4 weeks to a stronger heart – it is true. A few simple lifestyle strategies can make a huge difference to your health. …Give your heart a healthy makeover! With just a few painless changes you can significantly lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, prevent your arteries from narrowing and strengthen your blood vessels…Absolutely! It is never too late, well as long as you are still breathing and your heart is still beating that is. I fully agree with the statement that you can change a lot in just 4 weeks, even though it is a stretch for many. The hard part is to stay in the change, make it become you and don’t fall back into old habits and comfort levels.
The reason to why I am even commenting this article is because it is in a magazine that people read, that people read and sometimes act upon. I feel that it is important that we provide the general public with the true and latest research available to us, not something that was published 20 years ago, no matter what media form it is in.
[printed in magazine] [my own comments]
Change the way you eat
The long-touted low-fat diet is yesterday’s news. The latest nutrition research suggests that maintaining your arterial superhighway is not just about avoiding as much saturated fat and processed food as possible but also about fueling your tank with what many experts call “functional foods,” those foods rich in nutrients with powerful heart-protecting (and anticancer) properties. “Focusing on low fat is overly simplistic,” says Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine at the Prevention Research Center at the
They are absolutely right. The 80’s low fat, high carb diet is out the door and replaced with a high natural fat and high protein intake. Unfortunately this article goes on by giving examples of what to eat, such as; wheat, cereals, bread, juice, and margarine! This to me is insane. The only way to lower your cholesterol and triglycerides is to quit eating any type of wheat and grains, lower other sugar intake such as juices and fruits, eat real natural fats such as butter, olive oil, canola oil, nuts, and avocado – NOT MARGARINE – margarine is only one molecule away from being plastic (but that is another story). Who can even make such a recommendation in a heart health article?! I would never recommend margarine to anyone, under any circumstances. Butter is real, margarine is not – it doesn’t get easier than that.
As far as the wheat and grain elimination – it might seem very strange to some, because the majority of us have grown up believing that whole wheat and grains are supposed to be healthy for us. Well the truth is that most grains contain way too much sugar for it to be beneficial. Why don’t you look for yourself? Go and get your bread package and read how many grams of carbohydrates you have in there, and then find out how much of it is sugar and how much of it is fiber… the rest is usually other gluten kinds that also is a harm to your heart health. What did you find? That the sugar outnumbers the fiber? You will find the same illustration on most bread you pick up.
Fill up on fiber
Only one type of fiber helps your heart – the viscous, or soluble, kind found in foods such as beans, oats, oat bran, barley, citrus fruits, eggplant, and okra…
You know what, most humans don’t even get half as much fiber as we should in our daily diet and my suggestion is to supplement it, at least four times a year as a fiber cleanse. But healthy fibers are found in green vegetables as well and are a much better choice than the oats and oat bran.
Cut the salt
If you’ve got pre- or full-blown hypertension, consider trying the low-sodium diet recommended by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. It’s rich in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products and includes poultry, fish, nuts and whole grains but only small amounts of red meat, sweets and sugary drinks.
Please change this header to – Change your salt. It is not the amounts of salt; it is what kind of salt! Many say to cut the salt… but let’s think for just a moment. When you are being hospitalized what is the first thing they will give you? Something called NaCl, right in your arm into your blood stream… What is NaCl? NaCl stands for Sodium (Natrium) Chloride and is simply the chemical name for SALT!!! Plain SALT!!! We need salt to survive, plain and simple. The hard part is to get the right kind. Unprocessed salt is the way to go - most likely found in health food and holistic food stores. Once you have the right kind of salt – please salt away! Another mistake that is made in the “cut the salt” process; people cut the intake of Iodine as well. Iodine is not salt, but some salt labels can be bought with iodine and without iodine. Iodine must be supplemented if it is not taken in another way, as it is another life supporting mineral. Don’t cut the salt – change it!
But with this diet you are sure to keep your hypertension and gain some pounds, increase you cholesterol, and increase your blood pressure. The only thing I am happy to read is that they want you to avoid sugary drinks – and that includes all juices out there, light or not. As far as the low-fat dairy products: yes it is low fat, but the lower the fat the higher the carbohydrates. The carbohydrates in dairy products are lactose – lactose is another name for sugar, milk sugar. So to say that you should limit your sugary drinks and then to say that you should drink lots of milk doesn’t really add up, to me.
When Medication Makes Sense
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, diet and exercise don’t get you where you need to be. Talk to your doctor about whether one of these meds is right for you.
Well, if you keep getting the wrong guidelines, how on earth are you supposed to reach your goals? These guidelines are set so that the medical companies can reach their goals – not yours.
Drugs that lower your cholesterol
Statins – the best – known type – do a remarkable job of lowering LDL cholesterol, healing the lining of the arteries and slowing the build up of plaque. If you already have heart disease, these drugs can reduce your risk of dying from heart attack by 29 percent.
I don’t think I have to go there, but Statins are still drugs with many side effects. They are known to lower your bad LDL cholesterol, but they will also lower your good HDL cholesterol. Stay with the high natural fat and protein diet limited from wheat, grain, fruit, dairy, sugar, and juices and you should be on good way to reaching your goal. To speed up the process you need to supplement with natural Omega 3, Vitamin C, EDTA, Vitamin D3, L-Arginine, OPCs, and Magnesium.
Statins, however have little effect on HDL cholesterol and triglycerides, another blood fat. For those you may need to take prescription niacin, fibrate drugs or FDA-approved fish oil supplements, which can increase HDL by up to 30 percent and lower triglycerides by as much as 45 percent depending on the drug.
This is correct about Niacin, which is simply Vitamin B3. What is wrong is that you do NOT need to get a prescription to get it; Niacin can be found on the nutrition shelf at your supermarket. There are many kinds of Niacin, and I would avoid “no blush Niacin” as it will not do you any good, just as the slow acting Niacin. To reach preferred levels of triglycerides someone might have to supplement niacin a lot – something that should be supervised by a doctor, he/she should at least be aware that you are doing it. Start at 250 mg per day for one week and increase it with 250 mg each week until you have reached a level of 1000 mg. If your triglycerides and LDL are very high you might have to supplement with up to 5000 mg per day say William Davis M.D. in his article “Using Niacin to improve cardiovascular health”. The supplementation does not have to be FDA approved either. FDA often approves synthetic drugs before they approve natural made supplements. Why? Well that is another discussion, but let’s just say that FDA work closely with the drug companies, not the natural supplementation companies. As long as your Omega 3 is natural you are good to go. And you should take 3000-4000 mg per day to see any progress.
Pills can help your heart grow stronger
Yes – as long as you take the right ones.
Numbers you need to know…
“A strong heart needs healthy blood vessels that have smooth, Teflon-like lining,” explains John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. “This lets blood move easily, not clot.”
True! And John P. Cooke is a personal favorite of mine – what this section forgets to mention is how you can make your vessels become like Teflon. What John P. Cook is talking about is L-Arginine, one of our most powerful natural occurring amino acid. L-arginine converts into nitric oxide when in your body and makes all that come true. He also suggests that we need to supplement with 5 grams of Arginine every day to get the nitric oxide effect.
This article was a very good attempt to make the public more aware, but it was a shame that L-arginine wasn’t mentioned even once. L-arginine alone could fill up page after page with great research and progress. The public need to know more about l-arginine, the public need to know that the people who discovered the nitric oxide effect derived from l-arginine won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998, the public need to know that l-arginine can change lives!
I would also suggest that in the future facts should be taken from Nutritionists and Holistic doctors as well as medical doctors interested in health care. It is also a shame that the readers have to look at a Crestor (medication for high cholesterol) add in the middle of the article. It kind of makes it look like AstraZeneca made the report…
Thank you for listening.
Looking forward for more heart health reading
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