The immune system and the heart

We typically don’t think of a weak immune system as having much to do with heart health, but undetected viruses and other antigens can prey on the cardiovascular system.

Natural medicine offers the most effective treatment against viruses, compared to the prescription drug Interferon, which has caused more suicides than all other drugs combined throughout history. The goal, along with correcting the diet and digestion, is to boost the natural killer cells to combat the virus. This can be done quite nicely with a synergistic combination of botanicals.

When considering heart disease and immunity, one also needs to consider liver function. C-reactive protein (CRP) is made in the liver as a response to inflammation. If your CRP test comes back normal while other markers for atherosclerosis are present, it could be due to fatty liver, the use of multiple drugs or other issues that impair liver function.

When the liver is impaired, it simply won’t crank out the CRP like it should, and lab levels for CRP will come back normal. Likewise, statin drugs lower CRP.

Another heart culprit is the amino acid homocysteine, which destroys arterial walls and promotes atherosclerosis. Most people understand high homocysteine levels to be related to B vitamin deficiencies, but too little stomach acid and the use of estrogen creams and birth control pills can also raise homocysteine.

A lesser-known culprit is poor liver function, when the liver’s methylation pathway is not functioning. Therefore, this pathway should always be supported in conjunction with the usual homocysteine-lowering therapies. Methly-B12 and Metacrin DX both support clearing the liver’s methylation pathway.

Hormones and the heart

When we think of hormones, we typically think of the sex hormones and how clumsily they function for many people. But what most provokes atherosclerosis is a less glamorous but exceptionally touchy hormone that we tend to abuse: insulin.

After years of a high-carb, sugar-laden diet that calls on the pancreas repeatedly to flood the system with insulin, the body’s cells become insulin-resistant. This leaves excess amounts of insulin circulating through the bloodstream, leading to high blood pressure, thicker blood (which can gum up the cardiovascular system) and an increase of the enzyme activity that elevates cholesterol.

Bob Livingston

By Bob Livingston

Bob Livingston has been writing most of his adult life on matters of health, nutritional supplements, natural alternatives and social importance.

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