The Frightening Heart

Categories: The Analysis of Disease States: Helping the Body Recover
Sources: How And When To Be Your Own Doctor

Heart disease is one of the major causes of death among North

Americans. It evokes images of resuscitation, of desperate races

against time, trying to restart an arrested heart before the brain

dies. It makes people think of horribly expensive surgery, last

wills and testaments, terrible, paralyzing pain. Heart disease is a

great profit center for the medical profession.



Most heart problems are very easy o fix by holistic approaches,

even many hereditary weaknesses and malfunctions can be healed, if

the work is done before too much organic damage occurs. But it

rarely is easy to get the people to take the necessary medicine;

everything in their lives must change--and fast.



First of all, people with heart problems must rapidly reach and

maintain normal weight. This can be done by fasting or by dietary

change, usually by eliminating all fats, sugars and refined

starches. Alcohol and tobacco must instantly and forever become only

past memories. It is almost as essential to eliminate flesh protein

foods and dairy. Should that prove entirely too painful, fish in

small quantities and only one or two times a week is tolerable.



For starters, a long fast, especially one involving lots of bed

rest, is ideal. This gives the heart a chance to heal while the body

weight is adjusted. A period of intense rest even without water

fasting will accomplish almost as much. Even someone with the

potential for heart disease who has not yet had a heart attack would

be well-served to spend a month in bed, losing weight on juice, or

sitting in a rocker on the porch eating only raw foods. After the

weight is down to normal or close to normal and the heart tests

stronger, an exercise program should be started.



Exercise has to become a religion. A daily aerobic program must be

started on a carefully managed gradient, using the pulse rate as an

regulator, at first raising their maximum heart rate to a point just

below 150 percent of its resting pulse and keeping it there for

thirty minutes. One can walk, jog, ride a bicycle or use an exercise

machine. Actually, everyone should do this, even those with no heart

problems. My husband, who hates the boredom of exercise, enjoys a

ski machine in front of the TV while the stock market program is on.

He finds the TV interesting enough that he pays no attention to his

workout. Daily aerobic exercise will strengthen the heart, gradually

slowing the heart's resting pulse rate, indicating that the heart

has become much stronger, pumping more blood with each pulse. As the

resting pulse drops the exercising heartbeat can be increased to

double the resting rate.



Highly aggressive, competitive, stress-oriented people have to give

up being adrenaline junkies and learn to relax and assume a

laid-back approach to living. Or die soon. An adrenaline junkie is

someone that enjoys the feeling they get when operating under

stress. Stress and the adrenaline it releases produce a kind of a

drug-high. Many stressaholics cannot give up their adrenaline

addiction while maintaining their previous employment and

life-style, even though their life is at stake. In this sense they

are like alcoholics, who should not take employment tending bar. To

survive for long these people may have to retire or change

professions. Stockbrokers may have to become Organic farmers;

journalists may have to operate a news stand or bookstore, or work

part-time covering the society page and dog shows. Women frequently

turn their family life into a stress-filled drama too.



With heart problems a life extension megavitamin program is

essential, even for twenty somethings if they have heart disease.

The sixty milligrams of Co-Enzyme Q-10 I recommend for the average

middle aged person will not be enough for heart cases; they should

take at least 120 milligrams daily and consider up to 250 mg. This

much Q-10 greatly boosts the energy output of the heart on a

cellular level. Vitamin E should also be increased, to between 600

and 2,000 iu daily. I also rebuild diseased hearts with

protomorphogens; usually they must stay on protomorphogens for the

rest of their lives. Niacin taken several times a day in doses,

sufficient to dilate the capillaries and cause a skin flush (50 to

200 milligrams), increases the blood flow to nourish the heart. The

amino acid L. Carnitine is also useful by increasing the energy

output of the heart much like Co-Enzyme Q-10.



When I put people on this program, the supplements and other

measures gradually take effect, and over months the patient begins

to feel enormously better. Inevitably they come to dislike the

side-effects of the various medications their medical doctor has put

them on and they begin to wean themselves off of heart-stimulating

poisons like digitalis. Another benefit of my program is that

inevitably, blood pressure also drops to a normal range so if they

have been on blood pressure medication they quit that too. Their

diuretics also become unnecessary. The money they save more than

pays for their supplements and the sense of well-being they feel is

beyond value.