Today's Health Tip: For Your Heart

This article excerpt is courtesy of  blogs.naturalnews.com

6 Steps to Heal Coronary Heart Disease Naturally

Coronary heart disease is the #1 killer in the United States. Accounting for 1 in every 4 deaths, it takes the lives of 600,000 people every year!(1) According the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report(2), heart disease has been the leading cause of death since 1921. That tells me that we are doing something very wrong in the way we approach the treatment of heart disease and our health in general. There has to be a better way. Is there something more effective than the standard medical treatments?

This week, Wellness Achiever subscriber, Brian asked:

“What is the best way to remove plaque from the artery walls that accumulate through eating bad foods?”

This is a great question! Fortunately, there is a much better solution than the modern medical treatment for heart disease. For the answer, we have to go back to the early days of medicine. It really comes down to what Hippocrates, The Father of Medicine, said over 2,400 years ago:

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” ~Hippocrates

We have all seen the drug commercials, that state “When diet and exercise alone are not enough… add this drug that will lower your cholesterol (and make you impotent, cause nerve damage, muscle weakness, heart attacks, strokes and death!)”

Indeed, statin drugs are effective at lowering your cholesterol. BUT, the have little to no clinical benefit in reducing death due to heart attack or stroke. I covered this issue fully here: Heart Disease And The Cholesterol Myth and Healing Heart Disease Naturally. Read these articles to gain clarity on the real cause of heart disease (hint: it is not cholesterol) and why statin drugs have been an utter failure.

When diet and exercise aren’t enough – change your diet and exercise! You body is designed to heal itself. You can heal but it requires the right kind and amount of diet and exercise.

What is Coronary Heart Disease?

The National Library of Medicine defines it as: “…a narrowing of the small blood vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart. CHD is also called coronary artery disease.”(3) This narrowing is caused by buildup of fatty plaques in the arteries. Early on, cholesterol was identified as a major component of these plaques and it was tagged as the enemy.

Cholesterol is not the enemy of your heart, it is the hero of your healing!  ← Tweet this!

Medical science went about developing hundreds of drugs to treat cholesterol and artificially lower blood pressure. It is as if no one ever stopped to ask “What is causing, or allowing, the cholesterol to build up in the arteries and cause plaquing?”

The first step in coronary heart disease is damage to the lining of your arteries. That is why cholesterol is there. Its job is to heal the injury. If cholesterol is not available to do this – because you are lowering it artificially with a statin drug, for example – you are more likely to die of a heart attack due to that damaged artery!

The next question should be “What causes damage to the arteries?” The answer is inflammation. Systemic inflammation is at the root cause of many, if not all, diseases. Inflammation damages the cells that line your arteries, causing a separation between the cells.

It is cholesterol’s job to repair the damaged cells. Every cell in your body has a outer layer, or membrane of fat. The cell membrane is made up of about fifty percent cholesterol. Without cholesterol, you will have unhealthy, weak cells. When cells are damaged, cholesterol is necessary to repair them.

As we trace back to the primary cause of coronary heart disease, what do you think the next question is? Yes. “What causes inflammation?” This is the million dollar question. In fact, it is the $109 Billion question - the cost to treat heart disease every single year!(1)

Out-of-control systemic inflammation is produced by your LIFESTYLE. It is also brought back into balance by your lifestyle and no other way. In Healing Heart Disease Naturally, I discussed the four components of an anti-inflammatory lifestyle that help you balance inflammation naturally.

When inflammation continues out of control in your body, it continues to damage the arteries. As a result, more and more cholesterol is produced by your body to heal the damaged cells.

Your body is designed to heal itself but inflammation interferes with that normal healing process. Until the interference – inflammation – is removed, the damage to the arteries continues. This is what causes the cholesterol to build up over time, producing a plaque.

Now, let’s look at a couple common medical treatments for coronary heart disease . Then we will review the best natural treatments to remove plaque from your arteries.