No Cure for Heart Disease?

The headline in today’s (2.12.10) Washington Post reads, “No cure for heart disease, Clinton’s case shows.”  The article states, “Bill Clinton has a new lease on life, but there’s no cure for the heart disease that has twice forced the former president to get blocked arteries fixed.”     Further in the article the writer states that bypass surgery grafts usually last around 10 years, on average. 

Bill Clinton was taken to the hospital yesterday for chest pain and found to have one of his bypass grafts blocked.  The doctors performed a cardiac catheritization where they placed a catheter near his heart and injected dye to find the blockage.  Once the blockage is visualized, they put a stent (a mesh tube) in the artery to open it up. 

Placing stents in blocked arteries have never been shown to prolong one’s life.  But, stent placement can help with symptoms such as chest pain and fatigue.  Furthermore, in an acute situation of an evolving heart attack or an impending heart attack, stent placement can be a life-saving procedure. 

Having said that I can assure you people do not have heart attacks due to a stent-deficiency syndrome.  They have heart attacks for a variety of reasons, but the main reason heart attacks occur is due to oxidative stress of the coronary arteries.  How do you get oxidative stress in the cells of the coronary arteries?  You can get increased oxidative stress by becoming nutrient deficient, particularly vitamin C deficient.  Research has shown that vitamin C deficiency can cause scurvy or sub-clinical scurvy in the arteries and result in the development of plaque. Eventually plaque can build up and lead to a heart attack. 

Other nutrient deficiencies can lead to oxidative stress in the coronary arteries including deficiencies of omega 6 fats, magnesium, vitamin E and CoQ10.                                                                                                            

            I assume Bill Clinton is being treated with statin drugs.  In the Washington Post article it states that since Mr. Clinton’s original bypass surgery six years ago, “he has really toed the line.  This (the new stents) was not about his lifestyle or his diet.”  

Perhaps Mr. Clinton does not know that 50% of all heart attack patients have low cholesterol—below 200.  This one statistic blows apart the whole theory that lowering cholesterol levels prevents heart attacks.  That theory is nonsense.  In order to decrease heart attacks, the most important idea is to lower oxidative stress.  How do you do that?  Eat whole foods, drink water and correct nutrient and hormonal imbalances.  Exercise also helps to lower oxidative stress.

My father was a textbook case of what holistic medicine can do for heart disease.  In fact, he was my first heart disease patient treated with holistic medicine.  He had his first heart attack at age 40 and a second heart attack a few years later. He was treated with two bypass surgeries and numerous angioplasties and drugs.  At age 60 he was dying from heart disease.  Unfortunately, my dad never took care of himself.  He smoked cigarettes, was overweight and never exercised.  When I began using holistic medicine, I treated him with bioidentical hormones and a nutritional regimen of vitamins and minerals.   The change in his heart disease symptoms was astounding; 25 years of continual angina went away in a week.  He lost weight (without changing any bad habits) and, more importantly, he looked better and felt better.  His story is in my book The Miracle of Natural Hormones.  After using a holistic approach, he lived another 10 years and had a good quality of life during that time.       

Heart disease can be helped and, in some cases, cured.  However, heart disease is not cured from stents or prescription drug use.  Poor lifestyle choices which lead to nutrient and hormonal deficiencies as well as oxidative stress lead to heart disease.  I believe Bill Clinton needs a holistic evaluation to treat the underlying cause of heart disease.  There is no reason he cannot get the same positive results that I see from my patients.