The death rates for heart disease and stroke each dropped by about 30 percent between 1999 and 2006, allowing American Heart Association to reach its 2010 goal of a 25 percent reduction in deaths four years early.
While it’s wonderful news, there’s still much progress to be made in terms of fighting heart disease. “Although death rates are declining, several of the risk factors leading to heart disease are increasing,” says Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, an American Heart Association spokeswoman. “There is an increase in obesity, diabetes and physical inactivity, which all lead to heart disease and stroke.”
Prevention—The Best Approach
The best strategy remains prevention—and that means taking a holistic approach to your health that incorporates diet, lifestyle, exercise, stress reduction, and maintaining emotional and mental well-being.
Diet, in particular, plays a key factor in heart disease prevention. The foods you eat and your nutritional intake can go a long way in supporting heart health.
For example, garlic and wild salmon are two powerfully healthy foods for your heart and your blood circulation.
No question that bananas and orange juice, rich in potassium, deliver powerful heart health benefits. Pomegranate juice and green tea are also heart healthy beverages. Both of these powerful foods supply extra antioxidants to your body, and antioxidants are major long-term protectors of your heart and arteries.
However, although there are many foods that are part of a heart-healthy diet, you might not always eat them often enough to get optimal amounts of their nutrients.
Organ meats are rich in coenzyme Q10, but most people won’t eat organs. Similarly, sardines and salmon are rich in not only heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids but also acetyl-l-carnitine, which is critical to maintaining the health of your heart cells, but not enough of us consume enough seafood or other meats and dairy that also contain these nutrients. Ditto for another important heart-health antioxidant called alpha-lipoic acid. Good food sources of alpha-lipoic acid include spinach, broccoli, beef, yeast (particularly brewer’s yeast), and certain organ meats (such as the kidney and heart).
As for vitamin E, another important heart-health nutrient, you would have to consume a pound of butter daily to obtain enough!
Supplements for a Healthy Heart
Supplements are designed to keep you staying healthy and to avoid costly problems down the road. Their cost is insignificant when compared to their benefits in helping to prevent and delay the onset of challenging health conditions.
Metabolic Response Modifiers (MRM) offers three vital supplement formulas that, taken together, will provide your body with all of these heart-healthy nutrients.
ChoLESStat—MRM’s formula designed to support healthy cholesterol levels contains Flaphenol, a homogeneous extract derived from the Spanish olea and other citrus plants, that delivers the antioxidant and cholesterol health benefits of flavonoids and polyphenols. The plant matter is intricately mixed before extraction, then crystallized to enhance the water-soluble properties. This bio-enhancement makes the flavonoids and polyphenols highly absorbable, enabling the body to synthesize cholesterol more effectively. Preliminary evidence suggests Flaphenol supports normal cholesterol levels just as well as prescription medications but without drug-related side effects.
Policosanol, also part of ChoLESStat, is a mixture of fatty acids derived from sugar cane, rice bran, or the wax of honey bees. These fatty acids work to support healthy cholesterol by several mechanisms, including blocking the formation of cholesterol in the liver.
ChoLESStat’s guggulipid, a resinous herb from India, supports healthy cholesterol levels in the blood. In recent clinical trials, patients using guggulipid had an overall cholesterol decline in the range of 14 to 27 percent. Inositol hexanicotinate is a variety of niacin that does not cause skin flushing and risk of liver damage, like some other forms of niacin. It decreases free-fatty-acid mobilization and synthesis of very low-density lipoproteins in the liver; this results in a decrease in LDLs, total cholesterol and triglycerides. Finally, ChoLESStat contains betasitosterol, a component found in soybeans and rice, that has been shown to decrease the absorption of cholesterol into the digestive system.
Co-Q10 with L-Carnitine—MRM delivers one of the highest quality L-carnitine products you can find in liquid form for maximum absorption and combines it with coenzyme Q10 for maximum heart health support. Studies suggest that people who take L-carnitine supplements soon after suffering a heart attack may be less likely to suffer a subsequent heart attack, die of heart disease, experience chest pain and abnormal heart rhythms, or develop congestive heart failure (CHF). (CHF is a condition that leads to a backup of blood into the lungs and legs because the heart loses its ability to pump blood efficiently.)
In addition, people with coronary artery disease who use L-carnitine along with standard medications may be able to sustain physical activity for longer periods of time.
In addition to reducing one’s chances of developing heart failure after a heart attack, some studies suggest that L-carnitine may help treat CHF once it has set in. These studies have shown that L-carnitine may improve exercise capacity in people with CHF.
In several studies, people who took L-carnitine supplements had a significant lowering of their total cholesterol and triglycerides, and an increase in their HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels.
Decreased blood flow to the legs from atherosclerosis (plaque buildup) often causes an aching or cramping pain in the legs while walking or exercising difficult. This pain is called intermittent claudication and the diminished blood flow to the legs is called peripheral vascular disease (PVD). At least one well-designed study suggests that carnitine supplements may improve muscle function and exercise capacity in those with PVD. In other words, people with PVD may be able to walk farther and longer if they take carnitine.
Complete E—When someone mentions vitamin E, most of us never consider the fact that vitamin E is actually a family of related compounds and that many of these close cousins are also very powerful health promoters.
The vitamin E family consists of at least eight different compounds: four tocopherols and four tocotrienols (designated as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta). Each of these is metabolized in the body into other important healthful compounds. Tocotrienols are most abundant in cereal grains including barley, rice, rye, and wheat, and the fruit of palm.
Unfortunately, the common commercial sources of natural vitamin E (soy, corn, cottonseed, canola, and sunflower oil distillates) contain little or no tocotrienols. What’s more, synthetic vitamin E contains only alpha-tocopherol, and one of the other tocopherols and tocotrienols.
We now know that:
- Gamma-tocopherol has stronger anti-inflammatory properties than alpha-tocopherol and appears to be more potent than alpha-tocopherol in increasing activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), a major antioxidant enzyme, in plasma and arterial tissues.
- Gamma-tocotrienol inhibits a specific liver enzyme involved in cholesterol production, which results in less cholesterol being manufactured by liver cells.
MRM’s full-spectrum vitamin E supplement is one of the best available today and comes highly recommended by our health researchers. Not only is it rich in all of the known tocopherol isomers of vitamin E, it also supplies all of the known tocotrienols, along with vitamin C palmitate and a small amount of alpha-linolenic acid, which aids the body’s utilization and recycling of vitamin E.
Resources
To find the nutrients discussed in this article, look for ChoLESStat, Co-Q10 with L-Carnitine, and Complete E from Metabolic Response Modifiers (MRM). Known for delivering extremely high quality supplements, their products are available at health food stores and natural product supermarkets nationwide. To find a natural health center in your community carrying them, contact MRM toll-free at 800-948-6296 or visit their website atwww.mrm-usa.com.
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