Category: Cardiovascular Health

Cardiovascular disease has become the leading cause of death for adults in the United States. The major causes of heart disease can be attributed to lifestyle. While it’s an unpleasant truth, Americans need to accept the fact that many of our health problems are the result of poor lifestyle choices. The good news is that cardiovascular disease can be easily prevented. By making a few choice lifestyle changes, it is possible to avoid heart disease and to help restore the body’s total health potential. Making the following changes can help improve your overall heart health, and can stem the onset of cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy individuals.

Stop Smoking

Smoking is one of the chief offenders in the cause of heart disease. Everyone understands the link between smoking and lung cancer, but many people overlook the direct connection between tobacco use and heart disease. Nicotine restricts the blood vessels, forcing the heart to work harder than it should. Moreover, the carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke reduces the oxygen levels in the blood, ultimately damaging the lining of the blood vessels. Fortunately, it is never too late to quit smoking. Even heavy smokers who quit the habit can greatly reduce their risk of heart disease and lung cancer.

Transitioning to a Heart Healthy Diet

Diet plays an important role in the overall health and well-being of our bodies. Many Americans rely on a diet that is far too high in saturated fats, refined sugars and grains, and meat and animal byproducts. Transitioning to a largely vegetarian diet, rich in fresh fruits, organic vegetables and seeds, nuts and avocados, can greatly reduce the risk of heart disease. It can also lead to an overall improvement of the body’s general health. Vegetarian diets help to boost the immune system, allowing the body to fight off infections and common viruses, thereby reducing the occurrence of everyday ailments such as colds, flu and stomach disorders.

Reduce Cholesterol

When cholesterol levels in the body are too high, it can build up along artery walls, reducing blood flow to the heart and leading to atherosclerosis. Arterial blockage can also decrease the level of oxygenated blood reaching the heart, leading to heart attacks. Conventional medicine tends to treat high cholesterol with prescriptions, using drugs to lower cholesterol levels. Unfortunately, many of these medications come with unwanted side effects. The best and most effective way of managing your cholesterol is through diet and exercise. Eliminate high fat foods such as milk, cheese and processed meats. Replace these with plant fats like seeds, nuts, avocados, olive and coconut oils. Add plenty of raw vegetables especially greens like organic kale, collards, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower. Substitute heart healthy flax and hemp seeds high in Omega-3 fatty acids, for the meat that has been removed from your diet.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the most powerful tools in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Not only does regular exercise strengthen the heart muscle itself, it also helps to oxygenate the blood which is vital to the health of all the body’s organs. Regular exercise will help you control your weight, reduce your cholesterol and maintain a healthy blood pressure. All are factors in maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system. An exercise routine of high intensity and short duration, three to five days a week, is ideal for most people. For those who already have compromised systems, it may be more difficult to fully engage with a regular exercise regimen. In those cases, it is advisable to begin slowly, perhaps with a regular daily walk or some light aerobic exercises, and build up the body’s strength. Even small amounts of regular exercise will be good for your heart.

Stress

Stress, both physical and emotional, can take quite a toll on our bodies. A healthy diet and regular exercise can alleviate much of the physical stresses and strains so common to modern life. Emotional stresses can be more difficult to address. Trusting God is the key to eliminating the emotional stresses and anxieties that can adversely affect the body’s health. Set aside a portion of every day to listen to what God is trying to tell you, meditate on what the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart. These quiet moments spent in prayer listening to God’s voice will help to ease the daily stresses and strains. By remembering “not my will but your will be done through me Lord”, we can achieve the inner peace necessary to release the body’s own healing power. Through a devotion to God’s will, you can eliminate stress and anxiety. This allows the lifestyle changes you have made to help your body return to the total health of body, mind and spirit that God intended.

Heart-failure patients have a better chance of survival if they take their pills, even if those pills are placebos, says a Duke University Medical Center study.

They analyzed international data on 7,599 heart-failure patients and found that similar lower death rates were associated with good adherence when taking a placebo or an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB), a drug that relaxes and dilates blood vessels.

Lower hospitalization rates were also associated with good adherence when taking both a placebo and an active drug, the study found.

-Duke University Medical Center, news release

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec comments on Placebo Pills Can Help Heart Failure Patients:

This study shows the power of beliefs. In the study heart failure patients had the same survival rate whether they took a placebo (no medication in the capsule) or a strong drug for the heart.

If the power of the mind is this influential on the heart and the whole body for that matter, can you imagine the devastating affects of the mind that believes the lie. The mind that believes the lies: that nothing can be done, that it is impossible to overcome this obstacle/challenge, that you just have to accept the fact that you only have 6 months to live with this cancer or this incurable disease. The mind is a powerful force that can make a tremendous impact on your physical health and well being either positively or negatively. There is a power though that is far greater than the mind in its affects on your total health. It is your heart/spirit.

If you believe something in your mind, it is a strong motivating force but it can be changed or swayed by the facts and beliefs of the world system, of the doctors and of the research. Your heart/spirit is where the KNOWING comes from. Knowing is far above and beyond believing because KNOWING is what GOD puts in your heart and it is unshakeable. To KNOW something means that you will never quit, stop or give up on it no matter what, no matter how long it takes or how much it costs, even if it costs you your life. Remember, God puts the knowing in the heart, the world system, family and friends put the beliefs in your mind. God always gives you the desires of your heart not your head because He put the desire in your heart in the first place.

It’s not enough to reduce “bad” cholesterol to prevent heart attacks because a substance called C-Reative Protein or CRP also must be kept low, doctors said in a finding that could save tens of thousands of lives.

Evidence has been growing that a special type of inflammation, different from the form treated with aspirin and other related drugs, contributes to heart disease. CRP measures that inflammation.

A study led by Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston showed that the people with the lowest risk of suffering a second heart attack also had the lowest levels of CRP.

A second study, led by Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, found that among 502 patients who lowered their CRP levels the most, there was ultrasound evidence that their clogged arteries had opened.

Ridker said the findings have “the potential to save thousands of lives” and should radically change the way the public thinks about heart disease prevention.

-New England Journal of Medicine

Dr. Keith & Laurie Nemec comments on Inflammatory Protein Role in Heart Disease:
Inflammation is the new buzz work in the health care world. In actuality, it is an old word, not a new one. Inflammation always has been the root of most all disease. Medical researchers are just now discovering what alternative medicine practitioners have always known. Inflammation produces symptoms, conditions and eventually disease in everyone.

So, if inflammation is the cause, what’s the cure or more correctly stated, how does one heal the inflammation?

Well, let us start with what NOT to do. Once medical researchers established that inflammation drives most disease processes, they thought they had the answer –just give the patient anti-inflammatory drugs and not only will you help their pain but help protect them from disease. Well, the premise is correct but the action steps are all wrong. As was previously discussed in the article about painkillers any pain pill, or anti-inflammatory drug causes Leaky Gut Syndrome, which opens the door to all disease and opens it very, very WIDE!

So what is the answer?

Put the fire out with 7 Basic Steps to Total Health.

1. Oxygen—the more air you fill your lungs with (in deep diaphragm breathing) the more you heal and the more inflammation you will reduce.
2. Water—water puts fire (inflammation) out so drink up.
3. Food—Living/raw plant food, not only does not cause inflammation (as cooked food, toxic animal products and refined sugars and flour do) but also causes existing fire (inflammation) to be put out.
4. Sleep—this is a powerful anti-inflammatory that few know about. In bed by 9 a.m. and up by 6 a.m. will do wonders for pain and inflammation.
5. Exercise—rebounding cellular/lymphatic exercise is the most powerful exercise available to decrease inflammation.
6. Fasting—the less you eat the better you will feel. When the diet is 100% living/raw plant food, there is no more inflammation being formed.
7. Prayer. The greatest anti-inflammatory of all is a still mind that listens to the voice of God spoken to the heart.

Be still and know that I AM GOD

A phenomenon known as “broken heart syndrome,” can trigger severe, temporary heart muscle weakness that mimics a classic heart attack, Johns Hopkins scientists claim in a new report.

Their study describes 20 patients, almost all of them women, who were hospitalized with all the symptoms of heart attacks, including chest pain, shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs and drastically reduced ability of the heart to pump blood.

But careful study found the problems were just temporary, caused by a massive release of stress hormones called catecholamines that can “stun” the heart. They include adrenaline, and flood the body following emotional shocks ranging from news of a loved one’s death, to an armed robbery, to an auto accident, the report said. Rather than requiring the drastic treatment necessary for a heart attack, the patients needed only supportive therapy for a few days to allow the heart to recover, the researchers said.

“This kind of thing has been described by others,” said study author Dr. Hunter C. Champion, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. But, he added, it’s still important to remind physicians that the cardiac problem might be due to stress cardiomyopathy, rather than a heart attack.

The Hopkins physicians are doing studies to determine how stress hormones can stun the heart, and whether there might be a genetic vulnerability to the condition, Champion said.
-New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Keith & Laurie Nemec comments on Heart Attacks Can Be Caused By a “Broken Heart”:
The importance of this study is to see how your mind affects your body. With the stress as the mind perceives it, adrenaline and other highly oxidative molecules are secreted which are good in survival scenarios where your life is threatened but if secreted because of mental/emotional stress they can promote disease formation.

Molecules like adrenaline if secreted in large amounts day in and day out lead to decreased blood flow to the internal organs including the intestinal tract where all the nutrients are absorbed. If you decrease blood to the intestinal tract you produce an inflammatory condition called Leaky Gut Syndrome which is the greatest source of maldigestion, malabsorption and toxicity in the body. With Leaky Gut the immune system is overloaded and it is the precursor to most diseases. This all can come from how you perceive the events in life. Some see the day as partly sunny, others see it as cloudy. The way you perceive the events in your life can dramatically affect your health.

Religion and spirituality may have a positive effect on blood pressure, according to a study of more than 5,300 Americans.

Researchers found that people in the Jackson (Miss.) Heart Study who were involved with or participated in religious activities had significantly lower blood pressure than people who did not, even though the people involved in religious activities were more likely to have high blood pressure, higher body mass index (BMI) scores, and lower levels of adherence to medications.

Cardiovascular health risks are widely recognized, and hypertension is the most prominent risk factor in the development of cardiovascular disease Americans.

“Our findings show that the integration of religion and spirituality — attending church and praying — may buffer individuals exposed to stress and delay the deleterious effects of hypertension. These practices can be useful for individuals to incorporate into their daily lives,” the lead researcher said.
-American Society of Hypertension

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Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on spirituality may help lower blood pressure.
Interesting in this article was the researchers found that religion and spirituality had a positive effect on high blood pressure in lowering the levels. We just want to make a few comments in this study. First thing is the difference between religion and spirituality. First of all the key factor that makes a change in ones total health is not religion. It is not attending church services. It is not being a part of a group, whether it is a religious group or a social group. Studies have shown that being with people, being in these atmospheres does have a positive effect on health, because when you are with people, you have more support from people, whether it is from a church group or a social group. They have shown that this has positive effects on health. But this is not what truly will transform a person’s life and this is not what spirituality really is. So religion, going to religious services can have the positive effects on health because of the social interaction and support.

What we want to talk about is the major impact in your health is your relationship with God, not religion, but your relationship with God, or your spirituality. When we ask Him into our lives, the living God who created us sustains us and who creates all and sustains all. When we enter the covenant relationship of marriage with Him, we now have opened up the communion or the communication lines. And the most important part of our total health is learning to be still and know the voice of God. To be still and hear His voice spoken into the heart and that can only happen when we learn to still our mind, our conscious thinking, raging, racing mind.

When we learn to still the mind and follow the heart, what God speaks to the heart, this will transform every aspect of our total health from our spirit to our soul to our body. To every aspect of our spirit, soul and body health. This is very different than positive thinking, or support from others in a group. This is the total health that is a byproduct of our walk with God and our communion with God. So, yes health will always be effected when we are with other people, whether it is a religious group or social group that supports us, but more importantly our total health will be transformed when we learn how to be still and sit and His feet and listen to what He is speaking to our heart. And how do we know He is speaking into our heart? Use these general guidelines:

1. It will not be comfortable to our mind; it will not make sense to our mind. It will usually make us feel uncomfortable in the mind, uneasy in the mind and it won’t be well accepted by others. Remember when God puts something in the heart; it is usually the opposite of what the world system would put in your mind. So if it makes you feel uncomfortable, if it makes you feel uneasy, if it makes you feel unstable, if it seems to not make sense, these are all indicators that God is speaking into the heart. Because the things of the heart are not things of the mind. Things of the Spirit are not things of the flesh.
2. Another general indicator is to never operate in fear. When we are operating in fear we’re operating form our old mind. Only make your decisions in faith and peace and things that bring love, joy and peace in your heart, not in your mind. Remember the things that bring peace in our heart don’t necessarily bring peace in our mind.

So, when we follow our heart we just know that we know that we know that it’s right. Even if the world and everyone in the world and our old lie filled mind tries to talk us out of it, we just know that it’s right. Kind of like if you fell in love with someone and you knew it was right and everyone said no that’s not right you shouldn’t do that. You know the whole world and everyone around you could tell you it’s not right, but you know in your heart that is right. And that’s why you step out and do it. And this is how we should live our lives. Living our lives from our heart, what God has spoken to our heart.

Feeling younger in middle age may be as easy as eating a low-calorie, nutritionally balanced diet, U.S. researchers report.

These types of diets help slow cardiac aging, according to researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Their study included 25 people, aged 41 to 65, who’d consumed a low-calorie diet (about 1,400 to 2,000 calories a day) an average of six years.

Using ultrasound imaging, the team found the hearts of the people on the low-calorie diets appeared more elastic than those of other people the same age who ate a typical Western diet (about 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day).

The hearts of the people on the low-calorie diet were also able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts of people 15 years younger. The study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Hearts tend to stiffen and pump less effectively as people get older, but ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of the people on caloric restriction appeared more elastic than those of the control subjects; that is, the hearts relaxed between beats in a way that is similar to the hearts of younger people. In addition, several heart disease risk factors and inflammatory markers–blood pressure, C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-á), and transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-â1)–were lower in the caloric restriction group than in the Western diet group.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate age-associated declines in heart function,” according to principal investigator Dr. Luigi Fontana.

Previous research in mice and rats found their lifespans increased by about 30 percent when they were put on calorie-restricted diets. This diet also protected the animals against cancer and atherosclerosis.

Fontana and his colleagues previously found that people on a very low-calorie diet had low blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, blood pressure scores similar to much younger people, less body fat, and reduced risk of diabetes.
This latest study also found that markers of inflammation indicative of primary aging were much lower in people who ate the calorie-restricted diets.

“It’s very clear from these studies that caloric restriction has a powerful, protective effect against diseases associated with aging,” said Dr. John O. Holloszy, a professor of medicine and co-investigator.

“Caloric restriction does not mean eating half a hamburger and half a pack of french fries and drinking half of a sugary beverage. These people have very good nutrition. They eliminate calories by eating nutrient-dense foods,” Holloszy said.

Calorie-restricted diets avoid refined and processed foods, soft drinks, desserts, white bread and other sources of “empty” calories, as well as limiting animal product consumption.
–Washington University School of Medicine

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on calorie restriction keeps the heart healthy.
Interesting in this study was that as people eat lower calorie, calorie restricted diets, which is a diet very easily sustained with a plant based living/raw food diet, it is the easiest way to eat a calorie restricted diet. Because if you are eating living/raw food in the right proportions, you will be filled up with the fiber, the raw fat, the raw protein, the raw carbohydrates in the right form filled with vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, bioenergy and enzymes.

So, what this study showed was the hearts of people on low calorie diets were able to relax in between beats, and they reacted similarly to people that were 15 years younger in age. Very important to also note that people that were calorie restricted or eating this lower calorie diet, the blood vessels appeared more elastic. And they were lower in disease risk factors of inflammation, which is C-reactive protein and tumor necrosis factor. These were very important to understand, this isn’t just for heart health, this was for total health. This study did characterize it as heart health, but when you decrease C-reactive protein and tumor necrosis factor and transforming growth factors, when these are all inflammation and disease promoting factors, you are going to promote a higher level of health of every cell, tissue, gland and organ in the body. These were all benefits from the calorie restricted diet.

So it is very clear a calorie restricted diet is very simply when we eat a living/raw plant food diet. When we eat a diet high in vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, legumes, avocados, sea vegetables. When we eat a diet of these in the living/raw state, we will be full; we will be highly filled with all the essential nutrients, bioenergy, bioenzymes, and phytochemicals. And we will go to the optimal body weight and we will have the lowest amount of inflammation in our body which would be linked to the lowest possible chances of contracting any diseases. This is a part of a lifestyle that will keep you in total health.