Excerpts from No More Heart Disease – How Nitric Oxide Can Prevent – Even Reverse – Heart Attacks and Strokes – by Dr. Louis J. Ignarro, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998 for his discovery of the importance of Nitric Oxide to the cardiovascular system.
If cardiovascular health is your goal, increased Nitric Oxide needs to be on the front lines of your heart-healthy program. Many heart attacks and strokes are preventable. You can put a stop to the progression of cardiovascular disease even if you already have it.
Cardiovascular disease includes: hypertension (high blood pressure), coronary heart disease, angina pectoris, and stroke. If you are taking medication for any of these you have heart disease!
High blood pressure (a reading of 140/90 or more) is a silent disease. It can injure the endothelial cells and cause other physiological damage without any outward signs.
When your body is producing healthy levels of Nitric Oxide, your risk of plaque formation and atherosclerosis is reduced.
By lowering the risk of blood clots, Nitric Oxide can decrease the chance of a heart attack or stroke.
Reduce your levels of stress, anxiety, loneliness and depression. We do know that these emotions can cause blood vessels to constrict through compromised Nitric Oxide production, increasing the likelihood of cardiovascular disease and heart attack. If any of the conditions becomes chronic, then your supply of Nitric Oxide will steadily diminish.
Many sufferers from chronic stress, involuntary solitude, and sadness tend to try to lift their spirits by self-medicating with mood elevators – from tranquilizers to martinis to caffeine. These techniques are detrimental since a temporary high tends to produce an emotional hangover, leaving people even more unhappy than they were before.
If your doctor finds you are already suffering from cardiovascular disease or a prime candidate, she/he might recommend a number of treatments: a statin drug to reduce your cholesterol level or a diuretic or a beta-blocker medication for your blood pressure, an angioplasty procedure, a coronary artery bypass. All these approaches have a downside as well: angioplasty may be temporary with a high rate of narrowing; bypass surgery has varying rates of success.
Most doctors overlook Nitric Oxide, a critical health-promoting strategy.
If you are 15 – 20% heavier than your doctor says you should be, then your excess fat is stressing your heart and blood vessels. Your endothelial Nitric Oxide production is diminished, and your susceptibility to a host of diseases is increased.
Nitric Oxide: The Body’s Natural Cardiovascular Wonder Drug
Nitric Oxide helps preserve the elasticity of all the vessels, because it is a “signaling molecule” that tells the blood vessels to increase in width or dilate. Repairing the damage wrought by cardiovascular disease without risky and often ineffective surgery had long been considered impossible. I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for making that thinking obsolete. Now we know we can reverse cardiovascular impairment naturally – with the body’s internally manufactured “wonder drug,” Nitric Oxide.
For more information contact Joy Matwyshen
Phone: 352-427-5440
