The American Medical Association has two reports that raise interesting question about the causes of heart attacks. They show that heart attacks are caused primarily by inflammation, swelling of the walls of arteries leading to the heart.

We used to hear that eating a high-fat diet was the major cause of heart attacks. That would not explain why many people on low-fat diets get heart attacks. We know that having a high cholesterol is associated with increased risk for heart attacks, but many people with low cholesterol suffer from heart attacks. We hear that infection with the intracellular bacteria, chlamydia, causes heart attacks. Indeed there is a huge amount of data showing that chronic infections with chlamydia markedly increase your chances of developing a heart attack. There are studies to show that giving people the antibiotics, Biaxin or Zithromax, helps to prevent second heart attacks. Zithromax and Biaxin are two antibiotics that help kill chlamydia.

One of these new studies in JAMA shows that people who get heart attacks, have bypass surgery for blocked arteries, or have blocked arteries, have high blood levels of myeloperoxidase, commonly called MPO, an enzyme that accumulates in the bloodstream when there is inflammation. MPO is produced by white blood cells when they fight infections in your body. The other study shows that people who are hospitalized for chest pain and have high blood levels of interleukin-6 are at increased risk for dying of heart attacks. Interleukin levels are raised when a person has an infection.

From these studies and many others comes the most comprehensive theory of why people die from heart attacks. First, eating a lot of foods that cause your blood sugar to rise to high levels damages the linings of your arteries. Sugar attached to cell walls and other proteins are called Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGE’s). Eating a large amount of saturated or partially hydrogenated fats also causes your blood to thicken and roughs up the linings of your arteries. Then an infection in your bloodstream, primarily with the bacteria called chlamydia, punches holes in the arteries and causes plaques to form. The infection or something else also causes your body to set up an immune reaction, just as if it was attacking a germ, and the inflammation or swelling that results can cause clots to block your arteries, or the plaques to slip off and block the arteries, causing a heart attack.

So these studies suggest that you should treat every chronic infection. The evidence is not strong that stomach infections caused by helicobacter cause heart attacks. There is not enough evidence to tell us that we can prevent heart attacks with antibiotics in people who have a chronic cough from lung infections with chlamydia, those who have chronic urinary tract infection with chlamydia, or chronic joint pains from chronic infections with chlamydia. However, I am willing to bet you that in the near future, you will be told that chronic infections in your lungs, joints and urinary system increase your chances of getting a heart attack and the next step is to prove that taking antibiotics for these conditions helps to prevent heart attacks.

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that aspirin is as effective as coumadin in preventing strokes, but fear of lawsuits will prevent doctors from taking advantage of this wonderful news that can improve the lives of millions of people who take coumadin because of irregular heart beats, previous history of clots, heart attacks or strokes.

Coumadin is a dangerous drug. It has to be closely regulated with frequent blood tests because too much can cause bleeding and too little increases risk for strokes. Adding any drug or changing your diet can change the dose requirements of coumadin. Since coumadin blocks the clotting vitamin K, foods with vitamin K increase needs for coumadin. So doctors tell their patients to avoid all leafy green vegetables. This creates an unhealthy diet which increases a person’s chances of getting heart attacks and stokes. Simple accidents can cause a person on coumadin to bleed to death.

On the other hand, aspirin is far safer. Doses rarely need to be changed when a person changes his diet or medication. Unlike coumadin, aspirin allows people to eat a perfectly healthful diet. This recent report shows that the far safer aspirin is as effective as the far more dangerous coumadin. However, the definition of malpractice is “not practicing the way that other doctors practice.” Since most doctors today have not read these recent reports, they will continue to prescribe coumadin to people with irregular heart beats and clots. Therefore, anyone who does anything else is guilty of the legal definition of malpractice. That is the only reason doctors will not switch from the highly dangerous coumadin to the far safer aspirin.

Beyond the commonly used serving packets, artificial sweeteners are often hidden in everyday items not advertised as diet foods such as cereal, vitamins, sauces and even baby food. Look for these key words on food labels to spot artificial substitutes:

Saccharin
Aspartame
Sucralose
Neotame (used in stable baked goods)
Acesulfame (found in diet sodas)

Break the Habit

Consume no more than two servings (two packets or one diet soda) of artificial sweeteners per day.
Try combining a half a teaspoon of your preferred artificial sweetener with a teaspoon of raw sugar. Then eventually wean yourself off the artificial sweetener.
Choose natural alternatives such as honey or agave. Or try coconut sap syrup, which has a low-glycemic index and just 10 calories per teaspoon. It also contains B vitamins, potassium and amino acids. Because these are all quite sweet tasting, you’ll find you don’t need to use much of them. Coconut syrup is available at health food stores for about $7.

Walking and vigorous exercise does not have the same reduction in heart attacks. Meta studies shows that the faster a person walks, the less likely they are to suffer a heart attack.

The majority of people doing “High Intensity Training” do it for for 30-60 minutes. What they call intense, I call “lolly gaggin”. I wouldn’t exercise that casually on my off days. If your doing HIT you won’t last 15 minutes, let alone 30, no matter what your fitness level is because you do HIT at your fitness level.

Doctors who do studies on exercise and are not exercisers themselves are unlikely to know the definition of vigorous exercise. When they talk about intensity, it’s the difference between crawling and almost crawling. Meta studies show that intensity determines fitness, and that duration is much less important. You can’t be fit, have strong muscles, run fast, jump high, lift heavy, or throw far unless you stress and recover. The same goes for using exercise to prevent disease.

For people who have heart health issues, are on medications or have other injuries, these are the factors that determine their fitness level and must exercise according to the weakest link.

Example: Someone going through rehab that just had a hip replacement is not going to be expected to run sprints. It’s a good idea to be checked out by a “well qualified” physician before doing HIT. ]]> http://quickgymcs.com/quick_chat2/?feed=rss2&p=238 0 http://quickgymcs.com/quick_chat2/?p=236 http://quickgymcs.com/quick_chat2/?p=236#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 03:15:09 +0000 David http://quickgymcs.com/quick_chat2/?p=236

I grew up knowing a lady that bought everything that was labeled “lite”. This was over 30 years ago. “Lite” mayonnaise, artificial sweeteners… I can’t even remember everything she bought that said “lite”, including ice cream and the chocolate syrup that went on top.

99% of the products that are labeled “low fat, NO fat, low sugar, NO sugar, lite, low calories or diet” are all just scams to lead you into a life of disappointments.

STOP BEING IGNORANT AND READ THE LABEL INCLUDING “INGREDIENTS”.
If you don’t know what it is….DON’T EAT IT. Losing weight is all more about losing FAT by getting proper nutrition and very little about cutting calories.

Here’s an incredible fact: Since the “cut down on fat” food craze began roughly 30 years ago, the obesity rate in American has more than doubled. Of course, many other factors are at play in fueling this health crisis, but what many people don’t realize is that “fat-free” does not mean low in calories. In fact, to make up for lack of flavor, manufacturers tend to add more sugar, flour and thickeners to fat-free products, which boosts calorie content. The fats in these foods are replaced with low-performing white carbs that digest quickly and are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. This causes the classic sugar high and crash followed by a hunger rebound.

Lastly, studies show that people often view a low-fat label as a green light to eat much more than they normally would, unaware that low-fat versions of foods are usually not much lower in calories than the regular versions. Click here to learn more about unmasking misleading food labels.

Break the Habit
Stay away from deceptively low-fat packaged foods like cookies and chips. Only choose low-fat food items that are not highly processed, such as low-fat dairy products including milk, cheese and yogurt.

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

A study in the medical journal Epidemiology reports that exercise lowers a blood test called C-Reactive Protein. Many researchers believe that C-Reactive Protein is a more dependable predictor of heart attacks than blood cholesterol level. Future studies are likely to show that exercise may be more important in preventing heart attacks than dieting to reduce cholesterol.

C-Reactive Protein (CRP) is a measure of inflammation, a swelling in the body that usually is caused by infection. A current theory is that you get an infection with a bacteria or virus, which raises blood levels of CRP and causes swelling and damage to the linings of your arteries. This causes cholesterol to deposit into the linings of arteries to form plaques that slow the flow of blood. Then the infection causes clots to form that completely block the arteries to cause a heart attack. How could exercise prevent heart attacks by lowering CRP? Nobody knows, but perhaps the vigorous flow of blood cleans arteries, sweeps bacteria from their inner linings and prevents inflammation. Vigorous exercise cannot hurt a healthy heart, but check with your doctor because hard exercise could cause a heart attack if your heart is already damaged.

Epidemiology, September 2002

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Recent research shows that having a high C-Reactive Protein increases your risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke by twice as much as having a high cholesterol. C-Reactive Protein (CRP) is a blood test that measures inflammation, part of the immune reaction that protects you from infection when you injure yourself. It causes redness, pain and swelling, and can damage the inner lining of arteries, and break off clots from arteries to block the flow of blood to cause strokes and heart attacks.

CRP levels fluctuate from day to day, and levels increase with aging, high blood pressure, alcohol use, smoking, low levels of physical activity, chronic fatigue, coffee consumption, having elevated triglycerides, insulin resistance or diabetes, taking estrogen, eating a high protein diet, and suffering sleep disturbances, or depression. If you have none of these known causes, at this time the best ways we know to reduce CRP levels are exercise and a diet that includes omega-3 fatty acids. Statins appear to protect against inflammation as well as to lower cholesterol, but they can cause muscle pain in exercisers.

IF YOU HAVE A HIGH CRP, try to correct the known causes: infection, high blood pressure, alcohol use, smoking, low levels of physical activity, chronic fatigue, coffee consumption, having elevated triglycerides, insulin resistance or diabetes, taking estrogen, eating a high protein diet, and suffering sleep disturbances, or depression.

The most common cause of an elevated CRP is infection. If you have burning on urination, getting up in the night to urinate, urgency when your bladder is full of a feeling that you have to urinate all the time, check for a urinary tract infection. If you have wheezing and a chronic cough or shortness of breath, check for a lung infection. If you have belching and burning in your stomach, get an upper GI series X ray and blood test for Helicobacter (see below). If you have diarrhea, check for an intestinal infection. If you have any of these infections, you have an accepted reason to take antibiotics. Your evaluation should include IGG and IGM antibody blood tests for chlamydia and mycoplasma. If either or both titres are high, I usually recommend taking doxycycline 100 mg twice a day for at least three weeks. Most doctors will not do this because they feel that data aren’t strong enough to warrant antibiotics at this time.

Helicobacter and Stomach Ulcers

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

If you belch or have burning in your stomach or chest, particularly when your stomach is empty, you have either an infection, a tumor, or an incurable condition called GERD. Infection with bacteria such as helicobacter pylori is by far the most common cause.

I recommend that you get an upper GI series X ray to rule out a tumor. That almost always comes back negative to tell you that you do not have tumor. Then you get a blood test for Helicobacter Pylori and you should be treated with antibiotics, even if the blood test is negative, because there are at least 23 other species of bacteria that this test does not detect. Your gastroenterologist will want to put a tube down your mouth and into your stomach, but the biopsy that he will do to find the helicobacter can often miss the germ even when it is there (11). If your doctor does not offer the antibiotic treatment (see below), you will be stuck with a diagnosis of regurgitation, called GERD, which means you have pain and no one can tell you why. You will need to take medication for the rest of your life.

An article in the medical journal GUT reported that at least 24 different bacteria have been shown to cause stomach ulcers (16). Since doctors do not have any way to check for all 24 different bacteria (10), all people with belching and burning in the stomach should be given a one-week course of antibiotics that are used to treat the most common cause of stomach ulcers, called Helicobacter Pylori.

Twenty years ago, stomach ulcers were treated by drinking cream. Today, almost everyone with belching and burning in the stomach should be treated with antibiotics. In 1983 they laughed at Dr. Barry Marshall when he reported that stomach ulcers were caused by infection with helicobacter pylori and could be cured with antibiotics. Fellow physicians were so mean to him that he responded by swallowing a vial of helicobacter and almost died. He recently received the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work.

A report from Italy shows that physical activity is very important in helping to control cholesterol (Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Volume 44, 2006). Healthy male sedentary controls had their blood cholesterol fractions compared to those of male professional cross-country skiers and professional road cyclists. The athletes had much more healthful numbers for total cholesterol, the good high-density cholesterol, triglycerides, and the bad low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. The concentration of another heart attack risk factor called Lp(a) or lipoprotein(a) was the same in both groups because it is a hereditary factor that is not influenced by lifestyle. Every single scale of susceptibility for heart attacks except the Lp(a) was better in the athletes.