Over the Counter Natural Cures (11 page)

If high blood pressure were dangerous, then lowering it with hypertension drugs would increase lifespan. Yet, I couldn't find a single clinical trial showing that hypertension medications increased lifespan among users of these drugs when compared to nonusers.
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In fact, many times, low blood pressure decreased it. It is completely natural for the first number (systolic) to be 100 plus our age.

Before you take on risky meds, you'll want to know about the naturally occurring medicine that can bust clots, control blood pressure, and at the same time, strengthen the heart!

THE FORGOTTEN CARDIOVASCULAR CURE

Up to this point, I've confirmed that blood clots are scary. At the same time, I've taught that, when used outside of emergency medicine, the drugs used to avoid blood clots can be even scarier. While there is never one sure way to avoid blood clots and the subsequent events of heart attack or stroke, you do have an alternative. And using it won't ruin your quality of life while robbing you of your retirement money. It is called hawthorn, and it is nature's forgotten cardiovascular cure.

Thanks to the rise of pharmaceutical advertising, this cardiovascular cure has been forgotten. It's not prescribed by doctors, and you won't see a single commercial advertising its benefits. But you can get it at the nutrition giant known as GNC.

Unlike the cardiovascular drugs, hawthorn doesn't “melt” the cardiovascular system and isn't toxic, which means it won't cause any adverse effects.
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It's also among the hottest areas of research because it provides one method for treating the entire array of cardiovascular complications that can arise as we age. Not only does hawthorn bust clots, but it also controls blood pressure and strengthens the heart.

Without hawthorn, our cardiovascular health can go bad fast. Adhering to nutrient logic, you'll want to make sure that your daily supplement plan includes hawthorn. It consists of a multitude of naturally occurring ingredients that have been used and studied for thousands of years.

To understand the magnitude of benefit from hawthorn, simply consider one of its ingredients, flavonoids.
The American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition
reported a 20 percent decrease in the risk of death
from heart disease among those who consumed at least 7.5 milligrams of flavonoids daily. This risk reduction is far better than that seen with the oft-prescribed cardiovascular drugs. You can expect hawthorn to be significantly better.

The flavonoids, along with all the other cardiovascular cures in hawthorn, work synergistically to confer total cardiovascular health. Once ingested, they bust risky clots, thanks to their ability to “lightly” prevent the conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin. Doing so won't paralyze the blood-clotting cascade as commonly used drugs do, but it will fend off rogue blood clots. Further protection from clots comes from hawthorn's ability to relax the spaghetti-sized arteries around the heart, leaving space for safe clot passage. Hawthorn's ingredients also increase the force of
heartbeats. Taking stress off the heart, this lengthens the time that the heart rests between beats.

All of the benefits from hawthorn translate into the clinically significant prevention of chronic cardiovascular and heart conditions.
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Hawthorn can successfully be used to treat heart failure (the heart's inability to pump blood efficiently), hypertension (artery constriction), angina (chest pain from decreased blood flow to the heart), excess blood clotting, and cardiac arrhythmias (disturbances of normal heart rhythm).
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GNC sells their own brand of hawthorn for about $7.00, which equates to about $4.00 per month, depending on the dose. Manufactured under FDA-approved good manufacturing practices, GNC hawthorn has no adulterants or excess fillers, based on my independent lab analysis. This can be verified with the certificate of analysis found at my website, www. overthecounternaturalcures.com. If not this brand, another brand would probably suffice; you just have to know what to look for.

Hawthorn is known scientifically as
Crataegus oxyacantha
. Look for that name when buying it in the “berry” form. As a whole, it contains a cocktail of flavonoids (bioflavanoids), amines, triterpene, saponins, and oligomeric procyanidins (also referred to as OPCs and pycnogenol). These are the same OPCs found in red wine, but hawthorn is a superior source because it provides them in higher quantities and without the very caustic alcohol.

Pronouncing the names of the active ingredients in hawthorn isn't important. What's important is that you don't get swindled into buying a high-priced extract (like online) that contains a large amount of any single ingredient. The synergy of all the ingredients is what makes hawthorn special. At most you could settle for a 10 percent to 20 percent extract of procyanidins, but usually you'll find it sold as 1 percent to 3 percent flavonoids (as bioflavanoids or hyperoside).

If you're going to take hawthorn, commit to taking it long term because its benefits do not show up immediately. You may need up to six weeks to start feeling benefits. Taking it at the right time and the right dosage can shorten this time.

The best time to take hawthorn is on an empty stomach, about an hour before exercise, and then again at bedtime. This will help ensure that the active ingredients are broken down properly in the stomach and distributed in the bloodstream. By administering hawthorn before exercise, you are helping to relax the cardiovascular system. That will help maximize your workouts—as seen by increased exercise tolerance. Taking hawthorn before bedtime will help to relax your muscles, increase oxygen uptake, and provide deeper sleep.

The best dose for standardized hawthorn (1 to 3 percent bioflavanoids) is about 15 to 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight two to three times per day. That means that a 150-pound person would take two to three capsules, twice daily.

If you're taking any cardiovascular drugs, you'll want to monitor your cardiovascular system very closely with your doctor. Since hawthorn is so effective, it can potentiate all drugs that target blood clots, hypertension, and the heart and increase their side effects. It's best to “go natural” first and choose cardiovascular drugs only in emergency situations, at which time you would abstain from hawthorn to reduce the chance of suffering from adverse drug reactions.

MAKING OVER-THE-COUNTER NATURAL CURES BETTER

Hawthorn is great. Hopefully you've learned that much by now. But you shouldn't bet on it. Instead, it should be one part of your total cardiovascular health plan. Supplementing your diet with plenty of magnesium-rich foods like organic sunflower seeds, almonds, and cashews, while
getting rid of excess body fat, are two other proven methods for warding off poor cardiovascular function.

Interestingly enough, aspirin studies prove the cardiovascular benefits of magnesium supplementation. When I read the major studies used to rationalize widespread aspirin, I noticed that in the studies showing aspirin to be effective they did not use aspirin alone. Most used buffered aspirin that contained magnesium. Early studies showing aspirin to be dangerous and ineffective used only aspirin. Thus, the magnesium present in the pill may have been responsible for the beneficial effects of heart attack and stroke prevention—not aspirin.

Recent research highlighted by the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University indicates that magnesium supplementation (about 500 to 1,000 milligrams daily as magnesium citrate or aspartate or naturally obtained from pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, and green leafy vegetables) helps arteries relax and constrict as needed. That means rogue blood clots can pass safely if formed. Even better, this regimen also led to a highly significant 35 percent reduction in the ability of blood to clot within the arteries.
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Aspirin or magnesium? You choose.

Finally, being obese is a huge disservice to the health of your cardiovascular system. Obesity causes inflammation. And inflammation can switch on your blood-clotting cascade. Particularly, being overweight raises the levels of thromboxane. This inflammatory molecule causes blood to go from a solid to a liquid by converting fibrinogen to fibrin. Not cool. To stop the potentially suffocating outcome, you have to stop carrying excess fat.

To find out if your weight is putting you at risk for excess inflammation and clotting, test your body-fat percentage at a local gym. You don't have to be so lean that your spouse drools over you. Acceptable body fat is 15 to 22 percent for men and 17 to 25 percent for women. If you aren't
within this range, follow my five simple habits outlined in chapter 11. They will help you to achieve an acceptable body-fat percentage without too much hardcore willpower.

THE TOTAL CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH PLAN

Big Pharma and physicians have a tendency to complicate health. This is especially true in the area of cardiovascular health. So many drugs are purported to help that we simply don't know if any are right for us. Understanding all of the medications and how they work has become an almost impossible task. Unable to see past the complexity, most people blindly succumb to the hasty prescription habits of doctors.

Choking down cardiovascular meds after the age of forty-five is as trendy as buying a red Corvette. And it's just as ridiculous. You're on the road to some sobering, adverse drug reactions. Lethargy, obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, internal bleeding, and even cancer await regular cardiovascular drug users. These side effects just barely kill you, slowly ruining quality of life and making you wish you were dead. You're better off slamming your Corvette into a brick wall. It's less painful and instant. Fortunately, hawthorn provides another route.

Hawthorn supplementation is an easy way to help ensure total cardiovascular health while protecting your wallet from Big Pharma. And if you combine it with magnesium supplementation and a suitable body-fat percentage, you'll find that having a healthy cardiovascular system doesn't have to be complicated, risky, or expensive.

 

 

 CHAPTER 5 

Although I'm sensitive to homelessness and alcoholism, I have to admit that a small part of me used to envy the drunken bum. Driving to work or strolling through a park, I would see him conked out in the middle of the day. Oblivious to the hustle and bustle of the city, his head would be curbside at a knot-wrenching, 45-degree angle. He was getting more shut-eye than I ever imagined. I wanted it, and I knew millions of other Americans did, too.

Despite the comforts of home, most of us can't sleep half as well as a drunken bum. A century ago, the national sleep average was nine to ten hours, according to
Harvard Health Publications
. Today, we get fewer than seven hours of sleep per night.
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This is usually rationalized by the erroneous claim that we are getting more work done. That's what I told myself, but I was wrong.

Our super-achiever culture frowns upon sleep while encouraging more work. Some people revel in it. Donald Trump boasts that he can get by with less sleep than “normal” people, tacitly implying that the rest of us are wimps—mere mortals who require regular deep sleep for at least eight hours per night. Others foolishly follow in his footsteps.

Lack of sleep might encourage more activity, but it depletes productivity. The extra waking hours of most “Stupor Heroes” are likely spent surfing the Internet, watching late-night television, or enjoying other faux fast-lifestyle activities. Beyond numbing your mind and reducing your productivity, the real cost of such bravado is accelerated aging, as sleep research shows. No matter what healthy habits you engage in during your waking hours, lack of rest will negate your antiaging endeavors.

But don't lose sleep over this. You can sleep like a drunken bum without booze, general anesthesia, or even expensive and risky sleep meds. Deep, relaxing, restful sleep is less than one chapter away. Applying what you learn will guarantee increased productivity as a professional who takes pride in “doing it all” and even extend your expiration date!