Heart Patients Take Note

I am going to tell you about the world’s very best treatment for arteriosclerosis (aka hardening of the arteries via plaque deposits). It doesn’t involve drugs or surgery, primarily requires commonly available nutritional supplements and usually substantially improves the patient’s condition inside of a month. This therapy has been around for 60-70 years, has been effective in tens of thousands of cases, and has been championed by Linus Pauling, who was a two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize. The supplements usually cost less than $80 per month and the major side-effect is that you become more resistant to colds and flu.

It is a mistake to think of arterial plaque deposits as “heart disease”. The plaque deposits lining the walls of arteries are a downstream effect of what begins as damage to artery walls. Under optimal conditions, this damage would be quickly repaired, because the major arteries – particularly coronary arteries - are under significant mechanical stress and having the blood “break through” a major artery wall could be almost immediately lethal.

The repair process revolves around the creation of new collagen and elastin fibers in the area of the damage. Of course there is a “recipe” of nutrients needed to make these fibers, and almost all of those nutrients are usually available in sufficient quantity. Unfortunately, one of those nutrients, in many people, is often in short supply. That nutrient is vitami
C.

Vitamin C performs many functions. It is an antioxidant. It is used to chelate out heavy metals. It plays an important part in the immune system, and it is also required to produce collagen fibers. It is significant to point out that vitami
C is not stored in the body.

Fortunately, vitami
C is in most foods. You will find it in every fruit, vegetable, and even in meat. The unfortunate part about vitami
C is that it is fragile, and doesn’t stand up to cooking. So, if most of your food is cooked, dried, preserved, processed, packaged, or canned, then you aren’t getting much vitami
C from your food, and you might not have enough for all vitami
C functions (such as synthesizing collagen fibers).

When artery walls are damaged and vitami
C is in short supply, you may not be able to fix the damage, but your body has a “pla
B”. Just like the Dutch boy who sticks his finger in the dike, your body will try to shore up the weak points in the artery walls “until they can be repaired”. The plaque deposits that heart disease patients are so afraid of are actually purposely placed at weak points of the arteries to prevent “breakthrough” bleeding.

The major problem with this “Plan B” is that until very late stages in this disease process, there is no pain, and the person is usually totally unaware of any problem. Even if they were aware, the useful message – get more vitami
C ! – is unlikely to pop into consciousness. So, instead of repairing the damage to the artery walls in the immediate future, more damage accumulates. This results in more plaque deposits, and where the artery wall damage is concentrated, thicker and thicker plaque deposits. Eventually, a blood clot gets stuck by the plaque deposit and closes off the blood flow in that artery. The result is most often a heart attack.

The real test of the vitami
C theory is what happens when sufficient nutrients are provided to fix damaged areas of artery walls. The almost universal result is that, as the arterial damage heals, the plaque deposits are “released” from the artery wall. Eventually this disease condition is substantially or even completely reversed.

I have spoken in general terms of the “vitami
C” treatment for arteriosclerosis. The actual formula is never quite so simple. The “basic” formula is vitamins C, E and a couple of amino acids. Other optional nutrients can be considered. Depending upon the individual patient, 5-7 more nutrients (from a pool of more than 15) are typically added. Also, dietary improvements always help.

I have taught this “vitami
C” therapy as an 8-hour continuing-education course for acupuncturists. To describe the same topic in a few paragraphs involved cutting a lot of corners. I hope that I have done this artfully enough to make you want to check into this topic further.