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July 25, 2005
Monitor Insulin to Ensure Fat Loss and to Prevent Heart Disease
Insulin problems are one of the main causes of heart disease in the United States, and doctors do a poor job of educating their patients about it. Your pancreas releases insulin to regulate glucose (sugar) levels in the blood, which rise after you eat carbohydrates. It also stimulates the storage of triglycerides and proteins. Then insulin signals the cells to absorb glucose from the bloodstream, energizing the cells and controlling the glucose levels in the blood. As soon as you use up your blood sugar, your liver begins releasing stored glucose to maintain a steady supply of energy.
Insulin makes the body more resistant to burning fat. It encourages the body to store extra fat, especially around the middle. It robs the body of energy by slowing the burning of fat for energy. Stated another way, it leaves you fat and tired.
If you have insulin resistance (a condition common among the obese), your tissues become less sensitive to insulin. Your cells do not take up enough glucose, meaning your pancreas must work overtime to produce extra insulin to achieve the same results. Over time, your pancreas becomes fatigued and stops producing enough insulin. This causes your glucose levels to climb abnormally high. When this occurs, you may be diagnosed with Type 2 or adult-onset diabetes. Many people show signs of insulin resistance for some time before their diabetes is diagnosed.
The further you get from your ideal weight, the more difficult it is for your body to manage your glucose levels. In addition, lack of exercise contributes to insulin problems. When you exercise regularly, muscle cells can handle insulin and glucose effectively. The less active you are and the less muscle tissue you have, the harder it is for the body to clear glucose from your bloodstream.
Insulin resistance isn’t just a blood sugar problem. It is also linked with a variety of other health concerns, including heart disease, high blood pressure, high levels of triglycerides, and low HDL (good) cholesterol, among others. Few doctors appreciate the importance of insulin in medical problems beyond diabetes.
Doctors can measure your insulin with a simple blood test. It’s alarming how few physicians actually do so.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 5:48 AM | Comments (115)
July 18, 2005
Optimize CoQ10 Levels Naturally for Heart Health
CoQ10 provides energy for your heart and other major organs. If your heart doesn't have enough CoQ10, it becomes less efficient, which can lead to heart problems including congestive heart failure.
A simple blood test can reveal your CoQ10 level. Most Americans do not get optimal amounts of CoQ10 from their diet. By monitoring your CoQ10 levels, your physician can help you adjust the dose as needed. Read Chapter 9, Give Your Heart Four Nutrients It Needs, in The Doctor’s Heart Cure to find out more about which supplements to take for optimal heart health.
Normal values for CoQ10 are 0.8 to 1.5 nanograms per milliliter. Most labs report both a normal range (your CoQ10 level compared to the levels in the population as a whole), as well as therapeutic ranges (the CoQ10 levels thought to help treat disease). Recommended therapeutic CoQ10 level should be between 2.5 to 3.5 ng/ml. There are no known side effects to elevated CoQ10 levels.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 9:18 AM | Comments (159)
July 11, 2005
A Great Predictor of Heart Disease: C-REACTIVE PROTEIN (CRP)
C-reactive protein (CRP) is a very effective predictor of heart disease. When the body experiences acute inflammation, injury, or infection anywhere in the body (including the arteries), the liver releases CRP. Normally, the blood contains no CRP. Therefore, its presence indicates a problem somewhere in the body.
Blood tests for C-reactive protein have been around for 30 years, but they have been used as a marker of end-of-life changes when the body begins shutting down before death. Today, the blood tests are far more sensitive and indicate signs of chronic minor inflammation. We can use the ultra-sensitive modern CRP blood tests to detect heart disease. The British Journal of Urology published a study that examined the CRP levels of almost 400 people. They found that once the CRP levels reached twice the normal level, their study participants were 150 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack.
Elevated levels of CRP can also indicate potential heart attacks years before they occur. Consider a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, which followed more than 22,000 men as part of the ongoing Physician’s Health Study. When the men first enrolled in the study, they were free of heart disease and gave blood samples. Eight years later, 543 of the men experienced a heart attack, stroke, or a blood clot in a major vessel. Researchers compared the blood samples from these men to those from men in the study who did not have cardiovascular disease.
Men with the highest levels of CRP were twice as likely to have had a stroke and three times as likely to have had a heart attack as the men with normal CRP levels. Keep in mind that these elevated CRP levels were present in the blood six to eight years before the cardiovascular event took place.
Elevated CRP levels can also indicate additional medical problems, such as rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic fever, cancer, tuberculosis, or pneumonia. In addition, CRP can be an excellent tool to assess future cardiovascular problems.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 7:07 AM | Comments (0)
July 4, 2005
The Dangers of Oxidation and the Role Of Homocysteine in Predicting Heart Disease and Stroke
Most patients and many doctors have never heard of homocysteine. To find out more about this unknown sinister killer, let's take a look at a process called oxidation.
Oxidation is the process that generates energy. There are examples of oxidation all around you. In physics, fire is rapid oxidation, while rust is a form of slow oxidation. In biology, oxidation is the “slow burn” of metabolism – the process of burning energy to fuel all of your body’s work. But just like outside your body, burning inside your body has consequences. If left unchecked, it inflames and damages surrounding tissues. Luckily, nature has a solution.
You are born with extensive “antioxidant systems” that prevent the fire of oxidation from spreading or damaging delicate surrounding structures. You’ve probably heard of many of these antioxidants, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoids, and coenzyme Q10.
Homocysteine is an amino acid that your body produces naturally during normal metabolism. It is the final common product of oxidation in your body. This is important because it distinguishes homocysteine from all other risk assessments. Because it accumulates during oxidation, its measurement is a measure of the health of your antioxidant systems.
Antioxidants prevent homocysteine from accumulating in the body. In other words, homocysteine levels indicate how efficient your antioxidant systems are. If your homocysteine level is high, it means that the fire of oxidation is overwhelming your antioxidants and damaging your heart and blood vessels. Homocysteine is an excellent measure of antioxidant health as well as an actual indicator of cardiovascular inflammation.
At low levels, your body can handle homocysteine, but when the levels inch above the normal range, it damages your arteries. Homocysteine also increases the formation of arterial plaque and makes the platelets in your blood stickier. This increases the risk of forming blood clots, which can cause heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism.
A number of studies demonstrated the link between high homocysteine levels and heart attack and stroke. For example, the Physician’s Health Study concluded that participants with high homocysteine levels are three times more likely to have a heart attack.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today.
Posted by james at 6:32 AM | Comments (0)