Caregiving: Mediterranean diet for life

A Miami cardiologist thinks there would be a lot less need for caregiving if more people adopted the Mediterranean diet and banned trans fats from their diets.

Dr. Michael D. Ozner, a board-certified cardiologist, medical director of wellness and prevention at Baptist Hospital in Miami and author of "The Miami Mediterranean Diet," is a bit impatient with a U.S. healthcare system that provides treatment after treatment for people with heart disease, but little guidance in diet and exercise. He's also a bit impatient with patients who don't ask what they can do to lower their risk factors for heart disease.

"In my opinion, we've gone down the wrong path. We use potent medications, interventions, bypass surgery, stents and we spend billions and billions for healthcare on interventions -- and spend too little attention on prevention," Ozner told UPI's Caregiving.

Bypass surgery does not fix the problem permanently; unless people change their habits, they will be back for more treatment, according to Ozner.

"A 31-year-old woman who had a strong family history of heart attacks was given a heart catheterization. Six months later, she was given another intervention and eventually she had six different catheterizations and a seventh was ordered, but she said, 'No, I've had enough,' and came to see me," he said.

"She had a daughter about age 12 and she didn't want to die of heart disease and leave her an orphan; she didn't have much family and her husband had died in auto accident."

No one had bothered to check her cholesterol; they advised no exercise and her nutrition habits were horrible, yet the medical field kept giving her interventions, Ozner said.

"That occurred about 10 years ago. She never had a heart catheterization since, and the best thing is that six months ago she showed me pictures of her daughter's wedding," Ozner said. "To me this is what it is all about. We should get back to what we know works -- a diet proven to work that's not based on hype."

Ozner calls the Mediterranean diet "cuisine to eat for the rest of your life."

"It's a lifestyle of eating healthy, the way people have eaten for thousands of years, and if a person exercises and eliminates trans fats it would be the rare patient that needed heart surgery," said Ozner.

"Lifestyle changes are the most important: quitting smoking, exercising -- and by that I just mean walking 30 minutes a day -- and eating olive oil, nuts, whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables of the Mediterranean diet."

The nice thing about the Mediterranean diet is that people have enjoyed it for thousands of years. Adapted for modern times, it means such changes as: eat pizza but with a whole wheat crust and low-fat cheese, have apple pie but not made from trans fats, eat some fresh almonds with a glass of water as a snack, eat cold-water fish, use olive oil, eat sorbet instead of ice cream and avoid red meat, Ozner advises.

"There has been a long list of studies that shows trans fat consumption is bad for a person's health and there is no safe level. Denmark banned trans fat from food but we've dragged our feet. In January 2006 we will be listing trans fat on food labels; however, the Food and Drug Administration is allowing companies to say the food has 'no trans fats' even if 500 milligrams of trans fat is contained in the food," Ozner said.

"Trans fat such as margarine was supposed to be a healthier alternative to saturated fats like butter, but it wasn't known that trans fat did a lot of damage. It increases bad cholesterol and decreases the good cholesterol. It increases (blood) platelet stickiness, it gets into the cell membrane and impedes cell communication, which leads to a cascade of problems including inflammation and a number of disease states including heart disease, hypertension and diabetes."

An ongoing study of more than 80,000 nurses found that replacing just 30 calories, or seven grams, of carbohydrates each day with 30 calories, or 4 grams, of trans fats nearly doubled the risk of developing heart disease, according to Ozner.

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Alex Cukan is an award-winning journalist, but she always has considered caregiving her primary job. UPI welcomes comments and questions about this column. E-mail: consumerhealth@upi.com