The Secret to Banishing Heart Disease, Fast!

 

Visit your doctor with an angina and he’ll immediately recommend an angiogram and bypass. Go to a reputable alternative physician, and he’ll prescribe the need for exercise, eating more vegetables, and an armload of supplements like co-Q10, hawthorne berries, magnesium, and omega-3s. All of these recommendations are excellent, but when a group of researchers investigated volumes of clinical studies looking at ameliorating or curing anginas, the research absolutely astounded them.

Think Zinc
Yes, zinc, the mineral we commonly think of as boosting our immunity, has been shown to terminate angina pectoris and restore youthful cardiac function. Angina is pain or discomfort, most often in the chest, that happens when some region of the heart does not receive enough oxygen from the blood. It is usually a symptom of coronary artery disease, which occurs when the vessels that carry blood to the heart become narrowed and blocked due to atherosclerosis.

Angina can feel like a squeezing pain, pressure, or tightness usually in the chest under the breastbone, but sometimes in the shoulders, arms, neck, jaw, or back. Angina is most commonly felt after physical exertion. It is also triggered by stress, extreme cold or heat, heavy meals, alcohol, and cigarette smoking.

How does zinc benefit the cardiovascular system?
Lipid peroxidation and LDL oxidation are believed to contribute to arteriosclerosis, and consequently angina pectoris. Administration of biologically available zinc was a beneficial treatment in a significant percentage of patients with severely symptomatic, inoperable atherosclerotic disease. In these patients, there was no difference in zinc concentration between patients with and without atherosclerosis in whole blood, erythocytes or hair, but there was a major difference between normal aorta and diseased aortas (almost double the amount of zinc was found in normal aorta vs. zinc in atherosclerotic aorta).

Medication with high-dose zinc sulfate to raise zinc serum concentrations resulted in objective improvement in 12 of 16 of these patients, including a patient that also had Reynard’s disease. Long term environmental exposure to zinc resulted in a 40% reduction in the incidence of angina of effort compared to people not exposed to environmental zinc and a 40% reduction in the incidence of probable ischemia in exercise.

In addition to reducing the incidence of angina, the antioxidative action of zinc prevents oxidation of LDL cholesterol and consequently stops the main mechanism of atherogenesis. Zinc blocks calcium and its several actions on atherogenesis. Increased amounts of cytotoxic cytokines often produced in the elderly, are blocked by high-dose zinc.

The researchers hypothesized that higher serum concentrations of LDL cholesterol resulted from administration of 300mg of zinc per day is caused by a release of low density cholesterol from cardiovascular tissues, beneficially flushing it into the serum where it is readily observed, thus decreasing arteriosclerosis, increasing circulation, terminating angina pectoris and restoring more youthful cardiac function.

In stark contrast to current practice, high-dose zinc should be considered as basic in the strategy of prophylaxis and therapy of the atherosclerosis process to terminate angina pectoris and restore youthful cardiac function.

 

SOURCE:  Medical Hypotheses,  Volume 66 , Issue 1 , Pages 169 – 172, Aug 5, 2005.

 

MDR COMMENTS:
Although the above article has great merit and its goal was to inform people on the benefits of zinc for the heart, we AT MDR feel that 300 mg of zinc can be toxic.

In fact, a review of zinc in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition states, "Zinc is considered to be relatively nontoxic, particularly if taken orally. However, manifestations of overt toxicity symptoms (nausea, vomiting, epigastric pain, lethargy, and fatigue) will occur with extremely high zinc intakes. At low intakes, but at amounts well in excess of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) (100-300 mg Zn/d vs an RDA of 15 mg Zn/d), evidence of induced copper deficiency with attendant symptoms of anemia and neutropenia, as well as impaired immune function and adverse effects on the ratio of low-density- lipoprotein to high-density-lipoprotein (LDL/HDL) cholesterol have been reported. Excess zinc supplementation has been suggested to interfere with the utilization of copper and iron and to adversely affect HDL cholesterol concentrations. In other words too much Zinc can negatively affect cholesterol levels.

The best approach is a safe balanced multi-vitamin with no more than 30 mg. of Zinc per day on a long term basis. Higher doses in supplement form should only be used under a Doctor's supervision for a short period of time.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 51, 225-227