protect your heart

Info on Heart Failure Your Cardiologist Probably Doesn’t Know

January 10, 2016 by James Bogash

Prevent heart disease — McCarony/Dollar Photo Club

Heart disease remains the biggest killer in the Western world. This is despite billions of dollars pumped into this condition.

Billions of dollars into research, drug development, drug use and cardiology procedures. And yet, all we have to show for it is a slight reduction in deaths from heart disease, but an increasing number of people living with heart disease.

What this tells me is that we are getting better at keeping people alive who have had a heart attack, but we still suck at doing anything to keep people from getting there in the first place. Most cardiologists and primary care doctors would point to the statin class of drugs as the singlemost important discovery in cardiologist ever.

Which pretty much explains why we’re in the mess we’re in because statins pretty much suck at preventing heart disease. Period. (in case you think this isn’t true, I’d invite you to read through my 100+ page eBook on cholesterol and we can talk after that…)

One thing we HAVE discovered from all the billions of dollars that have gone into cardiovascular research is that heart disease is almost 100% preventable.

Yup.

Seems hard to reconcile that the #1 killer in the Western world is almost entirely preventable. All we need to do is exercise more and eat better.

Except that it’s not quite that simple.

At the surface, yes, healthy dietary choices, not smoking and exercising regularly will eliminate a huge chunk of heart disease in this country. Then there’s the specifics, things like:

Short burst aerobic exercise instead of merely walking 30 minutes a day
More healthy fats (monounsaturated, omega-3) instead of trans and omega-6 fats
Managing stress
Avoiding refined carbohydrates and eat more whole grains
Avoiding toxic environmental chemical exposure like BPA

But sometimes the answers are far more complex. And way beyond the realm of the average cardiologist.

You see, the human body has never respected the artificial boundaries of medical specialties that we have created. The examples of neurology crossing into gastroenterology, endocrinology crossing into cardiology and obstetrics crossing into psychology are all over the place.

This particular article is no different. In it, researchers looked at 60 stable patients with mild CHF (half with NYHA functional class I to II) and moderate to severe CHF (half with NYHA functional class III to IV) and evaluated the composition of the inhabitants of the gut. Here’s what they found when these heart failure patients were compared to normal patients:

The entire heart failure population had massive quantities of pathogenic bacteria and Candida.

You can bet these findings will be the key topic of discussion at the next joint Cardiovascular / Gastroenterology convention.

(Yeah, don’t hold your breath waiting for the invite to this event…)

But seriously, these are some VERY striking differences between the heart failure patients and the normal participants. The question is whether the changes in the gut were the cause or the result of the chronic heart failure.

As with everything, the answer likely lies somewhere in between. We already have strong evidence that the bacteria in the gut contribute to obesity and diabetes. It would not be a big stretch to link bad bacteria balance in the gut with the later development of heart disease.

Personally, I’ll keep an eye on the research as it comes out over the next few years linking the gut bacteria and heart disease. In the meantime, I would do everything possible to make sure I’m living a lifestyle that is consistent with a healthy bacterial flora in the gut as well as avoiding antibiotics in all but the most life-threatening situations.

Your heart will must likely thank you for it.

Are You Giving Your Kids this Vitamin?

May 20, 2015 by James Bogash

vitamin D and children — Vitamin D as a child affects life as an adult

You take your vitamins religiously. You exercise and watch what you eat. But your kids? You send them to school with a Twinkie and fruit juice and don’t think twice about vitamins for them.

It’s not that you don’t care about your kids, it’s just that we don’t really think of them as having the problem. We think of kids being more resilient and the choices that they make not having a long term impact. But we just now that this isn’t true. There is a long list of things that happen to children that have effects decades later as an adult. These can include:

The point is that things that happen in childhood DO matter. These things can play a huge role in the health challenges your child will or will not have to deal with as an adult.

That’s a pretty strong responsibility as a parent.

Luckily some things are easier to implement. Which brings us to this particular study looking at the relationship to vitamin D levels in children and the health of their blood vessels 27 years later (as measured by carotid artery intima media thickness, or IMT). Here’s what they found:

Children with the lowest levels of 25-OH vitamin D (<40 nmol/L or 16 ng/ml–a very low number) were 70% more likely to have high-risk IMT.
These same low-level vitamin D kids were 80% more likely to have risk factors for heart disease as an adult.

This is a very simple addition to your child’s routine. With Keegan (9 years old), he gets 6,000 IU of vitamin D per week. That’s only 3 drops per week of the Biotics Bio-D-mulsion Forte formula that I recommend here in the office. I will usually add another drop of Biotics Bio-Ae-mulsion Forte as well (vitamin A 12,500 IU) to help support immune function.

This combination has seemed to keep his immune system humming at top efficiency and according to this study, may be protecting his blood vessels at this very moment…

Think You’re Doing Everything to Protect Your Heart? Even THIS?

August 20, 2013 by James Bogash

heart disase sleep — Enough sleep needed to protect the heart

Despite societal beliefs, heart disease is NOT genetic. It is almost entirely environmental. Lifestyle factors to lower your risk are very well established.

Most of you can probably name off the top few easily: Exercise, not smoking, plant based diet, don’t stress, avoid animal based saturated fats, more omega-3 fatty acids, etc… But some are a little more elusive and less well known. But usually these risk factors may play a smaller (but no less important) role, such as BPA in plastic water, dark chocolate, nuts and lycopene in tomatoes. But what if there was a very important risk factor that had a large impact on your risk of a heart attack or dying of a heart attack that you were not aware of?

Enter this large study out of the Netherlands. Luckily, the Dutch are a generally healthy people, so these researchers were actually able to find some healthy people to study (as opposed to the US, where researchers have to peek into dark corners and seedy vegan restaurants to find the healthy residents). Basically, they looked at 17,887 men and women and how their health behaviors were linked to the later risk of heart attacks or cardiac deaths.

Here’s the behaviors and the amount they lowered the risk individually:

Sufficient physical activity (≥3.5 h/week cycling or sports–52% of study participants) led to 26% lower risk.
Healthy diet (Mediterranean Diet Score ≥5–37% of participants) led to 12% lower risk.
Moderate alcohol consumption (≥1 beverage/month–91% men, 78% of women participants).
Non-smoking (65% of participants) led to 43% lower risk.

Overall, when all 4 of these healthy lifestyles were done together, there was an overall 57% lower risk of heart disease and 67% lower risk of fatal heart attack. Sadly, even in this healthier country, only 12% of the study participants adhered to all the factors studied. And like many of the studies on heart disease, these guidelines are pretty basic and very easy to achieve. More specific lifestyle changes would likely lead to much greater reductions.

There was one more behavior they look at:

Sufficient sleep duration of at least 7 hours per night.

Man, I better hit the hiking trail drinking red wine and eating raw nuts dipped in pure cacao.

In the study, 80% of men and 86% of women obtained sufficient sleep. Pretty sure we wouldn’t see these numbers here in the US with salaried employees with kids (or 5 blog / week health related blog authors…). Overall, getting sufficient sleep lowered the risk of heart disease by 22% and fatal heart attack by 46%. These are some pretty strong numbers.

But when added to the 4 factors listed about, the protection jumped, lowering risk of heart disease by 65% and fatal heart attack by 83%. These are some pretty serious numbers.

Overall, this really should not come as too big of a surprise because we know that sleep is incredibly important and, conversely, not sleeping well is unhealthy. Study after study have linked poor or too little sleep to increased inflammation, obesity and diabetes.

Lest you think that you’re ok because you load up on Ambien and Lunesta with your valium, there are some pretty scary associations between the use of these types of drugs and death (arguably something we want to avoid…).

And stress kills sleep quality and duration, which likely feeds into this entire picture of preventing heart disease and fatal heart attacks.

With that said, I’m off to bed to lower my risk of a heart attack..

Is Your Cardiologist a Hypocrite? 80% Chance the Answer is Yes

May 17, 2013 by James Bogash

Respect. Without this one factor, the advice your doctor gives you will go in one ear and out the other. There are a variety of factors that contribute to the level of respect you have for your physician.

High on the list is whether or not your physician practices what he or she preaches. Does he or she reek of cigarette smoke, and yet expects you to quit? Does he or she have a belly that stick way too far past the waistline and yet expects you to lose weight to manage your diabetes? Does your doctor tell you that you need to ramp up the exercise, but wouldn’t know what to do with a jump rope if he or she tripped over it?

These situations make it hard to follow your doctor’s advice. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be an isolated experience.

This particular study looked at a large population of 1770 cardiologists in Italy and questioned them on their heart-healthy behaviors. (Keep in mind that Europeans, in general, are healthier than us Americans) One group of questions asked about 5 classic heart disease risk factors. This simple list included:

High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Smoking
Diabetes
Previous vascular events

Pretty simple list of things to avoid that are almost entirely lifestyle dependent. So what did the researchers find?

More than 49% of the participants had at least 1 risk factor.
More than 28% had 2 to 5 risk factors.
A mere 22.1% had none of these factors.
Despite the reported risk factors, >90% of cardiologists considered themselves at mild risk of a cardiac event.
Furthermore, overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, and stress at work or at home were commonly reported.
Very interestingly, cardiologists self reported only a limited use of cardiovascular drugs, such as statins or aspirin.

How can society expect to stem the tsunami of chronic disease if the stewards of health are themselves, not healthy? “Do as I say, not as I do.” It won’t work.

The bottom line is that your health and the responsibility for your health lies with you. NEVER rely on any physician to teach you more about staying healthy then you can learn yourself (except maybe me, of course….). According the this study, the odds are that even your cardiologist doesn’t know what’s good for his or her heart.