal gain, so it's now crazy to doubt anything our multi-national overlords tell us?

Therefore, still reeling from your child-like vision, I tried to clarify your position on what IS "Healthy." For instance, there's nothing in your rant to suggest nutrition has the slightest connection to wellness, so (I tweeted), Are you saying living on McDonalds is as healthy as (4 instance), a low-fat, whole-food vegan diet? Sadly, all I got in response was sarcasm, avoidance and insults.

But perhaps complete trust in corporate niceness pays well at The Guardian now? The newspaper has a wonderful sweetheart deal with Unilever who make incredible health foods like Magnum Ice Cream and harvest millions of tons of palm oil to pour into our food supply.

Belle Gibson was an incredibly easy and convenient straw-man (or rather, straw woman), for you to demolish when it comes to the connections between diet and disease, but how do you feel about taking on experts (and research), of real stature? Dr. T. Colin Campbell comes to mind, one of the men who (though he doesn't know it), helped save my husband's life? More about him, his wonderful professional partner Dr. Esslestyn and the connections between heart disease, cancer and diet at Forks Over Knives.

So yes, this subject is personal for me.  I met hubby in 1977, married him in 1978, had three kids and still love him to bits (unfashionable perhaps, but that's the way it is).  Then just over 12 months ago at 57, he started to get chest pain walking uphill, which stopped when he rested. He's never smoked in his life (me neither), and thought he had a reasonably healthy diet.

Given his Dad dropped dead from his first heart attack at 42, I was frantic.  Hubby was referred for a stress test which he failed miserably, so gripped by fear I got him booked in for an angiogram within 48 hours. It was the first appointment available in the dozens of x-ray clinics I phoned. Afterwards, they said it would take a while for the results to come through, but I cajoled and pushed, and got them the next day. They were faxed to our GP.

The news was awful, he had one 90% blockage (amongst some others), in a major coronary artery. I drove him straight to the nearest big hospital, presenting at ED with the results. They admitted him immediately, admonishing me for not calling an ambulance. I hadn't thought about that, as he wasn't actually having a heart attack (and never did have one, thank God), but we now had clear evidence of severe coronary artery disease.

So in summary, he failed the cardiac stress test on the Monday morning and I got him admitted to hospital by the following Friday evening. He saw the cardiologist Saturday morning, who us told the first symptom of cardiac disease in 50% to 60% people is sudden death. We were lucky. Later cardiac output tests also showed he had normal heart function and undamaged cardiac muscle.

After an admission over the weekend, he had four stents inserted on Monday morning and was discharged the next day. I hardly left his side the whole time, but during my brief rests at home, I grabbed a couple of large black plastic bin liners and threw out all his favourite foods, biscuits, cheese, bacon (and any other type of meat), chocolate, so-called "healthy" margarines, dairy products, eggs and all processed foods. The Heart Foundation guidelines went in the bin too and I grabbed some Pritikin books gathering dust on my shelf.  My fierce protective instincts were on over-drive. When hubby came home and opened the fridge and larder, he nearly had a fit, but knew better than to argue. Our long-term bond meant he trusted me.

My obsessive research over the next few days led me to Forks Over Knives. The upshot? We now get 10% (or less), of our calories from fat, don't eat refined sugar and don't restrict the amount of food we eat (just the type). At six foot tall, he's slowly lost just over 15 kilos, dropped three waist sizes and achieved an overall cholesterol below 3mmol/L (his LDL cholesterol hovers around 1mmol/L). I've dropped 8 kilos at a tad over five foot tall - and we got there without one pang of hunger, an amazing rebuttal to the diet industry.

When we last saw the cardiologist, he nearly did a double take at my husband's blood results.  He was very pleased, but gobsmacked we achieved it. He said if we maintain those levels, my hubby can expect reversal of his atheroma, but he doesn't tell his patients about it, because he feels very few of them could sustain the changes.  He asked how we did it and I told him, but I think it went over his head as he darkly muttered my hubby had responded "Extraordinarily well" to the statins he'd prescribed.  The irony is (and was), by that time, he was only taking a quarter of the original dose ordered and now takes none.

Amazingly, despite eating our fill at every snack and meal, the weight has not returned.

Clearly, if a consultant cardiologist (who sees hundreds of cardiac patients a year and prescribes whacking great doses of statins for all of them), nearly falls off his chair at my husband's blood work, it's our diet and not his medications facilitating the dramatic change. If it was the latter, I guess hubby's pathology results wouldn't have provoked such a surprised response. He's seeing him again in a few months and it should be an interesting meeting.

And one other thing I discovered, so-called "Normal cholesterol" levels are anything but normal, as this clip explains. If anything, they're a dangerous cave-in to our corporate food culture. I mentioned this to the cardiologist during our last meeting and he agreed, saying the average overall cholesterol reading of patients who have their first heart attack is just 5.6mmol/L. That's a truly scary fact . . . and even scarier is the clear evidence many powerful vested interests would prefer to keep us in the dark, because it's more profitable . . .

Regards, Kim