People who have heart attacks usually ate a meal cooked in vegetable and hydrogenated oils.
The news reported that the 51 year old James Gandolfini had eaten back-to-back orders of fried prawns accompanied with mayonnaise chili sauce during a 7pm meal, just hours before he suffered a fatal heart attack.
Was there a connection to his last meal and his sudden death?
I believe there was.
For decades scientists have known that a single high-fat meal causes short-term enhancement of platelet activity. In other words the high fat meal makes the blood eager to clot.
Now for functional medicine practitioners, we understand that we are NOT talking about good fats like coconut oil, avocados, nuts, etc.
What may in fact be a lethal combination for high risk cardiovascular individuals include fried foods, high consumptions of polyunsaturated foods (corn, cottonseed, safflower oils) and all hydrogenated oils and transfats.
Since most of us are not perfect and we like to indulge periodically, functional medicine doctors recommend the following nutrients that can inhibit or turn off this postprandial platelet hyperactivity. They include: vitamin E (mixed tocopherol-tocotrienol combination), arginine, magnesium, taurine and acetyl L-carnitine .
These nutrients have been reported to turn off this exaggerated clotting response triggered by a high fat meal that leads to a massive heart attack.
So after a night on the town and the occasional treat of eating a high (bad) fat meal, functional medicine practitioners recommend you take the above nutrients to "decrease" this cardiovascular risk.
References
Haft JI, et al, Role of blood platelets in coronary artery disease, Am J Cardiol, 43:1197-1206, 1979
Oliver MS, et al., Relation between serum free fatty acids and arrhythmias and death after acute myocardial infarction, Lancet 1:710, 1968
Plotnick GD, et al, Effect of anti-oxidant vitamins on the transient impairment of epithelium-dependent brachial artery vasoactiity following a single high-fat meal, J Am Med Assoc 278; 20:1682-86, 1997
Suzuki YT, et al., Effects of l-carnitine on ventricular arrhythmias in dogs with acute myocardial ischemia and the supplement of excess free fatty acids, Japan Circul J, 45:552-9, 1981
Wallen JW, et al, Pre-ischemic administration of ribose to delay the onset of irreversible ischemic injury and improve function: studies in normal and hypertrophied hearts, Canad J Physiol Pharmacol, 81:40-47, 2003
Wolf A, et al, Dietary L-arginine supplementation normalizes platelet aggregation in hypercholesterolemic humans, J Am Coll Cardiol 29:479-85, 1997
CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) is a biologically produced trans fat (or partially trans, according to Wikipedia) found mostly in beef and dairy products, but has beneficial effects on health. That may be the one exception to the general rule that trans fats are very bad for humans (and other mammals/animals).