Heart Health with Dr. Erika
5 Ways You Can Keep Your Heart Healthy
ERIKA SCHULTZ, DENVER ACUPUNCTURIST, NUTRITIONIST
I am here to talk to you about heart health. This is a topic very near and dear to my heart. I just had a close family member who had to deal with a cardiovascular event. We are very grateful for the fact there was a western intervention in a medical emergency situation which really made a difference in keeping her here with us on the planet.
But I wanted to visit this subject because it is a really important topic in general.
Heart disease as you know is one of the single most… well, actually the top most killer of Americans. It is a little known fact that a lot of that has to do with what is going on inside of your body.
Sometimes it has to do with your diet and sometimes not.
There are nine different factors that contribute to heart disease.
- Smoking
- Low consumption of fruits and vegetables
- Exercise
- Alcohol consumption
- Hypertension
- Diabetes
- Abdominal obesity
- Psychological factors
- Lipids or cholesterol
Each of these factors are contributors to cardiovascular disease.
The first four are key lifestyle factors that could potentially contribute to heart disease. For the most part these are things we have control over… like how many fruits and vegetables we eat each day. Going for a walk or doing a 20 minute exercise routine daily is another choice we can make.
The other five I would say are also something we have control over… hypertension, diabetes – although more support, education and guidance may be needed to navigate these risks.
These five factors are what we work with at Paramount Wellness every day.
We strive to prevent these situations or improve them in those already diagnosed. We also support our clients in making lifestyle changes with education and nutritional supplementation.
Cholesterol
The first topic that we visit is high cholesterol – which is a high risk factor to a healthy heart.
When you get diagnosed with high cholesterol from a western medicine professional there are a few things you need to be aware of.
There is a reason why your cholesterol is high and that is not something that is going to be readily available or researched by your medical doctor. The answer from a western medical perspective is to simply put you on a statin medication.
If you do a little more digging into cholesterol and I urge you to check out the Weston A. Price Foundation called the Myths and Truths About Cholesterol… you will have a better understanding of the uses of cholesterol in the body.
But what most people do not realize about cholesterol is that you want to understand it in terms of “good” and “bad” cholesterol.
LDL cholesterol is often called the “bad” cholesterol because it collects in the walls of your blood vessels, raising your chances of health problems like a heart attack or stroke.
Good cholesterol is called HDL – a good way to remember it is the “happy” good, light and fluffy cholesterol. HDL moves through the bloodstream removing harmful bad cholesterol (LDL). High HDL levels reduce the risk for heart disease — but low levels increase the risk.
And that’s actually useful to balance out the “bad” LDL cholesterol. But unfortunately, in the western world we are only looking at the one number and that is the “total” cholesterol.
At Paramount Wellness we do an analysis to understand where your cholesterol numbers are at… if they pose a danger to your health and if it really makes sense for you to be on statin medication.
Research has shown that some of these medications have not made a significant effect on reducing heart disease in this country. A lot of that could be attributed to increasing levels of obesity, which we can ascertain from total events of cardiovascular disease reporting.
Cholesterol medications can come with their own set of side effects. You can look those up. Ask someone who is on a statin. Most people, by now, are well aware of the potential dangers.
But once again, it is really important to evaluate what your cholesterol really is and what it looks like. From a functional medicine standpoint we can do that within our office. One of the ways we can do this is through a lab findings review. And you can do that by bringing your lab work into us… we will evaluate it comprehensively… provide a more comprehensive picture than what you may be getting from labs that are just looking at cholesterol levels.
You cannot improve your health without improving your diet. For most people that feels so overwhelming and scary. What kind of changes am I going to have to make in my life?
The reality is if you can find somebody who is a great coach who can work with you to establish a foundation and fundamentals about a great diet, then get the support you need throughout that process of making dietary changes…and do it on a gradient so it does not feel hard, it feels easy. That is what we specialize in in our guided nutritional counseling program at Paramount Wellness.
This is something we require all of our patients to do as they start working with us because we realize that the basic foundations of great health is actually having a diet that feels easy and is healthy and works for your body specifically.
Guided Nutrition Coaching at Paramount Wellness is a very powerful program and provides you with access to a certified nutrition coach who can provide lot of information that you will have for the rest of your life and that you can share with your loved ones. We encourage you to take advantage of that whether you are a current client or someone who is considering care in our office.
It is certainly one of the most foundational components of what we do and is very important for your life in the long run in general.
Heart Sound Recorder
The third piece and one of the lesser talked about areas I would say in terms of heart health is determining whether there is an issue in the heart tissue itself or some kind of electrical issue in terms of all of the organs that communicate around the heart.
One of the ways we evaluate that is by using a software called the Heart Sound Recorder. It is a device that would give us predictability in terms of understanding if there is a heart nutritional deficiency that is contributing to the heart muscle itself, or the communication it has with the rest of the system.
The Heart Sound Recorder is a simple non-invasive test. It is really an incredible revolutionary device that allows us to look at the heart and prevent something catastrophic from taking place by understanding what the nutritional deficiencies are in the heart so we can address them specifically for your body.
The fourth and final piece is Nutrition Response Testing. This science-based technique provides insight into the health of the heart tissue. We can determine if there is something missing in terms of heart health and nutritional status that could potentially over time lead to a major event, but why is there potentially an issue?
Factors that contribute to cholesterol to accumulation in the interior wall is a mechanism called an epithelial lesion – or if you think of it in layman’s terms, a “boo boo” in the heart wall or artery. What this does is signal the body to produce more cholesterol because every time there is a wound in the body, there is mechanism or natural defense to bring down inflammation to start producing cholesterol.
When there is a lesion in the arterial wall the body’s natural mechanism is to start producing cholesterol and start sending up white cells from the immune system up to that area – sometimes even red blood cells and that is why sometimes the artery wall will become blocked and this is what can lead to a major cardiovascular event or heart attack, essentially.
Determining how many there are in the system can also determine prognosis.
In general what we want to understand about the body’s natural reaction to a pathological situation is whether the cause is a bacteria, virus, or a parasitic event and what is needed to heal that tissue.
Unfortunately when you are talking about a tiny little artery inside of the heart, and things get blocked you can be looking at a situation that is fairly dangerous.
Ultimately, what we want to understand is whether these pathogenic factors are present in your body, where they are circulating, and what other tissues they are potentially having an impact on.
What most people do not realize is, if the pathogens are having an impact on the heart, then they are probably having an impact somewhere else as well.
At Paramount Wellness we identify what those are and with whole food targeted supplementation and homeopathy can determine whatever is needed and what the body determines is the thing to do that will generally and easily help the body with its repair mechanisms. And we can use that whole food nutrition supplementation, homeopathy to start facilitating a healing process in that tissue itself.
That is something we do through our systematic testing of the body, and that is through Nutrition Response Testing, a system of analyzing neurological reflexes to detect nutritional imbalances and possible causes of poor health.
We often see clients whose doctors no longer have answers to their chronic illness and by determining the body’s nutrition deficiencies through testing can initiate the healing process.
Last but not least is acupuncture – another modality that we use to improve circulatory function. Acupuncture is an ancient system of healing that predates recorded history.
While Chinese acupuncture history dates back centuries, the treatment expanded to the United States after in 1972. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classified acupuncture needles as medical instruments in 1995.
Acupuncture in and of itself can improve circulatory factors in the blood by making a tiny little insertion to stimulate the body’s immune system. The body then sends all the necessary nutritional components and white blood cells to improve circulatory function.
Acupuncture also increases endorphins, and feel good hormones which decrease stress which can also have an impact on the heart.
I appreciate being able to share some of the foundational therapies we do at Paramount Wellness to improve heart health and heart function naturally without medications or surgical interventions.
If you are interested in getting in touch with us please reach out at Paramount Wellness or call 720-460-0766.
Source:
Heart Health YouTube video by Dr. Erika Schultz