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Atherosclerosis is fat build-up in the arteries and its sequelae include heart attacks, strokes, and painful limbs (intermittent claudication). They are some of the most easily, efficiently, and effectively treated diseases by innovative naturopathic medicine.
I’ve written a few times before on how the naturopathic treatments of chelation therapy, ozone and ultraviolet blood irradiation, and exercise can tremendously effect positive change in patients who have this type of artery disease. One article describes how the cox-2 painkillers may have triggered more heart attacks, and how underlying nutritional imbalances could have contributed (http://www.pannaturopathic.com/cardiovasc.html). Elsewhere, I talked about a newer therapy that involved the infusion through an IV line of an essential fatty acid called phosphatidyl choline (http://www.pannaturopathic.com/updatedcardio.html). This particular treatment is aimed at directly lowering the plaque obstructions in all the arteries throughout the body by replacing stiff, old fats in the artery wall with flexible healthy lipids. And finally, I wrote for my colleagues a more technical summary of my approach to cardiovascular disease in Naturopathic Doctor News and Review, http://www.pannaturopathic.com/ndnr_cardio.pdf. Below, I’d like to talk about assessing how we know these therapies are working at a fundamental level for our patients at risk and for our patients with actual heart and artery disease. Note: chelation therapy plays a large part in treatment of the below risk factors, and a good description of it can be found at this link http://www.arthritistrust.org/Articles/Chelation%20Therapy.pdf .
I’ve chosen this topic largely because our partnership with a different lab has allowed us to offer a panel of tests that have cost previously about $750, for the current cost of just over $350 CAD. It sounds a bit expensive for heart and artery disease screening, since most Canadians are used to the standard cholesterol panel to play the main part in their testing. The problem is, conventional medicine is testing for disease, whereas naturopathic medicine is testing for disease and screening for interventions that optimize health. You can’t really have optimal health and disease at the same time, so doing all you can to optimize specific factors of health (such as nutrition, detoxification) will go far in reversing a disease (and preventing the heart attack and stroke end-points).
The standard cholesterol panel, including total cholesterol, HDL (good cholesterol), LDL (bad cholesterol), and triglycerides is undoubtedly useful. It provides a baseline from which we can strive for improvements. Importantly in conventional medicine, it is used to assess who is a good candidate for cholesterol-lowering drug therapy. We run it in our baseline assessment not because we will use any natural or synthetic drugs to lower it, but because we want to see if we can lower it with natural detoxification treatments as described in the above linked articles. By far the more important tests are below, as many can be considered independent risk factors for heart attacks or strokes, regardless of cholesterol level, or smoking status.
Lipoprotein a, or Lp(a), is in the profile because of its strong association with the actual formation of the fatty occlusion present in diseased arteries. It seems to be a hereditary factor, and may be part of the missing link as to why a seemingly healthy person will have a heart attack. Up to 40% of heart attacks are not easily linked to environmental factors such as diet, lifestyle, smoking, or cholesterol. Lp(a) is associated with none of the previous risk factors, but it most definitely is associated with higher heart attacks. The researchers Doetch, Roheim, and Thompson have stated that it is the most important of the inherited risk factors for heart disease. If found to be elevated, the detoxification, chelation, and oxidative therapies can usually lower it significantly. In fact, more detailed research has shown that Lp(a) may interfere with a chemical called transforming growth factor beta, and ozone therapy can negate this effect by directly raising this chemical, allowing for a healthier artery wall.
Highly sensitive c-reactive protein is a marker of inflammation. Inflammation may be the most important component of cardiovascular disease, and both ozone therapy (by decreasing the body burden of latent, hidden infections) and chelation (by decreasing heavy metals) will lower it. One study showed that men with the highest crp had three times the risk of heart attack. While it is not always positive in cases where inflammation is important, it serves as an objective marker that can show us that chelation and ozone therapy is working.
Homocysteine is measured as this chemical acts as a scouring pad within the arteries, damaging the smooth lining of the arteries and creating inflammation with plaque build-up. Once again, a high homocysteine was associated with a three-fold increase in risk of heart attack. The use of the high doses of intravenous B-vitamins in the chelation treatment very effectively lower the homocysteine.
Fibrinogen is extremely important as its elevation in the blood stream indicates a blood that is more viscous or thick. This increase viscosity makes the blood more difficult to pump, and thus it does not oxygenate tissues as efficiently. Furthermore, some research indicates that elevated fibrinogen may be the trigger that makes cholesterol in the blood become plaque, and thus it becomes extremely important to assess and lower if cholesterol is high. The ozone therapy or ultraviolet blood irradiation usually effectively lowers this fibrinogen.
Ferritin is measured, and the females reading this may recognize this as a test that is usually done to assess iron stores. Ferritin is also what we call an “acute phase reactant” – something that is elevated in inflammation. We do know that elevated ferritin may be associated independently with increased cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes, but the mechanism is unknown. Many doctors believe the elevated risk associated with a high ferritin has to do with too much iron being in the blood, with subsequent uncontrolled inflammation in the blood vessels. Ferritin can be lowered effectively with chelation therapy. It remains to be seem if ferritin can be lowered by ozone therapy alone. If the elevated ferritin was due to inflammation, it conceivably would be lowered by ozone alone, but if it is due to high iron in the blood, then chelation is the effective treatment. Either way, in treating our cardiovascular patients, we do both.
Fasting glucose and insulin is done to assess for metabolic syndromes that can contribute to cardiovascular disease. In fact, usually we can tell from measuring the waist to hip ratio who is at risk for having problems in this department, as a big abdomen (fat concentrated around the belly) indicates a risk of high amounts of fatty plaque in the arteries. This is usually also considered a pre-diabetic risk factor. If these are elevated, or if there is a concentration of fat around the abdomen, diet and exercise become important as well as ozone therapy. Ozone therapy works at the fundamental problem in metabolic syndrome of the cells being unable to efficiently utilize sugar for energy, and the diet/exercise supports this treatment. In fact, this triad of treatments is the program that we use for diabetics who want to lower their fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C, and it is just as useful in preventing and treating heart and artery disease.
Quite a bit of information about lab tests, but I find that it’s important for patients to understand that naturopathic treatments are aimed not only at treating specific disease markers (such as an aspirin for platelets, a beta blocker or water pill for high blood pressure, and a statin for cholesterol) but instead are non-specific treatments that fundamentally address underlying disease processes. Thus, the fundamental treatments of detoxification (chelation therapy), nutritional therapy (diet and the nutritional agents in the chelation bag), and stimulatory therapy (stimulation of the immune system, oxygen delivery, and energy generation with ozone therapy) have the potential to address every single one of the above lab markers.
Thus, unlike testing for cholesterol and then giving a drug, measuring blood pressure and then giving a different drug, measuring blood sugar and then giving yet another drug, the goal of our cardiovascular program is to identify a baseline so that our triad of therapies using chelation, nutrition, and ozone, can be followed and ensured to be effective.
