Book stakes out middle ground in cardiac care
                      Healthy Living News - November 2006

In America, the worlds of traditional and alternative medicine are often at odds with one another. Those firmly         entrenched in the traditional camp put their stock in conventional drugs and surgery, often viewing alternative medicine with suspicion or downright derision. Alternative practitioners, who focus on nutritional medicine, supplements, and non-traditional therapies, tend to dismiss mainstream approaches as “dangerous” or “money-oriented.” Each side of this healthcare divide seems more intent on disproving the validity of the other than on adopting the most successful healing strategies of the “opposing camp” for the benefit of patients.

In the realm of cardiovascular health, as in any area of medicine dealing with life and death, this lack of middle ground can have serious implications for patients who need the best of both worlds if they are to be truly healed rather than just have their symptoms temporarily suppressed. What’s worse, it has been extremely difficult for patients with cardiovascular disease to educate themselves about what both standard and alternative medicine have to offer because little, if anything, has been written on the subject—that is, until now.

A new book to be released this month by cardiologists Dr. Stephen Sinatra and Dr. James Roberts, entitled Reverse Heart Disease Now (Wiley Publishing), introduces readers to the concept of the “New Cardiology,” an integrative approach to the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease that draws upon key interventions from both traditional and alternative medicine.

Drs. Sinatra and Roberts are both university-trained, board-certified invasive cardiologists who, after years of performing heart catheterizations, prescribing drugs, and sending patients for bypass surgery or stent placement, independently (Sinatra practices in Connecticut, and Roberts practices in Toledo) arrived at the conclusion that they were merely “putting out fires rather than quenching the embers.”

“Our patients were coming back with recurrent or new cardiovascular problems because we were only managing their symptoms, putting a high-price band aid on their coronary ‘lesion’ without dealing with the factors that plugged them up in the first place—the ‘circulesion,’” notes Dr. Roberts. “We began to focus on the causes of cardiovascular disease states, and we began to see that our patients got better quicker and stayed better longer.

“The key new intervention for both of us was the addition of antioxidant vitamins and fish oils to our patients’ drug regimens. Good results led to greater interest and study on our parts, so now our practices provide Integrative Cardiology—what we call in the book the ‘New Cardiology.’ We still do heart catheterizations and prescribe drugs when their use makes sense, but we integrate this with the best that nutritional and complementary medicine have to offer.”

Reverse Heart Disease Now explores the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease—how it builds up and what factors combine to cause it. Though Sinatra and Roberts acknowledge the importance of traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as elevated cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, and hypertension, they have learned that these factors are only part of the heart-disease equation. The book introduces readers to several other important risk factors—dubbed the “dirty dozen”—that doctors don’t routinely check for, including insulin insensitivity, trans-fatty acids, vascular inflammation (high C-Reactive protein), thick blood (high fibrinogen), oxidative stress, gum disease, autonomic dysfunction (impaired heart rate variability), chronic infection (nanobacteria), toxic blood (iron overload and heavy metals),  emotional stress, and genetics.

The book emphasizes early detection and screening and goes well beyond a list and explanation of heart-disease risk factors to include a plan of action readers can use to address them as well as a risk-assessment tool to help readers decide whether they are at risk or not.  Long-standing screening techniques, such as stress tests and nuclear scans, are discussed along with some of the newer, state-of-the-art techniques, which Sinatra and Roberts consider to be even more effective, such as carotid artery intima-media thickness measurement, heart rate variability and vascular stiffness assessment, coronary calcium scoring, genetic testing, and the ultra-fast coronary CT study.

 Reverse Heart Disease Now also deals in a balanced way with the drugs used to treat cardiovascular disease. The authors discuss both the good and the bad—those drugs they consider beneficial and those they believe are of questionable virtue—as well as the right and wrong ways to use them. They also delve deeply into the use of supplements, including commonly used nutritional supplements, such as antioxidants, fish oils, minerals, and B-vitamins; energy-generation supporting agents, such as co-enzyme Q10, carnitine, and ribose; and newer supplements, such as the nutritional clot buster nattokinase and the nutritional anti-inflammatory agent turmeric.

“We also talk about alternative approaches, such as chelation therapy and reverse cholesterol transport with phosphatidylcholine, and we cover external counterpulsation and magnetic molecular energizer therapy—my two areas of greatest interest—as approaches to cardiovascular disease,” says Dr. Roberts.

Readers interested in learning about commonsense changes they can make in their lives to stave off heart disease will appreciate the plans of action as well as the dietary and cooking advice the book provides. Readers will also find inspiration in the case studies of good “New Cardiology” outcomes that are presented throughout the book.

Reverse Heart Disease Now is a must-read for anyone with cardiovascular disease or who wishes to avoid developing the disease. They will discover in its pages that the integrative approach of the “New Cardiology,” which combines the best therapies of both traditional and alternative medicine, is the best way to optimize their cardiovascular health.

                            The above article was presented in the November issue of Healthy Living News (North West Ohio)