You cannot dissolve plaque like pouring a drain cleaner down a pipe. Plaque forms inside the wall of your artery, not on the surface, so there is nothing to simply rinse away.
But the research does show three real things we can aim for. You can stop plaque getting worse. You can stabilise it so the cap toughens and becomes far less likely to burst. And in some trials, plaque has genuinely gone backwards.
Two studies make this clear. The Ornish trial put patients with existing heart disease onto an intensive lifestyle programme and found most of that group showed some regression, while the group on standard care kept getting worse and had far more cardiac events over time. The ASTEROID trial took the opposite route, using a high dose statin, and used ultrasound scans to watch plaque actually shrink.
Diet and medication are not competing with each other. They work on the same root causes, mainly cholesterol and inflammation, just by different routes.
In this episode I walk through six practical steps that the evidence actually supports, covering your cholesterol numbers, the way you eat, how movement helps clean your arteries, calming chronic inflammation, managing stress properly, and which supplements are simply not worth your money.
The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version.
Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says.
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