Heart Disease and the Digestion Connection

For as complicated as heart disease sounds coming from the medical community, it is a relatively simple problem to turn around or prevent. Given a few insights that are implemented into ones daily life, achieving better blood levels of cholesterol, tryglycerides, and LDL's won't be as daunting a task as one might think. Lets explore some of these.

Higher blood levels of homocysteine, an amino acid that clings to the walls of the arteries, has a big role in cardiovasular disease. Homocysteine, under normal circumstances, is a short lived byproduct of the metabolism of methionine. However, lower levels of B-vitamins prevent its breakdown. Since the B-vitamins, namely folic acid, are not absorbed as well as we age, we find ourselves up against climbing blood levels of all the things that we don't want to see increase. And before too long we'll start feeling the results of all of that.

The first thing we can do to improve this situation, is eat plenty of raw food. It has plenty of great folic acid in it and eating raw food is a better way to absorb your nutrients. It has plenty of its own enzymes to help facilitate the breakdown of the nutrients, so that they may be absorbed well. Secondly, take a digestive enzyme with all meals and snacks. Make sure it has hydrochloric acid included in it because many just contain the pancreatic enzymes. Next, make sure you get yourself a good B-complex and extra folic acid. These will quench the homocysteines before they pose a problem. Folic acid seems to be a bigger player in the prevention of homocysteine, but other B-vitamins such as B-6, B-12, and choline are important players in this whole scenario as well. There are some good combination formulas of these nutrients on the market in health food stores. I've seen them referred to as "Homocysteine Regulators", and a few different companies make them.