Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I became an invasive cardiologist.
As time went on, I realized that by the time I see patients as an invasive cardiologist, the horse is out of the barn in many circumstances. Of course, we want to treat people.
We do an amazing job of getting arteries open. We use truly life-saving procedures. I began to realize that to make a real impact on cardiovascular disease, we have to find out who's at risk and to treat them early to minimize their risk factors so they don't go and have a heart attack.
Mike: So it's about prevention? |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 My friend the well-known cardiologist and nutritionist Dr. Steve Sinatra has gone on record as saying that even cardiac patients can enjoy dark chocolate regularly in moderation, if they're not sensitive to caffeine.
I'd recommend you get the darkest, most delicious kind you can find, with a label that says at least 60 percent cocoa, and enjoy an ounce or two a few times a week. |
| Stephen Sinatra is a board-certified cardiologist, a certified bioenergetic psychotherapist, and a certified nutrition and antiaging specialist. Sinatra integrates conventional medicine with complementary, nutritional, and psychological therapies that help heal the heart. In my opinion, his classic Heart Sense for Women should be required reading. His latest book is The Fast Food Diet.
Sinatra couldn't choose among his top twelve, so I let him list all twelvelAll foods listed below are organic, natural, wild, or free range. These are the foods Sinatra eats in everyday life.
1. |
Ray D. Strand
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 A week after I received the letter, I was grabbing a snack in the doctors' lounge when the cardiologist approached me. Our interaction was a bit different this time. Amazed at Wayne's improvement, the doctor was anxious to see some of the research studies on CoQlO. I told him I would send copies of the studies right over.
"Ray," he said, "you remind me of a doctor I used to listen to on the radio during my commute into work. He would talk about all these medical studies on nutrition and supplements. I was sure he was off his rocker. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I'm also a cardiologist. As a cardiologist, I'll go and bring natural medicine sometimes to the nursing homes, and when someone's bedridden or in a wheelchair, giving them shots of these vitamins is really hard. They are likely to get sores and other complications from the injection. We're seeing really nice effects from the greens.
Mike: Can you talk in more detail about what kind of things you've seen?
Dr. Weiss: Number one: More energy. They feel like they've gotten that B vitamin shot. The second thing is better bowel movements and better bowel function. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 Next, the cardiologist tested the patient with a Holter monitor, a beeper-sized machine that records the heart's electrical activity or electrocardiogram for an entire day. While the patient was connected to the monitor, she pushed a button every time she experienced heart palpitations. The only abnormal results of this last test were short bursts of rapid heart rate, or tachycardia. Such bursts commonly occur when a person is exercising or feeling anxious. Because of these test results, the heart doctor's diagnosis was "nothing wrong. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 Esselstyn, the cardiologist bet him a steak dinner that he couldn't get his cholesterol below its level at the time—a frightening 305 mg/dL.
At first, I thought Jim was something of a wise guy, not entirely serious about the enterprise before us. We always seemed to be at loggerheads. He was constantly challenging me. What would he do at restaurants? While traveling? How could he possibly eat this food? He had always hated fruits and vegetables. "Big Macs, French fries, milk shakes were favorite foods," he readily admits. "My favorite thing was chocolate. |
| In 1999, cardiologist David Waters of the University of California performed a study that compared the results of angioplasty—in which a balloon is inserted into a coronary artery to widen the vessel and improve blood flow—with the use of drugs to aggressively reduce serum cholesterol levels. There was no disputing the outcome. The patients who had the drug treatment to lower cholesterol had fewer hospitalizations for chest pain and fewer heart attacks than those who underwent angioplasty and standard postoperative care. |
| So I fired the cardiologist, and went to Dr. Esselstyn on my own." As Joseanne explains, "He had no hope. He was willing to do anything."
Not everyone was quite so open to my message. Take Evelyn Oswick, for example—the group's only woman. She had been fifty-three when she suffered the first signs of heart trouble. She and her husband, Hank, had delivered their daughter to college, and were carrying a light chair up the stairs to the dormitory's second floor when Evelyn suddenly felt breathless. |
| After years of agony, the cardiologist told Emil about Dr. Esselstyn, and suggested that he have a talk with me.
His back was against the wall. There was no mechanical intervention he could have. He was gobbling nitro all day to stave off the angina, and couldn't even lie down flat to sleep. Every day, his wife, Margie, had to cover his thorax and abdomen with nitroglycerin paste, which she then covered with plastic wrap to protect his clothes, just so that Emil could perform the most basic tasks of taking care of himself without suffering incapacitating pain. |
| People with the severity of disease you have average about a year," the cardiologist told him. Since the doctors were afraid to operate, they prescribed medication for the pain, and the hospital dietician actually advised him to consume a stick of corn oil margarine every day—a prescription based on some study (we now know far better) that suggested corn oil was good for the heart and arteries! Don couldn't stomach the idea of eating a stick of margarine, so instead, he dutifully poured corn oil into a glass and drank it before he went to bed each night for several years. |
| Cooke writes: "In my opinion, it is far better, and well within your ability, to restore the health of your endothelium rather than have a cardiologist remove it with a balloon catheter. If your doctor recommends angioplasty, tell him or her that if at all possible, you prefer a medical and dietary approach. Angioplasty should be reserved for emergency situations (when someone is in the middle of a heart attack) or when medical and nutritional therapy have been attempted but failed to relieve the symptoms."2
Similarly, Dr. James Forrester and Dr. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 My cardiologist, however, scoffed at the idea. He referred me to Dr. Ahmet Hoke, a well-known neurologist at Johns Hopkins, who ordered biopsies in which pencil-eraser-deep tissue samples were taken from my thighs. Hoke, a Middle Eastern-born physician who serves as the director of the Division of Neuromuscular Diseases at Johns Hopkins, discussed my test results with me a few days later. My biopsies showed that I had suffered damage to my small-fiber sensory nerves, the tiny nerves that tell us whether what we touch is soft or rough, hot or cold. |
Anne Harrington
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 Instead, the book sported puffs from the executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, a cardiologist, a general practitioner, and a leading stress researcher. "I am delighted that someone has finally taken the nonsense out of meditation," said one of these men. "This is a book that any rational person—whether a product of Eastern or Western culture—can wholeheartedly accept."39
By the 1980s, this new medicalized understanding of meditation was no longer strictly identified with Benson's secularized version of TM. |
| By the end of the 1970s, Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson's quick-and-easy method for evoking what he called a "relaxation response" was also winning large numbers of converts; I have more to say about Benson's work in chapter six.
Through much of the 1970s, the relaxation technique that had the most cachet—and also, in the eyes of many, the most clinical promise— was biofeedback. |
Bill Sardi
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 After a night in the intensive care unit, more medicines are prescribed although the cardiologist says the event was mild. His family asks the doctor if something can be done for his pain. Morphine is prescribed.
Only now does Manny's family think of alternatives. A neighbor suggests an herbal tea. An acquaintance of the family who went to Mexico to undergo treatment at a border cancer clinic recommends that he try it. They make phone calls to ask what it would cost for Manny to receive care there. But Manny doesn't go to Mexico because the oncologist gives them new hope. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Although coenzyme Q10 represents one of the greatest breakthroughs for the treatment of cardiovascular disease as well as for other diseases, the resistance of the medical profession to using this essential nutrient represents one of the greatest potential tragedies in medicine," says my friend, board-certified cardiologist, nutritionist, and noted author Stephen Sinatra, M.D.
CoQ 10 has been an approved drug in Japan for congestive heart failure since 1974. And several studies have demonstrated a relationship between depleted CoQ 10 levels and heart disease.
So What Is CoQ10, Anyway? |
Bill Sardi
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| John Murray, a cardiologist, went to visit Bedouins in North Africa who ate high-fat diets but had low rates of cardiovascular disease. He brought them iron pills to determine the impact of iron on arterial disease and noticed cholesterol plaques rapidly formed among the men taking iron pills and eating high-fat diets. [Iron Time Bomb, 1999] Maybe something similar to this is happening in Saudi Arabia.
The sale of alcohol is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Alcohol increases the absorption of iron from foods and iron storage in the liver. |
Andreas Moritz
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 When the cardiologist came back into the room, he said, I am totally surprised, just totally surprised. These tests show a healthy heart, no muscle damage at all! So you can go home, continue doing what you have been doing and come back to see me in six months.' He did not mention anything else about medications."
Her message ended by saying how grateful she was for all the advice and recommendations that had given her the power to reclaim a healthy normal heart. |
| Just thought you would like to hear the latest report from my cardiologist, whom I went to see on Monday, just because it has now been over one year since my heart attack." This was the beginning of an e-mail message that Susan, a 62-year old friend of mine from Arizona, sent me a few years ago. "He was a bit disturbed when I first saw him," she continued, "because I said I was not taking any medications and had not since last August. |
| Three months later, George visited his cardiologist who took him through a series of tests to determine the condition of his heart. George was not surprised to hear his doctor confirm that he no longer needed a heart transplant operation. He saved himself the $750,000 that the heart transplant would have cost. Over a period of time, he reduced and finally stopped all of his medication. Fifteen years later, he is still very active and enjoys an excellent state of health. |
| If you have already had one heart attack, your cardiologist will tell you to take cholesterol-lowering statins even if your cholesterol is very low. From the viewpoint of conventional medicine, having a heart attack implies that your cholesterol must be too high. Hence you are being sentenced to a lifetime of statins and a boring low-fat diet. But even if you have not experienced any heart trouble yet, you are already being considered for possible treatment. Since so many children now show signs of elevated cholesterol, we have a whole new generation of candidates for medical treatment. |
| Doing his job, the cardiologist follows the standard procedures and puts the patient in the cardiac catheterization room, examining the arteries with an angiogram. If you live in a developed country like America and are middle-aged or older, you are most likely to have arteriosclerosis, and the angiogram will show a narrowing. It won't take much convincing to tell you that you need a stent. "It's this train where you can't get off at any station along the way," Dr. Topol said. "Once you get on the train, you're getting the stents. |
| Neither the patients nor the examining cardiologist knew who had actually received the surgery. The results were that 10 out 13 patients with real surgery and 5 out of 5 patients with the sham operation had improved significantly. This experiment demonstrated that the placebo effect combined with the body's healing response might actually be the real power behind successful surgery. Surgery, just like every other treatment, can work as a placebo for the patient; and it seems to have no significant advantage over the placebo. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 Even much of our contact with surgeons is routine, if that word can be used to describe a trip to the cardiologist. A short postponement of an appointment is not likely to matter. Moreover, most surgery is elective; brief delays have little consequence.
None of this is true for emergency medicine. It is completely unpredictable; a moment's inaction may be the difference between life and death.
Our goal in this chapter is to assess the impact of emergency medicine and related specialties on health and well-being. |
| Our vision of the cardiologist is one who holds the beating heart—and therefore our very life—in his (sorry again for the sexism) hands. This leads us to coronary artery bypass grafts (called "cabbages" because of the CABG abbreviation), more than a half million of these surgeries are performed yearly. In this procedure, the surgeon does indeed stop the heart, and graft a piece of vein (usually the saphenous vein from the thigh) into one or more of the coronary arteries.
Does "cabbage" save lives? The first major clinical trial was in the early 1980s. |
Bottom Line Health
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| If you have this condition, ask your cardiologist if a biventricular pacemaker is right for you.
Americans Get Unneeded Blood Transfusions
Duke University news release.
Heart patients in the United States receive more blood transfusions than heart patients in many other countries, which may indicate that doctors in this country are too liberal in recommending this procedure, researchers say. |
Mark Sircus
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 At that point, I decided to look for a cardiologist who would be open to alternative methods of healing, allow me to be involved, and would most importantly allow me to have hope. After months of unsuccessful appointments with closed-minded doctors, I decided to take my healing into my own hands, and began my quest for a form of natural healing on my own.
I stopped taking all prescription drugs and began experimenting with various alternative methods, techniques, and products, in hope of finding a "Miracle Cure". |
Shannon Brownlee
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 Roy Ditchey, a local, board-certified cardiologist who had just relocated to Redding. Campbell says that Ditchey agreed: The woman's coronary arteries were not severely blocked, and she had not needed surgery.
More than once, Campbell and other physicians who were concerned about the hospital's cardiology program and its doctors would complain to Redding Medical Center administrators. At least once, a review was promised, but over the years, as far as Campbell could tell, one was never actually undertaken. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| I'm also a cardiologist. As a cardiologist, I'll go and bring natural medicine sometimes to the nursing homes, and when someone's bedridden or in a wheelchair, giving them shots of these vitamins is really hard. They are likely to get sores and other complications from the injection. We're seeing really nice effects from the greens.
Mike: Can you talk in more detail about what kind of things you've seen?
Dr. Weiss: Number one: More energy. They feel like they've gotten that B vitamin shot. The second thing is better bowel movements and better bowel function. |
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