Alan R. Gaby, M.D., Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., Forrest Batz, Pharm.D. Rick Chester, RPh., N.D., DipLAc. George Constantine, R.Ph., Ph.D. Linnea D. Thompson, Pharm.D., N.D.
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 Preliminary research conducted several decades ago suggested that high sugar consumption increased heart attack risk.58 Some researchers at that time disagreed59 and others have subsequently been unable to find a link. Nevertheless, sugar has been associated with reduced HDL ("good") cholesterol,60 increased triglycerides (page 235),61 as well as an increase in other risk factors linked to heart attacks.62 As a result, many doctors recommend that people reduce their intake of sugar despite the fact that high sugar intake leads to only slightly higher risks of heart disease in most reports. |
Brenda Davis and Tom Barnard
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 Studies suggest that when moderate amounts of tropical oils are consumed as part of a high-fiber, low- or no-cholesterol, plant-based diet, judicious use of these fats does not increase heart attack risk. By contrast, adding tropical fats to a standard North American diet already containing excessive saturated fat and cholesterol may simply be adding fuel to the fire.
How much saturated fat should we eat? The WHO/FAO Diet and Diseases 2002 report* suggests optimal intakes should be no more than 7 percent of the total daily calorie intake for people with type 2 diabetes. |
The Life Extension Editorial Staff
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 As new studies continued to verify aspirin's cardioprotective effect, the FDA finally issued a ruling in 1998 that allowed aspirin companies to advertise that aspirin reduces heart attack risk. Too bad so many Americans had to die because it took the FDA 15 years to recognize what was clearly established in 1983.
SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE AND PAIN AND SUFFERING
This fourth edition of Disease Prevention and Treatment reveals many beneficial therapies that are not being used routinely in the clinical setting. |
| SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE AND FOLIC ACID
One example of Scientific Medicine in action occurred 22 years ago when the Life Extension Foundation recommended taking folic acid to reduce heart attack risk. Back then, most cardiologists had never heard of homocysteine and did not know that folic acid reduces levels of this toxic, artery-clogging agent in the body. |
| The FDA demanded that the sale of this product cease, but Life Extension refused, citing the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, that is, the right to communicate that a published scientific study found that aspirin reduces heart attack risk. Realizing that they could not get around the U.S. Constitution, the FDA went to the manufacturer of the product and demanded that they stop making "First Amendment Aspirin" or face intrusive daily inspections. The manufacturer capitulated and stopped making the product. |
| Since homocysteine wields such a powerful cardiovascular blow from so many different directions, it is estimated that a 3-unit increase in homocysteine equates to a 35% increase in heart attack risk (Verhoef et al. 1996). The risk becomes even greater if hyperhomocysteinemia occurs with other risk factors. For example, a hypertensive woman with elevated homocysteine levels has a 25-fold increased risk of vascular disease. |
| The study showed that low dose aspirin reduced heart attack risk by about 44% compared to the control group; the risk was 55% lower than that of placebo-treated men with high CRP levels. The results of this study suggest that in addition to aspirin's antagonism toward platelet clumping, it may also attenuate thrombosis through anti-inflammatory mechanisms (Physicians Weekly 1998a).
Aspirin significantly cut the death rate from cardiac disease among 2368 noninsulin-dependent diabetic patients with coronary artery disease. |
| Despite numerous studies linking elevated fibrinogen to increased heart attack risk, few physicians bother to check their patient's blood levels of fibrinogen or other correctable risk factors such as homocysteine and C-reactive protein.
Many cardiologists are still demanding a higher standard of proof before they routinely test their patients' blood for what they consider to be "newly identified" cardiac risk factors. |
Earl L. Mindell, RPh, PhD with Virginia Hopkins, MA
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| Reports from the early years of the ongoing MRFIT (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial), involving over 360,000 men, cemented the notion that a diagnosis of high blood cholesterol greatly increases heart attack risk. Scores of smaller studies appeared to further support the diet-heart hypothesis that a high-cholesterol diet causes high blood cholesterol, and that high blood cholesterol causes heart disease.
As a result, mainstream medicine has adopted cholesterol-lowering therapies as its first-line defense against heart attack. |
Patrick Holford
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 In 1992, a study of fourteen thousand male doctors found that those with homocysteine levels in the top 5 percent had three times the heart attack risk, compared with those in the bottom 5 percent. This increased risk was confirmed by the Massachusetts-based Framingham Heart Study in 1995, which found that having more than 11.4 units of homocysteine in the blood increased the risk.21 Another study at the University of Washington found that having high homocysteine doubles the risk of heart attack in young women. |
| Vitamin E, however, was four times as effective, according to Professor Morris Brown, whose double-blind controlled trial of vitamin E at Cambridge University Medical School showed a 75 percent reduction in heart attack risk.6
These results are consistent with many studies that show a reduced risk of heart attack, especially if vitamin E is given before a problem develops. In one study, whose findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 87,200 nurses were given 100 IU of vitamin E daily for more than two years. |
| There is a strong association between magnesium deficiency and heart attack risk. A pronounced magnesium deficiency can cause a heart attack by cramping a coronary artery even in the absence of an atherosclerotic blockage. So checking your magnesium level is essential.
VITAMIN E PROTECTS YOUR ARTERIES
Another way to change blood pressure is to thin the blood. Conventionally aspirin is used and reduces the risk of a heart attack by 20 percent. |
Joseph E. Mario
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 HashighZinc; Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Potassium, Selenium; Calcium, Sodium, Iron, Manganese; some B-Complex, Magnesium, Phosphorus, and Silicon; 30% water-absorbing mucilage.
•PUERARIAORPUERIA SEE Kudzu Root.
•PULSATILLANIG A potent, almost poisonous hairy Chinese Anemone, a flower-like polyp ofthe sea (or aperennial plant of the Crowfoot family called Wind Flower, Pasque Flower, or Wood Anemone, SEE Anemone). Take only as a triturated homeopathic remedy. For circulation problems; colds, catarrh; female remedy for menses pain (3x). |
Gary Null
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| Cytokines, by themselves, can contribute to increased heart attack risk, even after inflammatory markers are corrected. So suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokines through supplementation is also necessary.
Homocysteine. Physicians rarely check for elevated blood levels of homocysteine, but this could be a fatal mistake, as studies correlate raised homocysteine levels with increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
Homocysteine forms from the amino acid methionine found in red meat and chicken. |
Patricia Hausman & Judith Benn Hurley
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 So it's no surprise to find that study after study links common heart attack risk factors to stroke. The list bears repeating:
• High blood pressure.
• High blood cholesterol.
• Overweight.
• Smoking.
• Diabetes.
For heart attacks, experts don't quibble over whether high blood pressure or high cholesterol is worse; both are considered very guilty parties. But in the case of stroke, high blood pressure is by far the most powerful of the risk factors.
The well-known Honolulu Heart Study, for instance, is but one of many that has documented the influence of blood pressure. |
Bill Gottlieb
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 In fact, he notes that in some cases, a low-fat diet alone may be as effective in reducing heart attack risk as going on a low-fat diet while also taking cholesterol-lowering medication.
Meats, whole dairy products, eggs and snack foods such as potato chips, crackers and cookies are the biggest sources of saturated fat in the American diet.
"With a low-fat diet, especially one free of animal food sources and those processed junk foods, you'll see all kinds of welcome changes," says Dr. Klaper. "Joints often stop hurting. Asthma frequently improves. |
The Complete Book of Alternative NutritionSelene Y. Craig, Jennifer Haigh, Sari Harrar and the Editors of PREVENTION Magazine Health Books
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| After observing that eating seafood seems to reduce heart attack risk in humans, researchers at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University of Chicago in Maywood, Illinois, studied the effect of fish oil supplements on heart attacks in animals. They found that giving daily doses of omega-3's significantly reduced the severity of heart attack among the animals that were studied.
If fish oil can help keep heart arteries open after they've been widened by angioplasty, it will be a major benefit for people who have had the procedure. |
Arthur C. Upton, M.D.
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| Women who use oral contraceptives have at least three or four times the heart attack risk of women who don't. However, women who have taken birth control pills have no additional risk of heart disease once they stop taking them.
• The incidence of heart disease for women may rise since teenage girls are smoking more. Female smokers are up to six times more likely to have a heart attack than female nonsmokers.
• Evidence suggests that estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) after menopause may lower a woman's risk for heart attack. |
Ralph Golan, M.D.
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 There is a general consensus that arteriosclerosis (plaque-congested arteries) is a primary culprit for heart attack risk. Although arteriosclerosis causes diminished blood flow and oxygen to the heart muscle, plaque alone rarely precipitates a heart attack. In fact, plaque development is a gradual process that often triggers the development of new arteries that are stimulated to grow and bypass the diseased sections. A blood clot (a coronary thrombosis) or a coronary artery spasm is most often the final event closing off a coronary artery, whether or not it is diseased with plaque. |
Nicola Reavley
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 However, results from the Physicians Health Study published in 1995 do not suggest a link between selenium levels and heart attack risk. Researchers analyzed blood selenium levels in 251 subjects who had heart attacks and an equal number of healthy people, matched by age and smoking status. The results did not show significant differences.32
Supplements
Finnish researchers evaluated the effect of selenium supplementation on 81 patients with heart attacks. Patients received either selenium-rich yeast (100 meg per day) or placebo in addition to conventional drug therapy for a six-month period. |
Prevention Magazine
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 The men's total cholesterol dropped an average of 19 percent in three weeks, possibly reducing their heart attack risk by almost 40 percent. Better yet, the dangerous low-density lipoprotein cholesterol—that's the artery-plugging stuff—plunged by 24 percent.
It appears that all beans can help lower cholesterol, even canned baked beans. In another University of Kentucky study, 24 men with high cholesterol ate 1 cup of beans in tomato sauce every day for three weeks. Their total cholesterol dropped 10. |
James A. Duke, Ph.D.
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 The big turnaround came in the early 1990s, when research showed that vitamin E could reduce heart attack risk by about 40 percent. That impressed a lot of doctors.
The older you get, the more likely you are to be deficient in one or more of the essential nutrients. Even if you're only mildly deficient, you pay a hefty price in terms of premature aging and increased risk of illness. For example, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore gave 96 older folks either an off-the-shelf multivitamin or a placebo (a fake pill). |
The Editors of Prevention Magazine Health Books
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 In the Physicians' Health Study at Harvard Medical School, for example, a preliminary report indicates that heart attack risk was cut 50 percent in a group of men between the ages of 40 and 84 who took 50 milligrams (83,000 international units) of beta-carotene every other day.
But in 1994, researchers began to question the therapeutic effects of beta-carotene. A study of 29,000 male Finnish smokers found that men who took 20 milligrams (about 33,000 international units) of beta-carotene a day actually had an increased incidence of both lung cancer and heart disease. |
| High cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease. heart attack risk by 52 percent, a diet rich in vitamin C reduced risk by 43 percent, and a diet rich in beta-carotene, one of the nutrients that give orange and yellow vegetables their color, reduced risk by 38 percent. What's more, nurses who got a rich supply of all three nutrients were 63 percent less likely to have heart attacks than those who did not. How do these nutrients work?
"Nobody really knows," says Howard N. Hodis, M.D. |
Jean Carper
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 Renaud, says preventing blood clots can sharply cut your chances of heart attack within a year, whereas it usually takes longer to reduce heart attack risk by lowering cholesterol. However, many foods, such as onions and garlic, do both, so you get double benefits.
70
"Everybody knows it is not cholesterol that kills you. It's the blood clot that forms on top of the cholesterol-hardened plaque in the arteries that can be deadly."—Dr. |
Ralph Golan, M.D.
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| RDA and easily into the range of increased heart attack risk. I generally recommend diminishing the intake of vitamin D-fortified foods. If you use a multiple vitamin formula, find one with reduced amounts of vitamin D (50 to 200 I.U. per daily dose). Natural vitamin D-3 (chole-calciferol) is preferable to synthetic D-2 (ergocalciferol).
The ability to manufacture vitamin D from sunlight decreases with age. |
Michael Castleman
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 Olive oil, particularly extra-virgin, cold-pressed olive oil, is high in nutrients that help prevent the development of plaques that clog arteries and increase heart attack risk.
Olive oil also raises levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL, the "good" cholesterol) and lowers levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL, the "bad" cholesterol).
In addition, olive oil helps prevent the blood clots that trigger heart attack. Blood clots form when special blood cells, called platelets, clump together and stick to coronary artery walls. |
Gale Maleskey
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 One reason that vitamin E helps to reduce heart attack risk is that it interferes with little particles in the blood called platelets, which play a role in blood clotting. Platelets can clump together or stick to artery walls when they shouldn't, which can cause a clot that closes off an artery. Vitamin E helps to prevent that, but it could also prevent the platelets from sticking and clumping when they need to. |
Dr. Vern Cherewatenko and Paul Perry
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 More frequent exercise reduced the heart attack risk further.
High blood pressure control. Exercise can help bring down high blood pressure, which is associated with stroke and heart attack. One study involving Harvard University alumni found those who were active had a 20-40 percent lower chance of having high blood pressure.
Studies also have shown that those who exercise regularly have a slower resting heart rate; their heart also beats more slowly when they're exercising than the hearts of people who are out of shape. |
| In addition, researchers have found that simvastatin, one of the new classes of cholesterol-lowering drugs, can significantly lower cholesterol levels and dramatically reduce heart attack risk.
In one European study, 202 people with diabetes were part of a 4,444-person study of the drug. Results indicated that simvastatin appeared to reduce LDLs, increase HDLs, and lower cholesterol; people with diabetes benefited the most.
Simvastatin lowered their risk of heart attack by 55 percent, compared with 32 percent among persons without diabetes. |
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