Heart - An American Medical Odyssey - Book Review

Hardcover: Heart: An American Medical Odyssey / Kindle

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his longtime cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, share the story of Cheney’s thirty-five-year battle with heart disease—providing insight into the incredible medical breakthroughs that have changed cardiac care over the last four decades.

For almost as long as he served at the highest levels of government and business, Dick Cheney has been one of the most well known cardiac patients in the world. When he suffered his first heart attack in 1978, Cheney received essentially the same treatment as President Eisenhower did after his heart attack in 1955. Since then, coronary care has undergone revolutionary changes. The story of these changes is told through the chronicle of Cheney’s own heart disease and the treatments he received.

In Heart, for the first time ever, Dick Cheney shares the very personal story of his health struggles. Heart traces the history of cardiology over the past forty years through the alternating narratives of Cheney and his longtime cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner. In their voices, readers will learn about Cheney’s personal experiences, get a glimpse into the all-important doctor-patient relationship, and learn about the cutting-edge science that has radically changed the way we think about and treat the disease. By revealing the intimate details behind his five heart attacks and most recently, his heart transplant, Cheney offers hope to the millions struggling with cardiovascular disease around the world.

Video:  Health concerns loomed over Dick Cheney while in office

CBSNews: Dick Cheney called his current health "a miracle" in a frank discussion of the heart disease he suffered over his entire political career and especially when he served as the vice president. In his first interview about his new book, "Heart," he speaks to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, discussing for the first time the revelation that the defibrillator implanted in his chest could be used by terrorists to kill him and was altered to prevent that. Cheney's 60 Minutes interview aired on Sunday, Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Before he had a heart transplant 20 months ago, Cheney was a seriously ill man who had undergone several life-saving procedures, including the implantation of a defibrillator. Cheney had that replaced in 2007 and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, with whom he wrote the book, had the device's wireless function disabled so a terrorist couldn't send his heart a fatal shock. Some years later, Cheney was watching an episode of the SHOWTIME hit "Homeland," in which that terrorist scenario was woven into the plot. "I was aware of the danger...that existed...I found it credible," he responds to Gupta when asked what went through his mind. "I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device, that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible," says Cheney.

Cheney suffered five heart attacks requiring multiple angioplasties and catheterizations, plus a quadruple bypass operation. Still, he says his health troubles never impacted his performance in his job as the second most powerful man in the world. Nor did the stress on the job contribute to his disease, says the former two-term vice president. "I simply don't buy the notion that it contributed to my heart disease," he tells Gupta. "In fact...getting back to work...was important enough that I, in fact, kept them separate...I always did what I needed to do in order to deal with the health crisis in the moment," says Cheney.

At arguably one of the most stressful times for him, making decisions on 9/11 while President Bush was at an appearance in Florida, he says his health did not even occur to him. "I didn't think about my health. I was thinking about the problem we were dealing with," says Cheney. What he didn't know was that a blood test result seen the morning of 9/11 made Dr. Reiner afraid for the vice president's life. It showed a surge of potassium in his blood, a condition called hyperkalemia that could be fatal. Reiner tells Gupta, as he watched 9/11 television coverage that night, he was thinking, "Oh great, the vice president is going to die tonight from hyperkalemia."

Two years ago, Cheney was gaunt, carried a sallow complexion and needed a cane to walk. Today, he says he's a new man and feels "fantastic." At 72, he says he has no real physical limits. "I fish. I hunt...I don't ski, but that's because of my knees, not my heart. So, it's been a miracle," he tells Gupta.

Cheney had his first heart attack over 35 years ago and has been the recipient of many modern heart treatments that seemed to come along at just the right time. He even had a pump attached directly to his heart while awaiting a transplant. He knows luck played a big role in his life. He says Dr. Reiner once made an analogy between the course of Cheney's health and treatment and a person who gets up late and drives to work, but he sees all the traffic lights ahead are red. "'Cheney,'" he says the doctor told him, "'when you get to them, they all turn green.' And that's... a pretty good description," says Cheney.

Gupta quipped that miracle, fantastic and wonderful were not words normally heard out of Cheney’s mouth… Cheney came back with… “You mean from Darth Vader?”

Full 60 Minute Segment Video:  Dick Cheney's heart

Technorati Tags: Heart,Book,Books,Dick Cheney,Cheney,Dr. Sanjay Gupta,60 Minutes,CBS,defibrillator,Power,Miracles,Heart Disease,hyperkalemia,Darth Vader

Eat Orange Fruits and Vegetables

If you have a family history of heart disease or cancer, you may find eating more orange colored foods to be beneficial to your health. A study suggested that by eating orange colored fruits and vegetables one is less likely to die of either of these two diseases. This is because orange fruits and vegetables such as carrots and pumpkin are “high in the anti-oxidant alpha-carotene”.

Ignore This Essential Habit and Your Health Will Eventually Decline

By Dr. Mercola

Researchers have learned that circadian rhythms—the 24-hour cycles known as your internal body clock—are involved in everything from sleep to weight gain, mood disorders, and a variety of diseases.

Your body actually has many internal clocks—in your brain, lungs, liver, heart and even your skeletal muscles—and they all work to keep your body running smoothly by controlling temperature and the release of hormones.

It's well known that lack of sleep can increase your chances of getting sick. A new study shows just how direct that connection is.

The research found that the circadian clocks of mice control an essential immune system gene that helps their bodies sense and ward off bacteria and viruses. When levels of that particular gene, called toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9), were at their highest, the mice were better able to withstand infections.

Interestingly, when the researchers induced sepsis, the severity of the disease was dependent on the timing of the induction. Severity directly correlated with cyclical changes in TLR9.

According to the authors, this may help explain why septic patients are known to be at higher risk of dying between the hours of 2 am and 6 am.

Furthermore, they also discovered that when mice were vaccinated when TLR9 was peaking, they had an enhanced immune response to the vaccine. The researchers believe vaccine effectiveness could be altered depending on the time of day the vaccination is administered...

According to study author Erol Fikrig, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicineⁱ:

"These findings not only unveil a novel, direct molecular link between circadian rhythms and the immune system, but also open a new paradigm in the biology of the overall immune response with important implications for the prevention and treatment of disease. Furthermore, patients in the ICU often have disturbed sleep patterns, due to noise, nocturnal light exposure and medications; it will be important to investigate how these factors influence TLR9 expression levels and immune responses."

Lack of Sleep Worsens Stress-Related Immune Depression

One of the first studies to provide direct evidence linking sleep with the human stress-immune relationship dates back to 1998ⁱⁱ. Stress is also known to interfere with immune system function, and has been found to increase susceptibility to the common cold and slow wound healing.

In that 1998 study, the researchers discovered that people who were more likely to awaken during the first sleep cycle also tended to have lower levels of natural killer cells (NKC). Overall, the age of the patient was the greatest determinant of NKC level, but sleep disturbances were responsible for about 12 percent of the variance in NKC level.

Are You Living in Sync with Your Natural Body Clock?

Sleeping well is one of the cornerstones of optimal health, and if you ignore your poor sleeping habits, you will, in time, pay a price. In general, you will feel best and maintain optimal health when your lifestyle is in line with your circadian rhythm. It's wise to establish healthful routines of eating, exercising and sleeping, and to stick to them every day, including the weekends.

Unfortunately, sleep deprivation is such a chronic condition these days that you might not even realize you suffer from it. Your circadian rhythm has evolved over many years to align your physiology with your environment. However, it operates under the assumption that you are behaving as your ancestors did. Historically, humans have slept at night and stayed awake during the day. If you stay up late at night, depriving yourself of sleep, you send conflicting signals to your body.

As a result, you body gets confused and doesn't know whether it should be producing chemicals to help you sleep, or gear up for the beginning of a new day.

Melatonin is another chemical closely tied to your circadian rhythm. It's a pineal hormone and a very potent antioxidant, created in your brain during sleep.

Among its many functions, it slows the production of estrogen and is well known to suppress tumor development, which is why insomnia may increase your risk of cancer. Melatonin also helps suppress harmful free radicals. Melatonin production can be severely disrupted simply by exposing yourself to bright light late at night. Just switching a bedside lamp on and off in an otherwise pitch-black room produces a drop in melatonin levels. This is why it's so important to turn off the lights as the evening wears on, and avoid watching TV and working on the computer late at night.

How Sleep Influences Your Physical Health

Without good sleep, optimal health may remain elusive, even if you eat well and exercise (although those factors will tend to improve your ability to sleep better). Aside from directly impacting your immune function, another explanation for why poor sleep can have such varied detrimental effects on your health is that your circadian system "drives" the rhythms of biological activity at the cellular level. Hence disruptions tend to cascade outward throughout your entire body. For example, besides impairing your immune function and raising your cancer risk, interrupted or impaired sleep can also:

Increase your risk of heart disease.
Harm your brain by halting new cell production. Sleep deprivation can increase levels of corticosterone (a stress hormone), resulting in fewer new brain cells being created in your hippocampus.

Aggravate or make you more susceptible to stomach ulcers.
Contribute to a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you've already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight.

Raise your blood pressure.
Contribute to premature aging by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep (and during certain types of exercise, such as high intensity interval training).

Worsen constipation.
Increase your risk of dying from any cause.

Furthermore, lack of sleep can further exacerbate chronic diseases such as:

Parkinsons
Alzheimers
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Gastrointestinal tract disorders
Kidney disease
Behavioral problems in children

Are Sleeping Pills a Good Option When You Can't Fall Asleep?

If you have trouble sleeping, you're not alone. According to the National Sleep Foundation's (NSF) 2010 "Sleep in America Poll," only four in 10 respondents said they got a good night's sleep every night, or almost every night, of the weekⁱⁱⁱ. But please don't make the mistake of resorting to sleeping pills. At best, they're ineffective. At worst, they can be dangerous.

According to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data, over-the-counter sleep products such as Tylenol PM and Excedrin PM don't offer any significant benefit to patients. In 2007, an analysis of sleeping pill studies financed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that sleeping pills like Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata reduced the average time to go to sleep by just under 13 minutes compared with sugar pills -- hardly a major improvement.

You'd be far better off putting your money toward authentic solutions to help you sleep, like installing black-out drapes in your bedroom, than on sleeping pills, as they may actually make it more difficult for you to get a good night's rest naturally.

If anything, you could consider taking a melatonin supplement, which will help boost sleepiness.

Ideally it is best to increase your melatonin levels naturally, of course, by exposing yourself to bright sunlight in the daytime (along with full spectrum fluorescent bulbs in the winter) and complete darkness at night. If you do this regularly, you will promote proper functioning of your natural circadian rhythm, which is essential for a proper sleep cycle. However, if that isn't possible, you can consider a melatonin supplement. It's is a completely natural substance, made by your body, and has many health benefits in addition to sleep. In scientific studies, melatonin has been shown to increase sleepiness, help you fall asleep more quickly and stay asleep, decrease restlessness, and reverse daytime fatigue. I prefer to use a sublingual melatonin product because it is absorbed much faster and therefore works more quickly.

Keep in mind you typically only need a very minute amount. Taking higher doses, such as 3 mg, can sometimes have the reverse effect. So start with as little as 0.25mg or 0.5mg and play around with it to see what dosage works best for you.

How to Optimize Your Sleep

Below are several of my top guidelines for promoting good sleep. For a comprehensive sleep guide, please see my article 33 Secret's to a Good Night's Sleep.

1. Avoid watching TV or using your computer at night—or at least about an hour or so before going to bed—as these technologies can have a significantly detrimental impact on your sleep. TV and computer screens emit blue light; nearly identical to the light you're exposed to outdoors during the day. This tricks your brain into thinking it's still daytime, thereby shutting down melatonin secretion.

   Under normal circumstances, your brain starts secreting melatonin between 9 or 10 pm, which makes you sleepy. When this natural secretion cycle is disrupted, due to excessive light exposure after sunset, insomnia can ensue.

2. Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the slightest bit of light in the room can disrupt your internal clock and your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin. Even the tiniest glow from your clock radio could be interfering with your sleep. So close your bedroom door, and get rid of night-lights. Refrain from turning on any light at all during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. Cover up your clock radio.

   Make sure to cover your windows—I recommend using blackout shades or drapes.

3. Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes and particularly their upstairs bedrooms too warm. Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. This is because when you sleep, your body's internal temperature drops to its lowest level, generally about four hours after you fall asleep. Scientists believe a cooler bedroom may therefore be most conducive to sleep, since it mimics your body's natural temperature drop.
4. Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready for sleep.
5. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can disrupt your pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. To do this, you need a gauss meter. You can find various models online, starting around $50 to $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to shut down all power in your house.
6. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your bed. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least three feet. This serves at least two functions. First, it can be stressful to see the time when you can't fall asleep, or wake up in the middle of the night. Secondly, the glow from a clock radio can be enough to suppress melatonin production and interfere with your sleep.

   Cell phones, cordless phones and their charging stations should ideally be kept three rooms away from your bedroom to prevent harmful EMF's.

7. Avoid using loud alarm clocks. It is very stressful on your body to be suddenly jolted awake. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, an alarm may even be unnecessary.

   I gave up my alarm clock years ago and now spontaneously awake without an alarm. On those rare occasions that I do need to get up early to catch a flight, I have used a sun alarm clock. The Sun Alarm™ provides an ideal way to wake up each morning if you can't wake up with the REAL sun. Combining the features of a traditional alarm clock (digital display, AM/FM radio, beeper, snooze button, etc) with a special built-in light that gradually increases in intensity, this amazing clock simulates a natural sunrise. It also includes a sunset feature where the light fades to darkness over time, which is ideal for anyone who has trouble falling asleep.

Technorati Tags: sleep,sleeplessness,circadian rhythm,natural body clock,sleep deprivation,depression,sleep disorder,normal body functions,graveyard shift

The Amazing Nutrient that Lowers Your Blood Pressure

Research has recently found that vitamin D has a protective effect against arterial stiffness and impaired blood vessel relaxation.

Study participants with reduced levels of vitamin D had increased arterial stiffness and vascular function impairment. However, among those whose vitamin D levels were normalized over a six month period, vascular health improved and blood pressure measurements declined.

Science Newsline Reports:

"The results add to evidence that lack of vitamin D can lead to impaired vascular health, contributing to high blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease."

In related news, researchers have also found that high level of vitamin D could be protective against the development of early age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in adults.

In women younger than 75, those who had 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations lower than 38 nanomoles per liter were more likely to have age-related macular degeneration than women with concentrations greater than 38 nanomoles per liter.

This isn't the first time vitamin D has been linked to improved heart health. In fact, there's overwhelming evidence that this nutrient is essential for your heart and cardiovascular system.

Sources:

Science Newsline April 4, 2011

Archives of Ophthalmology April 2011; 129(4): 481-489

MSNBC April 27, 2011

Science Daily March 21, 2011

Journal of General Internal Medicine April 21, 2011 [Epub ahead of print]

Diabetes Care May 2011;34(5):1133-8

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Stiffer Arteries and High Blood Pressure

Even if you're considered generally "healthy," if you're deficient in vitamin D, your arteries are likely stiffer than they should be, and your blood pressure may run higher than recommended due to your blood vessels being unable to relax. That's the conclusion researchers from the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute has reached. Their findings were recently presented at the annual American College of Cardiology meeting in New Orleans.

According to researcher Dr. Al Mheid:

"We found that people with vitamin D deficiency had vascular dysfunction comparable to those with diabetes or hypertension."

That's a truly profound statement!

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are severely deficient in vitamin D, regardless of race or nationality. In the United States, the late winter average vitamin D is only about 15-18 ng/ml, which is considered a very serious deficiency state. Overall, it's estimated that 85 percent of the American public are deficient, and as much as 95 percent of U.S. senior citizens.

Another recent study also confirms the link between vitamin D deficiency and high blood pressure. Published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the study found that the disproportionately higher rates of hypertension among African Americans compared to Caucasians appears to be due to higher incidence of vitamin D deficiency. Life Extension Magazine quotes researcher Dr. Fiscella, professor of Family Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center:

"Our study confirms that vitamin D represents one piece of the complex puzzle of race and blood pressure, and since black-white differences in blood pressure represent thousands of excess deaths due to heart disease and stroke among blacks, we believe that simple interventions such as taking vitamin D supplements might have a positive impact on racial disparities."

The link between vitamin D status and heart health becomes even more apparent when you consider that only ONE out of 1,900 people evaluated meet the American Heart Association (AHA) definition of ideal cardiovascular health!

The AHA's definition of ideal cardiovascular health is the combination of the following seven factors:

1. Nonsmoking
2. body mass index less than 25
3. goal-level physical activity
4. healthy diet
5. untreated cholesterol below 200
6. blood pressure below 120/80
7. fasting blood sugar below 100

And out of 1,900 people, only one single person could claim this health status. Is it any wonder heart disease is one of the top killers in the US?

Raise Your Vitamin D Status to Improve Your Cardiovascular Health

Fortunately, it's been repeatedly shown that by increasing your vitamin D levels, you can improve your cardiovascular health and lower your blood pressure, and this latest research confirms this. Forty-two of the participants who raised their vitamin D to normal levels had an average drop in blood pressure of 4.6 millimeters mercury.

Keep in mind that "normal" is not the same as optimal, so increasing your levels to the recommended optimal levels as indicated in the chart below will undoubtedly impart an even more beneficial effect—not just for your cardiovascular health but also your health in general, from improving your immune function to cutting your risk of cancer in half.

But just how does vitamin D work in respect to your vascular health?

Science Newsline explains::

"Throughout the body, a layer of endothelial cells lines the blood vessels, controlling whether the blood vessels constrict or relax and helping to prevent clots that lead to strokes and heart attacks.

"There is already a lot known about how vitamin D could be acting here," Al Mheid says. "It could be strengthening endothelial cells and the muscles surrounding the blood vessels. It could also be reducing the level of angiotensin, a hormone that drives increased blood pressure, or regulating inflammation."

Vitamin D also improves your cardiovascular health through a number of other mechanisms, such as:

• Increasing your body's natural anti-inflammatory cytokines
• Suppressing vascular calcification
• Inhibiting vascular smooth muscle growth

A previous study found women who take vitamin D supplements lower their risk of death from heart disease by one-third, and other researchers have found that people with the lowest average vitamin D levels had a 124 percent greater risk of dying from all causes and a 378 percent greater risk of dying from a heart problem.

Beware: 100 Million Americans May Be Unnecessarily Labeled as Having Abnormal Blood Pressure

As a side note, I want to quickly touch on two related items here here.
First, according to a study published in March in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, as many as 100 million Americans may currently be misclassified as having abnormal blood pressure! Looking at data for nearly 13,800 people who were followed for two decades, the researchers examined and compared the independent contributions of diastolic- (DBP) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) on mortality.
In those over the age of 50, having systolic blood pressure above 140, independent of DBP, significantly increased their risk of premature death. Meanwhile, in those underthe age of 50, diastolic blood pressure above 100 was linked to significant increases in premature death. As a result, the authors strongly suggest revising the definition of "normal" blood pressure (i.e. below 120/80), using these alternative cut-off points.
Science Daily quotes lead researcher Dr. Taylor:

"Our findings highlight that the choice of approach used to define normal blood pressure will impact literally millions of Americans. If we cannot reliably see an effect on mortality in a large group of individuals followed for nearly 20 years, should we define the condition as abnormal? We believe considering this kind of approach represents a critical step in ensuring that diagnoses are given only to those with a meaningful elevation in risk, and targeted towards individuals most likely to benefit."

This is definitely important, because not only are tens of millions of people taking unnecessary blood pressure medication as a result, but it has now become more or less standard practice to also prescribe an antidepressant along with that blood pressure reducer! The thought is that high blood pressure is the result of stress, which is oftentimes the case.

However, antidepressants have no benefit on this kind of stress and can only put your health at even greater risk... so please, AVOID making the mistake of taking an antidepressant for high blood pressure! If your doctor recommends or prescribes one for your high blood pressure and not your depression, REFUSE it, as there is simply no justification for ever using these dangerous drugs for this purpose.

Vitamin D May Prevent Diabetes, and Helps Reduce Heart Disease Risk if You're Diabetic

Vitamin D is also an important factor in diabetes. First, having lower levels of vitamin D has been linked to an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. After following more than 5,000 people for five years, the Australian research team found that those with lower than average vitamin D levels had a 57 percent increased risk of developing diabetes, compared to those within the recommended range. According to lead researcher Dr. Claudia Gagnon:

"Studies like ours have suggested that blood levels of vitamin D higher than what is recommended for bone health may be necessary to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes."

Low levels of vitamin D are also known to nearly double your risk of cardiovascular disease if you already have diabetes. A 2009 study shed light on why vitamin D has such a significant impact on diabetics' heart health.

Diabetics who are deficient in vitamin D cannot process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels, hence increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Vitamin D inhibits the uptake of cholesterol by cells called macrophages. Macrophages are dispatched by your immune system in response to inflammation and are often activated by diseases such as diabetes.

When you're deficient in vitamin D, your macrophage cells absorb more cholesterol, and can't get rid of it. The macrophages then get clogged with cholesterol and become what scientists call "foam cells," which are one of the earliest markers of atherosclerosis.

So, if you're diabetic it's even more important to maintain therapeutic levels of vitamin D.

High Vitamin D Status also Improves Survival Rates in Heart Failure Patients

Patients with heart failure also have reduced survival rates if they're deficient in vitamin D, according to a study from last year.

The study, conducted at the University Medical Center in the Netherlands, also suggested that low levels of vitamin D are associated with activation of the Renin Angiotensin System (RAS – a pivotal regulatory system in heart failure) and an altered cytokine profile.

According to the researchers, patients with lower concentrations had a higher risk of death or required re-hospitalization, whereas patients with higher concentrations had lower survival risks for these endpoints.

How Much Vitamin D do You Need to Decrease Arterial Stiffness?

In March of last year, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism looked at the effect of different dosages of vitamin D in relation to arterial stiffness in African American teens.

Forty-four participants were randomly assigned to receive either 400 IU of vitamin D per day (which is the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics) or 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day.

Those who took 400 IU's a day did not achieve vitamin D sufficiency while those who took 2,000 IU's a day did, and consequently had a decrease in central arterial stiffness. As demonstrated in this study, there's no doubt that the current daily recommended allowances (RDA) for vitamin D are FAR too low to achieve optimal health benefits!

As of right now, the conventional RDAs are only:

• 400 IU for infants, children and adolescents
• 200 IU for adults up to age 50
• 400 IU for adults aged 51 to 70
• 600 IU for seniors over 70

Research has repeatedly shown you may need as much as ten times these amounts, depending on your current status!

According to vitamin D experts, the ideal vitamin D levels are actually far higher than the conventional "normal," so when you get your levels checked, don't be satisfied with a simple, "You're within the normal range." Instead, make sure your levels are within these ideal therapeutic ranges:

As you can see, anything below 50 ng/ml is now believed to be a deficiency state, and the optimal range to treat heart disease is between 70-100 ng/ml. Meanwhile, conventional medicine still considers 32 ng/ml to be the threshold for "optimal health." Please do not be fooled by that conservative recommendation!

Please note that levels over 100 ng/ml are likely only a problem if they are obtained by swallowing oral vitamin D3. If you raise your level to over 100 by sun exposure it is unlikely to be problematic. In the winter I live in the sub-tropics on the beach and typically get two hours of sun every day, which raises my levels to over 100 ng/ml. This is also typical for many healthy lifeguards in the summer.

Vitamin D Status and Your Vision

Another recent study has also implicated vitamin D deficiency in the development of macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness in the US.

In women younger than 75, having vitamin D levels below 38 nanomoles per liter equated to higher risk of developing age-related macular degeneration. Those whose vitamin D intake was among the top one-fifth of participants had a 59 percent lower risk of developing AMD compared to women whose intake was among the lowest fifth.

Take Action Before it's Too Late

Unfortunately, the most common symptom of heart disease is sudden death, so you simply MUST be proactive.

Typically, there are absolutely no indications of a problem, no signs like chest pain or shortness of breath. You simply have NO symptoms at all before getting struck by the chest pain that kills you. Sudden cardiac death strikes more than 300,000 people every year in the US alone.

This is a tragedy made even more upsetting as heart disease, just like type 2 diabetes, is one of the easiest diseases to prevent and avoid, if you're proactive! For example, vitamin D deficiency is incredibly easy to diagnose and fix, and can dramatically reduce your risk.

One of the first steps you should take is to watch my one-hour free lecture on vitamin D, which will tell you what your optimal vitamin D levels should be along with how to safely get them there.

Next, assess your heart disease risk factors.

Keep in mind that your total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease unless it's close to 300 or higher. And, perhaps more importantly, you need to be aware that cholesterol is not the CAUSE of heart disease. If you become overly concerned with trying to lower your cholesterol level to some set number, you will be completely missing the real problem.

The ratios you need to be concerned with when evaluating your heart disease risk are:

• Your HDL/Cholesterol ratio
• Your Triglyceride/HDL ratios

Your HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent. Below 10 percent, it's a significant indicator of risk for heart disease.

You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. Simply take your triglyceride level and divide it by your HDL level. That percentage should be below 2.

Fasting Insulin Levels: Another Important Risk Factor for Heart Disease

There's a reason why diabetes significantly raises your risk of heart disease. The factor that links these two diseases is insulin, so naturally, keeping your insulin levels low is imperative for preventing and treating both.

Further, studies have shown that people with a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dl had a nearly 300% increase higher risk of having coronary heart disease than people with a level below 79 mg/dl.

Normal fasting blood glucose is below 100 mg/dl, but for optimal health it should be closer to 80.

Any meal or snack high in unhealthy carbohydrates like sugar and refined grains generates a rapid rise in blood glucose, followed by insulin to compensate for the rise in blood sugar. The insulin released from eating too many carbohydrates promotes fat and makes it more difficult for your body to lose fat, particularly around your belly, and this is one of the major contributors to heart disease.

Reducing your intake of fructose and grains, including corn-based foods and potatoes is perhaps THE most important strategy to help you lower your blood glucose and prevent insulin resistance, diabetes, and heart disease.

Helpful Supplements for Heart Disease and Macular Degeneration

Emerging research is pointing to L-arginine, an amino acid, as a powerful player in your cardiovascular health. In the latest research, supplementation with L-arginine resulted in multiple beneficial vascular effects in people with multiple risk factors for heart disease.

L-arginine is a precursor to nitric oxide and is actually the only known nutritional substrate in your vessel lining available to endothelial cells (a layer of cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels) for nitric oxide production. In other words, the lining in your vessels (endothelium) need L-arginine to create nitric oxide, which acts as a cellular signaling molecule in your body to help promote healthy blood vessel flexibility and dilation.

This is why a high-quality L-arginine supplement may be a simple way to enhance your body's supply, especially if you know you have risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, excess weight, or high insulin levels (diabetes).

You can also find L-arginine in dietary sources and may be able to somewhat enhance your levels by eating more:

• Nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, almonds, cashews and peanuts)
• Sesame and sunflower seeds
• Coconut
• Raisins
• Dairy and meat

Additionally, chronic inflammation is a hallmark of everything I've covered in this article—diabetes, heart disease, and macular degeneration. A potent supplement to helpkeep inflammation in check is astaxanthin. This potent antioxidant exhibits VERY STRONG free radical scavenging activity, and protects your cells, organs and body tissues from oxidative damage.

What to Do if You're at Risk

If you find that you are at risk for heart disease, I urge you to get your vitamin D levels checked, and if you are deficient, take steps to increase your levels to the therapeutic range.

Then simply apply the Take Control of Your Health program. This will virtually eliminate your risk -- sometimes quite rapidly-- because it helps to significantly reduce inflammation in your body. And, keeping your inflammation levels low is key if you want to reduce your risk of heart disease.

An added boon of applying this program is that it will automatically also help you to prevent and treat type 2 diabetes.

Related Links:

7 Simple Steps for a Healthy Heart

Does High Cholesterol REALLY Cause Heart Disease?

Heart Attack Triggers You Should Know

Source:  Dr. Mercola

Dark Chocolate Chases Wrinkles

Chocolate can help protect the skin from wrinkle-causing UV damage, but it's not the type typically found in heart-shaped boxes. It's a special dark chocolate that is high in flavanols, which means it's loaded with naturally occurring, beneficial antioxidant plant compounds.

Chocolate has been used medicinally for more than 3,000 years, variously used as a treatment for angina, dysentery, fevers, constipation, and a host of other illnesses. Modern medicine started taking chocolate seriously in 1997, when a Harvard professor discovered that high-flavanol cocoa relaxes the blood vessels, thereby acting as a protectant against heart disease and hypertension.

Now scientists at European Dermatology London say a few squares of high-flavanol chocolate a day helps prevent wrinkles caused by UV rays from the sun, and may even lower the risk of skin cancer. But they emphasized that it has to be high-flavanol chocolate. In a statement in the Daily Mail, the researchers said, "The main mechanism is likely to be the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. But conventional chocolate had no such effect."

Until recently, most health research with chocolate was done using unsweetened cocoa or specially formulated high-flavanol chocolate, since ordinary chocolate candy has had the flavanols removed because they have such a bitter taste. Companies like Mars and Nestle, however, now provide high-flavanol chocolate in highly palatable form. Mars, for example, markets Dove Dark, which is made with a proprietary, specially processed cocoa that is so high in antioxidants that it is used in medical research.

Flavanols are also found in green tea, red wine, and other foods and drinks. However, a 20 g portion (less than an ounce—.0705) of high flavanol chocolate contains roughly 660 mg of flavanols, while a serving of red wine contains about 160 mg and a serving of green tea contains only 47 mg.

Washington-based nutrition consultant Katherine Tallmadge recommends roughly an ounce a day of high-flavanol chocolate such as Dove Dark for health benefits. "Any more than that," she said in an article in the Washington Post, "and you're probably going to take in too many calories for weight control."

By Sylvia Booth Hubbard - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 7:56 AM

© 2010 Newsmax Health

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

'Heart Healthy' Diet Killing MILLIONS Every Year!

 

Shocking new studies reveal:  'Heart Healthy' Diet Killing MILLIONS Every Year!

Research reveals that polyunsaturated
vegetable oils, which the U.S. government pushes,
are like 'fertilizer' for cancer tumors!

Everything you've been told about cholesterol and heart disease is wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

I know that sounds hard to believe, but it's true!

Most people are convinced that heart disease and stroke result from a diet high in cholesterol and saturated fats. This notion is based on the flawed idea that cholesterol is the cause of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

But the truth is, there is no direct cause-and-effect relationship between cholesterol levels and heart attack or stroke risk. And we've known this for decades!

When President Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower had his first heart attack, his cholesterol level was 164 mg/dl — a level considered "perfect" by today's standards.

What's more, Ike had his cholesterol measured 10 times a year. He eliminated all saturated fats and ate supposed "heart-healthy" foods, such as corn oil. He did everything his cardiologists asked of him — and yet he suffered a number of new heart attacks and later died of heart disease.

What was true of Ike has been true of the general population as well. Americans have been eating a so-called "heart-healthy" diet for more than 40 years now, and yet we've seen no reduction in heart disease, stroke, or atherosclerosis. In fact, heart disease is worse today than it was 50 years ago!

The U.S. government's dietary recommendations have killed more
Americans than both world wars!

People find it difficult to believe that everything they have been told about cholesterol could be wrong. They especially have difficulty believing that their own doctors could be so wrong.

After all, these doctors went to medical school . . . and they use a lot of fancy medical jargon. That's proof that they must know what they are talking about.

Well, my name is Dr. Russell Blaylock — and I went to medical school, too. I know all the jargon. In fact, I practiced neurosurgery for 24 years. And during most of my practice, I also believed what the medical establishment said about cholesterol — and I prescribed a lot of pharmaceutical drugs.

It wasn't until I really began to examine the scientific evidence in greater detail that I discovered that I, like so many of my colleagues, was misled. I was merely parroting a lie that was not true.

I discovered not only that cholesterol is NOT a cause of heart disease and stroke . . . but also that the "heart-healthy" diet that has been pushed on Americans for four decades is behind the cancer epidemic we've seen.

In fact, the U.S. government's dietary recommendations probably have killed more Americans than both world wars! That's because the polyunsaturated vegetable oils that the government has been recommending are like powerful "fertilizers" for cancer tumors.

A recent report from the Framingham Heart Study, reported in the prestigious journal The Lancet, found that men with cholesterol below 190 mg/dl — considered "healthy" for their hearts — had TRIPLE the risk of developing colon cancer when compared to men with levels greater than 220 mg/dl.

As for the risk of heart attack from the higher cholesterol, there was NO DIFFERENCE between the men with levels at 180 mg/dl and those with cholesterol greater than 250 mg/dl.

The problem is, most doctors don't have time to keep up with
the latest scientific research!

As I said, I'm an M.D., a board-certified neurosurgeon and have been a practicing physician for more than 30 years.

I'm part and parcel of the medical establishment, and for that very reason, I know the strengths and the weaknesses of conventional medicine.

Every year, our government and a number of private institutions spend billions of dollars on research, yet a great deal of this research goes unread.

Worse, the information gleaned often never is used in treating and preventing human disease.

Most doctors never read more than a few articles in popular medical journals, and they almost never read studies of basic science. This is why they think so-called alternative treatments do not work.

But the truth is, today's "alternative" treatment often becomes tomorrow's standard of treatment.

One example: For decades, so-called alternative and nutritionally-oriented physicians like myself have advocated the omega-3 (fish) oils as a proven preventive for cardiovascular disease, and as a vital component for neurological development in the young.

Yet for years many doctors dismissed such recommendations — and mainstream medical journals went out of their way to attack believers in fish oil supplements as misguided. (Now, of course, they all sing its praises as a preventive . . . yet it started out as an "alternative" treatment.)

Mainstream medicine often IGNORES the evidence!

We hear a lot about "evidence-based medicine," but just how much of traditional medical practice is evidence-based?

Studies have shown that as little as 30% of conventional medical practice is backed by science.

Most medical procedures, treatments and recommendations are based on nothing more than accepted custom . . . anecdotal evidence of what works . . . and recommendations from drug company reps.

The term "evidence-based medicine" was invented largely to discredit all alternative treatments, since it implies that everything outside traditional medicine is not "evidence-based."

In fact, most alternative treatments have a tremendous amount of scientific evidence for their mode of action. But they often lack large epidemiological studies, because such studies are prohibitively expensive and the government will not fund well-conducted studies.

By Russell Blaylock, M.D., Neurosurgeon

Source:  Special Wellness Report by Dr. Russell Blaylock

DR. RUSSELL BLAYLOCK
Doctor, Neurosurgeon,
Author, Health Advocate

Russell Blaylock, M.D., not only compiles and edits Newsmax.com's Blaylock Wellness Report. He's also a nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, health practitioner, author and lecturer.

He attended the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans and completed his internship and neurosurgical residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. For over a quarter of a century, he practiced in the demanding field of neurosurgery in addition to having a nutritional practice.

He recently retired from his neurosurgical duties to devote his full attention to nutritional studies and research. Dr. Blaylock has authored three books on nutrition and wellness:

• Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills 
• Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life
• Natural Strategies For Cancer Patients

An in-demand guest for radio and TV programs, he lectures extensively to both lay audiences and other physicians on a variety of nutrition-related subjects.

Dr. Blaylock is the 2004 recipient of the Integrity in Science Award granted by the Weston A. Price Foundation. He serves on the editorial staff of the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, official publication of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

He previously was assistant clinical professor of neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and is a visiting biology professor at the Belhaven College, also in Jackson.

Sadly… what will happen if government controlled or nationalized healthcare passes in the U.S., you will see more regulation and the abolishment of natural and alternative healthcare… more drugs, no choice and more information suppressed.

There is no question that the healthcare system in the U.S. needs an overhaul or some help, but not more government control or a government “insurance” option!!

Let the government fix Medicare and then work with a team, including the AMA, FDA, pharmaceutical manufacturers, insurance companies, doctor, nurses, reps from all alternative and holistic realms, researcher as well as input from patients to develop a better more efficient system through the ‘private sector’ allowing all types of so-called alternative medicine to be part of the new system with a focus on prevention.

THITW~

Posted:  True Health Is True Wealth

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How Painkillers can cause Cardiac Arrest

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is raising questions over what might have caused it.

Photograph by: handout, morguefile.com

CHICAGO — The death of pop music icon Michael Jackson from cardiac arrest on Thursday has raised a host of questions about what might have caused it.

It may take weeks before an autopsy can reveal the true circumstances that led the singer’s heart to stop.

One possible cause reported by celebrity website TMZ.com is that he was injected with the potent painkiller Demerol before he went into cardiac arrest.

Others speculate it was a combination of Demerol and Oxycontin, another powerful painkiller that is among the most commonly abused prescription drugs.

Here are some facts about cardiac arrest and both these drugs.

HOW COULD DEMEROL CAUSE CARDIAC ARREST?

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops circulating blood. In 80 percent of cases, the cause is heart disease, but narcotic painkillers like Demerol can cause cardiac arrest.

Dr. Daniel Simon, chief of cardiology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said if Jackson had been injected with too much Demerol, it might have caused him to stop breathing, a condition called respiratory arrest.

"The most likely scenario with Demerol would be that it caused a respiratory arrest because it takes away the drive to ventilate (breathe)," Simon said in a telephone interview.

He said low blood oxygen can trigger a deadly heart rhythm known as ventricular fibrillation in which the heart quivers but does not circulate blood. "Without CPR and a defibrillator, you have no chance," Simon said.

DEMEROL AND OXYCONTIN?

ABC News has reported that Jackson was addicted to prescription painkillers, and may have used Demerol in combination with Oxycontin.

Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Bruce Lindsay, past president of the Heart Rhythm Society, said the two drugs in combination could cause respiratory arrest.

"As with any of these painkillers, if you get too much on board, it really depresses the central nervous system so the patient could lapse into a deep sleep or even a coma. And if their respiratory capacity was too depressed, they would just stop breathing," Lindsay said.

"If they stop breathing, eventually of course the heart will go into cardiac arrest, but not because of some primary heart problem. It is simply because the final mode of death is that the heart stops beating."

COULD IT HAVE BEEN HEART DISEASE?

Simon said many media outlets are looking for exotic reasons to explain the singer’s death because it occurred in a relatively young man, but age 50 is not too young for sudden cardiac arrest.

"A lot of people are saying it’s a surprise a 50-year-old has cardiac arrest. Thirty percent of cardiac arrests are in people for whom it is their first symptom of heart disease," Simon said.

"When they do an autopsy, the first thing the medical examiner will look for is a scar in the heart muscle suggesting an old heart attack," Simon said.

He said 25 percent of patients who have cardiac arrest have had a prior heart attack without knowing it. "That is what the scar will tell them."

Big Pharma and doctors under the AMA push drugs, drugs, drugs and surgery rather than prevention, natural remedies and alternative treatments. Once nationalized healthcare takes over that trend away from natural and alternative cures will continue while their pattern of treatment will go unchanged except that it will be rationed.

BY JULIE STEENHUYSEN, REUTERSJUNE 26, 2009

(Editing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: The Vancouver Sun

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

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Michael Pollan's prescription to President Barack Obama — and you: ‘Eat food, not too much, mostly plants’

Michael Pollan visited the UBC Farm recently.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun

VANCOUVER — He’s not as famous as his brother-in-law, actor Michael J. Fox, but Michael Pollan has a captivated audience that can change a nation. One, in particular, is Barack Obama.

Last October, Pollan wrote an open letter to Obama in The New York Times Magazine, citing how the presidential candidate could put the nation’s food system on the right track if he became president. In short order, an Obama aide phoned requesting a summary, but Pollan declined, basically saying if the story could have been shorter, it would have been. Undeterred, Obama quoted Pollan’s article at length in an interview with a reporter from Time magazine.

At the consumer level, Pollan is changing the way people eat, first with Omnivore’s Dilemma, which stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for 91 weeks. In his latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, he coined a phrase, summarizing the book’s message: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” (Perhaps Obama should have asked for a seven-word summary.) Anyway, the phrase has legs and is working its way onto T-shirts, coffee mugs and the bottom of e-mail signatures. Some Pollan fans have created a web petition, appealing to Obama to appoint Pollan as secretary of agriculture (www.thepetitionsite.com).

Pollan’s shorthand summary of the book is like a semaphore for eating whole, local, mostly vegetarian foods in lesser amounts (like the French, eat less, but more sensually). But the background history, politics, culture and science woven into the book are what makes you sit up. “Food” in his mind does not include “food-like substitutes,” the 17,000 new ones that appear on grocery shelves every year.

I had a chance to sit down with Pollan when he was in Vancouver on a speaking engagement recently. (About 700 people showed up at the University of B.C. Farm.)

“I spent two years looking at the whole question of what we really know about diet and health,” said Pollan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., where he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Usually, the deeper you drill into questions like that, the more complicated and ambiguous things become and it’s not as simple as you thought. With this question, the opposite was true. The further I went, the simpler it got. After two years of research, I had seven words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

That’s his prescription for health and well-being.

When Pollan talks about food, he means the kind our grandparents and great-grandparents used to eat.

“The modern way of eating leads to chronic diseases. As soon as you get away from the Western diet, you are going to be healthier.

It’s the elephant in the room that the food industry would rather not pay attention to,” he says.

In his book, he raises the irony of North American orthoexics, referring to an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.

“The chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food,” he says in the book.

“The rise of highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the super-abundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn and soy.

These changes have given us the Western diet that we take for granted: lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything — except vegetables, fruits and whole grains.”

Humans, he says, have adapted to a multitude of diets around the world. The Western diet, however, is not one of them and we have higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity than people on culturally traditional diets. By the 1960s, he says, it was all but impossible to sustain our grandparents’ way of eating. Synthetics had entered the food chain, as had meats raised on grains (not pastures) and pharmaceuticals.

The thing is, the big profits are made in cheap, easy, processed food. “It’s easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or carrot.”

However, those health claims often crumble like vanilla wafers. “The low-fat campaign,” he says, was an abject failure after 30 years of linking dietary fat with heart disease and cancer and weight gain.

“It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences,” he says in his book. He points out that the human brain is about 60 per cent fat and every neuron is sheathed in a protective layer of fat.

Ironically, Americans got fat on low-fat diets because they turned to carbs to avoid fat.

There’s evidence that carbs interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that increase hunger and promote overeating and, thus, fat storage in the body.

Grandma food, the simple, unadulterated food made of vegetables, fruits and grains, can’t be broken down into reductionist science, he says.

These whole foods are a wilderness of chemical compounds and interactions that science doesn’t understand, just like the workings of our digestive system which has as many neurons as our spinal column.

“But,” he says, “you don’t need to fathom a carrot’s complexity to reap its benefits.”

Pollan is optimistic. “There’s a revolution going on and I’m very encouraged. The fastest growing segment [in the food sector] are farmers’ markets and organics. It’s important on the health level because there are no processed foods at farmers’ markets. Anything that gets people to cook more tends towards a healthier diet.”

And that, he says, is happening despite $32 billion a year spent marketing processed foods in the U.S.

BY MIA STAINSBY, VANCOUVER SUNJUNE 23, 2009

Sorry for the bad fit - full story - vancouversun.com

Click here to listen to the interview with food author Michael Pollan

Related Resources:

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