Patches could help repair damaged hearts.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US for both men and women. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 735, 00 Americans have a heart attack each year, and 610,000 die of heart disease.

Those who survive heart attacks remain at serious risk for heart failure. During a heart attack, the network of blood vessels that delivers blood to the heart, called the coronary arteries, experiences a blockage due to build-up of cholesterol and fatty deposits. Blood can’t flow through to the heart, which means it doesn’t get the oxygen and nutrients it needs, causing tissue to die.

Heart attack survivors are thus left with a heart that’s weaker, making everyday tasks like lifting objects or climbing stairs exhausting or even dangerous. Restoring damaged heart tissue has proved difficult if not impossible, but a research team from Imperial College London has a new tool they hope will be able to heal wounded hearts.

The team developed thumb-sized patches of heart tissue, about two by three centimetres in size and containing up to 50 million human stem cells. They programmed the stem cells to mature into working heart muscle, or cardiac progenitor cells. The patches are sewn onto the damaged area of the heart to help pump blood and release chemicals to stimulate repair and regeneration. The team presented its research at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) Conference in Manchester this week.

Using stem cells to treat weakened heart muscle isn’t a new concept. But many existing methods injected stem cells directly into damaged tissue, and without a ‘scaffold’ to hold them in place, the cells would clear out of the heart before achieving significant tissue repair.

The team tested the patches in rabbits, finding that four weeks after implanting a patch, the hearts’ left ventricles (the chamber that pumps blood to the body through the aorta) recovered without developing abnormal heart rhythms. They also found that blood vessels from recipient hearts grew into the patches and helped nourish them, a crucial step for integration. The patches started to beat spontaneously after just three days, and within one month started to mimic mature heart tissue.

The next step is to test the safety of the patches through clinical trials, then attempt to use them to repair human hearts.

“One day, we hope to add heart patches to the treatments that doctors can routinely offer people after a heart attack,” said Dr. Richard Jabbour, who carried out the research. “We could prescribe one of these patches alongside medicines for someone with heart failure, which you could take from a shelf and implant straight into a person.”

Professor Metin Avkiran, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, added “This is a prime example of world-leading research that has the potential to mend broken hearts and transform lives around the globe. If clinical trials can show the benefits of these heart patches in people after a heart attack, it would be a great leap forward for regenerative medicine.”

People suffering from schizophrenia may find help in a surprising place: broccoli sprouts. That’s because new research found that one of the compounds found in this highly nutritious food may help to reset the brain chemistry of those suffering from the disease.

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality. Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 16 and 30 but, in some cases, children under 16 may have schizophrenia.

Some of the most common symptoms include: hallucinations, delusions, unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking, agitated body movements, reduced expression of emotions through facial expression or tone of voice, reduced feelings of pleasure in life, difficulty beginning and sustaining activities, and reduced speaking.

Johns Hopkins University conducted a series of studies, ultimately discovering that broccoli sprouts contain a powerful substance known as sulforaphane, which can reset brain chemistry imbalance linked to schizophrenia. Broccoli microgreens and full-size broccoli also contain this potent nutrient.

In the study, the researchers found that those suffering from schizophrenia may have imbalances in the brain linked to glutamate, which can be altered by administering sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts. The researchers hope that supplementing with broccoli sprout extract may eventually allow those people suffering from schizophrenia to reduce the antipsychotic medications needed to control the disease.

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Glutamate is involved in sending messages between brain cells and is linked to schizophrenia as well as depression. Discovering that broccoli sprouts can alter glutamate levels offers hope for both people with schizophrenia as well as those suffering from depression. While more research is necessary to determine how much broccoli sprout extract may be needed to control the condition, the sprouts and microgreens are so delicious and easy to obtain that it is worth adding them to your diet.

In addition to their potential brain health benefits, there are other great reasons to eat broccoli sprouts or broccoli microgreens: In a study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry researchers at the University of Maryland found that microgreens contained up to forty times as many nutrients as their full-grown vegetable counterparts.

The study found that microgreen leaves can contain up to 40 times more nutrients like vitamin C, carotenoids (beta carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin), and vitamin E, than their mature counterparts.

Broccoli sprouts and microgreens, like their full-grown counterparts are also high in vitamin K, which is an antioxidant that helps to destroy harmful free radicals linked to aging or disease. It is also critical to building strong bones and is also involved in healthy blood clotting because it is required to make blood-clotting factors in your body.

If you bleed excessively, you may be deficient in vitamin K. The nutrient is also involved in preventing heart disease—insufficient vitamin K may cause the blood vessels to become hard and narrowed with deposits. Vitamin K also has anticancer properties, making it useful in the prevention or treatment of the disease.

Another way broccoli sprouts or microgreens may exert their beneficial effect on schizophrenia may be through the gut. Research shows that the health of your gut is significantly influenced by what you eat.

A study assessed 15096 faecal samples provided by 11336 people, published in the journal of the American Society for Microbiology, found some exciting facts about gut health and the microbiome, which is the total of all the microbes in a living being.

We each have a microbiome and no two microbiomes are alike, although there can be some similarities between them. The microbiome is a sort of microbial fingerprint. And, thanks to the new research, we have greater insight into the effect of diet on our microbiome and how it may impact brain diseases like schizophrenia.

The research found that the gut bacteria of people suffering from mental health issues like schizophrenia were more similar to others suffering from mental disorders than to those who do not suffer from mental disorders. While the scientists conducting the study did not draw any conclusions, there may be a possible connection between gut health and mental health. Certainly, other research suggests that is indeed the case.

As an added bonus, eating more broccoli sprouts or microgreens will likely boost your eye health, too. That’s because broccoli sprouts and microgreens are rich in a wide range of vision-protecting nutrients, including: alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein, rutin and zeaxanthin.

While we may be familiar with the dangers of eating too much sugar, the actual effects of this indulgence may be far more frightening than previously imagined. Certainly, science supports the idea that excess sugar consumption leads to weight gain, increases our chances of diabetes and heart disease, and portends worse health outcomes. But now, new data shows that sugar can harm us in a place we didn’t expect, by actually attacking our DNA.

To properly explain this fascinating research, let’s quickly review some biology basics. The human body is made up of roughly 37 trillion cells, our structural building blocks. The “brain” of the cell is called the nucleus, and the nucleus contains our DNA. For years, we’ve assumed that DNA was a product of our heritage, handed down from mother and father, a rigid pre-determinant of everything from our height to our mathematical skills. However, the revolutionary new field of epigenetics has led to the discovery that what we do actually changes the way our DNA is used, that the choices we make can forever transform our genetic code

This means that the way we interact with the world changes our DNA, not just the other way around. More intriguing, one of the major ways we can change our DNA is by diet. For example, a study published in 2008 showed that exposing mice brains to as little as 6 hours of high blood sugar led to epigenetic changes that increased risk of vascular damage. These changes lasted even after 6 days of normal blood glucose, representing long-term damage after just a short blast of sugar. The research on long-term effects from short exposures is at the core of epigenetics. It’s furthered by data from another 2008 study published in the journal Diabetes. 

In this work, researchers showed that short periods of high blood glucose led to worse long term vascular changes than did sustained high blood glucose (a scary thought for the carbohydrate binger). Again, the underlying mechanism seems to be modification of the cell’s DNA, leading to the extended duration of this effect.

But there’s more. The most frightening data on this subject shows that high blood glucose may damage our telomeres; the ends of our DNA code. Considering that an undamaged telomere may be protective against cancer, death, and the very act of aging, any process that harms telomeres could put us at substantial risk. Data from the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging found that the higher the blood sugar, the more damage caused to the telomere and its associated DNA.

If we know that high levels of circulating glucose are trashing our DNA, it would make sense that diets low in glucose could have the opposite effect. Indeed, this is true. From the journal Science, the article “When Metabolism and Epigenetics Converge” relates the known neuroprotective benefits of a low carbohydrate diet to the epigenetic suppression of toxic oxidative stress. This benefit, which was also seen with calorie restrictive diets, seems to indicate that choosing meals lower in carbohydrates and lower in calories improves our brain cells’ ability to fight off damage, leading to healthier brains.

Reflect for a moment on our current dietary recommendations The US dietary guidelines recommend we get 65% of our daily calories from carbohydrates sources. Beyond the fact that most carbohydrate rich meals are converted into sugar as soon as they’re digested, Americans will average around 13-14% of calories a day from pure added sugar. It would seem we’re advocating for a dietary plan destined to harm our DNA. The good news is that the field of epigenetic has also identified substances capable of undoing DNA damage. Enter the epigenetic diet.

Essentially, the idea of epigenetic diet is to maximize the health of your DNA. This diet emphasizes compounds like the sulforaphane (found in broccoli), curcumin (found in turmeric), epigallocatechin gallate (found in green tea) and resveratrol (found in wine), and is designed to slow or potentially reverse damage to our DNA. The epigenetic activity of these chemicals may both prevent cancer formation and lead to decreased fat cells, as well as generally lower inflammation.³ In contrast to the negative effects of blood sugar on the brain, these chemicals may  actually lower risk of Parkinson’s Disease and cognitive decline, as well as slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. While it’s too soon to tell if the benefits of these compounds can ameliorate the toxic effects of high sugar, initial research is impressive.

Moving forward, the field of epigenetics is poised to explode. The more we learn about our genetic makeup, the more we can learn how our environment affects it. It’s rather scary and amazing that the choices we make in life change our DNA, but the power this connotes can also lead to empowerment. Realize that when you eat a food, you are triggering a ripple effect that penetrates all the way to your genetic code. Your silverware can quite literally be a gene-editing tool, for better or worse.

Heart disease is the leading killer of men and women over the age of 50. Heart attacks are twice as deadly for women as they are for men.

Statistics (which need not apply to you) show that one in two women will eventually die of some kind of heart disease—either coronary artery disease causing a heart attack or a stroke and 1 in 4 men!

Disorders that are characterized by arteriosclerosis which increased risk for heart disease include:

• diabetes
• insulin resistance
• high cholesterol
• obesity
• smoking
• physical inactivity
• hypertension
• decreased thyroid hormone
• poor diet
• inflammation
• a genetic tendency toward producing too much homocysteine

No matter where cardiovascular disease first shows up, it is present throughout the entire body and steps should be taken to prevent or treat it before it shows up in mid-life!
Most of the time, arteriosclerosis is not diagnosed until an individual has a heart attack or stroke.
If you have diabetes or high blood pressure, are significantly overweight, never exercise, follow a poor diet, or are a smoker, one can virtually guarantee that you already have arteriosclerosis!

Listen to Your Body

Men who are having a heart attack typically present with chest pain that begins under the breastbone and spreads to the jaw and the left arm. Heart attack may also just feel like indigestion. 50% of men typically have no symptoms.
Women with heart attacks may not have chest pain at all either. Instead, they may experience primarily jaw pain and indigestion.
More women than men with so-called normal coronary arteries also have heart attacks, angina, and myocardial ischemia. As a result, a normal angiogram (blood vessel study) in a woman with symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t have heart disease.
What Causes This
Cardiovascular disease results, in part, from arteriosclerosis—an accumulation of oxidized fat in blood vessels that calcifies and eventually causes blood vessel and heart damage, especially if there is inflammation present in the body.
Arteriosclerosis underlies all coronary artery disease and is responsible for the majority of deaths in the Western world.
Hardening of the arteries is caused by damage to the endothelial lining of blood vessels from free radicals.
This, in turn, is caused by Glycaemic stress, Tran’s fats, Emotional stress, and Micronutrient deficiencies which cause inflammation.
The part emotional stress plays in this equation cannot be overemphasized.
Emotions such as depression, anxiety, panic, and grief have been shown to cause constriction in blood vessels, thereby impeding the free flow of blood.
And anything that causes constriction in your blood vessels makes your heart and your vessels work harder to do their job.

Treatment and prevention

Hormone replacement therapy
There is a large body of research that shows oestrogen has a beneficial effect on the heart and blood vessels. In using HRT however, women should be aware of the fact that it can increase the risk of blood clots and hence stroke as well as breast cancer.
Bio-identical hormone replacement is safer than synthetic hormones.
There are many nutraceutical and herbal combinations available that also help to balance and increase oestrogen more safely.

Testosterone therapy
Recent studies indicate that Testosterone replacement in men reduce their risks of major adverse cardiovascular events — including strokes, heart attacks, and death.
Insulin resistance:
An enormous amount of data exists on the link between nutrition and heart disease, particularly with regard to the ill effects of excess insulin and the benefits of antioxidants.
Lifestyle:
Diets high in the consumption of trans-fatty acids (including hydrogenated oils) and refined carbohydrates, combined with inadequate exercise and protein, all set the stage for cellular inflammation, which creates a predisposition to hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.
Eating five to six servings of fruits and vegetables per day has been shown to lower the risk of stroke by 31 percent.
The strongest effect comes from the cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and cabbage, followed by green leafy vegetables and citrus fruit and juice.
One study showed that people who ate just five large carrots per week lowered their risk of stroke by 68 percent compared to those who ate only one carrot per week.

Depression:
New data now concludes that depression is an important independent risk factor for heart disease. Depressed men and women were shown to be twice as likely to develop coronary artery disease as were normal, non-depressed women.

Homocysteine:
Having elevated blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine (found in high amounts in animal protein) constitutes a strong risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
At least 10 percent of the population has a genetic tendency for elevated levels.
When high homocysteine levels are reduced, the incidence of heart attack is cut by 20 percent, the risk of blood-clot-related strokes decreases by 40 percent and the risk of venous blood clots elsewhere in the body plunges by an impressive 60 percent.
Studies have shown that dietary intake of vitamins B12, B6, and folate can help combat an elevated homocysteine level, as can cutting back on the amount of animal based protein in your diet.
Ask your health care provider to determine your homocysteine level. It should be between 7 – 9.
Fish oil
A diet containing fish oil has been found to reduce the incidence of heart disease in a number of studies. Research shows that 3 g per day of fish oil containing both EPA and DHA protects the heart because it makes platelets more slippery and decreases cellular inflammation.
Alternatively, you can eat three servings of cold-water fish per week, such as salmon, mackerel or sardines
If you are a vegetarian or do not care for these fish, take high-quality flax seed or EPA and DHA supplements derived from algae.
Magnesium
Using diuretics results in the loss of magnesium through the urine. Excessive use of the stomach acid inhibitors e.g. Nexium, also result in magnesium deficiency.

Calcium
Adequate calcium intake also helps keep blood pressure normal. This mineral works in tandem with magnesium, and therefore it’s important to make sure you get enough of both

Coenzyme Q10
CoQ10 acts to increase the supply of energy for cellular processes in general and thereby contributes to the improvement of overall health.
Some of the documented benefits include improved ability of the heart to pump effectively. It has also been shown to help reduce high blood pressure and congestive heart failure in those who already have heart disease.
Statin drugs lower Coenzyme Q10 levels.

Carotenoids
Dozens of studies show that individuals who consume high amounts of pigment-rich foods have less risk for heart disease.
Beta-carotene
Prevents the lipoprotein LDL (“bad” cholesterol) from becoming oxidized
Lycopene
Is another good antioxidant; eating tomatoes a couple of times a week will give you all the lycopene you need.
Vitamin E
Tocotrienols: These are part of the vitamin E family, but they are 40 to 60 times more powerful antioxidants than regular vitamin E.
Tocotrienols improve total cholesterol levels, oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad” cholesterol), and the clumping of red blood cells.
Free-radical damage (oxidative stress from poor diet, psychological stress, smoking, etc.) that accompanies LDL oxidation is particularly dangerous because it can cause serious injury to artery and vein walls.
Diet
Fresh fruits, dark green leafy vegetables, almonds, peanuts, and wheat germ also contain tocotrienols and the other types of vitamin E. Most multivitamins don’t have significant amounts, so if you want to supplement your diet, you have to take these supplements separately.
Selenium:
This antioxidant has been shown to decrease the risk of free-radical damage to blood vessel walls
Oligomeric Proanthocyanidins (OPCs)
Derived from grape seeds or pine bark, OPCs are in the class of foods known as the flavonoids. Cardiovascular disease risk is inversely proportional to flavonoid intake.
Alpha-Lipoic Acid
Vitamin C:
This powerful antioxidant helps protect the endothelial lining of your blood vessels and has also been found to aid the absorption of calcium and magnesium, two key minerals for heart health

Hawthorn
Herbalists have used Hawthorn berry extract for years as a tonic for heart related conditions.
Garlic
Tea
Both black and green tea consumption have been shown to have beneficial effects on the endothelial lining of blood vessels, which helps decrease the risk of stroke
Weight-bearing exercise
Can be very helpful for heart health because it lowers insulin resistance dramatically.
Stop smoking!
Gum disease
Is a risk factor for coronary artery disease and stroke. This association may be due, in part, to the fact that inflammation plays a central role both in gum disease and in hardening of the arteries.
It has also been shown that the inflammation seen in periodontal disease is associated with narrowing of the carotid arteries, a risk factor for stroke.
Periodontal disease is easily preventable (and often treatable) through proper brushing, flossing, and regular visits to the dentist for professional evaluation and cleaning.
Pets
If you don’t already have a pet, consider getting one. It’s well documented that the presence of a pet lowers blood pressure and is relaxing.
Genetic testing
This is done via a simple buccal swab and can show your risk for developing heart and blood vessel disease.
Inflammation
Your levels of inflammation can be checked by asking your physician to do a CRP test for you. This should be < 1