Cardiovascular Health Archives - Dan Hammer Health LTD

Eliminating Heart Disease Naturally Thru Nitric Oxide Therapy

Archive for Cardiovascular Health

Combining Walnuts and Pecans for Heart Health

Posted by Dan Hammer //

06/15/2020

When it comes to heart health, combining walnuts and pecans can be a winning team. Most of the positive press associated with using nuts for heart health goes to walnuts. But pecans can also be a positive force for good cardiovascular health.

To start our discussion I’d like to do a nutritional comparison of these two nuts. And I’m going to use information from Dr. Edward Group of Global Healing.. Below is his table comparing one ounce of walnuts to one ounce of pecans:

https://globalhealing.com/natural-health/pecans-vs-walnuts/

Nutrient	Walnuts (14 halves)	Pecans (19 halves)
Water	1.15g	1g
Calories	185kcal	196kcal
Protein	4.32g	2.6g
Total Fat	18.49g	20.4g
Carbohydrates	3.89g	3.93g
Fiber	1.9g	2.7g
Sugars	0.74g	1.13g
Minerals
Calcium, Ca	28mg	20mg
Iron, Fe	0.82mg	0.72mg
Magnesium, Mg	45mg	34mg
Phosphorus, P	98mg	79mg
Potassium, K	125mg	116mg
Sodium, Na	1mg	0mg
Zinc, Zn	0.88mg	1.28mg
Vitamins
Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid	0.4mg	0.3mg
Thiamin	0.097mg	0.187mg
Riboflavin	0.043mg	0.037mg
Niacin	0.319mg	0.331mg
Vitamin B-6	0.152mg	0.06mg
Folate, DFE	28µg	6µg
Vitamin B12	0µg	0µg
Vitamin A, RAE	0µg	1µg
Vitamin A, IU	6IU	16IU
Vitamin E	0.2mg	0.4mg
Vitamin D (D2 + D3)	0µg	0µg
Vitamin D	0IU	0IU
Vitamin K	0.8µg	1µg
Lipids
Fatty acids, total saturated	1.737g	1.752g
Fatty acids, total monounsaturated	2.533g	11.567g
Fatty acids, total polyunsaturated	13.374g	6.128g
Cholesterol	0mg	0mg
Caffeine	0mg	0mg

Combining Walnuts and Pecans For a Healthy Snack

The key to helping people improve their health is to find healthy snacks that will fuel their body with good nutritional calories.

One ounce of either walnuts or pecans is under 200 calories. This is good.

What makes them a better choice than potato chips is that they will satisfy your hunger and hold your appetite for a longer period of time. And the reason why is their combination of protein and fiber with healthy fats. Read More →

Vitamin D and Heart Health

Posted by Dan Hammer //

05/15/2020

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about CoVid19 and Vitamin D Deficiency. Today I want to focus on vitamin D and heart health.

Additional studies are showing how optimizing your vitamin D intake can help to prevent both heart disease and stroke. And it seems to do this by:

Improving endothelial function
Reducing arterial stiffening

Vitamin D does this by increasing your endothelium’s ability to create nitric oxide. Nitric oxide dilates your blood vessels to improved blood flow.

Additionally, vitamin D helps to decrease the destructive chemical compound called peroxynitrite, which can cause inflammation that leads to arterial stiffness.

Researchers at the Nanomedical Research Laboratory at Ohio University conducted a study that examined this relationship between nitric oxide and peroxynitrite. For simplicity, please remember the following:

Nitric oxide is good
Peroxynitrite is bad

In their study, the researcher introduced a human hormone called angiotensin-II. This hormone causes endothelial dysfunction. The result was a decrease in nitric oxide and an increase in peroxynitrite.

When vitamin D3 was introduced, this was significantly reversed. There was a 10 fold increase in nitric oxide and a 10 fold decrease in peroxynitrite.

This study suggests that by maintaining normal levels of vitamin D in your blood stream, you can help to maintain normal endothelial function. This helps your body to properly produce nitric oxide for improved blood flow.

And, normal levels of vitamin D help to prevent the destructive peroxynitrite, which can cause vascular inflammation that leads to arterial stiffness.

So the question becomes:

How much vitamin D to you need to take to see a benefit? Read More →

Blueberry Polyphenols Reduce Heart Disease

Posted by Dan Hammer //

04/22/2020

Several recent studies have shown how blueberry polyphenols reduce heart disease risk factors. Specifically these polyphenols inhibit the formation of foam cells that lead to atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of fatty deposits called plaque that narrows the arterial wall. The vast majority of heart disease is associated with this process. In fact, here is a simple overview of what happens:

The process starts when monocytes (a type of white blood cell) adheres to the endothelial cells that line your arterial walls.
These monocytes invade this one cell thick lining and develop into macrophages.
Macrophages are used by your body to engulf oxidized LDL cholesterol.
The accumulation of oxidized LDL particles in the macrophages form foam cells.
Foam cells then stimulate the body to produce smooth muscle cells and excess connective tissue, which leads to the narrowing of the inside of the artery or atherosclerosis.

If these foam cells are stable, then the risk for a stroke or heart attack is lower. But if these foam cells are inflamed, then the risk for a heart attack or stroke is significantly increased.

Given the above progression, there are two key points to stop the formation of plaque. One is to prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. This is where a diet high in antioxidants can play a major role.

And blueberries are high in antioxidants.

The second area is were the polyphenols come in. Blueberries are rich in two types of polyphenols: Read More →

5 Fun Facts You Should Know About Your Heart

Posted by Dan Hammer //

03/01/2020

Your heart is located just to the left of center of your chest area. It’s why when you say the Pledge of Allegiance you place your right hand over this area of your chest. Some consider your heart muscle the strongest muscle in your body because of the lifetime of work it does to keep you alive. Which brings us to our first fun fact.

Fun Fact #1 – Your heart will beat about 115,000 times each day. In the United States the average life expectancy is 80 years. This means your heart will beat approximately 42 million times per year. And if you multiply this by 80, then your heart will beat about 3.36 TRILLION times in your lifetime.

Fun Fact #2 – A women’s heart beats slightly faster than a man’s heart. Because of this some might say that a women’s heart is stronger than a man’s heart. And does even more work than a man.

Now that we’ve established the amount of work your heart is going to do in your lifetime, let’s look at its primary purpose. That purpose is to circulate your blood, which carries oxygen and needed nutrients to every part of your body.

Fun Fact #3 – Your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood every day. This means your heart pumps approximately 730,000 gallons per year. Which is 58.4 million gallons in your lifetime. That’s a lot but it’s even more impressive when you understand that a gallon of blood weight 8.72 pounds. This means your heart moves 509 million pounds or 255 tons of blood during your lifetime.

Yes ladies, if we apply Fun Fact #2, then your heart does even more work than those lazy men. This gets even better when you add in the next fun fact. Read More →

NO More Heart Disease Book Review

Posted by Dan Hammer //

02/08/2020

The book NO More Heart Disease by Nobel Laureate in Medicine Dr. Louis J. Ignarro was key to helping me understand the power and effectiveness of nitric oxide therapy.

Back in 2008 I first came upon this concept of using nitric oxide to improve blood flow.

While my background is exercise physiology, I had never heard of what has become know as “The Miracle Molecule.”

I had been told that nitric oxide would help me improve my workouts and athletic performance. At that time I still played competitive indoor soccer at the age of 55. He was in a men’s over 40 league. And when I consistently used ingredients that would help me optimize my nitric oxide production, what I experienced was greater endurance on the soccer court.

More importantly I didn’t have soreness the next day after a competitive match.

I then got my wife to address her high blood pressure with nitric oxide. Prior to taking ingredients that would help optimize this Miracle Molecule, her blood pressure averaged 160 over 90. Within one week her blood pressure lowered to 112 over 68 and has been at this level ever since.

My experience, and the experience of my wife, prompted me to learn about this remarkable molecule for vascular health.

Enter NO More Heart Disease

The book that was recommended to me (and I recommend it to you) was Dr. Ignarro’s book called NO More Heart Disease. It was originally published in 2005 but I feel it is still the best book written to date to help people understand how significant this molecule is to their health.

In fact, Dr. Ignarro makes no bones about it. He firmly believes nitric oxide is key to your health.

If you look at the cover of his book, then you will see the subtitle, which states: Read More →

Bergamot Extract Lowers Cholesterol

Posted by Dan Hammer //

12/08/2019

Today I want to introduce you to a natural way to address cholesterol concerns by highlighting how bergamot extract lowers cholesterol. And without side effects.

In most cases the medical community will recommend taking a statin drug to lower a person’s cholesterol. And while statin drugs are very effective in doing this, they can have some significant side effects such as:

Statins reduce CoQ10, which is needed for energy production in every cell, especially the heart. There is a direct link to an increase in congestive heart failure with the increase use of statins.
Statins reduce vitamin K2, which your body uses to regulate calcium levels in the vascular system. As vitamin K2 decreases the potential for vascular calcification increases.
Statins reduce ketone production, which can then accelerate the aging process.
Increased risk for cancer: Breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.
Increased risk for diabetes.
Muscular issues like pain and muscle wasting.
Increased risk for cataracts.

In today’s medical world cholesterol has become the enemy. Yet healthy cholesterol levels are key to good health.

Why?

Because cholesterol is need for proper cell membrane integrity. In fact, without cholesterol you would just be a pool of living matter, instead of an upright thinking human being.

Cholesterol is also essential for your brain, which contains about 25 percent of the cholesterol in your body. It’s critical for synapse formation, i.e. the connections between your neurons, which allow you to think, learn new things, and form memories. So perhaps it’s not surprising that memory loss is widely reported in association with statin use. Read More →

To Stent Or Not To Stent

Posted by Dan Hammer //

11/22/2019

To stent or not to stent has recently become public news with the release of the ISCHEMIA study. This study has create headlines like this one from The Washington Post:

“Stents and bypass surgery are no more effective than drugs for stable heart disease, highly anticipated trial results show”

or this headline from CBS News:

“Medication and lifestyle changes could be as effective as surgery for heart disease, trail finds”

This newly released trial was led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Stanford University. They looked at over 5,000 patients who had heart blockages but were stable. And what they found can be summarized as follows:

Placing a stent in a patient with stable blockages could improve a patient’s quality of life by reducing their symptoms like chest pain.
But when compared to taking medications or implementing lifestyle changes, stenting didn’t lower their risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Needless to say this study has caused a significant reaction in the medical community. According to Harvard Medical School “about 600,000 people in the United States undergo an angioplasty to widen a narrowed coronary artery, nearly always with a tiny wire mesh tube (stent) left inside the artery to keep it open.”

This is not an inexpensive procedure.

To Stent or Not To Stent – The Numbers

The average cost for this procedure (angioplasty with the placement of a stent) is around $29,000.

This means that this medical procedure is a 17.4 billion dollar industry. It’s a major income stream for both interventional cardiologist and hospitals.

In response to the release of this study Elliot Antman, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital made the following statement:

“The ISCHEMIA trial shows that an early invasive approach does not protect patients against death or the overall chance of a heart attack, but does effectively relieve chest pain – the more chest pain a patient has, the more likely they are to benefit.”

Now before we demonize interventional cardiologist and hospitals it’s important to note the following key words that apply to this trial:

“. . .who had heart blockages but were stable.”

Stable heart blockages is the key piece of information.

Going back to the Harvard Medical School they estimate that approximately “two-thirds of these procedures are done in people experiencing a potentially life-threatening event – a heart attack or unstable angina, defined as severe, worsening chest pain during exertion or stress, or chest pain that happens at rest.”

One-third of 600,000 is 198,000 people who might find other alternatives like medications and lifestyle changes to be as effective as stenting in keeping themselves alive. That could be a 5.7 billion dollar savings per year.

To Sent or Not To Sent – What is Stable Heart Blockages

Most vascular blockages are due to a process called atherosclerosis. This usually starts with very low density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol) being oxidized by free radicals. This creates inflammation and damage to the endothelium resulting in plaque formation. Over time this plaque continues to grow, which narrows the inside of the artery.

There is usually a fibrous cap to this plaque. This fibrous cap provides structure to the plaque.

However, unstable plaque or vulnerable plaque has a thin fibrous cap usually formed from a collection of white blood cells and lipids like bad cholesterol. And if free radical damage is continuing to occur, then the resulting inflammation makes this cap even more vulnerable for a rupture.

This rupture can then form a blood clot, or release cellular debris, that can then lead to a blockage resulting in a heart attack or stroke. If you remember Tim Russert from Meet The Press, then his heart attack and death would be a good example of this process.

There are certain biomarkers that can help you and your physician determine the increased probability of plaque being unstable. They are:

c-Reactive Protein

Oxidized LDL

Both of these are due to inflammation. Oxidized LDL is usually due to free radical damage.

Which gives a strong clue to lifestyle changes that can address this. One lifestyle change would be to significantly increase your intake of fruits, vegetables, and herbal extracts that are powerful antioxidants.

As well as eliminating as many omega 6 fatty acids from your diet and replacing them with omega 3 fatty acids.

Sugar and highly processed foods also contribute to vascular inflammation.

These 3 lifestyle changes can significantly improve your health while reducing the potential for oxidized LDL and vascular inflammation. All of which can help to stabilize any plaque in the vascular system.

And as I’ve share multiple times in previous articles, nitric oxide therapy can help to vasodilate the vascular system for improved blood flow. This would then help those who are experiencing chest pain and angina.

Blessing Lives Through Nitric Oxide Therapy!

Dan Hammer

Avocados Lower Bad Cholesterol

Posted by Dan Hammer //

11/08/2019

The recent headline about how avocados lower bad cholesterol caught my attention. And the reason why is that the key to vascular health is addressing inflammation.

Vascular inflammation typically leads to plaque formation. This can significantly increase your potential for a heart attack or stroke.

Anything you can do to prevent vascular inflammation can help to reduce your risk for strokes and heart attacks.

One of the key contributors to vascular inflammation is bad cholesterol, which the medical community labels as LDL or Low Density Lipoprotein.

But the real cause of vascular inflammation is not LDL but oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and small, dense LDL particles.

By itself LDL does not damage the lining of your vascular system. What is call the endothelium.

Unfortunately, dietary choices create the environment for what are called free radicals. These are unstable molecules that are missing an electron in their outer orbit. To stabilize themselves they steal an electron from another molecule.

This process than creates another free radical, which continues this process until eventually damage is done to your cellular tissues. The result is inflammation.

In a recent 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the participants who ate one avocado per day, while following a moderate-fat diet, had an average 13.5 mg/dl drop in bad or LDL cholesterol.

Avocados Lower Bad Cholesterol

Penn State University just released information to support how avocados lower bad cholesterol. Read More →

Can Drinking Water Lower Your A1C

Posted by Dan Hammer //

11/01/2019

One of my clients prompted me to research this question: Can drinking water lower your A1C?

Now before I let you know what I found let’s set the stage by defining the term “A1C.”

Your A1C is determined by a blood test that provides an estimated average of what your blood sugar level has been over the past 2-3 months. In the medical community this term A1C is also referred to has Hemoglobin A1C, HbA1C, or glycated hemoglobin.

Hemoglobin is the protein in your red blood cell that carries oxygen.

Glycated means that sugar in your blood stream has attached itself to the hemoglobin of your red blood cell.

This means that your A1C measures how much of your red blood cells have sugar attached to them. If your A1C test result is 7%, then 7% of your red blood cells have sugar attached to them.

And this score become a baseline measurement in helping to determine if you have diabetes, which is having too much sugar in your blood stream.

There are other blood tests and methods to determine if your blood sugar levels are too high. The following chart provides context to these measurements and methods and how they are reflected in determining if you have diabetes:

As you can see by the above chart you would want your A1C score to be as close to 5 as possible. Once you’re above 6 you’re considered to be prediabetic and 6.5 or higher diabetic.

Which now brings us back to my client’s question: Can Drinking Water Lower Your A1C? Read More →

Dangers of Belly Fat

Posted by Dan Hammer //

09/01/2019

Several new research studies now clearly show the dangers of belly fat. Belly fat is not the same as the subcutaneous fat that pads our thighs, buttocks, and upper arms. While this fat might be less than pleasant to look it, it doesn’t present any health issues.

But belly fat is different. Sometimes called visceral fat, this is the fat that accumulates beneath the abdominal wall and around your abdominal organs. It is metabolically active. And it acts like an endocrine organ secreting hormones and other chemicals that are now clearly linked to a wide range of health issues.

One such “hormone” is retinol-binding protein 4 or RBP4, which contributes to insulin resistance that can lead to Type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. Belly fat also secretes these harmful substances:

Angiotensinogen – Which raises blood pressure.

Resistin – Which leads to high blood sugar levels.

Adiponectin – Which slows the metabolization of lipids and glucose.

Interleukin 6 – Which is associated with inflammation of arteries and heart attacks.

All contributing to a series of health issues called Metabolic Syndrome.

Currently, the adult obesity rate in America now exceeds 35% in seven states, 30% in 29 states, and 25% in 48 states. When you add overweight statistics to the mix, approximately 67% of America is now overweight or obese.

This means that for every 100 people you meet today, almost 70 of them will be either overweight or obese.

And if you want to know if you are a candidate for the dangers of belly fat, then get out a soft tape to measure your girth. The easiest way to measure this is find your belly button and take your measurement.

For women if your measurement is 35 inches or more, then you are carrying potentially dangerous belly fat. For men the measurement is 40 inches or more. Read More →