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DISEASES OF THE VEINS: WHO IS AFFECTED BY PULMONARY HYPERTENSION? HOW SERIOUS IS PULMONARY HYPERTENSION?

admin — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:38:07 +0000

Who Is Affected by Pulmonary Hypertension? Individuals with previous pulmonary embolism, chronic emphysema, and certain types of congenital heart disease are at higher risk for the development of pulmonary hypertension. Primary pulmonary hypertension is rare; it occurs most often in young adults, but it can occur at any age. It affects about twice as many women as men.How Serious Is Pulmonary Hypertension? Pulmonary hypertension is usually a very debilitating problem; however, the symptoms and life expectancy are extremely variable, even for people with the same degree of pulmonary blood pressure elevation. People with Eisenmenger’s complex seem to be able to endure very severe pulmonary hypertension for years, although they may be limited in their activities. In people with primary pulmonary hypertension, symptoms tend to develop more rapidly and life expectancy is shorter.*214\252\8*

USING EVENING PRIMROSE OIL FOR HEART DISEASE TREATMENT

admin — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:41:12 +0000

Evening primrose oil and blood pressure
This is the pressure at which the heart pumps blood into the major arteries. If the blood pressure goes too high, it overtaxes the heart and blood vessels. People with high blood pressure run a greater risk of experiencing arteriosclerosis, heart failure, stroke, and kidney disease.
Tests on both animals and humans have shown that essential fatty acids reduce arterial pressure. Evening primrose oil has been shown to bring down the blood pressure in animals with high blood pressure. In preliminary studies on humans with high blood pressure, evening primrose oil (given as Efamol) was considered more effective in lowering blood pressure than much higher doses of other polyunsaturates.

Evening primrose oil and vascular obstruction
Diets rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids may not only arrest the progression of atheroma, but may actually reverse it, allowing the obstruction to be cleared. Taking a supplement such as evening primrose oil would be worthwhile even for those people whose cardiovascular system is already damaged. In a group of people with intermittent claudication due to vascular obstruction, evening primrose oil was found to improve their exercise tolerance.
Evening primrose oil helps in two ways. Firstly, because the GLA in evening primrose oil converts easily to DGLA, and it is likely that many of the beneficial effects of essential fatty acids in cardiovascular disease may relate to an accumulation of DGLA. Secondly, evening primrose oil converts to PGE1 which is a potent vasodilator – it widens the peripheral blood vessels. PGE1 has produced dramatic improvements in patients with vascular spasm due to Raynaud’s syndrome, and also to relieve angina.

Drugs and cardiovascular disorders
Evening primrose oil works physiologically rather than as a drug, and with none of the side-effects of drugs. The fact that it works physiologically rather than pharmacologically is proved by the fact that evening primrose oil does not lower cholesterol in those people with normal levels of cholesterol – it acts through natural processes to regulate cholesterol metabolism.

Fish oils
Fish oils have had a remarkable success in trials with patients suffering from angina, hyperlipidaemia, and those having suffered a heart attack. A number of studies have shown that when you add fish oils to your diet, cholesterol levels are lowered and there is less clumping together of platelets.
So it is a good idea to take a brand of evening primrose oil which already contains fish oils, or to take a supplement of fish oils in addition to evening primrose oil.

*4/60/5*

QUITTING THOSE CIGARETTES FOR A HEALTHY HEART: ALTERNATIVES TO CIGARETTES

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:47:38 +0000

Well, if cigarettes are so bad, what about pipes and cigars? For cigarette smokers, especially, switching is just fooling yourself. You’ll inhale the smoke to get the nicotine effect. Besides, pipe and cigar smokers have their own health problems, including cancer of the lip, tongue, throat and oesophagus.

How about smokeless tobacco such as snuff or chewing tobacco? These provide “satisfaction” by giving a shot of nicotine. It just takes a bit longer to get the hit, but then if one keeps the stuff in the mouth, there’s a constant flow to the brain. And the nicotine, regardless of the source, still has the effects on the cardiovascular system that can kill. Moreover, smokeless tobacco has been well established as a deadly cause of cancer of the mouth, and it also leads to gum disease that can mean tooth loss.

There are other things that can substitute for the oral satisfaction you’ll crave, and for the fiddling around that you do with the cigarette in your hand. I’ll detail a number of options.

*92\85\2*

Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol

BEAT HEART DISEASE WITHOUT SURGERY: CASE HISTORIES AND

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:46:57 +0000

COMMENT- THE SECOND HISTORY

Case History: RC, (Male – upper middle age) My first heart attack must have occurred when I was on holiday staying in France in 1987. I kept getting this severe pain in the upper back. Thought I’d slipped a disc. But I would wake up in the night with it and any exertion like packing up the car made it worse. I discussed with my wife whether the coffee and French pastries might be contributing to the pain and I stopped them and through cutting out tea, coffee and pastries I did improve but not much.

On my return to England I had to go to the bank -I wanted a business loan so I had to have a medical checkup. The doctor there discovered I had high blood pressure, 190/90 but apart from that he said I was fine. I decided to cut out fats and transform my diet and my blood pressure dropped to 130/70 and has stayed there ever since.

But I still had angina. I decided to have a checkup with a cardiologist associated with a leading London hospital. In October 1988 I had a treadmill test and was told ‘there is nothing you can do really’. I asked about diet and was told ‘eat what you like’. I was mad about this because I knew diet had helped me before. He [the specialist] also told me I didn’t need to exercise – a warm bath was all I needed.

I began to have more problems. I spoke to a friend who worked in another London hospital, she arranged for me to see the Professor of Cardiology there. That was June 1989. He diagnosed a 90 per cent blockage in my coronary arteries and suggested angioplasty. I went in on Wednesday, was done on Thursday, came out Saturday with drug treatment.

In the following year, I was carrying a bag of waste to the dustbin when I felt queer. I went to my GP who confirmed I was having a heart attack and must be conducted urgently to hospital. It had to be the original London hospital in my area. Once there, a doctor looked at me and said I could go home: ‘you look perfectly all right to me’. My wife refused. If she had not been so adamant I would not be here now because I had a severe heart attack that night.

It was a horrendous experience. I was put in a room with three other patients on life support machines, two of which died, one had his family screaming around him. There they were, screaming and shouting right next to the intensive care unit for heart patients.

My attack started at 9.00 p.m. and I was in agony. They tried to find the registrar. At midnight they got hold of him and he gave me a streptokinase injection and immediately the pain started to ease. Apparently that dissolves blood clots.

The next day the original consultant cardiologist turned up. He said, ‘that shot we gave you cost 750. We only had two in the hospital and you got one.’

I later found out that up in Scotland doctors carry this around normally. I was truly shocked that a major hospital in London only had two shots.

After three sleepless nights, following transferral to a general ward through which ambulance crews were trundling people all night with doors crashing, and the TV on all night, I started another heart attack. I insisted my wife help move me out and I did move to a second hospital. They gave me another balloon angioplasty at 3.00 a.m. As I was being wheeled out of the theatre the surgeon said, ‘It was a great success.’

Great success? I thought. I am still lying here in such terrible pain I can’t move and you tell me that?

After I was discharged on three drugs, I felt better for about two months. Then I started to feel unwell again, so unwell I was spending two to three days in bed each week.

One day my wife said, ‘Get out of bed, you are fading away. I won’t let this happen. We have heard about this treatment [chelation] and you are having it.’

In April ’91 I went to see Wayne [Dr Perry]. It was the best day’s work I ever did. I had a Doppler. One carotid artery [leading to the head] was 70 per cent blocked. On one artery they couldn’t get a reading because there was too much disturbance.

After 20 treatments I felt great. I had bought a complete kitchen which I was going to fit, but I delayed when I started feeling ill. After the treatment my wife said you couldn’t knock me down. I laid the ceramic tiled floor, my wife mixed the cement. I was so fit I dug the garden over. The difference was unbelievable. My carotid blockage was reduced by 30 per cent.

Through all this I kept my GP informed. He was in accord with my trying the treatment. When I later had a checkup with the senior cardiologist at the hospital (he has some post in Europe too), I asked him about chelation to see what he’d say and he said, ‘Don’t touch it, it doesn’t work.’

I have now had 30 treatments and, after meeting a patient in the clinic who was having the treatment on the National Health [a pioneering step], I asked my doctor to write to the heart specialist to see if I could have it too. When I next saw him I knew he’d received the letter but he had six senior doctors around him and he never raised it and neither did I, to spare his feelings.

He did tell me I was down for a triple bypass and I asked him what protection it gave me from further heart attacks. ‘Oh it won’t stop you from having another heart attack,’ he said. ‘How reassuring,’ I thought. ‘Here I am about to have another heart operation and I’m told it mightn’t work.’

It reminded me of a remark I’d heard in the arterial clinic. Three farmers had come in from Kenya. They did have a chelation clinic in Kenya, but local medicos got it closed down. One very fit man had gone to his doctor and the doctor had said, ‘Why don’t you have a bypass?’ ‘Do I need it?’ he had asked. ‘No,’ the doctor said, ‘but it would give you another ten years of life.’ He said he then decided to hot foot it to the UK to have chelation therapy instead.

RC is now fit and active. His wife and he both follow a carefully controlled diet low in fat, meat and dairy foods and high in fibre and fresh fruit and vegetable content. His wife once followed a diet consisting entirely of grapes for a month. She had so much energy she used to spring out of bed singing in the mornings, to such an extent her husband begged her to ‘tone it down’.

What seems disturbing about this case history is the picture it paints about lack of peace and quiet in intensive care in a leading London teaching hospital. As RC says: ‘How do they expect patients to get better if they can’t sleep for noise and commotion?’ Also disrupting to patient welfare were the battles RC and his wife had to fight on his account to get the treatment he wanted at the very time when he should have been surrendering to recovery.

The general criticism of chelation therapy – it doesn’t work was again in evidence.

*91\104\2*

Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol