Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing.
events remain the top cause of death because individuals are largely un- aware of treatment options before they get into trouble. More, “Most people falsely assume that their condition has been fixed with a medical proce- dure and/or drugs, and that a lifestyle change isn’t necessary.”
~ Dr. Dean Ornish, Love & Survival Real Perpetrators
Cholesterol’s Bad Rap Dr. Stephen Sinatra, an integrative cardiologist, anti-aging specialist and bioenergetics psychotherapist in Man- chester, Connecticut, has also shifted his heart health paradigm. He now prescribes a combination of conven- tional medicine, food, supplements, mind/body strategies and natural heal- ing methods. His book, Heartbreak and Heart Disease: A Mind/Body Prescrip- tion for Healing the Heart, relates many inspiring case histories that address the psycho-emotional component of heart health and illustrate how to repair and reopen a broken heart by releasing long-repressed emotions.
Following two years of Gestalt psy- chotherapy training and seven years of bioenergetics training, Sinatra likewise realized that heartbreak was one of the major causes of heart disease. An expert in the field of natural cardiology, he had once believed that cholesterol and fat were the primary causes before 40 years of treatment research taught him otherwise.
“Cholesterol is not the reason for heart disease,” advises Sinatra, founder of
HeartMDInstitute.com and author of The Great Cholesterol Myth. “The body produces and needs cho- lesterol to convert sunlight to vitamin D, to make sex hormones, vital semi- permeable membranes for the body’s trillions of cells, plus bile salts for digestion. Even your brain makes and uses cholesterol to build connections between the neurons that facilitate learning and memory.”
Sinatra names the real perpetrators of heart disease—stress, inflammation and overeating sugar and processed foods containing saturated fat. He counsels that the heart benefits less from a low- fat, high-carbohydrate diet than one low in carbohydrates and higher in healthy fats, overturning widespread medical mantras.
Also, a high-fructose, high-grain carbohydrate diet raises triglycer- ides, increases the risk of metabolic syndrome and contributes to insulin resistance, causing the liver to produce more cholesterol, as well as more inflammatory, low-density lipopro- tein cholesterol (LDL) particles, all of which increase the risk for CHD, diabetes and stroke. The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that metabolic syndrome, which affects nearly 35 percent of American adults, may overtake smoking as the leading risk factor for CHD. The AHA currently is focused on increasing awareness that heart disease is the number one killer of women. Its Go Red for Women campaign empha- sizes the vital need to take preventive basic actions, including adopting an ex- ercise routine, healthier diet and doctor visits for appropriate non-invasive tests.
Essential Spirit Dr. James Forleo, a chiropractor in Durango, Colorado, with 30-plus years of clinical experience, maintains that health is simple, disease is complicated (also the title of his book). He counsels patients, “If mental stress is present in your life, you owe it to your cardiovas- cular system to change to a healthier lifestyle. Your life may depend on it.” Forleo has recognized that an indi- vidual’s state of mind can be a big help or hindrance in maintaining a healthy heart. “The heart represents a differ- ent realm of experience entirely, one
that cannot be explained by logic and reason,” comments Forleo.
He champions the link between maintaining normal spinal function and healthy heart function, along with supporting the inner presence of Spirit, which he calls the healthy heart’s ultimate elixir. “Its essence relaxes the heart, opens the mind to possibilities greater than itself and provides the perspective that the heart and the mind are complementary,” he observes. He explains that when our emo- tions get bottled up, something in our heart or circulation has to give. “If you or someone you know experiences heart problems, chances are that unre- solved emotions lie directly below the surface,” he says. “There are excep- tions, and genetic problems can explain many heart defects, but heart problems don’t usually show up unless emotions are involved.”
Forleo’s concept is supported by the work of Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., executive vice president and direc- tor of research at California’s Institute of HeartMath. His research papers include The Energetic Heart: Bioelec- tromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People. “Today, evidence suggests that the heart may play a particularly important role in emotional experience. Research in the relatively new discipline of neurocardiology has confirmed that the heart is a sensory organ and acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center that learns, remem- bers and makes independent functional decisions that don’t involve the cere- bral cortex,” advises McCraty.
To Happy Hearts Pioneering integrative medical doc- tors Masley, Sinatra, Forleo and Mona Lisa Schultz, who also holds a Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience, agree that in matters of heart disease, emotions take center stage. Schultz, who recently co-authored All is Well: Heal Your Body with Medicine, Affirmations and Intuition, with Louise L. Hay, a lead- ing founder of the self-help movement, applies her 25 years of experience as a medical intuitive with the best of West- ern clinical science, brain research and energy medicine.
natural awakenings January 2014 17
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