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Health See other Health Articles Title: Can You Reverse Heart Disease? WebMD Making some simple changes in what you eat, how often you exercise, how much you weigh, and how you manage stress can help to put the brakes on heart disease. But can you actually reverse heart disease, not just slow it down? You can undo some, but probably not all, of the damage, if you're willing to make big, lasting changes to your lifestyle. Slideshow: 25 Foods That Can Save Your Heart Yes, You Can! Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, has written six best-selling books, including Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease. In his book The Spectrum, Ornish describes patients waiting to undergo a heart transplant -- those with the worst possible damage -- who enrolled in his program while on the transplant list. Some of them, he says, improved so much that they no longer needed a transplant. “Our studies show that, with significant lifestyle changes, blood flow to the heart and its ability to pump normally improve in less than a month, and the frequency of chest pains fell by 90% in that time,” Ornish says. “Within a year on our program, even severely blocked arteries in the heart became less blocked, and there was even more reversal after five years. That’s compared with … other patients in our study, in which the heart just got worse and worse.” What It Takes Ornish's plan includes walking at least half an hour a day, or for an hour three times a week. Yoga, meditation, and stress reduction are also parts of his program. Diet may be the biggest thing you'd change to try to reverse heart disease as much as possible. The shift will be drastic if you're used to a typical American diet. “Just making moderate changes in your diet may be enough to prevent heart disease, but it won’t be enough to reverse it,” Ornish says. Ornish's book, The Spectrum, puts foods in five groups, ranging from healthiest to least healthy. To reverse heart disease means becoming a vegetarian. You'll fill your plate with fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nonfat dairy, and egg whites, and avoid fats, refined sugar, and processed carbs. “You want to eat foods in their natural form as much as possible," Ornish says. Of course, eating a healthy diet and being active are part of any heart-health plan. So are sticking to a healthy weight, taking all your medications, keeping up with your doctor visits, and not smoking or being around secondhand smoke. Is It Too Strict? You need to be really motivated to make those changes, and to make them last. "You have to live a very strict lifestyle," says Lori Mosca, MD, director of preventive cardiology at Columbia University Medical Center. If you already have heart disease, Mosca emphasizes slowing it down through a healthy lifestyle that allows for more variety than Ornish's "reversal" plan. “I don’t think that dietary approaches that are highly restrictive are sustainable," Mosca says. She avoids using the word "reversal." "I wouldn’t say you can ‘reverse’ heart disease, because that implies you had something and now you don’t," she says. "You can’t cure heart disease, but you can slow its progression.” Ornish agrees that if you're just trying to slow heart disease, you might have more freedom with your diet. “If you need to reverse a life-threatening illness, you’re well advised to live as much as you can on the healthiest end of the spectrum,” he says. “But if you’re just trying to stay healthy, it’s [unrealistic] to say, ‘Never eat certain foods.’ It’s much more sustainable to just move in a healthier direction.” What if you slip up and eat something that’s really not heart-healthy, like a bacon cheeseburger or a doughnut? Get back on track. “Forgive yourself and move on," Ornish says. “If you indulge one day, then eat healthy the next. If you don’t exercise one day, do more the next.” In time, your new habits should start to feel more normal. “We found that the more people changed their diet and lifestyle, the more they felt better," Ornish says. “The better you feel, the more you want to keep doing it." Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
I've no doubt that all parts of the human body can be healed, including eyes and teeth.
#2. To: Pinguinite (#1)
Don't know about teeth. If certain elements were missing or in short supply during tooth growth then little can be done to prevent fractures and tooth falling apart.
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