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Stroke or Heart Attack: Recovery & Prevention

Heart Attack and Stroke prevention share many protocols and therapies. The following information is for patients of either a Heart Attack or Stroke. If you had a Heart Attack, or have been diagnosed with peripheral or coronary heart disease, your cardiologist informed you that you are at a higher risk of a stroke. If you had a stroke or TCIA your neurologist informed you that managing your heart function is necessary for the prevention of stroke. Hence, both conditions require managed care that is inclusive of the other risk factors.

NOTE: If you have disabilities from a stroke read New Therapies for Stroke & TBI Rehab and watch the video. Learn about Van’s innovative treatments that can assist the recovery of your abilities not provided within conventional rehabilitation. The results can be beyond belief.

Returning home after a Heart Attack or a Stroke can be frightening – you never once before had thought it could happen to you and now your wondering when it will happen again. In a few days it really hits you that you have survived…your life could have ended or you could have been more severely disabled. Over a few weeks it slowly sets in that you were not the healthy invincible person you thought you were and now ponder what happened or what did you do that compromised your body such that it landed you in the hospital with your life being rescued by others? Then the really big message registers – Now is time to change – BUT what do you REALLY have to do so you know you can prevent this for happening again?

Van Harding’s services support your recovery and the prevention of a Heart Attack and/or Stroke by correcting your physiological functions through lifestyle and diet. His goal is to dial you into your ideal parameters and keep you there. He’ll work with your general physician, cardiologist, neurologist and/or therapist to support all of your care. He’ll provide Routine acupuncture, herbs and/or nutraceutical supplements that improve the following conditions and reduce the amounts of various medications:

       – Resolve anemia, arrhythmias and angina
       – Increase circulation to regions of the brain and heart
       – Reduce your cholesterol, triglycerides, lipids
       – Stabilize blood pressure and reduce Hypertension
       – Reduce blood coagulation
       – Reduce brain blood vessel spasms (TIA’s and Headaches)
       – Reduce Stress, balance emotions and induce relaxation

Your recovery and prevention are also dependent upon managing your emotions. A recent study published March 3, 2014 in the European Heart Journal that references studies from Harvard Medical School (July 2013) concluded the following There is a higher risk of cardiovascular events shortly after outbursts of anger… An angry outburst can increase the risk of developing a heart attack in the next two hours between 2.4 – 7.3 times higher than usual. The risk of developing stroke increased between 1.7 – 7.6 times.”

Read from that study’s abstract:
Outburst of anger as a trigger of acute cardiovascular events: a systemic review and meta-analysis Elizabeth Mostofsky MPh ScD, Elizabeth Anne Penner, Murray A. Mittleman

Are You At Risk?  Read These Questionnaires

Contact Van if any of the following apply to you?
– Are you seeking to regain that confidence and restoration of your abilities and activities?
– Do you want to awaken each morning with the peace and confidence that your health is good and you can trust your circumstances based upon medical facts?
– Are your medication’s side effects causing you discomfort or reduced abilities?
– Are you wondering why did your heart function, blood vessels and/or blood pressure physiology change? What changed from 10 years ago when you did not need a medication? Is  your heart or blood vessels’ condition truly caused by aging or is your diet, nutrition, life style or stress causing it?

If you are asking those questions, you are not alone and there are answers. The most common statement by cardiologist about prevention of most cases is that “from this point forward the bulk of your recovery will be through the changes you make to your diet, life style and manage your stress” – Cleveland Clinic. It is important to understand that your medications are necessary to manage your condition in the acute phase and early stages of recovery – they are stabilizing your condition because your correct physiology is not able to do the job. Today, your #1 priority is to re-establish your correct physiology so you can prevent a reoccurrence. It is a myth that as we age we have to have medications. The facts are that we have not been supporting our physiology, allowing ourselves to enter decline and the result is a dysfunction to normal physiology causing  hypertension,  inflammation that damages the blood vessel, compensatory elevation of cholesterol, alteration of the heart muscles’ physiology that causes a heart attack or stroke.

No one has a deficiency of a medication like a ‘statin’ but they do have inflammation that elevates cholesterol. No one has a deficiency of a ‘calcium channel blocker’ medication to control their heart (arrhythmia) but they do have alter heart muscle and heart electrical activity sometimes due to poor nutrient balance. No one has a deficiency of an ‘antihypertensive medication’ but they do have a hyper-excitable nervous system due to nutrient deficiencies that control blood vessels and/or a lack of stress/emotional management or dozens of other nutritional and life style factors which are not healthy.

The above is good news because it is within your control by your day to day choices to require medication or not. Through Van’s detailed assessment of your case he’ll develop your treatment protocol to address those physiological mechanisms that landed you in hospital using only natural substances and therapies. By returning those mechanisms to the correct physiological function many symptoms are eliminated and then there might no longer be a medical reason for some if not all of your medications. The best part is that we may have gotten to the root cause of your heart attack and/or stroke and thus truly will be able to prevent another event.

You can preview the depth and breathe of your case review by by reading patient history questionnaire in the New Patient Intake Packet for Heart Attack & Stroke: Recovery and Prevention.

There are no silver bullets and there’s not just a few things to be done to restore your health and the journey is not completed in a few days. It will take months to fully implement your new life style and diet. There is a saying that goes “It is fun to get sick and it is not fun to get healthy!”   The take away meaning is that it is not pleasurable to give-up those ‘things’ that undermined your health.  It is hard work and exceptional discipline to do what is necessary to regain your health. To quote Van Harding “Doing whatever is necessary to restore health is a tiny price to pay for the peace of mind knowing that you have your life back…then you and you loved ones can experience joy.”

Your protocol may include the following:

Lower & Manage blood cholesterol, triglycerides
Manage blood pressure
Tightly manage diabetes
Weight loss and weight management
Stress & emotions management
Smoking cessation for those who are smokers
Eliminating substance abuse (prescription and/or recreational)
Compulsive behavior management
Diet and menu education
Classes in cooking, meditation and/or Qi Gong
Manage gynecological, prostate and metabolic disorders which commonly are intertwined
with heart and stroke physiology.
Manage autoimmune conditions, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Hashimoto’s and ongoing
inflammation.
Management of chronic pain

Schedule an Introductory Acupuncture Session and experience first hand the efficacy of stress and blood pressure reduction, increased relaxation and mood enhancement by acupuncture. 

Self Education
Reading the following books does not replace the necessity of working with a healthcare provider, yet they are excellent resources of self empowerment for your
Heart Attack or Stroke: Recovery and Prevention.

Learn what the conventional treatments and rehabilitation are NOT providing to you. These books are written for the general public and provide you the science to understand the how important it is for you to go beyond the conventional treatments and care. These books are excellent reading for any heart disease or brain based neurological disease, injury or disorder.

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Heart Disease Mark Houston M.D., M.S., F.A.C.P., F.A.H.A., F.A.S.H., F.A.C.N., Director, Hypertension Institute, Saint Thomas Hospital, Nashville, TN.
Coronary heart disease has long been the number one killer in this country, and for decades, we have been told about five basic risk factors: elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and smoking. But the truth is that heart disease is much more complex– with close to 400 risk factors!

In this innovative guide, Dr. Mark Houston helps readers discover the causes of heart disease, how to prevent and treat its debilitating effects via nutrition, nutritional supplements, exercise, weight management, and lays to rest to various myths (cholesterol is not the primary cause) based on scientific studies and medical publications.

Readers will also learn how to indentify the risk factors most likely to endager them and construct an arsenal of non-pharmacological preventitive strategies that can counteract this most deadly disease.

The Truth About Statins by Barbara H. Roberts MD is the director of the Women’s Cardiac Center at the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island. She discusses both the benefits and health risks of these popular drugs in this comprehensive guide that finally reveals the questionable science behind the research studies. This honest, patient-friendly appraisal of the most widely used medications in the world may shock you, but it may also save your life.

Why Is My Brain Not Working by Dr. Datis Kharrazian  DHSc, DC, MNeuroSci, has spent
more than a decade teaching several thousand hours of postgraduate education in non-pharmaceutical applications for chronic illnesses, autoimmune disorders, and complex neurological disorders all over the world to health care providers
.

Reverse Heart Disease Now by Stephen T. Sinatra MD., F.A.C.C. is a board-certified cardiologist, James C. Roberts MD cardiologist and Martin Zucker author and writter.

Research

Statin Effects Study – Univ California San Diego Posted are literature reviews since 2007 to most current 2014.

American Journal Cardiovascular Drugs. Apr 6, 2010
Statin Adverse Effects: A Review of the Literature and Evidence for a Mitochondrial Mechanism
Beatrice Golomb MD PhD, Marcella Evans MS

Journal Cardiovascular & Pharmacology 
Oral Vitamin C reduces arterial stiffness and platelet aggregation in humans

Journal of Nutrition  July 2, 2007
Dept. of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada  L85 4K1      Read Full Text
New Developments and Novel Therapeutic Perspectives for Vitamin C  

 

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