Heart Disease

Heart Disease

Dean Ornish, M.D., is a California doctor who astounded the medical world a few years ago by becoming the first researcher to actually reverse heart disease. Even more amazing, he did it with a low-tech combination of natural approaches: exercise, yoga, meditation, support groups and a very low fat vegetarian diet (10 percent of calories from fat).

I've always liked a story that Dr. Ornish tells about a group of rabbits that added an unexpected tidbit to the research on heart disease. Kept in a laboratory under research conditions, the rabbits were genetically similar, and all received the same food and got the same amount of exercise, yet one group had 60 percent fewer heart attacks than the others. What was the difference? It turned out that the healthier rabbits were the ones kept in the lower cages, and the short person who fed the rabbits could reach the lower animals and pet them when feeding them. Love, it seems, is a life preserver. I've always thought so.

Preventing Clogged Pipes

In heart disease--or more accurately, coronary artery disease--the arteries that nourish the heart become clogged. This disease is our number one cause of death. It affects approximately 7 million Americans and causes about 1.5 million heart attacks and 500,000 deaths each year.

Mainstream medicine hasn't yet adopted the safe, gentle, natural Ornish approach. Instead, our taxes and health insurance premiums go to finance approximately 300,000 coronary artery bypass operations each year at a cost of about $30,000 each, or $9 billion total.

Bypass surgery is only a temporary fix. The bypasses themselves usually clog up after a few months or years. If the $9 billion spent on bypasses went instead into natural therapies and preventive approaches, the U.S. health system would be better off.

Preventive therapies include treating high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol and doing everything possible to encourage Americans to quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more, manage their stress more effectively and cultivate more social support.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognizes the value of prevention. In a 1994 report, the NIH said: "For health-care reform to succeed at reducing costs . . . disease prevention must be the ultimate focus of the primary health-care system, rather than disease treatment." I just wish doctors would embrace this concept.

Vegetable Power

One of my favorite approaches to preventing--and recovering from--heart attack is one you won't find in any medical texts. It's vegetable soup. Most people call it minestrone, but I call it Medistrone because it's as much a medicine as a food.

There is no recipe for this soup. You simply take the appropriate ingredients, which I'm about to describe, and combine them into any number of delicious soups. The idea is to concentrate on seasonal vegetables and make it a little different each time, so you never get tired of this healthful dish. It soon becomes a habit that you'll enjoy for the rest of your life.

Some of the vegetables and herbs I use in vegetable soup, notably garlic, onions, ginger and red pepper, make the blood less likely to clot, thus preventing the blood clots that trigger heart attack. Garlic and onion also help reduce cholesterol and blood pressure.

Other vegetables, particularly tomatoes, contain the compound gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA). Lately I've become fascinated by this compound. According to studies, the GABA in tomatoes and many other soup vegetables appears to reduce blood pressure and help strengthen the heart muscle. To Medistrone's tomato base we add other herbs, spices and vegetables that help reduce blood pressure, among them the aforementioned onions and garlic plus rice, celery and saffron.

Still other vegetables that you might add to Medistrone that help lower cholesterol are artichokes, barley, beans, carrots, eggplant and spinach.

In addition, my Medistrone contains vegetables high in glutathione, a powerful antioxidant. antioxidants help prevent artery-clogging plaque from being deposited on coronary artery walls. You can find healthy amounts in asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, purslane and tomatoes. (It's also found in avocados, grapefruit, oranges, peaches and watermelon, but I wouldn't use these in my soup.)

All of the vegetables that you might use in Medistrone are low in fat and have little or no cholesterol, so they can help control weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. Vegetables can even provide good exercise if you grow them yourself.

So if you're worried about heart attack, by all means have Medistrone as a meal once or twice a week--or more if you want. You can make a big pot early in the week, then freeze portion-size servings and have it whenever you want. I speculate that simply by replacing a few meat or cheese meals a week with Medistrone, you may reduce your risk of heart attack by about 20 percent.

More Reasons for Eating Your Veggies

Don't stop with Medistrone. There's such strong scientific evidence in favor of fruits and vegetables for preventing heart disease that you should make them part of every meal.

Fruits and vegetables are our main sources of potent antioxidants: vitamins C and E, the vitamin A­like carotenoids and folate, a B vitamin. Many studies show that as dietary consumption of these nutrients increases, risk of heart attack plummets by up to 40 percent. (And cancer risk drops about 50 percent as well).

No wonder the National Research Council, the National Cancer Institute and most nutritional health authorities urge all Americans to "strive for five." This means getting at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Keep in mind, though, that five is just the healthy minimum. Many nutritionists encourage eight or nine servings a day. That's a very tall order, considering that only about 10 percent of all Americans get even five, according to Gladys Block, Ph.D., a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley. It's starting to sound as if a better slogan would be "tend toward ten." In 1997, I launched my own campaign called Strive for Five Times Five (fruits, herbs, legumes and grains, nuts and vegetables).

I have no doubt that if we put the $9 billion that goes for bypasses into a big advertising campaign to get Americans to eat more fruits and veggies, we'd see fewer heart attacks.

Green Pharmacy for Heart Disease

I've already said that garlic, onions, ginger and red pepper help prevent and treat heart disease by reducing blood pressure and that garlic and onions also cut cholesterol and discourage the blood from forming clots. If you know much about herbs, that information probably isn't news to you. But you may not know that many other herbs can help prevent and treat heart disease.

Pigweed (Amaranthus, various species) and other plants containing calcium. Pigweed leaves are one of our best plant sources of calcium (about 5.3 percent on a dry-weight basis). Studies suggest that calcium adds mineral density to bone, which can help prevent osteoporosis. But there's more: The mineral also significantly reduces heart attack risk.

Other high-calcium plants include lamb's-quarters, stinging nettle, broadbeans, watercress, licorice, marjoram, savory, red clover shoots and thyme.

In addition to calcium, pigweed is high in fiber. A six-year Harvard study of more than 40,000 men showed that compared with those who consumed the least fiber, those who ate the most had just one-third the risk of heart attack. You can add pigweed to salads, mixed vegetable dishes and Medistrone.

Willow (Salix, various species). Willow bark contains salicin, the herbal precursor of aspirin. A great deal of research shows that low-dose aspirin--one-half to one standard tablet a day--can reduce heart attack risk substantially by preventing the blood clots that trigger it.

The body converts aspirin into salicylic acid, and it also converts the salicin in willow bark into salicylic acid. So if pharmaceutical aspirin helps prevent heart attack, herbal aspirin should, too. If you're allergic to aspirin, though, you probably shouldn't take herbal aspirin either.

Typically, people use the bark of the white willow (S. alba), but several other species are richer in salicin, including crack willow (S. fragilis) and purple osier (S. purpurea). If white willow is the only kind you can find at your health food store or herb shop, though, that's okay.

About a half-teaspoon to a teaspoon of white willow bark contains approximately 100,000 parts per million of salicin, or about 100 milligrams. After it's converted into salicylic acid, that should be about enough to provide aspirin's heart-protective effect.

I'd suggest brewing a tea with a teaspoon of so of bark to a cup of boiling water. Steep for 15 minutes and strain. You can try drinking one cup a day or one every other day.

Angelica (Angelica archangelica). Doctors routinely prescribe calcium channel blockers such as verapamil (Calan, Isoptin) to prevent heart attack. This is a class of drugs that works by helping to reduce blood pressure.

Angelica contains 15 separate compounds that are calcium channel blockers. If you are taking a prescribed calcium channel blocker, I would not advise abandoning your medication in favor of angelica, but I do suspect that adding this herb to your regimen would improve the overall effect of your medication. You should discuss this herb with your doctor if you'd like to try it.

I make a concoction called Angelade, which consists of juiced angelica stalks, carrots, celery, fennel, garlic, papaya and parsnips, with some water and spices for drinkability. It's very tasty, and all of the ingredients contain either calcium channel blockers, antioxidants or compounds that lower cholesterol or blood pressure, thus helping to prevent heart disease in one way or another.

Grape (Vitis vinifera). Some 30 long-term studies agree that moderate alcohol drinkers--those who have one or two drinks a day--reduce their heart attack risk by some 25 to 40 percent. Meanwhile, a debate rages about why.

Some researchers say that alcohol itself has a heart-protective effect, presumably by lowering LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind). They say that any type of alcohol helps: beer, wine or distilled spirits.

Others insist that there's something extra in red wine, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Certain chemicals called phenolic compounds that are found in grape skin give red wine its color. They also protect the body from LDL cholesterol even better than powerful vitamin E.

You really don't need to drink red wine to get these compounds, though. They are also found in red grapes, red grape juice and many other fruits and vegetables, including bilberries, blackberries, blueberries, garlic and onions.

If you choose to get the benefits of these compounds by having a couple of glasses of red wine a day, fine. Just remember that imbibing more than two drinks a day damages the heart.

Hawthorn (Crataegus, various species). Hawthorn has a well-established and well-deserved reputation as a mild heart tonic. It's especially useful in treating the heart fatigue known as congestive heart failure. But research shows that this herb also helps prevent heart attack. It improves blood circulation through the heart by opening (dilating) the coronary arteries. It also increases the heart's ability to cope with a loss of oxygen, which is what happens when clogged coronary arteries reduce the heart's blood supply.

Hawthorn also helps keep the heart beating properly and decreases what's known as peripheral vascular resistance. This means that it helps blood flow more easily, relieving strain on the heart and helping to reduce blood pressure.

In one study, people with heart disease who took 600 to 900 milligrams of hawthorn a day for two months reported that they felt significant improvement.

Hawthorn is a powerful heart medicine. If you want to take hawthorn to prevent heart attack, you should discuss it with your doctor and see a naturopath to get a standardized extract. Naturopaths do not recommend taking the raw herb to treat heart disease.

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). I promote tasty, spinachlike purslane at every opportunity, and here's a good one. This easy-to-grow garden vegetable is our best leafy source of beneficial compounds known as omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3's help prevent the blood clots that trigger heart attack. They're the reason that people who eat a lot of cold-water fish like salmon, which is a prime source of these oils, have low rates of heart disease.

In addition, purslane is extremely well-endowed with antioxidants, which also help prevent heart attack as well as cancer.

Finally, these greens contain calcium and magnesium in a one-to-one ratio. I've already mentioned that calcium is good for the heart, but calcium is most protective when you take it in a one-to-one combination with magnesium. That's a good argument for eating lots of fresh, leafy purslane. I eat it raw in salads or steam it, just like spinach.

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis). Rosemary is one of the richer herbal sources of antioxidants, which is why it works so well as a food preservative. Its antioxidants help prevent the fats in meat from turning rancid. They do the same, in a manner of speaking, for your heart.

Rosemary makes a pleasant-tasting tea. You can also use generous amounts of rosemary in your cooking.

Chicory (Cichorium intybus). According to California herbalist Kathi Keville, author of The Illustrated Herb Encyclopedia and Herbs for Health and Healing, whom I respect highly, Egyptian researchers have discovered that chicory root has two heart benefits. It slows a rapid heartbeat, and it also has a mild heart-stimulating effect, somewhat like the often-prescribed medication digitalis. And it's gentle enough to be safe.

Several commercial coffee substitutes contain roasted chicory. In France and Italy, the roots are not only consumed as a drink but are also considered a vegetable. Try some chicory coffee substitute and see how you like it. Follow the package directions.

Olive (Olea europea). When taken daily, olive oil may have a significantly protective effect against heart disease. Certainly it is pivotal in the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. In Mediterranean populations in which the main source of fat is monounsaturated olive oil, heart attacks are relatively rare, even when total fat consumption is fairly high.

If you haven't already done so, you should consider making olive oil the main oil that you use in the kitchen.

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea). Leave the papery red skins on your peanuts, because that's where the heart-protective compounds called oligomeric procyanidins (OPCs) can be found. OPCs are potent antioxidants that help prevent not only heart attack but also cancer and stroke.

Since plants' OPC content has not yet been well-tabulated, I cannot tell you which ones have the most. I like to get my OPCs from peanut skins, red grapes and red wine.