TO THE HEART PATIENT Don't Read this if you Really, Really believe your Cardiologist knows best when the only advice he has is :
take this drug to lower your cholesterol and this other drug to keep your nerves under control (Statins and Beta blockers )....
Oh and make sure to check in every three months to find out whether your liver has survived so far.
You have the right to choose your own death and the way you want to go about it, but if........ just if, you think there must be a better way, you may want to delve into this article by a doctor who finally saw the light. And thank God he is not alone anymore.
..............
!!! "So you've decided to read it?
Then let's start with something that your cardiologist is most likely not willing to admit yet:
Cardiovascular disease, a leading cause of mortality in the world, is no longer considered a disorder of lipid accumulation but rather a disease process characterized by low-grade inflammation of the vascular lining (endothelial cells) and an inappropriate 'wound healing response' of the bloodvessels : http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/abstract/47/3/403
And there is reason to believe that blood glucose levels are more indicative of looming heart trouble than cholesterol
Not sure exactly what the cause but likely suspects are wheat gluten and lectins and Omega6 overload and polyunsaturated fats
DRUGS
There are two main types of heart medication: calcium channel blockers and beta adrenergic blockers. (Merck) Without going into the whole sordid mess, let's just say that one slows down - heart muscle activity, and the other dims the nerve signals that must link the brain with the heart for normal operation. The brain sends thousands of signals every second to the heart to make minute little adjustments in heartbeat and blood flow in order to accommodate variation in demand coming from the organs and muscles. So, when blood pressure goes up due to plaque in the arteries, or because of stress tightening up the arteries, the heart has to work twice as hard to push all that blood through the system.
And then there are the statin drugs, which want to lower your cholesterol........but your liver makes most of the cholesterol.... does that mean that now your liver has to work harder.?? mind you your liver made the high amounts of cholesterol for a reason..... don't you think so??
So you really have to make a choice: trying to do something to ease the burden on the heart, to unblock the flow, or drug the heart so that your blood pressure gauges will read normal, even though the heart is still struggling to keep up with the oxygen demands of the body, demands which have not changed. But now since the heart is shackled by the added pharmacological deadweight, the oxygen demands don't get met. Short-term effect: decreased circulation, oxygen deficit, fatigue. Long term effect: heart muscle degeneration, enlargement, degeneration of any other organ or tissue which is not getting the blood it keeps calling for, lung congestion, and death.
Heart muscle is different from other muscle. When you work out and your biceps get bigger, it's getting stronger. The biceps is skeletal muscle. Heart muscle is different. When heart muscle enlarges, it's because it' s getting weaker - overstretched and thinner and flimsier. That's why an enlarged heart is a problem. Why does the heart enlarge? Increased resistance from blocked arteries makes it harder to push all the blood through the system.
In 1900 the term "heart attack" didn't even exist. And now, for the first time in history more people are dying of heart problems than any other disease. And this is normal???
It's is insane, that's what it is!.
Heart drugs were supposed to be a temporary solution. So how temporary is your heart medication?
Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution, right?
Result of heart drugs and the "foods of commerce" both of which are new in this century: 1 out of 2 North Americans dies of congestive heart failure. (CDC website) this statistic has gone unchanged since 1994. (Statistical Abstracts)
Percentage of persons aged 20 years and older with hypertension or taking hypertension medications: 30.2%
Percentage of persons aged 20 years and older with high blood cholesterol: 17.3%
Percentage of persons aged 20 years and older with physician-diagnosed diabetes: 6.5%
Percentage of persons aged 20 years and older who are obese: 30.5%
Percentage of adults aged 18 years and older who are current cigarette smokers (2003): 21.6%
Percentage of adults aged 18 years and older who engage in no leisure-time physical activity (2003): 37.6%
Crippled by pharmaceuticals
Headache Dizziness Slowed heart Edema Abnormal EKG Angina Irregular heartbeat Low blood pressure Fast heart Fainting Amnesia Depression Hallucinations Insomnia Personality change Tremors Ringing in the ears Anorexia Constipation Vomiting Weight gain Photosensitivity Nosebleed Muscle cramps Joint pain Sexual difficulties Anemia
(A partial list of side effects to the above-cited heart drugs )
source: Physician's Desk Reference
DEATH BY BYPASS because the blockage is not the problem
Angioplasty? Bypass? Think these are going to save you? Re-clogging rate for angioplasty two years about 57%. (Willix) In 1992, a study in Journal of the American Medical Association reported that at least half of angioplasties were unnecessary.
Long term benefit of bypass? What do 90% of people with bypass surgeries eventually die of? Take a wild guess.
In a 1997 study, two groups of heart attack patients were followed for one year. The first group had either angioplasty or bypass. The second group had nothing. Difference in mortality? None. No difference in mortality! (New England Journal of Medicine May 22, 1997) That means that neither bypass nor angioplasty extends people's lifespan whatsoever i.e. statistically you'll live just as long without either, by doing nothing. But of course that would not fatten the heart surgeon's purse. The procedures are now so common place , surgeons can almost do it with their eyes closed. Some may do, because 13% die on the table.
This is a common finding in many other studies. In a 22 year follow-up study of 682 heart patients, it was found that the bypass surgery had no effect on the survival rate or the day to day pain.
In a 16 year follow up study bypass surgery made no difference whatsoever in survival rate.
And on and on , the conclusion is inescapable. After several years, every heart surgeon must eventually confront reality: bypass surgery doesn't save lives. 13% die on the table. The rest come back for more later on.
Most bypass surgeries these days are done before the patient is in acute distress. Often the patient is intimidated into surgery with mild chest pain as the only symptom, perhaps even with normal blood pressure. The diagnosis is made quickly before the prey gets his/her act together and flies away. Healthcare?? I think we're talking sales and marketing here, and the surgeons are very good at closing the sale. Fear and panic are very persuasive motivators.
Even for those with verified arterial blockage, surgery is a temporary housecleaning procedure, and all the studies show the same thing: bypass does not increase overall survival rate. People die of heart disease just as soon.
The arteries that have been roto-rootered immediately begin to take on the condition of the rest of the cardiovascular system, i.e., clogged. Unless!!! of course you take drastic action with regards to your diet and lifestyle...but why wait until after such drastic, dangerous trauma, why not start NOW!!! You can make a difference already by taking something as simple as 3000 mg of VitC per day, change your diet to non dairy and non animal fat from grainfed beef. etc. The only dairy exception would be butter from pastured cows, which is high in Vit A,D, and Vit. K2. (Vit K2 is helpful in preventing atheriosclerosis)
And fat from pastured beef and preferable not finished on GMO corn
The above statistics don't even take into account the actual risk of death from the bypass operation itself. In a bizarre advertisement in the 23 Nov 98 issue of Newsweek, we see a comparison of bypass surgery death rates on the operating table among the leading hospitals in the country, as mentioned before. Here are the odds they advertise for bypass surgery
Texas Heart Center 87% Johns Hopkins 90.2% Mayo Clinic 93.3%
A 13% chance of dying from a surgery that isn't even going to prolong survival?
LIFETIME PROGRAM?
Remember when you were first diagnosed as having high blood pressure and were first put on medications to "control your blood pressure"?
Heart medications are like most medications - fine for short-term, life-threatening situations. But long term, as with any drug, legal or illegal, eventually your body will pay the price. Looking in the Physicians' Desk Reference, we find that even the manufacturers of most heart medications don't recommend them for indefinite, open-ended use. This book is easy to get. Look up your medication and see the recommended duration of prescription. One reason is that the testing they did to put the drug on the market probably wasn't long-term. The other reason is that everybody knows that all side effects of drugs are cumulative.
And another thing: what if your doctor changes your prescription from Lipitor 5 to 10 to.....? How does that make you feel??
OPTIONS?
What's the alternative to this one-way downward spiral? Well, it's obvious that such a lifestyle isn't working too well and probably won't last too long. Do people you know who have been on heart medications for quite a while, look healthy? Are they getting stronger or weaker, year by year? Look at all the people you used to know in this category who are no longer around. A universal principle for any life form is that either it's improving or it's dying. Day by day the inner systems are either becoming stronger and more refined, or else they' are degenerating and breaking down. Can't be both. We're not in stasis. Unless they're in a serious accident, most people don't die all at once. No, most people die by stages, day by day, very often with no pain or symptoms. Just like heart attacks. Do these people get a warning? Sometimes, but for 33% of them, their very first symptom was death. (Willix)
These days it seems everybody and his dog is on the healthy heart bandwagon. No fat, low fat, fat free - often these labels are found on some very heart-unfriendly foods. How can you make any sense of all this?
Well for starters, with very few exceptions if a food has any pasteurized dairy derivatives at all, it's either hard fat or chemicals. You can definitely live without it. This group includes most pizza, yoghurt, clam chowder, ice cream, meringue, whipped cream, cottage cheese, linguini alfredo, tapioca, brie, creamed chicken - get the idea? In fact the proteins and the refined starches and sugars are among the worst offenders.
LOW FAT?
Next, if you want to calculate the true percentage of fat in any item, take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 10, and divide by the number of calories. Your answer may surprise you, especially if the product is supposedly low fat.
For example, let's say a bag of "low fat" snack food has 350 calories and 20 grams of fat. Add a zero to the fat grams - that's 200. Two hundred divided by 350 is 57%. That's 57% fat for this "low-fat" food. That is not so bad as long it is the good fat. No transfats, please, please, whenever you see the word trans-fat, or hydrogenated, give it a wide berth; and use polyunsaturated fats sparingly. Our diets are loaded with Omega-6 and not enough Omega3 (monounsaturated). In fact a lot of animal fat has mono unsaturated fat content. Don't expect your dietician to tell you that
We need fat. Our body is mainly fat and protein. We need saturated and unsaturated. We need it in the form of essential fatty acids, which compose many important structures of the body, such as nerve linings and hormones, for example. Good fat... Good fat comes in avocados, bananas, raw nuts, fish, small amounts of clean lean meat, and pasture fed beef. Good fat in dairy comes only in non-pasteurised dairy, which in Canada in virtually impossible. But we don't need a lot of carbohydrates, especially not from the kind with gluten (wheat). The damage to your arteries was never done by the fat. Fat does not "clog arteries". Arteries are plastered because of damage done by free radicals, LDL damaged by free radicals, damage done by homocysteine, damage done because our diet was severely compromised.
ENZYMES
The other problem is that, because of food processing, most foods we eat contain no enzymes necessary for the breakdown inside the body.Enzymes break down foods into their simplest components, the only usable forms. The body has its own enzymes for digestion - amylase, pepsin, lipase, chymotrypsin, , to name a few. The problem is that there is a limited supply. So the body simply does the best job it possibly can with its own enzymes. We can help by eating those foods which contain within them the enzymes necessary for complete breakdown and assimilation by the body. That way the body's stores of enzymes are not taxed. Examples: raw fruits and vegetables. The more raw fruits and raw vegetables in the diet, the more digested the food becomes, resulting in a greater nutritive value by the time the blood nourishes the individual cells in all organs and tissues. It's a very simple idea, very simple indeed. . Ever see a Hamburger Helper tree, or a Velveeta plant? How many meats in the deli case never had parents? The result is that the body simply cannot keep up with the enzymatic demands being made upon it week after week, month after month.
So what do you think happens to food that doesn't get broken down, that doesn't get digested within your digestive tract every day?
It stays there. Comes in but never goes out. Does the word putrefy mean anything to you? It's rot. The undigested food rots and clumps up and blocks your stomach and intestines. Year by year we simply fill up, like a balloon. The body dehydrates, toxifies, and degenerates. No energy. Bad circulation.
Long-term intake of enzymeless foods blocks the colon.. Toxification of this organ can cause practically any disease you can name.
FREE RADICALS
As already touched upon: then there are the free radicals. Remember, those are the unstable little molecules we get from drugs, alcohol, stress, processed food, smoking, radiation from TV and computers, trauma - the usual culprits, but also from the breakdown of cells in our own body. A free radical is a molecule that is missing an electron. It tries to steal an electron from a normal cell or molecule in the body, making that molecule able to do the same thing to another one, in a chain reaction, like musical chairs. This is how DNA gets altered, and how cells change - how cancer starts. Doctors call it mutagenesis. In the arteries, free radicals are the guys who make the little cuts or nicks in the artery lining and you have a local inflammation, and more often than not many at the same time. And you LDL goes way up because cholesterol is needed for the repair. Because your arteries don't like nicks and cuts and will repair.. We don't know yet how it works and what takes place, but remember: our body is a self healing unit, incredibly sophisticated. It will not let those little cuts, or whatever does damage to the arteries , go untreated. It appears there might be repair being done from inside the artery wall and thus building out into the "channel". Whatever it is : free radicals are a threat, they may be the cause of the hardening of the arteries (artherosclerosis). According to Linus Pauling (two time Nobel prize winner!!) there is an acute VitC deficiency at that point in the arteries around the heart , the Coronaries. You have a situation not unlike Scorbut : a severe VitC deficiency. He suggests immediate VitC injections or large doses (up to 10 grams per day) orally.
There is some evidence now that a high LDL level (the bad guys) is a symptom of something different, an underlying problem, and LDL is on its way in higher than normal numbers to do some repairing. Or maybe it is a shortage of the clean-up guys, the HDL, to get it out of the system. Whatever it is, it is becoming more and more clear that lowering your cholesterol level is not really getting to the heart of the problem
One of the biggest producers of free radicals in the body is rancid (rotting) indigestible hard fats (trans fats) which just sit there in the tract for too long a time, because they're too weird to be broken down by the body's own enzymes. Fats like these are new to our species - only within the last 75 years - chips, fries, deep-fried foods. With almost 50% of the population now dying of heart disease; something has obviously changed for the worse. It is also quite a coincidence that the same time the transfats were introduced, together with the polyunsaturated vegetable oils (high in Omega-6) coronary heart disease really took flight. Coincidence??
People aren't born with a bad heart, most of the time. The genetic theory is pretty shaky - it really doesn't matter if your parents or grandparents died of heart attacks. People inherit eating habits. These habits determine the health of the heart far more than genetics can. What were the grandparents eating? Although there is some evidence that lactose intolerance (mild or otherwise) could elevate your chances of beating the odds. Did you know that consumption of milk is a fairly recent phenomenon. The porridge they were eating at the beginning of the 20th century had water in it, no milk!
We dig our graves with our teeth - it's not just an epigram; more often, it's an epitaph.It makes a hell of a difference what we eat to prevent from going further down the slope. But what about the stuff that is already there?
CHELATION
Between two and three thousand MDs are now offering a medical alternative to bypass surgery. It is called chelation therapy.
Originally developed for cleaning heavy metals out of the blood, the application with arterial plaque soon became obvious and successful..
EDTA is an amino acid compound that is introduced into the blood for the purpose of dissolving the plaque out of the arteries.
Practitioners claim high rates of success.
Chelation therapy can be either intravenous or else given orally, with tablets.
Although EDTA may place some temporary stress on the kidneys, at least it actually does what it advertises, which is to remove plaque from all the arteries. This is in contrast to bypass surgery and angioplasty, which only rearranges the plaque temporarily.
If your doctor pretends ignorance, or is otherwise unhelpful, seek contact with a local Naturopath. Most places now have associations of Natural Health Practitioners. Check the Yellow Pages.
NATURAL ALTERNATIVE TO HEART MEDICATION
So, the alternative to blocked is - digest everything you eat every day. A few hints:
1. Stop all dairy immediately,except for grass fed butter , and cheese... Insist on grass fed beef.
Forget about the rest.2. Cut out white sugar wherever you can: soft drinks, donuts, cookies, ice cream, etc.
It destroys digestive enzymes that break down fats. Cut down on most wheat based food stuffs3. Eat as many raw foods as possible,
they contain their own enzymes and won't drain the body's resources.
4. And again: cut down on carbohydrates, especially the grain based ones.
Oats and barley seem the safer ones. There must be a reason why so many people have gluten allergy
5. Get your anti oxidents: Vit A, C,D, E, A . Either in your diet or as supplements. If your homocysteine levels are high -and they probably are if your cholesterol levels are high- take a Vit B complex ( espec. folic acid, Vit B6, Vit B12. See also Dr McCully's story
if your cholesterol levels are high- take a Vit B complex ( espec. folic acid, Vit B6, Vit B12. See also Dr McCully's storyIf you're still smoking cigarettes, disregard everything you've just read, and light up! Forget about it! Sayonara.
One reservation I do have about Kilmer McCully is that he still clings to the outdated fat theory
Enzymes taken at mealtime will not only ensure complete digestion at that meal. In addition, they will break down the toxic, residual, undigested fats and protein that have been lurking in the intestines and in the bloodstream. This is no theory. You can see it. You can feel it. It's not medication - it's nutrition. See Enzymes page
LIFE TIME OF DRUGS ?
Afraid to stop taking drugs? Several medical doctors are helping their patients get off heart drugs. Willix, MacDougall, Atkins, even Whittaker. Dr. Kavanaugh, a Canadian cardiologist, instead of bypass and angioplasty, takes his patients and puts them on a specialized exercise program , initially very light, and gradually increasing in duration. One of his bypass patients actually went on to run in the Boston Marathon!
But even easier than these programs are the simple enzymes and chelation supplements cited above.
As mentioned check with your doctor and if he/she is not interested, get hold of a Naturopath..
Cause of every disease a deficiency of drugs? Where would that idea come from?.
One of the most famous heart surgeons in the US, Robert Willix no longer recommends either drugs or surgery because of all the years of watching his own failures and realizing that angioplasty and bypass simply do not heal people. They just postpone the inevitable for a short time. Willix has come to the same conclusion again and again: no matter how far gone the patient is, there's a greater chance of lasting improvement simply by diet and exercise. In fact, that's the only chance. It's really going against the grain, though isn't it? I mean North-Americans don't think like that. Responsible for my own health? I just trust my doctor. That way I don't actually have to do anything, except take my pills. I can continue my present course of my toxifying self destructive lifestyle. I'm sure Doctor knows what's best.
The death statistics however indicate otherwise - in 75 years, it's gone from less than 1% all the way up to 50% of all deaths being caused by heart failure. Today almost a millions die of heart disease every year. It must be quite bewildering to some that we cannot seem to pinpoint what exactly the problem is. But maybe we are entering a new era. Some of us are coming into a new phase of mass consciousness - a quantum shift in which the old ideas of drugging the body into submission are losing credibility. Reason: it usually doesn't work. Worse, the side effects aren't worth it.
So we learn something new, which of course isn't new at all.
The new idea is - work with the body, facilitate its own inner systems of regulation, minimize stress from food overload. Detox the blood, the milieu in which all cells are bathed. The holistic approach, in evidence since the days of Hippocrates.
This article was put together by using liberally material from a blog by Dr Tim O'Shea, and by Stephan Guyenet PhD, a Doctoral Graduate in Neurobiology
These are two blogs I can warmly recommend.
And don't forget to Exercise. The best investment in your health, your family and everybody who gives a darn about you may be a treadmill. Too expensive?? Get it with the Can Tire money you saved. Or with the Points you saved up while filling up at the gasbar, or when you did your shopping there. As a good Canadian!
And......
