Heart Disease Cardiovascular Disease , February is Heart Health Month! What do I Need to Know?
We love to celebrate our loved ones on Valentines Day. Its an affair of the heart. But, have you thought about your own heart lately? We used to believe that heart disease was an issue of old age but autopsies during the Vietnam war revealed that arterial disease was already present in many 18-year-old soldiers!
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics suggest that once you survive your first year, heart disease rates remain low until the age of 24. During the following decade (ages 25 to 34) heart disease rates soar by 400 percent, and the curve gets steeper with each additional decade.
What is Heart Disease? The primary reported cause of heart failure is coronary artery disease. Thats what they found in those Vietnam soldiers. A more accurate term for the cause is cardiovascular disease, because its not just a disease of the heart, its disease of the whole circulatory system.
It starts when fats in the blood are oxidized and then deposited on the interior walls of the blood vessels as plaque. Arterial plaque reduces the interior diameter (lumen) of the arteries which feed the heart. This condition is called Atherosclerosis. The heart muscle becomes starved for oxygen, forcing the heart rate to increase, and often raising blood pressure. This is the reason why heart disease and stroke are such close relatives. They have the same root cause – vascular disease.
A trendy medical treatment for arterial plaque is angioplasty. They insert a balloon inside the restricted blood vessel and push those fats out of the way. Unfortunately recurrence within six months (or less) is very common.
Chemistry 101. Arterial plaque is made up of oxidized cholesterol. This fact led to the cholesterol paranoia of the 1980s. But, cholesterol is not the culprit. The problem comes from the oxidizing of dietary fats.
Our cells process billions of chemical reactions every day. One of the side effects of those chemical reactions is the creation of free radicals. Oxygen is found free in nature as a stable molecule (O2). The oxygen molecule is made up of two oxygen atoms, held together, by a shared electron. The molecule looks like this O – O
During cellular metabolism, its often necessary to cleave the bond holding the two oxygen atoms together, to create a substance that requires added oxygen. Often, one of the free atoms of oxygen gets loose, and thats what we call a free radical. The damage they can inflict on cellular structures or circulating fats is called oxidation. Free radical damage is associated with many disease processes.
Another cause of vascular disease is high levels of blood homocysteine. This by-product of protein assimilation activates enzymes that attack the elastic parts of our blood vessels, causing hardening of the arteries Recent research has found that treatment with folic acid lowers homocycteine levels, thus protecting us from heart disease and stroke.
Prevention is Key. Natures solution for free radicals are the anti-oxidants. The primary antioxidants are Vitamins A,C, and E, Coenzyme Q-10, and a spectrum of the carotenoids and bioflavonoids. This is why Shaklees Vitalizer is such a breakthrough product. It contains 26 separate antioxidants to protect us from oxidative damage which causes vascular disease, certain cancers and premature aging. Vitalizer delivers the right nutrients to the right place at the right time. Its 12 patented, 2 patents pending delivery system means you cant find it anywhere else. Check out our blog on the tremendous research and results using Shaklee nutrition contained in the Landmark Study.
What Steps Can You Take? What really distinguishes the holistic nutritional approach from the medical model is prevention. Take an action step with a healthy heart supplement plan this year, so you can celebrate many more Valentines days with your loved ones.
See where to find out more info and watch some great videos about this topic BELOW the article.