Chapter 6: Healthy Heart Remedies
Many natural remedies use a variety of herbs and supplements to help treat as well as prevent heart disease. Atherosclerosis the hardening of the arteries is a common cause of heart disease. This disease is found mainly in the western world. On the other hand, atherosclerosis is relatively rare in the third world countries due to the difference in lifestyles, access to traditional diets and herb remedies. Most importantly, they’re free from chemicals and toxins from the processed foods that can jeopardize the heart’s health.
Coenzyme Q10, or ubiquinone, is a compound that helps our cells extract energy from food. This compound is often missing from our diets. Although Coenzyme Q10 is produced naturally in our body, the amount decreases dramatically as a person grows older or has reduced cholesterol levels. So by supplementing Coenzyme Q10 in your daily stack, you can ensure that your body has an adequate supply of nutrients to sustain your heart and keep your cells healthy.
If you are not getting enough magnesium and potassium in your diet, by taking these supplements can help you regulate your blood pressure levels as well as improve heart function. As you may or may not know, salt goes a long way back in the human’s history. It plays a vital role in both the development of human civilization as well as public health politics in the past centuries. Although salt was highly- regarded as a prized ingredient for thousands of years, it was demonized in the past century. Today, it was even named as one of the single most harmful substance in the human body.
However, recent studies have shown that although the amount of salt intake affects the heart health, it still plays a significant role in a healthy heart and optimal health. In fact, too little salt can cause various diseases and harm your body in the long run. Thus, we should consume salt in moderation for better health.
So where do we get our salt?
Natural, unrefined sea or rock salt are a great source of minerals.
Sea salt is the best source of salt that we can find to enrich our food with an abundance of minerals. Today, it’s difficult to find a trace of healthy minerals in our food due to the shortage of nutrient- rich soil. So by adding a variety of sea salts to our food, we can obtain the much-needed minerals from the Earth’s oceans.
But not all salts are good for our health. In fact, table salt which is mined from the salt deposits underground is heavily processed and detrimental to our health. Processed table salt is stripped of its natural minerals and often includes additive to avoid clumping.
You can only reap all the health benefits of the minerals from the ocean by choosing whole, natural sea salt that’s “worth its salt”. Not to mention the incredible taste that it can bring to your best dishes.
Many supplements like fish oil are often of low quality and can be harmful. This is due to the extraction process used which causes them to oxidize. It is important to access the quality before purchasing or taking any supplements. Typically, a good wholesome diet will supply all the needs of the body.
The only time supplements become necessary is when your diet is lacking or when certain health conditions cause you to develop an insufficiency or deficiency. Most dietary supplements are safe, and some of them offer actual health benefits, but there can be some risk with their use. Some of these are also anti-nutrients; they prevent the body absorbing nutrients.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids are essential nutrients that are found in naturally grown plants, free range, naturally fed livestock and sea caught fish. Usually, in nature, they are found in the ideal proportion for heart health of 50/50 with other natural fats such as omega-6 fats.
Livestock such as eggs, dairy and seafood lack many essential nutrients when they are raised in feedlots or factory farms without natural feeds or natural sunshine. They lack omega-3 fats and contain very high amount of damaging fats which is bad for health.
So if you’re not consuming free-range organic food, then you’re highly recommended to include supplements in your diet to fulfill your daily nutritional needs.
Health experts find that Vitamin C is undoubtedly one of the safest and much-needed nutrients for the human body. By taking in a daily dose of Vitamin C, your body will have a similar effect with walking. A simple exercise as walking can stimulate a protein known as endothelin-1, which induces the constriction of small blood vessels. Studies show that people who take a daily time- release dose of Vitamin C at 500 mg can inhibit the endothelin-1 activity as much as those who walked regularly.
Vitamin B9, also known as folic acid is one the water-soluble vitamins. It’s one of the essential vitamins that you should include in your daily nutritional needs. Our liver acts as a storage for vitamins.
On a daily basis, our body will utilize the required amount of vitamin from this storage. The excess amount of vitamins is then eliminated from our body automatically through the excretory system. Vitamin B9 aids in one of the most important functions of the body, which includes everything from the formation of red blood cells to the production of vital energy.
Besides that, Vitamin B9 also provides health benefits such as creating a defensive barrier from cancer, stroke, heart diseases, and birth anomalies. Other advantages include muscle building, haemoglobin formation, and also prevention from mental and emotional breakdowns. Vitamin B9 can be found naturally in asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and lentils.
Enzymes are vital for every cell in our body as they are organic, biological catalyst that starts, promote and speed up biochemical reactions.
Metabolic enzymes in the blood break down the protein-based protection of virus’ parasites, bacteria and fungi. They are cleansers that combat chronic inflammation, preventing most diseases including heart disease. Our body produces many enzymes; millions a day, but we still need a good supply of fresh enzymes from fresh food.
When you eat a healthy wholesome diet with plenty of raw, fresh fruits and vegetables, you get a good variety of enzymes and antioxidants as well as fiber.
Antioxidants are molecules that give off electrons that help to maintain the integrity of your cells. Antioxidants help to prevent cholesterol from oxidizing. In fact, oxidized cholesterol is the reason of fatality.
Although oxidation is one of the normal bodily processes, it can be life-threatening if there’s an overproduction of oxidized cholesterol.
Why is that so? It’s because unlike the other products of oxidation, oxidized cholesterol is commonly mistaken as bacteria by our natural immune system. Thus, your body will do whatever it takes to eliminate oxidized cholesterol from the body, causing inflammation of the arterial walls. As a result, it can lead to atherosclerosis or even heart diseases.
There are many recognized antioxidants, but the one of the most well-known is vitamin E. Study after study has shown that vitamin E is a potent antioxidant that can help prevent and even treat free radical damage.
Have you heard of the term “Factory Farming”? It’s a modern day term that refers to the “non-traditional” approach to farming businesses that focuses on keeping animals at high stocking densities. They’re able to achieve this goal by incorporating modern technology to hasten animal growth, increase production outputs, and reduces the death rate of livestock.
The modern society, especially business owners and investors, share the same opinion that factory farming is the way to go for modern farming. Factory farming was also regarded as one of the top innovations and believed to solve countless issues, providing high production output and lowering the cost. On the other hand, there are also some who are against it, claiming that factory farming brings more harm than good to both our health and environment. Animal activists also protest against animal cruelty practices in factory farming.
So what is the truth?
After years of close monitoring and extensive studies in the agriculture sector, it is found that most factory farming utilize poor quality ingredients and questionable processing methods.
On the other hand, there’s an “Organic” way of farming. This term refers to the more natural, less toxic approach on how the agricultural products are grown and produced. For instance, organic crops must be grown without the use of modern agricultural chemicals such as GMOs (Bioengineered genes), synthetic pesticides, sewage sludge-based, and petroleum based fertilizers.
Organic livestock must not be injected with growth hormones, antibiotics, or animal by-products. Organic livestock must be grown with organic feed and given access to roam outdoors. Any less than that cannot be labeled as “organic”.
Thus, organic agricultural products are far more nutritional and less toxic to our body. Consuming more organic food and less factory-farmed food can lead to better health with more retained nutrients.
Our bodies, if given the raw materials needed are very good at detoxing themselves. People who have a healthy wholesome diet and refrains from indulging in too many processed foods (a small amount of processed food is not ideal, but the body can deal with it if not overloaded) will enjoy renewed energy and heart health.
Psychological risk factors including anxiety and depression are clearly factors that can have a substantial effect on the heart. Stress can affect and increase the risk factors for heart disease and high blood pressure (BP), especially if coupled with physical inactivity and a person being overweight.
Based on the latest clinical findings, it is found that meditation can drastically reduce the risk of heart diseases, stroke, and even death by approximately 50%. They found that deep breathing and acute relaxation can be more effective than any latest super drugs to prevent or even cure heart diseases.
The ultimate goal of meditation is to find “Balance” within our body. Although this may sound intangible and hard to grasp by the majority of our society today, meditation has been proven to balance out our biomarkers in the body. These biomarkers are also known as hormones and neurotransmitter.
When you’re experiencing stress or pain from any part of the body, it’s normally due to the hormonal changes and neurotransmitter imbalance. A powerful cure for this situation is meditation. This practice helped countless of patients to regulate their biomarkers.
Why is meditation so powerful? The secret lies in the practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a term that refers to being able to focus your awareness on the present moment and everything around you, both internally and externally.
One of the keys of mindfulness is to always be at the present moment. Being present to your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors without judging them. The practice of non-judgement is the essence of staying truly calm and present.
The benefits of mindfulness are endless. Studies have demonstrated that people who practice mindfulness regularly are more likely to live longer, have healthier hearts, stronger immune system, and unlikely to be obese.
Another alternative therapy for heart health is reflexology.
This method appeals to those who seek for non-invasive therapy. In fact, some people might even find reflexology to be rather relaxing and therapeutic. It’s not necessary to visit the reflexology centres to reap the benefits as you can easily apply these self-relaxing techniques yourself at any time on your hands and feet, provided that you know how to do it properly.
Reflexology helps to maintain the balance of the mind and body by keeping them in a homeostasis state, so that the body can function optimally. By applying pressure at certain pressure points of the body, trained reflexologists are able to fix the malfunctioned body and put your body in the natural equilibrium state.
Applying pressure at certain pressure points are able to stimulate your muscles, tissues, and even cells of any parts of your body. These pressure points are also known as reflexes on the hands and feet.
Different pressure points affect different parts of the body. In order to relax and invigorate the myocardial muscles, the pressure points are located on the reflexes on your feet, which also indirectly stimulates the colon and pituitary gland.
There are a lot of foods that have the properties to dramatically help with heart health problems mainly because they are very rich sources of the nutrients and compounds that naturally purify arteries, cleanse and remove inflammation as well as boost the immune system.