Dan Buettner
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 State Department in 1963, he was a surgeon on the Loma Linda heart surgery team that brought open-heart surgery to that country for the first time. He pointed to a photograph of a girl who, with her family, had walked 100 miles to get an operation. In Vietnam, a year before South Vietnam fell, the work of the heart surgery team in Saigon was featured on the Walter Cronkite TV program.
As a surgeon he was a pioneer of open-heart procedures. (Dr. Leonard Bailey, who has performed more infant heart transplants than anyone in the world, unabashedly refers to Wareham as "my mentor." |
Bottom Line Health
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| Most importantly, he notes, the people chosen for the study were carefully selected to represent the full range of heart surgery patients—young, old, those undergoing valve surgery and those protected by beta blockers.
Half of the participants got a 13-day course of amiodarone, starting six days before they were scheduled for heart surgery. The other half got a placebo. Researchers found that the incidence of abnormal heartbeats was 50% lower in the group receiving amiodarone than in the group getting the placebo.
"There was a substantial protective effect," Mitchell says. |
Dan Buettner
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| Ellsworth Wareham, 91, assists during a heart surgery procedure, something he does about two to three times per week. stamina is decreasing. The hormones that build the muscles are diminished.
"So yes, I am sensitive about my age," he said. "If someone tells you the assistant on your heart surgery is in his 90s, well, that's not a comfortable thought. But the way I see it, the cardiac surgeons who want me there to assist them can judge my ability better than I can. And when I start to do less than top-quality work, I trust them not to use me." Eventually, he won't renew his license, he added. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 The entire heart surgery industry is worth about $100 billion a year. Drug-coated stents alone cost U.S. taxpayers and insurers $3.4 billion. More than a billion dollars a year are being wasted by cardiothoracic surgeons who perform bypasses on patients whose symptoms could be controlled with medical management, using drugs, diet, and exercise, which are not only cheaper but also safer and far less invasive. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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 It requires multiple medications, possibly including daily insulin injections; blood-glucose monitoring equipment; frequent doctors visits; and, as complications mount, is likely to lead to surgeries (including open heart surgery or amputations), dialysis, and increasing disability As you can see, this progressive condition causes damage to the body in many ways.
The good news, if caught early, diabetes can be controlled without medications. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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 Almost all the patients on whom I've performed heart surgery used to have cereal for breakfast, 80 percent of them with a "healthy" banana and "healthy" skim milk. Instead, enjoy eggs-they won't kill you, unlike cereal and other grain-based foods-and open your mind to other choices, such as protein smoothies or even soup or leftovers of last night's dinner.
EGG DISHES
Eggs fortified with omega-3 fatty acids form one foundation of Phase 1 breakfast choices. Despite what you've been told, consuming up to four eggs a day has no major impact on most people's cholesterol. |
| Have you had friends or family members who survived heart surgery only to later die from, say, colon cancer? Bad luck? No. Killer genes? Yes. Like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, killer genes keep firing off bullets until one of them gets you.
The leading cause of death for Alzheimer sufferers is starvation: these unfortunate folks forget to eat. Is this just a coincidence or part of a genetic plan? Exposure to small amounts of sugar actually improves short-term memory, probably so you can remember where you found that new fruit tree. |
| The result is that strong cells remain and weak cells are eliminated, enhancing the chance of survival during and after heart surgery.
All the research on hormesis in humans suggests that there is a point in every exposure to a stressor or toxin in which the response is not only to survive but also to thrive. That's because your genes realize both that it is not the right time to reproduce and put offspring in harm's way and that unless they can keep you well, you may die, taking your genes with you. |
| This mineral is so essential that all heart surgery patients receive 1 to 2 grams intravenously during and every six hours after their operation to normalize their heart rhythm and control blood pressure. Many cardiac disease specialists think a dietary deficiency of magnesium causes or contributes to hypertension. Magnesium is poorly absorbed and competes with the same receptors in the intestines that absorb calcium. When magnesium and calcium are combined in a supplement, you'll actually get less of each. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Acarefully controlled study has proved the value of amiodarone for people who are having heart surgery. Amiodarone is a drug that prevents abnormal heart rhythms such as atrial fibrillation.
THE STUDY
Comprised of 601 patients, the study was "at least twice as big as any previous trial," says study author Dr. L. Brent Mitchell, director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta at the University of Calgary. |
| But he stops short of endorsing the drug for all heart surgery patients due to the lack of data about how many patients were started on beta blockers and then had that medication stopped.
"When patients are withdrawn from beta blockers, the risk [of atrial fibrillation] is doubled," Mathew says. "There is no information about what percentage of patients was actually withdrawn from beta blockers. |
| Half of the participants got a 13-day course of amiodarone, starting six days before they were scheduled for heart surgery. The other half got a placebo. Researchers found that the incidence of abnormal heartbeats was 50% lower in the group receiving amiodarone than in the group getting the placebo.
"There was a substantial protective effect," Mitchell says. "It works whether a person gets a beta blocker or not."
The protective effect is especially important in high-risk patients, such as older people and those having valve surgery. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 Most demoralizing for those who had been the beneficiaries of the clinic's surgical interventions was the recognition that so much that had been done to save them—repeated open heart surgery, angioplasties aplenty, stents, and a host of medications—seemed no longer to have any useful effect. Almost all the men had lost their sexual potency. Most had chest pains, the terrifying condition known as angina. For some, it was so agonizing that they couldn't lie down and had to sleep sitting up. Only a few could take long walks, and some couldn't even cross a room without excruciating pain. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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 None of them had anxiety disorders, but doctors were interested in their anxiety because it has a major influence on how well heart surgery patients recover. ANP directly dampens the sympathetic nervous system's response by stemming the flow of epinephrine and lowering the heart rate, and it also seems to reduce the feeling of anxiousness, which is paramount. And we know that among panic disorder patients, those who have frequent attacks have a deficit of ANP in their bloodstreams. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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| I take advantage of hormesis when I perform heart surgery by briefly shutting off the flow of blood to the heart. This period of stress alerts the patient's heart cell genes that trouble is on the way, activating a complex series of events that cause heart muscle cells to hunker down and protect themselves until a better time-in the form of new blood flow-arrives. Even better, other cells in the area that are not pulling their weight are eaten by white blood cells or instructed to die, a process called apoptosis. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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 The infection can come from anything from IV drug use to dental or heart surgery. Other skin signs of endocarditis are red, painful nodules on the fingers and toes—medically known as Osier's nodes—and hemorrhages under the nails (see Dark Stripes, above) and on the whites of the eyes (Roth spots). Edema and excessive sweating are signs that the infection is worsening.
Scaly Rash on Palms or Soles
If you notice a lot of little scales on the palms of your hands or soles of your feet, you may mistake them for a cluster of warts or even psoriasis.
Nails, above. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Auto transfusion is a very safe method of supplying patients with their own blood (donated before surgery) after they undergo major surgery, such as coronary bypasses, congenital heart surgery, or surgical removal of cancer.
Hemodilution is a technique that maintains the amount of fluid circulating around the body through artificial volume expanders, either colloids (starches or gelatin) or crystalloids (sugar or saline solutions). |
| Not eating enough fruit and vegetables, smoking and not exercising
It was a wakeup call for Baby Boomers when newscasters reported in 2004 that former President Bill Clinton had to undergo emergency heart surgery. Unfortunately, the message conveyed to the world wasn't really focused on improving heart health but on taking the right drugs. It was by mere coincidence that just one week before President Clinton was admitted to the hospital, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet sounded a wakeup call with a different meaning. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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| One of my patients, Jerry Murphy, came to me at the age of sixty-seven after his cardiologist recommended open heart surgery, something he was determined to avoid. "No male Murphy has ever lived beyond sixty-seven," he announced. "What are you going to do about that?" I responded that the real question was what he was going to do about it, albeit with my help. Now in his mid-eighties—well past the sixty-seven-year life expectancy for male Murphys—Jerry Murphy thinks my nutrition program represents a more natural way of eating, a return to healthier ways of the past. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Heck, there's still a McDonald's restaurant in the Cleveland Clinic where they perform heart surgery!
If the birds and the bees have figured out how to raise healthy offspring, you'd think that humans might have the brain power to raise their own healthy children, too. And some parents are. There are lots of great parents out there raising kids on a macrobiotic diet, a vegetarian diet or a zero-processed-foods diet. Many of those parents are home schoolers, by the way. Good job to all the parents who actually teach their children healthful eating habits! Keep up the goog work! |
Dawson Church
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 It examined the effects of social support and spiritual practice on patients undergoing heart surgery It found that those with large amounts of both factors exhibited a mortality rate just one-seventh of those who did not.22 Another was done at St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. It examined links between church attendance and physical health. The researchers found that patients who attended church regularly, and had a strong faith practice, were less likely to die and had stronger overall health.23
These are not isolated examples. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Acute ischemia, like that which takes place during a heart attack, heart surgery, or angioplasty, drains the cell of energy. Even when oxygenated blood flow returns, refilling the energy pool may take ten or more days. But when oxygen deprivation is chronic, or when energy metabolism is disrupted by disease, there may be so much continual strain on the energy supply that the pool can never refill without the assistance of supplemental ribose. Conditions like ischemic heart disease, congestive heart failure, or fibromyalgia fall into this category. |
| A California doctor recently reported astounding improvements among beating heart surgery patients who received D-ribose supplementation prior to sur-
Adenine
Ribose
ATP
PRPP ?
AMP
Adenosine
De Novo Synthetic Pathway
Ribose
PRPP"
I I i
IMP t
I
J
Catabolic & Salvage Pathways
PRPP t
Ribose
Hypoxanthine I I t
Uric Acid
?Denotes intermediate steps
Figure 6.5. Replacing lost energy substrates through the de novo pathway of energy synthesis begins with D-ribose. D-ribose can also "salvage" AMP degradation products capturing them before they can be washed out of the cell. |
| In one clinical trial, researchers demonstrated that daily therapy using 300 mg of oral coenzyme Qiq for two weeks prior to cardiac surgery increased the coenzyme Qi0 content in cardiac muscle, improved mitochondrial energy production, and offered myocardial protection during heart surgery.
In another study, the same group of researchers demonstrated that in the older heart, coenzyme Qio treatment increased the capacity to sustain a cardiac workload by 28 percent compared to untreated hearts. |
Lynne McTaggart
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 Krucoff longed to introduce some of these practices to hospitals in America, but if he was going to convince any of his colleagues in cardiology, he would have to prove the benefit of spirituality to the practice of heart surgery through hard data showing a measurable physiological effect. He would have to demonstrate that intangible aspects like intention, or spiritual beliefs, or even a spiritual, uplifting environment could really make a difference to a patient's outcome.
During the eighteen-hour flight home, Krucoff and Crater began teasing out ideas for a study. |
Peter h. Fraser and Harry Massey
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 Cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, who combines Eastern and Western medical techniques into his surgical practice, declares that many of his heart surgery patients do better when they also learn how to meditate, use guided imagery, and receive adjunct complementary therapies such as acupuncture and foot reflexology.3 Acupuncturist Michael Wayne, in his book Quantum-Integral Medicine, argues that patients can harness their minds to ramp up their bodies' innate self-healing capabilities, so they can be their own doctors to a much larger extent than ever thought possible. |
Dawson Church
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| The effects of spiritual or religious practice and social support on people undergoing heart surgery were studied by a group of researchers from the University of Texas Medical School, led by Thomas Oxman, M.D. They discovered that those patients that were richly networked or had a strong spiritual or religious practice had only one-seventh the mortality rate of those who did not.25 These astonishing results are not an isolated instance. The effect of consciousness upon physical healing is already documented, and is being studied more and more. |
Rick Levy and Lou Aronica
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 Cardiac surgeons at Johns Hopkins have observed that their heart surgery patients tend to be people who have suffered massive losses of love in their lives. We tend to attach love issues to the heart because the heart symbolizes love in our culture. If we have lost in love, we might say, "My heart is broken." People suffering a break-up will often experience physical heart pain, and so on. Simply put, people who've experienced love loss tend to store the resulting painful emotional energy in the heart.
This described me perfectly. |
Dan Buettner
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| If someone tells you the assistant on your heart surgery is in his 90s, well, that's not a comfortable thought. But the way I see it, the cardiac surgeons who want me there to assist them can judge my ability better than I can. And when I start to do less than top-quality work, I trust them not to use me." Eventually, he won't renew his license, he added. "And a deficit in mental or physical ability may appear at any time and make the decision for me."
As I parked on the steep hill near his driveway, I spotted Wareham on his hands and knees, cleaning leaves out of the gutter in the road. |
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