Nutrition and Mortality in the Dual Pandemic
Heart disease, kidney disease and stroke mortality are increasing, driven by diet, exercise and lifestyle choices, mediated by a risk conferred by the microbiome. Poor nutrition promotes health inequities and ethnic disparities.
Plant-based diets are associated with lower rates of obesity and diabetes, high quality of life and longer life expectancy, as well as less hypertension, dyslipidemia, peripheral artery disease, coronary disease, myocardial infarction, erectile dysfunction, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, stroke and death, much of which is mediated by the microbiome.
In our dual heart disease and COVID-19 pandemic, we need to advocate for risk factor reduction, whenever and wherever possible by improving our microbiome to reduce mortality associated with nutrition-related illnesses.
Dr. Kim Allan Williams is currently the Chairman of the University of Louisville Department of Medicine. He specializes in cardiology, cardio-nutrition, cardio- rheumatology, cardio-nephrology, preventive cardiology and cardiovascular radiology. He is a past President of the American College of Cardiology, past President of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology, and former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Black Cardiologists.
He is also the founder of the Urban Cardiology Initiative in Detroit, Michigan, aiming to reduce ethnic heart care disparities. He continues community-based efforts in Chicago at Rush University Medical Center, including the H.E.A.R.T. program (Helping Everyone Assess Risk Today), screening for heart disease and intervening with education, nutrition and lifestyle changes. He has been a delegate for cardiology to the American Medical Association for over 20 years and has served as a consultant for the FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
His current professional focus is on preventive cardiology, synthesizing data on cardiovascular risk and mortality due to nutrition. He has over 600 research and guideline publications, online resources, movies and lectures, most recently on the topic of cardio-nutrition. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (https://ijdrp.org/index.php/ijdrp).
A native of Chicago’s South Side’s inner-city schools, and a former professional tennis player and national tennis coach, Dr. Williams has over 40 years of experience as an educator, researcher, and clinician focused on advocacy for nutrition, national and international health care disparities, health care delivery, and advanced access to cardiac imaging.
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