Heart Healthy Nutritional Supplementation

Nutritional supplementation needed for cardiovascular health

Cardiovascular health can be enhanced and disease reversed through nutritional supplementation that supports a healthy diet. You should check with you physician before beginning a program of supplementation.

Multivitamins

Everyone needs basic multivitamin supplements that provide the essential vitamins and minerals the body requires for good health. Even if you eat a healthy, balanced diet, you are still not getting all the vitamins and minerals you need. This is due to the depletion of nutrients in the soil and modern methods of farming that reduce the nutritional content of food, as shown in the following examples:

nutritional supplementation examples

Fish Oil

Fish oil provides Omega-3 oils that are an essential part of maintaining cardiovascular health. It can penetrate soft plaque and make it less susceptible to rupture and provides numerous benefits including:

Lowers blood pressure
Decreases bad forms of cholesterol, triglycerides
Increases HDL (good cholesterol)
Reduces arterial wall inflammation (increasingly viewed as an even bigger problem than the levels of cholesterol)
Makes blood less likely to form clots that can cause heart attack or stroke

COQ10

CoQ10, short for Coenzyme Q10, is one of the most powerful of known antioxidants. It protects the mitochondria, which are sometimes described as our cellular power plant because they generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a source of chemical energy for the body. Mitochondria are especially prevalent in the heart muscles. CoQ10 can:

Decrease blood pressure in patients with established hypertension
Reenergize heart cells
Protect LDL from oxidation

CoQ10 in the body is depleted by poor diet, genetics, aging, high-intensity exercise, a hyperactive thyroid, and gum disease. Multiple medications including beta blockers, antihypertensives, oral diabetic drugs, some antidepressants, and statins are also a major cause of CoQ10 depletion.

Magnesium

Magnesium improves the metabolic efficiency of heart muscle cells and can help protect the heart in the acute phase of a heart attack. Magnesium deficiency is increasingly common as the soil and resulting food supply have become deficient in all health-nurturing minerals. It is further depleted by stress. Magnesium can reduce the risk of:

Hypertension
Cerebrovascular and coronary artery constriction and occlusion
Arrhythmias
Sudden cardiac death

Vitamin C

Vitamin C, in addition to protecting us from colds, provides many benefits for cardiovascular health:

Retards progression of atherosclerosis
Helps control blood pressure
Helps neutralize vascular wall damage
Supports recovery after a heart attack or bypass surgery

D-Ribose

D-rib ose is a relatively new supplement that is excellent in strengthening ATP, energizing heart muscle cells as well as the rest of the body. D-ribose is the only compound used by the human body to replenish diminished ATP energy stores.

Niacin

Niacin is strongly recommended by many leading cardiologists. It performs two vital functions in managing cholesterol levels:

Raises the levels of protective HDL, which picks up harmful LDL and transports it to the liver for removal
Helps neutralize small particle LDL cholesterol and Lp(a)-a small, highly inflammatory cholesterol particle

Please see the note in the table below regarding Niacin Flush.*

Supplementation Program

The following table is a minimal recommended supplementation program for protecting your cardiovascular health. The center column is the recommended supplementation amounts if you have no indication of disease. These supplements can be readily added to your diet without fear of side effects or conflict with existing medications you may be using. If you have identified the presence of atherosclerosis or other risks through a screening test, you may require higher dosages and additional supplements to help reverse or minimize risk for a cardiac event, as shown in the far right column.

niacin