In an ironic twist, the president of the Amercian Heart Association, Dr. John Warner, suffered a heart attack in the middle of a health conference at the age of 52.

Dr. Warner’s speech at the conference focused on how his family’s history of heart disease has impacted his family, citing his father and his father’s father heart bypass surgery while in their 60s, While Dr. Warner is recovering after doctors cleared a clogged artery, the fact remains that the head of an organization dedicated to living lives free of cardiovascular disease or stroke had a heart attack more than a decade earlier than the age of the average man’s first heart attack. It’s like finding out the vegan restaurant you love is run by a guy who competes in whole hog barbeque contests on the weekends. Does the AHA treat cardiovascular disease or simply manage it?

Recommended: 35 Things You Could Do With Coconut Oil – From Body Care to Health to Household

Treating Symptoms

One in four deaths in the U.S. is from cardiovascular disease. The CDC identifies high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking as key factors in developing it. But simply addressing these misses the bigger picture – high blood pressure and high cholesterol are symptoms. They don’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, many of the causes of crucial heart disease risk factors are the same: diet and exercise.

AHA diet recommendations are perfectly pleasant, but they don’t address critical factors in an actual healthy diet. They vilify salt without explicitly acknowledging that the problem is actually the processed food. The association’s first-ever guidelines for added sugars were introduced in 2016, years behind emerging dietary research. let’s not get into their complicated an incredibly damaging relationship with fats, including the AHA’s recent denouncement of coconut oil. The AHA doesn’t actually fix the diet, much like it only fixes symptoms.

Recommended: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Recommended: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System

A Non-Profit, Emphasis on the Profit

The AHA has a laundry list of powerful friends in industries that would are very interested in controlling the heart disease narrative – especially pharmaceutical companies. Many well known pharmaceutical companies have contributed millions to the AHA. Some of the best-selling drugs in the country, statins and medications to lower blood pressure, are the AHA’s solution of choice for treating heart disease. The AHA provides a steady stream of customers, and one could argue that the recent drop in healthy blood pressure guidelines that added 30 million Americans to the potential sales…patient pool.

Sources:

• Heart attack strikes American Heart Association president – CNN
• AHA president doing well after minor heart attack – American Heart Association News
• Heart Disease Facts – CDC.gov
• Nearly half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure under new guidelines – CBS
• The American Heart Association — Protecting Industry Not Patients – Huffington Post

The prevailing beliefs around pharmaceuticals in America are that prescription drugs are safe if used according to directions, over-the-counter drugs are even safer – that’s why they don’t require a prescription, and pharmaceutical complications are rare.

Drugs aren’t as safe as many assume. It seems using NSAIDs significantly increase your risk of heart attack or stroke, more so than previously believed, though doctors have known these drugs increase the risk of heart attack and stroke for 15 years, along with raising blood pressure and causing heart failure.

Dangers of Using NSAIDs

Apparently, they did not know the extent of the risk until Vioxx (rofecoxib), another NSAID, was pulled from the market and further studies on all NSAIDs were conducted. In the five years Vioxx was on the market, it caused as many as 140,000 heart attacks in the U.S. and 55,000 deaths.

After Vioxx was removed from the market in 2004, further studies into the safety of NSAIDs were conducted. In mid-2015, an expert panel reviewed the new information about these drugs and decided it was time for the FDA to modify the warnings associated with their use.

NSAIDs (pronounced en-saids) are Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Common, well-known NSAIDs include:

• Ibuprofen (Motrin®, Advil®, Motrin IB®)
• Aspirin (Note: these particular warnings do not apply to aspirin.)
• Naproxen (Naprosyn®, Aleve®)
• Nabumetone (Relafen®)

The new warnings from the FDA point out that the risk increases with increased dosage and the length of time NSAIDs are taken; however, heart attack and stroke risk increase with short-term use, possibly as short as a few weeks. The risk applies to all users but those with heart disease face a greater risk.

The FDA website says:

There is no period of use shown to be without risk,” says Judy Racoosin, M.D., M.P.H., deputy director of FDA’s Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Products.

People who have cardiovascular disease, particularly those who recently had a heart attack or cardiac bypass surgery, are at the greatest risk for cardiovascular adverse events associated with NSAIDs.

FDA is adding information in the drug label for people who already have had a heart attack. This vulnerable population is at an increased risk of having another heart attack or dying of heart attack-related causes if they’re treated with NSAIDs, according to studies.

But the risk is also present in people without cardiovascular disease. “Everyone may be at risk – even people without an underlying risk for cardiovascular disease,” Racoosin adds.

Can You Safely Use NSAIDs?

The FDA tells consumers to take the smallest dose possible for the least amount of time possible to increase safety. The reality is, these drugs are not safe, though many still believe them to be. In addition to the cardiovascular risks, there is a risk of “… inflammation, bleeding, ulceration, and perforation of the stomach, small intestine, or large intestine, which can be fatal.” [Motrin Insert] Renal damage is also a concern.

Conclusion

The best approach is to managing pain and inflammation is to treat the cause rather than the symptoms – to heal the body. For many, this entails a sweeping lifestyle change. But those who choose to heal their bodies through nutrition, detox, and exercise, reap the rewards. Check out What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
• Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones
• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials

Sources:

• FDA strengthens warning that NSAIDs increase heart attack and stroke risk – Harvard Health Publications
• FDA Strengthens Warning of Heart Attack and Stroke Risk for Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs – FDA
• Motrin – Med Library

(NaturalNews – John Phillip) Just in case you needed yet another reason to stay away from added dietary sugar sources, nutritional scientists now confirm that our obsession with consuming sweets is killing us by dramatically increasing risk of death from cardiovascular disease and heart attack. A host of known risk factors including elevated blood pressure and triglycerides, along with cholesterol abnormalities such as oxidized LDL cholesterol and poor HDL/LDL cholesterol ratios are all attributable to a diet filled with empty calories fueled by sugar consumption. Interestingly, researchers have determined that the increase in cardiovascular risk factors is not attributable to weight gain commonly associated with excess sugar intake; sugar directly raises heart disease risk independent of weight gain.

A research study team from New Zealand’s University of Otago, publishing in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, has conducted a review and meta-analysis of a large cohort of dietary studies comparing the effects of higher and lower added sugar consumption on blood pressure and lipids, both of which are important cardiovascular risk determinants. Lead study author, Dr. Lisa Te Morenga and her students have uncovered solid and documented evidence that eating sugar has a direct effect on risk factors for heart disease, and is likely to negatively impact blood pressure and blood lipids. Dr. Te Morenga noted, “Our analysis confirmed that sugars contribute to cardiovascular risk, independent of the effect of sugars on body weight.”

Sugar and refined carbohydrates increase risk of hypertension and cholesterol abnormalities

The scientists analyzed a total of 49 nutritional intervention trials conducted between 1965 and 2013. Comparing diets where the only intended differences were the amount of sugars and non-sugar carbohydrates consumed by the participants allowed for the measurement of the effects of these diets on lipids and blood pressure. 37 trials reported the effects of dietary sugars on lipid metabolism while another 12 yielded results on blood pressure. The team then pooled the available data to determine the impact on measurable risk factors that affect human health.

The team noted that some of the data provided by the studies was skewed as the research was funded by the food/sugar industries. When they factored out those biased results, they found a startling pool of data conclusively demonstrating the negative impact of high-sugar diets on cardio-metabolic risk factors. Small increases in blood pressure, as little as 20 mm Hg systolic and diastolic, can double the risk of a heart attack, while changes to cholesterol metabolism can alter the delicate endothelial lining of the arteries affecting plaque formation and blood clotting.

While the food industry and media outlets continue to promote a wide spectrum of processed, sugar packed foods as a means to boost their bottom line profit margins, millions of uninformed people continue to consume 156 pounds of added sugar each year. Recently, sugar has been making news as it has been associated with increased risk of many forms of cancer, as well as stroke and Alzheimer’s dementia. The evidence should be clear to any health-minded individual — eliminate all sources of empty sugar and refined food products in favor of foods in their natural form to dramatically lower the risk of heart disease and most chronic illnesses.

Sources for this article include:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2014/05/07/ajcn.113.081521
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-05/uoo-sii051414.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140515095633.htm