Did you ever wonder if the food you eat is a direct effect on your health, well-being,

and longevity?

Well, I'm here to end that mystery you ARE the food you eat.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast, I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Today we look at stents, those tiny tubes that doctors insert into a blocked artery

to try to keep it open.

Did you know that there's demonstrably little or no benefit to the hundreds of thousands

of stent procedures performed outside of an emergency setting?

Here's our first story.

The large National Cardiology Conference has made track the majority of cardiologists in

the entire country in one place.

So hey, if you're going to have a heart attack, that would seem to be the place to do it.

And indeed, that's when the American Heart Association president had his within hours

of his presidential address.

With so many of the nation's top cardiologists at the conference, maybe that's a bad time

to go into cardiac arrest anywhere else, though, you don't know until you point it to

the test.

To their surprise, they found substantially lower mortality among those going into cardiac

failure or cardiac arrest during the big national cardiology meetings.

Why is the death rate lower when most of the cardiologists are away?

One potential explanation is that the intensity of care may be lower, suggesting the harms

of such care may unexpectedly outweigh the benefits.

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