Then in the 80's the number was dropped to 244, that was the gold standard for a while. That figure was harder to get to, both diet and exercise were needed by most to accomplish the task but again by and large the target was met. Again there was no drop in heart disease or in the death from heart attack figures. Instead of wondering whether they were chasing the wrong boggy man, as physicians the world over were telling US doctors, American heart health authorities stuck to their guns about cholesterol being the near do all end all of heart disease. There was even a Niteline show with Ted Koppel in the early 90's where cardiologists from around the world were gathered and asked why American's had so much heart disease! The foreign docs pounded the American experts for their dependence on cholesterol as their most important marker of heart health.

Around this same time drug companies had developed a slew of cholesterol lowering drugs called Statins. This gave even more incentive to stick to their guns about cholesterol, and the authorities lowered the target figure once again to under 200. Now most people needed drugs to get close to that figure. (Could there have been any relation between the invention of the drugs and the lowering of the cholesterol target to one that most folks couldn't meet with out the drugs? No, couldn't be that would be a conspiracy theory)! By the way these cholesterol drugs have been found to cause lower extremity nerve damage, decrease memory, increase chances of breast cancer, cause liver damage and death. (1,2). A press release about one of these drugs in December of 2003 stated that the drugs was in itself causing heart attacks!

All this silliness about cholesterol continued until the late 90's when a good number of very young, extremely fit 30 to 40 somethings dropped dead of heart attacks. Autopsy's found they had not a whit of athero sclerotic (cholesterol) plaque anywhere in their arteries! So what killed them!

Well, what these victims did have were very, very high levels of inflammation in their blood vessels. It was then that the work of a researcher who had been fired from Harvard for saying cholesterol was not the primary cause of heart attacks, was rediscovered and realized by medical world to be true. This researcher had said that vascular inflammation could close the blood vessels as tightly as athero sclerotic plaque could and bring on a heart attack. He asserted that measuring a marker for inflammation called C Reactive Protein was a better indicator of heart health then measuring cholesterol! (Later in the decade he sued Harvard for wrongfully firing him and won).

So, first and foremost we have the primary cause of heart attack, vascular inflammation. What is this and how does it set in? Vascular inflammation is a result of stress, some thing we have in abundance and something those high intensity 30 and 40 somethings who keeled over had multiplied in their lives. Those heart attack victims had been under stress since school making good grades, jumping into careers, starting and managing families, exercising or over exercising regularly (many were marathoners and tri athletes); in other words most of every second of every day was filled with activity and the rush of getting from one task to another.

In causing vascular inflammation another effect kicks in. Inflammation is a form of trauma that creates fibrosis. Yes, our old nemesis returns! When the intima, (inside wall of a blood vessel), swells they are irritated and stretched. The body reacts to this insult by weaving fibrin into the walls to strengthen what it sees as a weak point. This fibrin causes the blood vessels to lose their expandability and elasticity. This is the primary stage of hardening of the arteries. It's only in the later stages of hardening that spider webs of fibrin grow on weak points inside the lumin (hole) in the artery and on that matrix cholesterol plaque accrues and plugs up the works making matters worse. During this entire process if the stress remains the inflammation remains and the cycle continues.

So it's the inflammation that kicks off the process of hardening of the arteries and athero sclerotic plaque. The combination of the swelling and plaque closing the lumin of an artery can cause trouble. But remember it has been found that the inflammation alone may be severe enough to close off the blood vessel creating a heart attack!

Mineral deficiencies can make matters worse still by creating irregularities in the heart beat. Calcium is the electrolyte responsible for muscular contraction, magnesium is the mineral electrolyte responsible for muscular relaxation. Muscles in magnesium deficit spasm. Remember calcium = contract magnesium = relax. When the body lacks magnesium then calcium gets into the magnesium channels producing a contract signal instead of the contract - relax signal and there you have arrhythmias.

So what's a true all encompassing plan to increase heart health? Any scheme to better the health of the heart and blood vessels needs to start at the source, stress and it's resultant inflammation. I'm supposing that most folks out there have their lives so regimented that lowering the stress levels likely is not possible so we'll work from the next stage.

It goes with out saying that if you can lower your stress levels by doing less, compressing less into your day and worrying less, that should be done. But for most folks these crazy days that's much easier said than done. So, it behooves us to do the things that can be done so as not to become a statistic.

References:
1) www.mercola.com
2) Mortimer, J.E., Axelrod, R., Zimbru, K. Sentara Norfork General Hospital, Norfolk VA.: Effect of Statins on breast cancer incidence. Proc An Soc Clin Oncol, 22, page 93, 2003.