Q: Can plaque in my arteries be reversed?
A: With a really aggressive heart-healthy diet, the plaque can shrink a little—maybe 5 percent. But that's not where the big change happens. What you can change with good lifestyle choices is the rate of complications, such as pain. In fact, based on the studies of our friend Dean Ornish and others, those rates can plummet up to 90 percent. Why? You can't treat plaque like the class bully—and blame everything on it. The bigger issue is how prone your arteries are to spasms. Fatty meals make your arteries smaller, so the plaque blocks more of the opening. Healthy foods, like the ones in our "YOU" diet, open up the arteries and decrease the destructive impact that plaque can have. And controlling stress, blood pressure, avoiding smoking and second hand smoke, and physical activity each add up to keeping you able to write e-mails many years in the future.
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