836
CHAPTERCardiovascular
Disease
S
am, my colleague at City College, born and raised on the African
coast of Ghana, had a father who died at the age of 103 in full pos-
session of his mental faculties. Sam believed he had inherited his father’s
longevity genes, since in looks and mind-set he was his carbon copy.
His father, however, unlike Sam, had eaten healthy foods all his life.
His dietary staple was fi sh that he ate right after he had caught and
cleaned it, yams and cassava he dug up from the earth and threw into
the fi re minutes before he devoured them, and coconut milk he drank
straight from the shell as soon as he got up in the morning. He sprin-
kled his food with what is considered the best salt in the world—min-
eral rich, reddish colored, and sweet tasting, it is raked up from the
shoreline of the Ghana coast. Sam, on the other hand, having immi-
grated to the United States as a young man, had eaten processed foods
most of his life. Now at age 86 his chances of living to be as old as his
father were slim, since he was suffering from hardening of the arteries,
a disease unknown among Ghanans—despite their high intake of salt.
I recommended to Sam that he change his diet instead of having an
angioplasty, but he followed his doctors’ advice and went ahead with the
operation. In this procedure, a balloon is threaded through the arteries
to the heart and expanded. After clearing away the plaque blocking the
arteries, the surgeon implants a stent to keep the artery open, thus
assuring the maximum fl ow of blood. The operation appeared at fi rst
to be a success. With his arteries cleared, Sam’s chest pains went away
and the increased fl ow of blood through the widened arteries now car-
ried a suffi cient supply of oxygen to the cells for the production of