Archive for the 'Cardio & Blood-Cholesterol' Category
To describe the cardiovascular system let’s use a model that most everyone is familiar with – plumbing. While this analogy may be overly simplistic, your cardiovascular system is essentially a network consisting of a pump and multiple pipes. Your heart is the pump, your blood vessels a complex set of pipes and your blood the fluid coursing through the system.
What a pump your heart is! About the size of a fist, this muscular organ contracts and relaxes from 50 to 200 times per minute without rest. At an average heart rate of 70 beats per minute, the human heart beats 4,200 times an hour, 100,800 times a day, 37 million times a year, and an amazing 3 billion times over an 85-year lifetime. The heart pump is divided into two halves, right and left, separated by a muscular wall called the septum. Each half has two chambers, the upper atrium and the lower ventricle. Blood flows into the right atrium and then, through a valve, into the right ventricle. When the right ventricle is full, another valve opens and the heart contracts, or pumps. This sends the blood from the right ventricle to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen. Oxygenated blood returning from the lungs enters the left atrium, then the left ventricle. When the valve between these two chambers closes, the heart contracts again and pumps blood into the arteries, the network of “pipes” that delivers oxygenated blood to your body.
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Time and solid scientific research have only confirmed his conclusions. The beneficial effect of lowered total and LDL cholesterol levels on coronary health has been demonstrated clearly by Dr. David Blankenhorn at the University of Southern California, who showed that by marked reduction of blood cholesterol, coronary heart disease could be slowed, stopped, or even made to regress, and by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Lipid Research Clinic, which clearly demonstrated that every 1 percent drop in serum cholesterol led to a 2 percent decrease in the risk of heart disease. In perhaps the most famous long-term cholesterol study of all, conducted over a forty-year period in Framingham, Massachusetts, Dr. William Castelli has shown that the risk of heart attack begins to rise gradually at a total cholesterol level of 150, then increases more steeply as cholesterol exceeds 200. But, Dr. Castelli reports, during all the years of the Framingham study they have yet to see a heart attack in anyone with a cholesterol level below 150! The link between low cholesterol and coronary health has been taken even further in the work of Dr. Dean Ornish at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. Dr. Ornish has demonstrated that without the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, a program like the Pritikin program, consisting of a low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol, and high-fiber eating plan, moderate exercise, life-style management, and cessation of smoking, not only can halt but can actually reverse the atherosclerotic effects of coronary heart disease.
It’s now overwhelmingly clear that one of the major risk factors for coronary heart disease is elevated blood cholesterol. Controlling your dietary cholesterol and saturated-fat intake is the most effective way to reduce this risk, but other factors – smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and not exercising regularly – can pose major threats to your health as well. While people who have safe levels of serum cholesterol are clearly in far less danger – even if they smoke, pay no attention to the signs of high blood pressure, and forgo exercise for a sedentary life-style – it is critical to acknowledge that smoking, high blood pressure, and a sedentary life-style are still dangerous and can greatly increase your chances of dying from a stroke, cancer, or other serious disease.
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Hearty Laughter
Where active exercise involving the arms is found difficult, the important effect of movement within the rib-cage may be produced by milder effort. Perhaps scarcely seeming to be an exertion at all, deep laughter brings quite powerful tugging movements to the ribs. If the company — or anything on TV, radio or in a book — gives an excuse for full laughter, indulge yourself. The beneficial effects operate in more than one fashion. Should no such opportunity present itself, silent mime with the same movement of chest and throat will produce similar physical results.
Help from Another
Not infrequently, cardiac distress may be due at least in part to abnormalities of tension or alignment in the spinal column. Accidental injury is probably the commonest cause, but prolonged faulty working posture can also be a major factor: By their influence upon nerves passing through the areas involved, these lesions may have a marked effect upon cardiac function. Their correction is rarely possible by simple home treatment, and is properly the domain of the skilled manipulator. Even so, such attention is rendered considerably more effective when the patient co-operates fully; this means both laying a proper foundation by initiating a sensible regimen of diet, exercise and other preliminaries, and accepting the need for continued self-effort to provide beneficial conditions and avoid stress-producing situations.
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HEART DISEASE: EXERCISE FOR HOME TREATMENT – HEARTY LAUGHTER AND HELP FROM ANOTHERHearty Laughter Where active exercise involving the arms is found difficult, the important effect of movement within the rib-cage may be produced by milder effort. Perhaps scarcely seeming to be an exertion at all, deep laughter brings quite powerful tugging movements to the ribs. If the company — or anything on TV, radio or in a book — gives an excuse for full laughter, indulge yourself. The beneficial effects operate in more than one fashion. Should no such opportunity present itself, silent mime with the same movement of chest and throat will produce similar physical results.Help from AnotherNot infrequently, cardiac distress may be due at least in part to abnormalities of tension or alignment in the spinal column. Accidental injury is probably the commonest cause, but prolonged faulty working posture can also be a major factor: By their influence upon nerves passing through the areas involved, these lesions may have a marked effect upon cardiac function. Their correction is rarely possible by simple home treatment, and is properly the domain of the skilled manipulator. Even so, such attention is rendered considerably more effective when the patient co-operates fully; this means both laying a proper foundation by initiating a sensible regimen of diet, exercise and other preliminaries, and accepting the need for continued self-effort to provide beneficial conditions and avoid stress-producing situations.*79\253\8*
Some scientists have noted a relationship between CVD risk and a person’s stress level, behavior habits, and socioeconomic status. These factors may affect established risk factors. For example, people under stress may start smoking or smoke more than they otherwise would. Other studies have challenged the apparent link between emotional stress and heart disease. Although it was once widely assumed that the Type A personality who suffered from high stress levels was a time bomb ticking toward a heart attack, this theory has not been proven clinically.
Researcher-physician Robert S. Eliot demonstrated that approximately one out of five people has an extreme cardiovascular reaction to stressful stimulation. These people experience alarm and resistance so strongly that, when under stress, their bodies produce large amounts of stress chemicals, which in turn cause tremendous changes in the cardiovascular system, including remarkable increases in blood pressure. These people are called hot reactors. Although their blood pressure may be normal when they are not under stress – for example, in a doctor’s office – it increases dramatically in response to even small amounts of everyday stress.
Cold reactors are those who are able to experience stress (even to live as Type As) without reacting with harmful cardiovascular responses. Cold reactors may internalize stress, but their self-talk and perceptions about the stressful events lead them to a non-response state in which their cardiovascular system remains virtually unaffected. Some research indicates that people who have an underlying predisposition toward a toxic core personality (in other words, who are chronically hostile and hateful) may be at greatest risk for a CVD event.
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MANAGING STRESS TO AVOID CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASESome scientists have noted a relationship between CVD risk and a person’s stress level, behavior habits, and socioeconomic status. These factors may affect established risk factors. For example, people under stress may start smoking or smoke more than they otherwise would. Other studies have challenged the apparent link between emotional stress and heart disease. Although it was once widely assumed that the Type A personality who suffered from high stress levels was a time bomb ticking toward a heart attack, this theory has not been proven clinically.Researcher-physician Robert S. Eliot demonstrated that approximately one out of five people has an extreme cardiovascular reaction to stressful stimulation. These people experience alarm and resistance so strongly that, when under stress, their bodies produce large amounts of stress chemicals, which in turn cause tremendous changes in the cardiovascular system, including remarkable increases in blood pressure. These people are called hot reactors. Although their blood pressure may be normal when they are not under stress – for example, in a doctor’s office – it increases dramatically in response to even small amounts of everyday stress.Cold reactors are those who are able to experience stress (even to live as Type As) without reacting with harmful cardiovascular responses. Cold reactors may internalize stress, but their self-talk and perceptions about the stressful events lead them to a non-response state in which their cardiovascular system remains virtually unaffected. Some research indicates that people who have an underlying predisposition toward a toxic core personality (in other words, who are chronically hostile and hateful) may be at greatest risk for a CVD event.*15/277/5*