Congestive Heart Failure
Background
The heart is a muscle that acts as a pump to send blood around your body. When it either gets damaged by heart attacks or infections (cardiomyopathy), has a malfunctioning heart valve, or grows too big (e.g., from long standing and untreated high blood pressure), it may no longer be able to pump blood effectively. When this happens, the blood backs up in your lungs or legs, which are upstream from the heart. This causes swelling in your ankles (which persists when you wake in the morning — mild swelling at night is common even in healthy people). When lying flat, fluid then backs up in the lungs. This causes people to need to sleep on many pillows and to wake up short of breath during the night if they lay flat. CHF also causes shortness of breath with exertion.
Treatments
Treating the underlying high blood pressure, valve problem, or angina is important. I rarely see heart valve surgery recommended unnecessarily, and cardiologists are very good with this issue. Follow your physician’s advice for lowering blood pressure as well.
Fortunately, natural remedies do an excellent job at improving heart muscle efficiency, and even modest improvements can improve function, and life span, dramatically. The following recipe should be tried by anyone with heart disease (unless they have associated kidney failure, in which case the magnesium part of the treatment should be monitored by their physician).
Give these nutrients a 6 week trial to see the optimal effects. The benefits for heart health are often dramatic!
Recommended Supplements
The items below are listed in order of priority. In mild cases, you can simply begin with the first 3, adding others if needed. In severe cases, I would consider all 6. Effects will be seen by 6 weeks.
Ribose
Ribose powder looks and tastes like sugar, and is a key to energy production in the body — including the heart. Take 1 scoop (5 gms) 3 times a day for 6 weeks, then twice a day. This nutrient is outstanding for promoting healthy heart function and is the most important one. You will likely be amazed after 6 weeks on it!
Coenzyme Q10
Take coenzyme Q10 400 mg/day for 6 weeks, then 200 mg/day. This nutrient is especially critical for anyone on cholesterol-lowering medications, even if there is no heart problem, as these medications cause coenzyme Q10 deficiency, and this nutrient is critical for heart function. For very late stage CHF (heart failure), use Ubiquinol 450-900 mg a day (a special form of coenzyme Q10).
Magnesium and B Complex
Magnesium glycinate 200 mg/day and B Complex 50+ mg/day. You can get these plus many other key nutrients easily in a drink-form by taking a good multivitamin powder and B Complex. Take as directed, but if it causes gas or loose stools, you can decrease the powder to 1/2 dose a day. Magnesium not only increases your heart muscles strength, but also markedly decreases the tendency to abnormal heart rhythms.
Acetyl L-Carnitine
Acetyl L-Carnitine 1,000 mg 2 times a day for 10 weeks and then stop it. If problems recur, resume at a dose of 500 mg/day.
Hawthorne
Take Hawthorne Phytosome (Enzymatic Therapy) 2 caps 3x day.
Magnesium Orotate
This is different from magnesium glycinate. A placebo-controlled study showed that 6,000 mg a day for one month followed by 3,000 mg a day increased survival rate 50% and markedly improved function.