Want to keep your heart healthy? The answer, as I’ve told you for years — and recent reports confirm — isn't statin drugs. Instead, relatively simple changes can help keep your heart in peak condition. (For the latest information on how to protect your heart, see my report "New Heart Revelations.")
Five important tips to keep your heart healthy are:
1. Watch your iron intake. The most prevalent study on human health — the Framingham Study — demonstrates that people with the highest blood iron levels, especially women, had the highest incidence of heart attacks and strokes.
The study confirms that the incidence of vascular disease is usually low in women until they reach menopause. Previously, it was thought that this was because female hormones, especially estrogens, protected them from atherosclerosis. But the study revealed that female hormones were not the reason; before menopause women did not store iron in their bodies due to menstruation.
After menopause, the subjects began to store iron at a very rapid rate. Men are at a risk because they accumulate iron soon after puberty.
2. Exercise. Most of us have been told at one time or another that we should exercise to prevent heart disease and strokes. Exercise also has many health advantages other than preventing heart disease and strokes. It increases the antioxidant enzymes that protect us from a number of diseases, including atherosclerosis.
In addition, exercise improves blood flow, protects the brain against degeneration, increases alertness and mental acuity, improves memory, lowers blood pressure, reduces the risk of diabetes, improves lung function, strengthens immunity, and inhibits depression.
3. Pure water. Most of us do not drink enough water, and those who do often drink out-of-the-tap municipal water that contains organochlorine compounds, fluoride, aluminum, industrial chemicals and some microorganisms. All can produce serious health problems.
When fluoride mixes with aluminum in the concentrations found in drinking water, a powerful brain toxin is created. Fluoride, aluminum, and lead all accumulate in blood vessels and trigger the formation of free radicals, the very process that causes atherosclerosis.
We should be drinking at least two 12-ounce glasses of pure water three times a day with meals and two more between meals. This means purified water, but not the water in plastic containers. While this water is superior to tap water, it does contain xenoestrogens from the plastic, which have been linked to increased breast cancer rates in women and prostate cancer in men. To learn more about what's in the water you're drinking, read my special report “Is Your Drinking Water Fit to Drink?"
4. Avoid smoking and smoke-filled places. Second-hand smoke has been shown to significantly increase free radical generation and lipid peroxidation in non-smokers.
5. Avoid Stress. Chronic, unrelieved stress has been shown to increase free radical generation in many tissues of the body, especially the brain. Knock off one day a week and relax. Doing so allows the body and mind to regenerate.
For more of Dr. Blaylock’s weekly tips, go here to view the archive.
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