More heart attacks and other cardiovascular events occur
on Mondays than any other day of the week. This “Monday
cardiac phenomenon” has long been believed to be related
to work stress
Two recent studies shed light on the persistent link
between stress and sudden heart attacks
In one, a group of German researchers found that as your
stress level rises, so do your levels of
disease-promoting white blood cells. This can lead to
plaque rupture and myocardial infarction
The other study found that stress hormones cause the
dispersal of bacterial biofilms from the walls of your
arteries. This dispersal can allow plaque deposits to
suddenly break loose, triggering a heart attack
Preventing heart disease involves reducing chronic
inflammation in your body. Key tools are diet, exercise,
sun exposure, and grounding to the earth. Effective
stress management is another important factor
By Dr. Mercola
About one in every three deaths in the US is attributed to
heart disease. The most common form of heart disease is coronary
artery disease (CAD), which can lead to a heart attack.
Interestingly, more heart attacks and other cardiovascular
events occur on Mondays than any other day of the week.1
This “Monday cardiac phenomenon” has been recognized for some
time, and has long been believed to be related to work stress.
Many do not realize that the most common symptom of heart
disease is sudden death from a heart attack. Oftentimes, there
are no prior indications of a problem; signs like chest pain or
shortness of breath, for example.
The good news is that heart disease, just like type 2
diabetes, is one of the easiest diseases to prevent and avoid,
but you must be proactive! Below I’ll discuss several
important prevention strategies. Checking your susceptibility is
also a good idea.
In a nutshell, in preventing cardiovascular disease and heart
attacks, it is important to address chronic inflammation
in your body. Proper diet, exercise, sun exposure, and grounding
to the earth are cornerstones of an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.
Effective stress management is another important factor for
keeping a heart attack at bay.
Links Between Stress and Heart Attack Revealed
Two recent studies shed light on the persistent link between
stress and sudden heart attacks. In one, a group of German
researchers found that as your stress level rises, so do your
levels of disease-promoting white blood cells.2,
3,
4 Co-author Dr. Matthias Nahrendorf explains:
“High levels of white blood cells may lead to
progression of atherosclerosis, plaque rupture and
myocardial infarction. The latter implies that a part of the
heart muscle, which pumps the blood with every beat, dies
off.
This may cause heart failure, either right away if
the infarct is large, or later on through maladaptive
processes. The heart tries to compensate for the loss of
contractile muscle tissue but over time this compensation
leads to a larger heart, which is weaker.”
The other study, published in the online open-access journal
mBio5,
6 found yet another way for sudden stress, emotional
shock, or
overexertion, to trigger a heart attack.
During moments of high stress, your body releases hormones
such as norepinephrine, which the researchers claim can cause
the dispersal of bacterial biofilms from the walls of your
arteries. This dispersal can allow plaque deposits to suddenly
break loose, thereby triggering a heart attack.
Stress contributes to heart disease in other ways as well.
Besides norepinephrine, your body also releases other stress
hormones that prepare your body to either fight or flee. One
such stress hormone is cortisol.
When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes
increasingly desensitized to cortisol, and since inflammation is
partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity
heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation
to get out of control.7
As mentioned earlier, chronic inflammation is a hallmark of
heart disease. So, both chronic and acute stress can contribute
to a sudden heart attack—depending on your underlying
susceptibility... This makes having effective tools to address
your stress levels a very important part of a heart healthy
lifestyle.
How Susceptible Are You to Developing a Heart Disease and/or
Suffering a Heart Attack?
When it comes to ascertaining your individual heart disease
risk, the following three tests or ratio calculations will give
you an idea of where you stand:
HDL to total cholesterol ratio. HDL
percentage is a potent heart disease risk factor. Just
divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. This ratio should
ideally be above 24 percent.
Triglyceride to HDL ratio. High
triglycerides are a potent risk factor for heart disease. In
combination, high triglycerides and low HDL levels are an
even bigger risk; this ratio is far more important to your
heart health than the standard good vs. bad cholesterol
ratio.
In fact, one
study found that people with the highest ratio of
triglycerides to HDL had 16 times the risk of heart attack
as those with the lowest ratio of triglycerides to HDL.
Calculate your triglyceride/HDL cholesterol ratio by
dividing your triglyceride level by your HDL level. This
ratio should ideally be below 2. So while you strive to keep
your HDL cholesterol levels up, you’ll want to decrease your
triglycerides.
You can increase your HDL levels by exercising and
getting plenty of omega-3 fats like those from krill oil.
Triglycerides are easily decreased by exercising and
avoiding grains and sugars in your diet.
Iron levels: Iron is nature’s rusting
agent. If you have excessive levels in your body, you are at
risk of major oxidation, or premature aging.
Lower Your Heart Attack Risk by Addressing Your Stress
Stress is so widespread as to be “pandemic” in today’s modern
world, but suffering ill effects from stress is not an
inevitable fact. A lot depends on how you respond to
these day-to-day stresses. And as you learn how to effectively
decrease your stress level, your heart attack risk will be
reduced as well.
There are many different stress reduction techniques. The key
is to find out what works best for you, and stick to a daily
stress-reduction program. One key strategy is to make
sure you get adequate
sleep, as sleep deprivation dramatically impairs your body’s
ability to handle stress and is yet another risk factor for
heart attack. Besides that, other stress management approaches
include:
Yoga: Health benefits from regular yoga practice
have been shown to decrease stress, improve sleep, and
immune function, and reduce food cravings, among other
things
My favorite tool for stress management is the
Emotional
Freedom Technique (EFT). It’s an energy psychology tool that
can help reprogram your body’s reactions to everyday stress,
thereby reducing your chances of developing adverse health
effects. For a demonstration, please see the following video
featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman, in which she
discusses EFT for stress relief. For serious or deep-seated
emotional problems, I strongly recommend seeing an experienced
EFT therapist, as there is a significant art to the process that
requires a high level of sophistication if serious problems are
to be successfully treated.
Cut Out Sugar to Protect Your Heart
As initially postulated by Dr. Yudkin in the 1960s, SUGAR is
a primary dietary culprit in the development of heart disease,
as it is profoundly inflammatory. To protect your heart health
you need to take proactive steps to address your insulin and
leptin resistance, which is the result of eating a diet too high
in sugars and grains. So, to safely and effectively reverse
insulin and leptin resistance, thereby reducing inflammation and
lowering your heart disease risk, you need to:
Avoid processed foods, sugar, processed fructose, and
grains if you are insulin/leptin resistant. As a standard
recommendation, I advise keeping your total fructose
consumption below 15 grams per day until your insulin/leptin
sensitivity and other heart disease risk factors (above)
have normalized
Eat a healthy diet of whole foods, ideally organic, and
replace the carbohydrates (sugars/grains) with:
Large amounts of vegetables
Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein
(think organically raised, pastured animals)
As much high-quality healthful fat as you want
(saturated and monounsaturated from animal and tropical
oil sources). Most people actually need upwards of
50-85 percent fats in their diet for optimal
health—a far cry from the 10 percent currently
recommended. Sources of healthful fats to add to your
diet include: avocados; butter made from raw grass-fed
organic milk; raw dairy; organic pastured egg yolks;
coconuts and coconut oil; unheated organic nut oils;
raw nuts and seeds; and grass-fed and finished meats
Another fat that is crucially important for heart health is
animal-based omega-3. Omega-3 fats such as that found in krill
oil help protect against heart disease and stroke by preventing
the build-up of fatty deposits in your arteries. For more
information about omega-3s and the best sources of this fat,
please
review this previous article.
Your Heart Needs Vitamin D
Being vitamin D deficient can massively increase your heart
disease risk. Vitamin D is the only known substrate for a
potent, pleiotropic (meaning it produces multiple effects),
repair and maintenance seco-steroid hormone that serves multiple
gene-regulatory functions in your body. This is why vitamin D
functions in so many different tissues—one of which is your
heart.
One 2009 study8
found that people with the lowest average vitamin D levels had a
124 percent greater risk of dying from all causes and a 378
percent greater risk of dying from a heart problem. Researchers
from Finland also showed that when compared with the
participants with the highest vitamin D, those with the lowest
levels had a
25 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease or
stroke.
Arterial stiffness, a major risk factor for heart disease
and stroke, is also associated with vitamin D deficiency. There
are a number of physiological mechanisms triggered by vitamin D
production through sunlight exposure that act to fight heart
disease, including:
An increase in your body's natural anti-inflammatory
cytokines
The suppression of vascular calcification
The inhibition of vascular smooth muscle growth
Fortunately, vitamin D deficiency is incredibly easy to fix.
Ideally, you'll want to maintain a vitamin D level of at least
50 ng/ml year-round. For active treatment of heart disease, a
level between 70-100 ng/ml may be warranted. For more
information about how to safely and effectively optimize your
vitamin D level, please see my previous article: “How
Vitamin D Performance Testing Can Help You Optimize Your Health.”
Exercise Is as Effective as Drugs Against Heart Disease
Exercise is one of the safest, most effective ways to prevent
and treat heart disease. This common sense advice was again
confirmed in a recently published meta-review conducted by
researchers at Harvard and Stanford,9
which found “no statistically detectable differences” between
physical activity and medications for heart disease. The only
time drugs beat exercise was for the recovery from
heart failure, in which case diuretic medicines produced a
better outcome.
Previous research has shown that exercise alone can reduce
your risk of cardiovascular disease by a factor of three.10
However, be aware that endurance-type exercise, such as
marathon running or any other endurance aerobic activity, can
actually damage your heart and increase your cardiovascular
risk... Research11
by Dr. Arthur Siegel found that long-distance running leads to
high levels of inflammation that can trigger cardiac events, and
another 2006 study12
found that non-elite marathon runners experienced decreased
right ventricular systolic function, again caused by an increase
in inflammation and a decrease in blood flow.
That said, other research has clearly demonstrated that
short bursts of intense activity (high intensity interval
training or HIIT) is safer and more effective than conventional
cardio—for your heart, general health, weight loss, and overall
fitness. So, the key is to exercise correctly and appropriately,
making certain you also have adequate recovery between sessions.
HIIT mimics the
movements of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which included
short bursts of high-intensity activities, but not
long-distance running.
Basically, by exercising in short bursts followed by periods
of recovery, you recreate exactly what your body needs for
optimum health. This type of exercise will also naturally
increase your body's production of human growth hormone (HGH)—a
synergistic, foundational biochemical underpinning that promotes
muscle and effectively burns excessive fat. It also plays an
important part in promoting overall health and longevity.
Earthing—A Potent Way to Reduce Inflammation
Regularly
walking barefoot, to ground with the earth, can have a
profound impact on reducing inflammation in your body and
reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease. When you do, free
electrons are transferred from the earth into your body. This
grounding effect is one of the most potent antioxidants we know
of, and helps alleviate inflammation throughout your body.
Grounding also helps thin your blood by improving its zeta
potential, which means it improves the negative electrical
charge between your red blood cells thus repelling them and
keeping your blood less likely to clot. In fact, grounding's
effect on blood thinning is so profound if you are taking blood
thinners you must work with your health care provider to lower
your dose otherwise you may overdose on the medication. Research
has demonstrated it takes about 80 minutes for the free
electrons from the earth to reach your blood stream and
transform your blood.
Take Proactive Steps to Protect Your Heart
The take-home message can be summarized as follows: if you
want to prevent heart disease and its lethal companions—heart
attack and stroke—you need to take some proactive steps to
quell inflammation in your body, and address your
stress. Tools such as EFT, which can help you rein in your
day-to-day stress levels, can also help you respond to acute
emotional upheaval and stress in a healthier way. As for
eliminating chronic inflammation, key tools include:
A heart-healthy diet (avoiding processed foods,
sugar/fructose and grains, making sure to replace these lost
carbs with healthy saturated fats)
Exercise
Sun exposure to optimize your vitamin D
Grounding to the earth
Copyright 1997- 2014 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.