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Eating foods high in trans fats can lead to coronary heart disease. Too much salt can increase blood pressure meaning your heart has to work harder to push the blood through your veins and arteries. Smoking has a negative impact on your heart. Smoking increases your heart rate and narrows your blood vessels. The carbon monoxide in smoke decreases the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. Exercise makes your heart pump harder for short periods of time which helps to strengthen the muscle and increase its efficiency.
By blocking these two mechanisms, statins’ cardioprotective effect can be explained. Please note that both mechanisms are cholesterol independent confirming the experimental data that statins have such an effect equally to people with low or high blood cholesterol.
Maybe you don’t even know that your blood pressure is high because normally you can’t feel it. Some feel a slight headache but most people don’t feel anything. Go to a doctor or pharmacy and get your blood pressure measured.
Beer anyone?: Although it is not recommended to start up drinking if its not something you already do, alcohol has been proven to raise HDL ‘good’ cholesterol levels by 10% with 1 or 2 drinks a day.
Next I saw a gastroenterologist who was convinced I had SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth). He prescribed Xyfaxan, an antibiotic that targets bacteria in the intestine in order to restore proper balance and cease pain caused by spasms of the gut. I did several series of this antibiotic over the next months. The third, pulling out all stops, was for three weeks.
Where’s all the gas coming from? If it’s acid reflux, Advanced CardioRX Reviews GERD and/or IBS, why doesn’t elimination of the usual culprits – gluten, dairy products, chocolate, wheat, red meat and alcohol – make a difference? If it’s SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), why aren’t the antibiotics working?
Time to ask the big question. But before I do, I’d like to make a qualifying statement. Even though it’s clear to me, after the fact, that my doctor’s lack of insight endangered my life, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not blaming my doctors for missing my diagnosis. I’m grateful for their continued concern and, ultimately, thankful for to their expertise. As I said, they saved my life. But why didn’t the absence of a source for the relentless distress I was experiencing arouse a sense of urgency in my doctors?
Though I’d seen the cardiologist initially in January, his response was routine. My internist, who I saw often, first in December and last in June, mentioned in passing “if you’d like to move your appointment (for the stress echo) up from August, you probably could.” I took that to mean the stress-echo was one more elimination test.
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