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| Health Concerns > Heart Disease: The Number One Killer | May 17, 2008 |
The following is the table of contents and first chapter from the book. If you are interested in this subject and want to learn more (or you want to read the rest of the book), please contact me at drsmith@renewalresearch.com.
Preventing and Reversing Cardiovascular Disease...Naturally
Contents
Introduction
Part One A Revolution in Diagnosing and Preventing Heart and Cardiovascular Disease
Chapter 1 An Epidemic of Heart Disease
Chapter 2 How To Use This Book
Chapter 3 Atherosclerosis: The Most Common Disease
Chapter 4 Beyond Cholesterol: Introducing The New Heart Disease Markers
Chapter 5 Atherogenesis: How Coronary Artery Disease Happens
Part Two The New Heart Markers: What They Mean and How Reverse Them
Chapter 6 Blood Lipids: Cholesterol and LDL, Triglycerides, Lipoproteins, HDL, VLDL
Chapter 7 C-Reactive Protein: The Fire Alarm Molecule
Chapter 8 Homocysteine: Ping Pong Balls From Hell
Chapter 9 Fibrinogen: Clotting Protein Gone Berserk Chapter 10 Blood Sugar, Insulin Resistance, and
Syndrome “X”
Chapter 11 LDL Density: A Few Extra Nanometers Can Kill You
Chapter 12 Hypothyroidism, Chlamydia, Iron Overload
References
Index
A Revolution in Diagnosing and Preventing Heart and Cardiovascular Disease
An Epidemic of Heart Disease
At age 50, Hal felt great. His cholesterol was low, he exercised every day, he didn’t drink or smoke, his blood pressure was normal, he maintained a healthy weight, ate a low fat diet, managed stress effectively, and got regular checkups.
While mowing his backyard one sunny Saturday afternoon, Hal experienced sudden chest pain. He collapsed. His wife, Muriel, delivering some lemonade and cookies, found him slumped on the ground next to his mower, dead of a massive myocardial infarction. A blood sample taken prior to his death revealed Hal’s untreated C-reactive protein had been 9.3 (normal is 1.0 or less).
Mary was a 55 year old Chicago real estate broker who owned her own firm. She’d read all the health magazines and knew a lot about how to take care of herself. Thanks to a statin drug, her cholesterol was normal. Because she exercised every day and ate a vegetarian diet, her blood pressure was normal. She wouldn’t dream of smoking.
One morning, while driving to her office, she passed out at the wheel and crashed into a tree. The autopsy showed she had suffered a massive stroke. Unbeknownst to her or her doctor Mary’s unmeasured and untreated fibrinogen level had been 500 for several years.
Art Baker was a healthy 62 year old musician and avid skier from Boulder, Colorado. Art’s cholesterol was normal, he eschewed fatty foods, exercised every day, and didn’t smoke. He kept his stress level and blood pressure low by playing piano every day, and living a laid back lifestyle. At a recent checkup, his internist told him he had no sign of heart or cardiovascular disease and that his general health was “perfect.” A couple of weeks later, one wintry afternoon, Art slumped over his keyboard while composing a new piece, and could not be revived. Art’s cause of death was not elevated cholesterol; it was undiagnosed and untreated metabolic syndrome (also known as Syndrome X). His blood sugar was elevated at 112, his triglycerides were quite high at 350, and his protective HDL was depressed at 27.
At 47 Jake was enjoying the prime of his life. A successful small businessman from San Francisco, he headed up his own consulting firm, and at work he played tough and called all the shots. At home, however, Millie, his wife and sweetheart of 25 years, knew his soft side and exploited it by teasing him mercilessly. He loved to play with his kids and reveled in watching them grow up.
Jake took good care of his health, or at least he though he did. His father had died of a heart attack, and Jake’s cholesterol was modestly elevated. His internist, Dr. Bob Sweeney had given him a statin drug, and, when the cholesterol had reached the normal range, pronounced Jake “healthy as a horse” and “free of heart attack risk.”
About a month after his last visit to Dr. Sweeney, while roughhousing with his 7 year old, Mikey, Jake stopped suddenly and clutched his chest. He turned blue, and collapsed on the oriental rug, dead in less than five minutes. Jake’s untreated homocysteine level was measured at 14.7 (ideal is 6.0 or less).
As a nation, we have been sold on the failed notion that to prevent heart disease all we have to do is control our cholesterol, weight, and blood pressure. Like Hal, Mary, Art, and Jake, though you may be convinced that you are doing all of the right things, you may still be at great risk of a sudden heart attack.
This book contains information that may save your life. It’ll show you how to apply the most recent research findings about heart disease. Recent research has proven beyond any doubt that if one truly wants to prevent the heart attacks and strokes that kill most of us, we need to go beyond the outmoded cholesterol model and look at the new “independent risk markers.”
I will show you how to test for the “independent markers” that actually cause atherosclerosis, and how to design your own personal program that will reverse the disease process.
Along the way, you’ll learn that your doctor is probably not aware of this information that can dramatically reduce your heart attack risk.
If you are perfectly healthy and symptom free, you can use these new markers to literally see into your future: you’ll identify the heart disease risk factors that could eventually cause you to suffer a heart attack or a stroke. Armed with this information, you can take action to reverse the markers and prevent a future health disaster.
If you already suffer from atherosclerotic heart and cardiovascular disease, this book will go far beyond the outdated cholesterol model to show you how to identify the specific causes of your disorder, and how to reverse them, so that your blood vessels can heal.
A system gone awry
The current standard medical approach for “preventing” atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) is to correct cholesterol if it’s elevated (using statin drugs), and lower blood pressure (more drugs). If you’re lucky, your physician will take an extra 30 seconds and toss in some gratuitous, halfhearted, hand waving recommendations about the importance of exercise and a low fat diet.
The next step is to sit back and wait for a cardiovascular “event.” No problem: more often than not there’ll be one. About three-fourths of patients subjected to this laissez-faire approach will eventually cooperate by having a heart attack or a stroke. Nothing like a medical emergency to mobilize action, so now the doctors whip out their prescription pads and sharpen their scalpels in a belated attempt to “close the door after the horses have gotten out.”
If the vast array of expensive drugs doesn’t prove effective, or if the atherosclerotic arterial blockage has progressed too far, there’s always balloon angioplasty (stretching open a narrowed artery by inserting a balloon in the narrowed part of the vessel and then blowing it up, stent implantation (a metal expandable tube is placed inside the narrowed artery), or bypass surgery (leg veins are transplanted to the heart to get blood past the blockage).
But shouldn’t they have anticipated the cataclysm and gotten going sooner? Couldn’t the debacle that finally stirs them into dramatic action have been prevented? I think so.
It seems to me that there’s something deeply flawed with a medical delivery system that waits patiently for a disaster, and then hauls out some truly drastic and dangerous therapeutic measures. When driving, you don’t wait until the last minute and then try to swerve away to avoid a crash. You take preventive action from the earliest moment a potential danger becomes apparent. That’s the kind of shift in consciousness I’m advocating with heart disease. From a statistical standpoint we know that most of us are steering toward a cardiovascular accident. Let’s start taking preventive action now, rather than waiting until the last minute and then opting for the drugs and surgery.
Medical scientists now know that atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is both preventable and reversible. By taking the blood tests I describe in this book, you can actually see the accident coming. And you’ll know which markers are going to cause it.
By identifying and reversing your specific risk markers, you can literally prevent this killer disease before it happens, and dramatically reduce that 75% risk down to 5% or less.
The leading cause of death
Heart disease is by far the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States.More likely than not, unless you take action to find and treat its causes, it will be the cause of your death. No matter who you are, how successful or wealthy you are, no matter what your age or sex or where you live, your chances of dying prematurely of cardiovascular disease are about three in four. You are about three times as likely to succumb to this preventable disease as from all other causes combined!
At this moment, more than 70 million Americans suffer from some form of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.Most of the rest are in the process of developing it.
Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the "silent killer" is a slow, progressive disease that begins early in life and usually goes undetected for decades. Twice every minute, an American suffers a heart attack. Half of these heart attacks, one every minute, is fatal.
Two thirds of these victims had no prior warning, no early symptoms to tell them they might be at risk. For them, the first and only symptom of heart disease was a fatal heart attack.
For those who die of a heart attack or a stroke, powerful biochemical forces have been silently at work, gradually setting the stage by causing the atherosclerotic hardening that precedes the fatal event.
Our understanding of atherosclerosis has now advanced far beyond the simplistic and antiquated notion that cholesterol is at the root of it. We now know that cholesterol, a molecule necessary for life, is just one of several markers for atherosclerosis. Other important molecular participants (villains, all) include homocysteine, C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, and small dense oxidized LDL particles. These have been shown play an active role in damaging the arterial wall and causing atherosclerotic plaque to form there. We can now test for these and other causes of atherosclerosis, and reverse them.
This book is written for two kinds of people. Some of you already have a heart problem and want to know how to reverse it. Others have no heart disease, but have become aware of the high probability of developing it, and want to keep that from happening.
The Renewal Heart Program first shows you how to identify your personal markers for atherosclerosis. Then, for the markers that are abnormal, you’ll learn how to reverse them.
As you read this book, keep in mind the following two important facts:
Heart and cardiovascular disease can be prevented and reversed naturally, using foods, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, botanical medicines, and (the least expensive and most potent medicine of all) daily exercise.
In the next chapter, I’ll explain how to use this book...
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