The Heart Truth

Just this past weekend, I spent some time with one of the leading researchers in the field of heart disease prevention. Dr. Nathan Byran and I were both participants at the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Symposium in Dallas, TX. We spent about 3 hours over dinner Friday evening discussing advances in heart disease reversal. I’ll tell you more about our conversation in a second, but first, let’s review some important reminders about heart disease.

February is American Heart Health Month, a time for directing awareness to the fact that heart disease is our Nation’s leading chronic disease and number one killer. A person’s diet, lifestyle and environment, matched to his or her genetic makeup, are major determinants for heart disease.

A woman suffers a heart attack every 90 seconds in the United States.

If you seek help quickly, treatment can save your life and prevent permanent damage to your heart muscle. Treatment works best if given within 1 hour of when symptoms begin.

Common symptoms of heart attack are:

• Unusually heavy pressure on the chest, like there's a ton of weight on you 
• Sharp upper body pain in the neck, back, shoulders, elbows, wrists, or jaw 
• Severe shortness of breath 
• Cold sweats (not hot flashes from menopause) 
• Unusual or unexplained fatigue (tiredness) 
• Unfamiliar dizziness or light-headedness 
• Unexplained nausea (feeling sick to the stomach) or vomiting 

Sadly, one third of all women who suffer heart attacks will never have any of these symptoms. I know that sounds scary, but there are ways to detect damage to the inside of your blood vessels with simple blood tests. 

What I learned from one of the world’s leading heart disease researchers…

Fortunately, many new scientific studies are showing that factors such as diet, lifestyle, environment, & genetics, along with the aging process, have a direct effect on one major underlying piece of the puzzle for the cause of heart disease. The discovery of a molecule called Nitric Oxide (N-O) or the “Master Regulator” has caused the field of Medicine to begin rethinking the way it approaches heart disease. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that laughing gas? The answer is “no”. Laughing gas is Nitrous Oxide (N2O); it’s vastly different from Nitric Oxide (N-O).

Nitric oxide (N-O) is a very important ‘signaling’ molecule in the body that transmits messages to cells for proper function. Research has proven that loss of N-O is the earliest event in the onset and progression of a number of diseases, especially cardiovascular disease.

When N-O is created and released in the body, it sends off crucial signals inside every cell, tissue, organ and system where it commands: 

• Blood vessels to relax so they can expand which reduces blood pressure and increases circulating oxygen and nutrients 
• Blood platelets to become less sticky thus preventing abnormal blood clots and plaque build-up 
• The immune system to destroy invading disease-producing agents and cancer cells 
• Brain cells to communicate with each other for proper brain function such as mood and memory 

N-O also supports health in other areas such as kidneys, bones, sleep, body weight, joints, skin, eyes, dental and even sexual health and altitude tolerance.

Clinical studies reveal that we lose 10% to 12% of our N-O production per decade beginning about age 25. The choices we make during this period can affect the rate of N-O loss, either speeding it up or slowing it down.

So you may be asking…

Q: “How can I know if I’m one of those people who is on the verge of a heart attack but doesn’t know it because I don’t have symptoms?”

A: There’s a comprehensive blood panel that we can obtain to see if the early stages of heart disease present in your blood vessels. This may sound foreign to a lot of people, but medical advances in the past few years have allowed us to see inside the body, on a chemical basis, without having to do expensive, invasive tests.

Q: “How do I know that I have a deficiency in N-O?”

A: There’s a free screening test that we can do at our office. It only takes 30 seconds to complete, so we can tell you immediately if you are deficient in N-O.

Q: “If I’m deficient in N-O, what can I do about it?”

A: If you are deficient in N-O, you need to change your diet immediately. You’ve heard that we all need to eat more green-leafy veggies. Well, it’s true. This is where we can get high amounts of N-O. Also, beats are an even better source… that is if you like beats. I’m not a beat fan, so I opt to take a supplement called NEO-40.

If you would like to receive testing for N-O deficiency and get your advanced cardiac labs done, we can certainly arrange that for you at our office. If you’re like me and not a fan of beats but would like to replenish your N-O in order to protect your heart, we can arrange for you to get the NEO-40 at a deeply discounted price in honor of Heart Health Month.

Brian Brown, APRN-BC

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