Combining Conventional Medicine and Natural Healing=Healthier Hearts

I'm very excited to have the opportunity to blog on the Psychology Today web site. It's a great match for me as a cardiologist who has long seen a close connection between cardiovascular health and the emotions. The blog will allow me to reach out to a new audience of health-minded readers and introduce the powerful integrative approach to cardiology that I believe can revolutionize the practice of cardiology and put a major dent in heart disease, the leading disease killer in the industrialized world.

Over more than thirty years of medical practice I've treated countless cardiac emergencies involving people only a heartbeat away from death. I've rushed into middle-of-the-night crises to perform medical heroics and I've even slept in hospital beds next to critical patients. Within a few short years of being a cardiac savoir to so many people, my ego began to inflate. I became pompous and unrealistically over-confident about my ability to make a difference.

Time, however, is a great ego vaccine. And in time, I got humble, as a result of repeatedly seeing the same patients at those emergency room doors in crisis after crisis despite all my best efforts. I finally "got it." I might be able to rescue people from the brink, but I was clueless about how to keep them healthy so they wouldn't have to go through it all over again. I could get the heart back on track. I just couldn't heal it.
In 1978, I had a career-altering conversation with an amazing Dutch petroleum chemist named Jacob Rinse who'd managed to "cure" his arterial disease, so he claimed, with lecithin, vitamin E, magnesium, and other nutrients. I was led to him by a patient, and did she ever alter the course of my career by suggesting I speak to him! At first his claims seemed preposterous, but thankfully I kept listening. I soon realized that Rinse knew more about the chemistry of heart disease than I did!

The conversation aroused my curiosity and touched that still, subconscious place inside of me that knew I needed to "think outside the box." Slowly, I began looking beyond the limitations of my drug-and surgery-oriented medical training to improve the arterial health of patients and address the underlying causes of their heart disease.

After several years of investigating the connection between toxic stress, emotions, and the heart, my attention expanded to include the bright new world of nutrition and the therapeutic promise of vitamins and minerals. My research turned up ever-increasing evidence and wind in my sails that pushed me into a new direction unknown to most cardiologists.
Slowly I started recommending supplements, starting with vitamins E and C and lecithin. Then I started talking up exercise and diet to patients with renewed enthusiasm. I soon observed speedier recoveries and dramatically improved health, often among the sickest patients for whom I had run out of all conventional options. I quickly became a believer, and for decades now I've been using an ever-growing arsenal of nutraceuticals in my medical practice-such as fish oil, CoQ10, carnitine, magnesium, and ribose-as a core strategy for achieving optimum cardiovascular health. Integration means using the best of both conventional medicine and natural healing. I bank on both to benefit my patients the most. To me that's smart medicine.

The results have been fantastic. I was once the top patient admitter to my hospital-and proud of it. Now, I rarely admit a patient to the hospital. Instead, I have learned how to keep my patients healthy and maximize the production of energy in their hard working (as in: around the clock, no time off) heart cells and throughout the body.

I lecture a good deal-to both lay people and doctors-about how to use conventional and natural healing for preventing and reversing arterial inflammation, the big hit man of cardiovascular disease. I take odds with the current cholesterol obsession and strongly believe there are much more troubling risk factors to consider than cholesterol, which is, by the way, an essential substance in the body's normal operations. Your sex hormones, for instance, are made from cholesterol. Instead of worrying about some cholesterol number that may mean very little, I believe we should be really concerned about the excess dietary sugar we eat, getting our stress under control, and getting enough physical activity.
In the coming blogs I will share the exciting concepts of integrative cardiology as well as practical recommendations-and in the process hopefully expand your cardiac consciousness.