Be Heart Smart

A look at the latest statistics on cardiovascular disease-including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and peripheral vascular disease (PVD)-is less than heartening. Some 750,000 people die of cardiovascular disease each year, a number that has not changed for the past 25 years.

Hard-Working, Heroic Heart

The heart begins beating within days of conception, and will likely beat 2.5 billion times in a lifetime-100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year. This hardworking organ is said to pump enough blood to fill three supertankers in an average lifetime. In a single day, the heart pumps blood approximately 12,000 miles through vessels that range in size from the diameter of a garden hose (the aorta) to one-tenth the thickness of a human hair (the capillaries). At rest, the muscles of the heart work twice as hard as the muscles in the legs of a person running at top speed.

All of this heroic cardiac work creates wear and tear, particularly in the muscular arteries that surround and feed the actual heart muscle. These arteries are especially vulnerable to damage; their paths twist and turn, and in each of the curves, the flow of blood rushing by can be turbulent. The arteries of younger people are more flexible and resilient, but as we age, the arteries become stiffer and more vulnerable to damage from the constant stress of the blood being pumped through them. Arteries in the brain are also more vulnerable to damage because of their twists and turns.

When blood vessel walls are damaged, a complex process of inflammation, cholesterol accumulation, and free radical formation begins. In its repair attempts, the body sends inflammatory molecules and cholesterol to the site, leading to the development of swollen areas called plaques.

Help Your Heart the Natural Way

After diet, exercise and weight control, your next key strategy is to support your heart health with key nutritional supplements.

It's true that modern medications for controlling high blood pressure and cholesterol are quite good at doing what they're prescribed to do. Unfortunately, these drugs also often are the cause of side effects that range from unpleasant to life-threatening. According to Michael Weber, M.D., a past president of the American Society of Hypertension, 50 percent of individuals who are put on blood pressure medications suffer from side effects that drive them to quit taking them within a year. With the cholesterol-lowering HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors-more commonly known as statins-there is small but real risk of liver or kidney damage and a life-threatening muscle disorder called rhabdomyolysis. One statin, Baycol®, was withdrawn after 52 people died from drug-induced rhabdomyolysis.

We've found a great company, BioActive Nutrients, of Spooner, Wisconsin, which is producing excellent products that offer a combination of value and quality. And we're also hearing good reports from people who use the BioActive Nutrients formulas.

Here's the story of one man who wrote in to BioActive Nutrients about his success with their natural products for heart disease risk factor control:

My name is Tom Tasker. I am 53 years old and I work as a driver for UPS. About a year ago, while on a weekend getaway, I suffered a mild stroke. After many tests, I was relieved to find that the stroke had caused no permanent damage. Still, my cholesterol (total: 342, LDL: 255) and blood pressure (148/95) needed to be immediately addressed. Two weeks after my family doctor put me on Lipitor® and a mild blood pressure medication, I was feeling just awful, with tremendous body aches (lower back pain so bad that I couldn't even lie down in bed), headaches, and just plain feeling lousy. I called my doctor and told him about what was happening; he told me to discontinue taking the medications for a week and then try them again...

As is the case with so many prescription drugs, natural alternatives exist that have milder, less specific physiological actions in the body and so carry significantly less risk of adverse effects. Before we find out how Tom's story ends, let's examine the options that exist for those who would rather not go the prescription drug route.

There are a great many herbs, nutrients, and "superfoods" that research suggests can strongly reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

Here, I'll talk about three specific natural substances that BioActive Nutrients uses in their heart health formulas and that have special promise: linden (Tilia europea) and hawthorn (Crataegus oxycantha), contained in Heart Life, and red yeast rice (Monascus purpureus), contained in Cholesterol Control.

The first two are hypotensives (they reduce blood pressure) and the latter (red yeast rice) contains a group of plant chemicals called monacolins, which are natural HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. One of the monacolins, monacolin K, is identical in molecular structure to the popular statin drug lovastatin. All three of these ingredients are found in BioActive Nutrients' supplements for heart health, Heart Life and Cholesterol Control.

Linden-This herb was once a well-known treatment for hysteria and anxiety. It is also a traditional remedy for high blood pressure, nervous tension, and headache related to sinus congestion or tension. The flowers of this tree are rich in tannins, volatile oils, and antioxidant flavonoids (including quercitol, hesperidin, astralagin, tiliroside, and kaempferol). Linden also contains compounds that are structurally similar to benzodiazepine drugs, such as Valium® and Xanax®, commonly used to treat anxiety disorders and insomnia. Added to bathwater or brewed as a tea, linden has relaxant effects that we can today use to help defuse "type A" tendencies. Modern nutritional science has enabled BioActive Nutrients to add it to their Heart Life supplement in concentrated form. This is the only supplement we know of that uses this important herb, so take note.

Hawthorn-This fruit-bearing shrub has long been used medicinally, with applications in the treatment of digestive disorders, shortness of breath, kidney stones, and-most often-cardiovascular disorders. Hawthorn has been clinically demonstrated to improve blood flow through the vessels that feed the heart; to improve the integrity of artery walls; and to help strengthen the heart's pumping action. Chemicals found in hawthorn have been found to have effects similar to those of beta-blockers, a drug class commonly used to treat hypertension. One animal study found that administering a hawthorn phytochemical to rats for two days before and ten days following an experimentally induced heart attack decreased the size of the infarct (heart muscle killed by the heart attack) and supported revascularization (the development of new blood vessels to feed oxygen-starved tissues). Some research even suggests that hawthorn has positive effects on blood lipids, and indicates that it acts as a strong inhibitor of LDL oxidation. One study from the Netherlands found that hawthorn may be a helpful treatment for heart failure, improving subjects' performance on exercise tests.
BioActive Nutrients' Heart Life contains extracts of hawthorn leaf, flowers, and berries, a combination that takes advantage of all of the heart-healing properties of this ancient plant medicine. In addition, this supplement contains B6, B12 and folic acid to lower vessel-damaging homocysteine; potassium and magnesium to help keep blood vessels relaxed; and ginger root to help decrease inflammation and improve blood flow.

Red Yeast Rice-This traditional Chinese food is the fermented product of rice on which a specific strain of red yeast has been grown. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD), the Chinese pharmacopoeia stated that red yeast rice was useful for "improving blood circulation." Modern science validates this ancient document. In a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, UCLA professor David Heber and colleagues found that a red yeast rice dietary supplement significantly lowered total cholesterol when used along with the American Heart Association Step I Diet (from an average of 254 mg/dL to 208 mg/dL), with no effects on HDL. The study's placebo group followed the same diet and did not take the red yeast rice, and their cholesterol levels did not change as significantly. Other studies performed in China show that red yeast rice reduces total cholesterol by 11 to 32 percent and lowers triglycerides, another blood fat, by 12 to 19 percent.

Red yeast rice contains natural statins, and so should probably be avoided by those for whom statin drugs are contraindicated. And like pharmaceutical statins, red yeast rice supplements may deplete the important antioxidant coenzyme Q10, so it makes sense to add this nutrient to your daily supplement program for as long as you use red yeast rice. BioActive Nutrients' Heart Life contains coenzyme Q10, and their Cholesterol Control contains 600 mg of red yeast rice.

Cholesterol Control also contains:

• No-flush niacin, which research has found to be a highly potent HDL-raising agent that also lowers LDL, triglycerides, and lipoprotein(a), a blood fat that is strongly correlated with cardiovascular risk;
• Turmeric, an herb with strong inhibitory effects on LDL oxidation and on the process of atherosclerosis;
• Rosemary, another herb with antioxidative effects that prevents LDL oxidation; and,
• Gamma-oryzanol, a cholesterol-lowering compound with antioxidant activity, derived from rice bran oil.

Finally, both formulas also contain ginger, extracts of which have been found to reduce plasma cholesterol, inhibit LDL oxidation, and attenuate development of atherosclerosis in lab studies.

Wondering what happened with our friend, Tom Tasker? Here's the rest of his story:

While I took a break from the drugs, I talked to Guy Evans from BioActive Nutrients about my difficulties and he suggested I try taking lecithin, coenzyme Q10, chromium picolinate, and Cholesterol Control. After six weeks of taking these, I had my cholesterol retested. To my happy surprise, I found that my total cholesterol had fallen to 224 and that my LDL had been reduced to 157. My blood pressure, too, had fallen-from 148/95 to 134/80!

Tom's is one of many happy endings that have come from shifting heart disease prevention from a pharmacologic to a nutritional emphasis. If you would like to try the same approach but are already on medication to treat high cholesterol and/or high blood pressure, be sure to solicit the guidance of your medical team as you make the shift to natural products.

Prevention-The Best Medicine for Heart Health

Surviving a heart attack or stroke is good, but never having one is better. We know how to prevent the majority of heart attacks and strokes-or, at least, how to stave them off into extreme old age. To maintain cardiovascular health, we need to control a few key risk factors:

• Hypertension, or high blood pressure, which increases stress against artery walls and accelerates the production of inflammatory substances and free radicals. About 65 million American adults-a third of the adult population of the country-have hypertension, with blood pressure measurements above 140/90. Many millions more are believed to be afflicted with prehypertension, a state recently defined as blood pressure between 120/80 and the 140/90 cutoff. Prehypertension is viewed as an early warning sign that it's time to make significant dietary and lifestyle changes to rein blood pressure back in.
• High cholesterol-specifically, a high ratio of total cholesterol to "good" HDL cholesterol and a high proportion of oxidized LDL-is another factor known to increase the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) substantially. About 37.7 million American adults have total cholesterol counts above 240 mg/dL, increasing their risk of cardiovascular disease; among Caucasians 20 and up, 40.5 percent of men and 14.5 percent of women have "good" HDL counts below 40-another known risk factor. Twenty-four percent of African American men and 13 percent of African American women have low HDL.
• Both hypertension and out-of-balance cholesterol counts are directly linked to the standard high-meat, high-sugar, processed-food diet that's loaded with unhealthful fats and low in whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, and fatty fish.
• Many hypertensives fit the stereotype of the so-called "type A" personality-the stressed-out, hard-driven, overloaded type who pushes him- or herself to the limit.
• Obesity, a known cardiovascular risk factor, is epidemic, with 65 percent of U.S. adults either overweight or obese.
• Some 18.2 million Americans have diabetes, which increases risk of heart attack and stroke by two to four times. Seventy-five percent of diabetics have borderline high or high blood pressure. While not all diabetes can be completely cured with nutritional intervention, the majority of people with type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes can control the disease with diet and exercise if it's caught early enough. Others may need medication or insulin.
• More recent research strongly suggests that chronic inflammation plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. The typical modern Western processed-food diet is rich in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats and trans fats from nut, seed, and corn oils, and far too low in anti-inflammatory omega-3s (fish oils, flax, walnuts, pumpkin seeds) and the neutral omega-9s (olive and canola oils). It is now understood that a heightened state of inflammation could accelerate plaque formation.

Here's the bottom line-If you want to avoid cardiovascular disease, you will need to keep blood pressure below 140/90 and keep your total cholesterol count below 200 and your HDL above 35. A primarily whole-foods diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and fruit should do the trick. Keep yourself relatively trim and fit. Make stress control measures a part of your everyday life. If you think you could have diabetes-millions are believed to be undiagnosed, with the disease stealthily progressing and damaging blood vessels as the months and years pass-get a thorough evaluation and treatment program through your physician.

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We like BioActive Nutrients because of the company's dedication to quality and value pricing. If you don't see their products yet in your store-BioActive Nutrients is an emerging brand-be sure to let your retailer know. Both Heart Life and Cholesterol Control can be special-ordered (as can their important Antifungal Kit) by your retailer by calling the company at (800) 879-6504.