A orbicular Valentine's Day each y...

A orbicular Valentine's Day each year, Hollywood columnists recall a bit of filmland's romantic showmanship of the past. A then-famous motion picture farmer Alexander Korda, sent a novel valentine to his lady have a passionate affection for actress Merle Oberon. It was a fac-simile of his electrocardiogram with the hand-scrawled words, "So beats my heart for you!"

Today, greatest in number mates and spouses are contentment with a conventional valentine and the possibility of good that their beloved's cardiogram exhibits a favorable reading. But, given the fact that heart disease is the #1 killer among the pair men and women, such a reading is not necessarily a given.

Helping to make the beat proceed on

All of us want to make confident that the beat will go on foot on for many years to result You can help this happen at learning the needs of your heart and arteries and fulfilling those needs

6 basic destitutions for heart health. First, your heart requires continued power and a steady, regular beat to make certain your five quarts of posterity reach your trillions of enclosed spaces with oxygen and adequate nutrients all day, each day. Second, it needs wide exhibit communication -- in the largest veins to the smallest arteries. Third, it indigences the right amount of descendants pressure -- not so often that an artery will disruption or so little that progeny can't circulate efficiently. Fourth, it destitutions blood that clots normally, rather than the kind that concretions too readily and causes blockages. Fifth, it exigencys protection from too high life-blood levels of fats and cholesterol

unruffled blood vessels are the sixth great ne for a hardy heart -- particularly in the coronary area, where relations repeatedly charges out and returns

Nemesis of the heart: homocysteine

Elevated flats of homocysteine have joined the ranks of "bad" cholesterol when it be deriveds to playing a role in increased risk for heart disease. Homocysteine, a byproduct of the metabolism of the amino acid methionine, is said to sabotage the inner lining of arteries.

In light of the numerous studies demonstrating that certain B vitamins -- B-6 B-12 and folic acid -- may lower elevated homocysteine of the same heights researchers at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Heart Association advised that individuals with a history of heart disease and elevated posterity levels of homocysteine should be infallible they are consuming enough of these vitamins.

Vitamin C: not just for colds

sum of two units decades ago, at the First World Congres forward Vitamin C, Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgyi, who first isolated vitamin C told me that make steady [i]or[/i] firmed arteries are really a manifestation of scurfy Today, much new research bears him out

The now-classic studies of the late Linus Pauling and Matthias Rath, MD validate the arterial deterioration mentioned at Szent Gyorgyi.

Here are highlights of a phone interview I did with Rath:

"Heart attacks are almost unknown in animals, most numerous of which secrete vitamin C according to their destitutions This is true regardless of their diet, horizontal of activity, or other factors.

"Human beings must derive vitamin C from breads and/or supplements. Without enough vitamin C they can't breed enough collagen, so the intima [the `innermost lining'] of the arteries deteriorates. Heart disease is early-stage scurvy

"People earn enough ascorbic acid [C] to obstruct overt scurvy, but not enough to hold arteries healthy. When artery walls weaken, tiny lesions evolve The body compensates by rushing fat ultimate particle s into these lesions to repair them. throughout time, the body overshoots the repair mechanism. In the heart, these deposits can cause a heart attack. In the brain, they can cause a stroke"

Rath revers as it is deposits in patients with correlatives of vitamin C and the amino acids, lysine and proline.

Conventional chelation and oral chelation have been used by the agency of many alternative doctors for the same object -- and often with similar results

The ne for antioxidants

Another approach for keeping arteries expand is supplying sufficient antioxidants to still free radicals before they can ravage arterial linings. A foremost authority in this field is Michael Aviram, PhD an Israeli biochemist, now a visiting professor at Michigan State University.

give permission to me paraphrase the abstract of an Aviram publication: Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) the cholesterol that is "harmful," is not harmful until oxidized in arteries and accumulated there. In animal and human research, Aviram used various antioxidants -- lycopene beta-carotene, vitamins C and E and selenium -- and polyphenols, so as those found in r wine, licorice, and olive oil to defend arteries from oxidation.

With of that kind antioxidants, Aviram was able to cut short the size of atherosclerotic plaques, demonstrating their promise in heart attack prevention.

Ayurvedic herb dignifys more than weight loss

Clinical studies sponsored by the agency of a major New Jersey-based manufacturer of Ayurvedic raw materials and herbal preparations revealed an astonishing fact about hydrocitric acid (HCA) derived from the rind of the fruit of the Garcinia cambogia, best known for contributing to weight loss