Holistic Health Practitioner

No matter what time of year, seems like we are always looking to detox and to manage our weight! Through the winter months, I convince myself that weight management will be easier in the warm weather when I can work in the yard; walk about more freely without ice, snow, and storms to contend with; enjoy longer days and more light and natural vitamin D; and so on.

Then, from my midsummer night’s dream I awaken to realize that longer days mean the joy of more social activities; more meals out with family and friends; more grab ‘n go food on our jaunts to be out of doors more; and on it goes.

This summer, Dr. Sinatra and I were mindful to create healthy, farm stand meals at home to balance dining out during vacation and business trips. And we added daily juicing to offset our dietary indiscretions.

Dr. Sinatra’s sister, Dr. Maria Seidel, got us jumpstarted. She stayed with us after taking her nursing students to Costa Rica. There, her local hosts made her fresh juice from their organically grown gardens every morning for three weeks. Maria came home feeling like a million bucks, and juiced us every morning of her visit. Now, we are all hooked!  

Instead of an occasional juice meal to detox, Dr. Sinatra and I have made juicing a regular breakfast ritual. In fact, we both feel so much better physically and mentally that we got motivated to maintain the “habit” even when we are on the road. If we feel we have overindulged, we compensate by juicing for dinner as well.  All those live enzymes are nature’s way of cleansing and restoring your GI tract, nurturing all the cells in your body, and boosting your immune system, as well as your overall energy.

Traveling in your own car with a cooler is the easiest way to maintain a juicy life. You can pack some organic fruits and veggies to juice along with your Vitamix, Cuisinart blender/food processor, or juicer. We actually find the Vitamix and Cusinart less messy, easier to clean, AND you don’t lose all the nutrients in the pulp strained and discarded in traditional juicers. The juice is more of a textural experience as well, which we enjoy—and there’s more fiber included to boot.

When staying in hotels, we looked for those with a kitchen set up or a counter with an available electrical outlet. If we can find a Jamba-juice kind of place when we travel by air, that’s a big plus too!

There are plenty of juice recipes out there to get you started if you are new at it, but feel free to be creative and have fun too! Pick the ingredients you like to eat. Dr. Sinatra’s favorite is to combine leafy greens with fresh fruit, beets, and a splash of ginger.

Here is one if his favorites. Combine one or all from each category:

• Berries: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries
• Other fruit: apple, banana, kiwi (no citrus)
• Vegetable: Beets are our breakfast favorite (but mixed veggie juices are great for lunch and dinner) 
• Ginger: skin and add fresh ginger to taste
• Greens: Swiss chard, baby spinach, parsley, kale, broccolini
• Add water or ice to get consistency for easy pouring

To prepare:

1. Just wash and cut fresh, hopefully organic, produce in chunks.
2. To liquefy in blender/processor, we use “chop” setting, then use food processor setting to make finer. If you use juicer, just turn it on.
3. Enjoy.

Note: These juices don’t keep long or store well, so make just enough for your meal.

For more great recipes and other cardiovascular nutrition tips, visit Dr. Sinatra’s Web site.

For years, I’ve been telling my readers and my patients to avoid acetaminophen—especially the extra-strength variety—because of the potential for liver problems. I’ve also told them to avoid NSAIDs because of the potential for gastrointestinal bleeding, liver damage, and kidney dysfunction. Now there’s yet another reason to avoid these analgesics, as recent studies suggest that they can also make it difficult to maintain healthy blood pressure levels.  So…

If you take painkillers regularly, please inform your doctor or holistic health practitioner. He or she may have some safer recommendations. You can also talk to your doctor about trying my recommendations for pain control, which include:

• White willow bark (180 mg twice a day); or
• Low-dose aspirin (325–650 mg a day as tolerated, but discontinue if you experience abdominal discomfort); or
• The nutritional supplement SAM-e (200–400 mg, once or twice a day as needed).

These options are safe for almost everyone, including people with cardiovascular problems.

For more information on how pharmaceuticals can lead to cardiovascular problems, visit www.drsinatra.com.

There has been some controversy about the effectiveness of medicinal footbaths. Dr. Sinatra and I have experienced several of them in exhibit halls at major health expos. You can imagine the numerous venders who propose many health benefits from using their products, particularly detoxification. The concept involves sitting with your feet in a small tub of water. Then, devices and solutions are added to promote detoxification.

Sodium chloride salt is usually sprinkled in the warm water and an electrode added with a positive and negative electronic charge to create a high energy complex in the water. Proponents claim that the color changes noted in the water colors represent different toxins being drawn out of the body through the feet—toxins coming from the liver, lymph glands, joints, fatty tissue, etc.

Now, while it’s true that the water does change color in these footbaths, it would do so even if your feet were not placed in the water. However, those colors do appear darker and thicker when the feet are immersed. So, what could possibly be going on?

Some proponents of the medicinal footbath claim that the highly charged water creates an energy complex that acts on the acupuncture meridians in the feet, reaching multiple systems in the body. Now remember, Dr. Sinatra is from Missouri, so you gotta show him! 

At one such anti-aging conference years back, Dr. Sinatra looked at these foot baths with a very skeptical eye. Although the theory seemed plausible, we were both thinking it a bit of a parlor trick that it could energize the body at the same time, despite positive testimonials from people who feel better after using the bath. Then one distributor offered some science: a live visual of microscopic serum analysis of blood viscosity pre- and post- footbath. 

The pre-treatment blood showed red blood cells stacked on one another like poker chips, known as rouleaux (pronounced rooo- low). Rouleaux formation indicates clumpy, sticky blood and increased blood viscosity, a risk factor for cardiovascular problems, such as heart attack and stroke. The post-foot bath blood analysis revealed red blood cells that were not sticking together; they were flowing freely in the microscopic field.

Mildly impressed, but still skeptical, Dr. Sinatra and I joined two another MD colleagues and tried the footbath for ourselves—and had the same blood results. For my husband, there was even relief of his right hip pain. The intervention had also included drinking a solution called Ioncleanse, a mixture of silver chloride and other minerals. The internalization of the minerals and the external charge are supposed to raise the overall energy field, thus making the detoxification and energetic process even more profound.

Needless to say, we all ordered footbaths for our own homes.

That was back in 2004. Flash forward to today, and many health professionals endorse footbaths and are convinced they may be a vital tool in energizing and detoxifying the body. Even the prestigious Townsend Letter described how the footbath works.

For now, we continue to have an open mind that the footbath may even be a viable intervention to reduce blood viscosity and inflammation—two factors that contribute to developing and worsening of heart disease. And the benefits of detox cannot be underscored; inflammation is the root of many illnesses.

We have the most experience with B. E. S. T. (Bio-Electric Stimulating Technique) footbath, and there are many others in the marketplace. Some companies offer electrodes that can be placed in your own bathtub. Many alternative medicine practitioners offer footbath treatments in their office or clinic if you want to experience one yourself.

For more information on cardiovascular problems, as well as new ways to reduce heart risk factors, visit Dr. Sinatra’s Web site.

Reference:
Walker M, Walker R.  IonCleanse detoxification—getting the issues out of tissues. Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients. 2004:101-104.

If you’re working hard to prevent heart attack and stroke, as well as the occurrence of other cardiovascular problems, you need to beware of the dangers associated with salt. 

As any decent doctor or holistic practitioner will tell you, having too much salt in your system can make it difficult for you to maintain healthy blood pressure levels, as well as healthy cholesterol levels.  In fact, too much salt can severely compromise your overall health and force you to deal with a myriad of serious heart risk factors you’d do well to avoid.

Here are four things you may not know about salt consumption:

1. Your body requires sodium (a component of salt) to regulate fluid balance and distribution, as well as nerve and muscle cell function. Although you need some sodium, the standard American diet includes way too much. That’s why I urge my patients to try what I often refer to as "the healthiest diet of all." You'll be amazed at how effective it can be.
2. The current recommendation for salt consumption is less than 2,400 mg of sodium a day, which amounts to about one teaspoon of salt. Recent research suggests that people ingesting less than 1,500 mg of sodium a day are better able to keep their blood pressure low. If you have high blood pressure, you should definitely aim for that kind of level. Don’t use salt from the shaker, and read labels to add up the amount you’re taking in.
3. Many items at fast food restaurants are high in salt, so you can easily exceed the recommended level with one serving.
4. You can easily make up for the reduced salt in your diet by cooking with fresh herbs and spices such as basil, garlic, oregano, rosemary, chives, parsley, and onion. What’s more, all of these flavorings contain natural substances that are good for your health. Garlic, in particular, has been shown to have a positive effect on blood pressure when consumed on a daily basis.

I hope you'll share this information with your friends and loved ones. It's just another example of how you can do something simple to help control your cardiovascular health.

For more information on blood pressure levels and other cardiovascular problems, visit www.drsinatra.com.

One of the common conditions we cardiologists treat has nothing directly to do with the heart itself, but rather with blockages of blood vessels going to and from the kidneys, stomach, arms, legs, and feet. We call this condition peripheral vascular or arterial disease. You may know it as “poor blood circulation.”

An estimated 12 million Americans are affected by the disease, and its incidence increases with age—about one-fifth of people age 70 and older have it. The condition is sometimes called a smoker’s disease because it’s particularly prominent among people who have smoked at some point in their lives.

Most doctors and holistic health practitioners agree that blood circulation problems are typically due to the buildup of plaque in the affected blood vessels—similar to the kind of buildup we see in the coronary arteries that feed the heart or the carotid arteries leading to the brain. The result is restricted blood flow, discomfort, tiredness, heaviness, and, often, cramping.

To combat the condition, doctors often use drugs, angioplasty, or surgery. My approach takes a different tack. I focus on the muscle cells and how to get rid of their metabolic by-products, which become increasingly toxic because of the poor blood circulation.

The solution is to help remove the toxins. To do this, I suggest taking glycine propionyl-L-carnitine (GPLC), a recently developed form of L-carnitine that can help improve blood circulation, as well as blood pressure levels. Like other forms of carnitine, GPLC gets quickly into the muscle cells’ mitochondria (the part of the cell where energy is produced). There it acts as a ferry, ushering in the fatty acids that are burned as fuel, and escorting out the toxins that otherwise would build up inside the cell.

GPLC has also been shown to increase the primary enzyme responsible for nitric oxide production in the arteries. Nitric oxide, as you may know, helps regulate the dilation of blood vessels. Proper dilation is necessary to keep blood circulation problems at bay.

For more information on poor blood circulation, ways to improve blood circulation, or other cardiovascular problems, visit Dr. Sinatra's Web site.

Dr. Sinatra has long believed in the famous words of Hippocrates, the Greek physician of centuries past who is now recognized as the “Father of Medicine.” Hippocrates employed food to assist his patients in healing their physical ailments. With all our high tech medical approaches and complex pharmaceutical agents, it is amazing how much we have forgotten that simple approach!

After years of applying nutritional solutions to the myriad faces of heart disease—high blood pressure levels; chronic hypertension; high triglycerides; elevated L(p)a; angina; and heart attack and stroke—Dr. Sinatra has finally answered his patients’ many requests for a book that they can have as a reference at home. His research and personal experiences with his family, friends, and cardiac patients has continually impressed my husband that Hippocrates was so right on—and provided the foundation for this effort.     

Dr. Sinatra has collaborated with former pro athlete and health editor Jim Healthy, as well as recipe queen Rebecca Bent to write Bottom Line’s The Healing Kitchen. The Healing Kitchen is a strategic resource for making healthy grocery selections and healing meal planning guidelines, as well as specific recipes to assist you in selecting the right healthy foods to meet your specific health and fitness needs.

Subscribers to Heart, Health, and Nutrition have been reading Dr. Sinatra’s take on which foods, herbs, and supplements can help with their cardiovascular problems (not to mention cancer and other diseases caused by inflammation) for many years. Now all that information and more is the basis for this one reference to help guide you to foods that can heal your body.

For instance, the omega 3 essential fatty acids—especially those found in squid and fish oils—assuage cardiac arrhythmia, lower blood pressure levels, reduce LDL cholesterol levels, and even prevent plaque rupture.

Garlic is a potent blood thinner and, like onions which are rich in quercetin, helps you prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Garlic and onions are both superb foods for lowering blood pressure levels. And, speaking of hypertension, Dr. Sinatra also recommends sardines and wakame seaweed as natural blood pressure lowering foods.

And that’s just the beginning! Did you know that the right diet can help alleviate your migraines headaches, or that non-inflammatory foods can heal your arthritis?

Foods can also protect women from menopausal symptoms, as well as heal and protect us from cancer. The lutein in tomatoes along with pumpkin seeds and other fine herbs and spices can help men with their prostate concerns. From heart disease and diabetes to sleep and sex, The Healing Kitchen will educate you about natural, tasty remedies for many of the illnesses that afflict the 20th century. 

If you are looking to use simple, healthy foods, herbs and spices to get your body back on track, and keep it there, you will love this book!

For more information on healthy heart nutrition or some of Dr. Sinatra’s famous recipes, visit his Web site at www.drsinatra.com.

I worry about the fact that so many women still think that cardiovascular problems, like heart disease and stroke, is primarily a problem for men. The truth is that heart disease is a major health risk for women, but many physicians did not realize this until recently, so they’ve done little to encourage their female patients to take steps to protect their heart health.

I also worry because much of our knowledge about heart disease describes how the condition affects men. This leads many physicians, including some holistic practitioners, to diagnose and treat women as if heart disease affected them the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heart disease affects men and women very differently and I’ve written about that here in this in newsletter articles, books, and here in this blog.

For example, if a 45-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man both come into the emergency room with chest pain, most physicians will probably admit the man and tell the woman her symptoms are due to stress and anxiety. Not many physicians realize that the incidence of coronary events among women quadruples as they reach middle age.

What You Can Do About It

I want you to understand that much of this, in both women and men, is related to lifestyle and the choices you make.

• Choose to seek natural ways to lower blood pressure if that’s a problem for you.
• Choose to adhere to good cardiovascular nutrition, which may include increasing the amount of fresh vegetables you consume and lowering the amount of breads and other starches you eat each day.
• Choose to do what you need to do to maintain good cholesterol levels, improve blood circulation, and healthy triglycerides.
• Choose to exercise so that you can more easily prevent blood clots and maintain a healthy weight.

In short, while it may be difficult at the start, choose to live a healthy lifestyle.  Choose life.

For more information on women and cardiovascular problems or tips for good cardiovascular nutrition, visit Dr. Sinatra's Web site.

Though you wouldn’t know it based on today’s obsession with cholesterol levels, cardiology has been slowly veering away from the narrow view of cholesterol as a primary cause of coronary artery disease (CAD).

The field is finally realizing that although good cholesterol levels can help deter the biochemical process that creates damage in arterial walls—which in turn leads to plaque, occlusions, and clots—it’s a relatively minor one. In other words, they’ve realized that even though they may find cholesterol at the scene of the crime, it’s not necessarily the perpetrator.

An excellent example of this is shared in a population study that showed how the French have the highest total cholesterol levels in Europe—about 250—but the lowest incidence of cardiovascular problems, including heart disease.

This being said, I continue to encourage you to find natural ways to maintain healthy cholesterol, including adhering to a smart, cholesterol lowering diet.  I just want you to also realize that cholesterol is just one of many heart risk factors, and is not necessarily the most deadly.

For more information on reducing cholesterol and other cardiovascular problems, visit Dr. Sinatra's Web site.

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a marker for inflammation that is directly associated with atherosclerotic plaque.

It’s a blood protein that, when found in elevated levels, may indicate risk of heart attack and stroke.  Multiple studies have identified CRP as a potent predictor of future cardiovascular problems—and one that is far more reliable than elevated cholesterol levels.

Biological characteristics that are associated with high CRP levels include trauma, infections, high blood sugar, excess weight, and hypercoagulability of blood (sticky blood). Any one of these situations literally feeds pro-inflammatory mediators, ratcheting up the chances that you’ll develop atherosclerosis.

If you currently have cardiovascular problems or you’ve had trauma or an infection that could cause inflammation, you should have your CRP levels tested. Just make sure your doctor or holistic health practitioner requests the high sensitivity test (hs-CRP). This test doesn’t take much time; typically, blood is drawn from a vein located either on the forearm or from inside your elbow. The blood is then analyzed in several tests to determine the level of CRP present.

For more information on heart risk factors and cardiovascular problems, visit Dr. Sinatra's Web site.

The leading causes of high blood pressure levels include stress, genetics, being overweight, a high-sugar diet, heavy metal toxicity, and lack of exercise. 

This blog is loaded with posts that can help you manage all of these.  And once you have them under control, you’ll be well on your way to avoiding a host of cardiovascular problems, including heart attack and stroke.

Obviously, it’s better to prevent high blood pressure levels than to treat them.  That’s why I work so hard to educate my readers.  I want you all to know that there are natural ways to lower blood pressure, including:

• reducing stress,
• losing weight  (you can get great tips for doing this here),
• controlling your sugar intake, and
• exercising more.

You also want to adhere to good cardiovascular nutrition and following my PAMM diet makes that easy.  You’ll never go hungry, but will enjoy delicious foods filled with the nutrients you need to maintain good health.

For more information on blood pressure levels and healthy blood pressure, visit Dr. Sinatra's Web site.

Even as a medical student, Dr. Sinatra was taught that the average diabetic ages 15 years quicker than the average non-diabetic. We watched that dire prediction come true for Dr. Sinatra’s diabetic mother, as well as our diabetic patients.

But it makes sense—if you have problems with sugar metabolism, that you’re going to age quicker, and we know now that it’s because the sugar and proteins create glycolated proteins in the body, and these cause accelerated aging.

Now we have another recent finding to support what we observed, but specifies yet another possible root cause: PHOPHATES.

An investigator from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine teamed up with a colleague from the Department of Pathology at Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Japan to perform provocative animal research with three groups of mice. Their bottom line finding was that phosphates—the “fizzy” part of sodas that we have cautioned our family, friends, and patients to avoid—may accelerate the aging process in humans as well as their rodent counterparts.

Even though the exact physiology of phosphate toxicity is not yet known in mammals, lead researcher Dr. Razzaque reports that phosphates represent a culprit behind the prevalence of age-related medical problems and complications such as cardiovascular problems, kidney disease, and weakened skin and muscular structures.

So, for an alternative to those sugary summery drinks, consider something equally cold and refreshing, but much more nutritious. Green tea over ice with zesty lemon and a spring of lime is one of our favorites. You can also try natural mineral water sweetened with flavored liquid stevia or mixed with a puree of your favorite fruit. I am particularly partial to watermelon or strawberries!

For more information on general or cardiovascular nutrition and other great heart-healthy recipes, visit Dr. Sinatra’s Web site.

One of the common conditions cardiologists treat has nothing directly to do with the heart itself, but rather with blockages of blood vessels going to and from the kidneys, stomach, arms, legs, and feet. We call this condition peripheral vascular or arterial disease. You may know it as “poor blood circulation,” a phrase often used in the ads you see on television.

An estimated 12 million Americans are affected by the disease, and its incidence increases with age—about one-fifth of people age 70 and older have it. The condition is sometimes called a smoker’s disease because it’s particularly prominent among people who have smoked at some point in their lives.

Doctors agree that peripheral blood circulation problems are typically due to the buildup of plaque in the affected blood vessels—similar to the kind of buildup we see in the coronary arteries that feed the heart or the carotid arteries leading to the brain. The result is restricted blood flow, discomfort, tiredness, heaviness, and, often, cramping. In the early stages of the disease, patients commonly complain of cramping and fatigue in the legs and buttocks during activities like walking. Because the symptoms tend to subside when the person sits down, we refer to the problem as intermittent claudication.

To improve blood circulation, doctors often use the drugs advertised in the ads I mentioned earlier. Angioplasty or surgery is also sometimes necessary. My approach takes a different tack. I focus on the muscle cells and how to get rid of their metabolic by-products, which become increasingly toxic because of the poor blood circulation.

As the muscles are used, they burn energy and release waste. This waste causes the cells in the muscles to swell and press against adjacent blood vessels. In a person whose arteries are already compromised by plaque buildup, the swelling causes further vasoconstriction, or narrowing of the vessels. Worse yet, the toxins themselves have a vasoconstricting effect of their own—so you’re hit with a triple whammy of sorts. And as you would imagine, the more toxins that accumulate, the worse the condition gets and the more difficult it becomes to walk.

The solution is to help remove the toxins. To do this, I suggest taking 1 gram daily of glycine propionyl-L-carnitine (GPLC), a form of L-carnitine that’s proven to help improve blood circulation and blood pressure levels, as well as offsetting the destructive nature of inflammatory compounds, cellular waste products, and toxins.

For more information on natural ways to avoid circulatory problems or other cardiovascular problems, visit www.drsinatra.com.

One of Dr. Sinatra’s safe at-home summer grilling tips is to always marinate your meat, fowl, or fish in the refrigerator, not the kitchen counter.  Set aside any extra sauce you wish to use for basting before it touches the raw foods.  We also follow the American Cancer Society warning to trim off visible fat before grilling, and cook it at a higher rack position so that it is farther from the heat. (Use only the minimum number of flames sources needed on your grill in order to reduce exposure to higher temperatures.)

But our KEY extra pointer that works is to rub your meats with rosemary. In the summer months, we have small pots of herbs on our patio so we can pick them fresh off the plant, but store-bought or dried rosemary can also work.

Rosemary helps to prevent the buildup of toxic carcinogens in the meats and even contains compounds that prevent skin cancers. It’s also a great antioxidant. You can add a drizzle of a light olive oil to the aid in the rosemary rub. Grapeseed oil is even better because it does not break down with high heat as much as olive oil can.

Lamb is the perfect complement to rosemary. Lamb is a rich, natural source of L-carnitine, an antioxidant that is one of Dr. Sinatra’s Awesome Foursome. A 4-ounce serving of lamb will net you about 75 mg of L-carnitine, a great energy substrate for cardiac muscle cells—and the entire body!

Remember, food can be your medicine. Here is a fun recipe that put our taste buds into orbit this summer.

And, stay tuned for more on Dr Sinatra’s new book about foods that heal. For even more great recipes and information on cardiovascular nutrition, check out Dr. Sinatra’s Web site.

Lamb a la Rosemary

• one organic New Zealand rack of lamb
• 1-2 tablespoons of grapeseed (preferred) or extra virgin olive oil
• leaves from a 3-4 inch sprig of fresh rosemary, finely chopped ( or1/2 tsp dried rosemary)

Combine oil and rosemary and rub lamb on both sides. Place in refrigerator for one to two hours. Remove and salt and pepper to taste. Cook on both sides over propane grill to desired doneness (at least 145 degrees). Place on clean place and garnish with sprig of fresh rosemary to serve.

Often when patients come to my office, I will find their blood pressure levels to be high. However, when they go home and measure it themselves, their blood pressure levels are normal. Occasionally they’ll ask if the instruments in my office are off, or if my staff misread the result.

The actual problem, however, is a common condition called white coat hypertension. It’s used to describe people who become anxious over a visit to a physician, holistic health practitioner, dentist, or other medical facility. Such visits evoke a fight-or-flight response, and their blood pressure levels go up. But research has shown that abnormally high blood pressure readings in a medical setting could be more than just a benign byproduct of anxiety. Although the condition is poorly understood, WCH could be a precursor to high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.

A Danish study published in the Journal of Human Hypertension found a heightened cardiovascular event risk for patients with WCH over a 10-year period. A Japanese study reported in the journal Hypertension Research suggests that white coat hypertension contributes to carotid arteriosclerosis. And in another Japanese medical report, based on eight years of observation, researchers suggest that white coat hypertension is a “transitional condition to hypertension” and may carry a “poor cardiovascular prognosis.”

If you experience white coat hypertension, I suggest you introduce a regular stress-reduction program into your life. That could include activities such as exercise, T'ai chi, meditation, or yoga.

You may also want to start taking blood pressure-friendly supplements on a daily basis—such as fish oil (2–3 grams), magnesium (400–800 mg), hydrosoluble CoQ10 (100–200 mg), and a garlic supplement high in allicin (500–1,000 mg).

Finally, consider my book, Lower Your Blood Pressure in Eight Weeks (Ballantine Books, 2003). It has lots of great, practical tips for lowering blood pressure levels.

For more information on natural ways to lower blood pressure, visit www.drsinatra.com. While there, sign up for FREE e-letters or subscribe to Dr. Sinatra’s monthly newsletter, Heart, Health & Nutrition.

I’ll never forget a patient I treated a few years ago who was living with chronic hypertension.  One Easter Sunday, he ate his fill of canned ham (packed with salt) and found himself in the hospital emergency room the next day.  He was in a hypertensive crisis and suffering with acute heart failure. His heart just couldn’t handle the large amount of salt he had consumed.

His was an extraordinary situation, but it underscores the need to be careful with salt intake. So please let his story be a lesson to you.   And please share it with family and friends who may be dealing with cardiovascular problems.

Here are some things you need to know about salt consumption:

• Your body requires sodium (a component of salt) to regulate fluid balance and distribution, as well as nerve and muscle cell function. Although you need some sodium, the standard diet includes way too much.
• “Salt sensitivity” is a key factor in determining the response to dietary salt intake. Cardiovascular problems, including heart attack and stroke, are more common in “salt sensitive” patients than in “salt resistant” ones.
• The current recommendation for salt consumption is less than 2,400 mg of sodium a day, which amounts to about one teaspoon of salt. Recent research suggests that people ingesting less than 1,500 mg of sodium a day are better able to control high blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure, you should definitely aim for that kind of level. Don’t use salt from the shaker, and read labels to add up the amount you’re taking in.
• Many items at fast food restaurants are high in salt, so you can easily exceed the recommended level with one serving.
• You can easily make up for the reduced salt in your diet by cooking with fresh herbs and spices such as basil, garlic, oregano, rosemary, chives, parsley, and onion. What’s more, all of these flavorings contain natural substances that are good for your health. Garlic, in particular, has been shown to have a positive effect on blood pressure when consumed on a daily basis.
• Beware of cutting your salt consumption too much. You need a minimum amount of sodium in your system to maintain proper electrolyte balance, regardless of your blood pressure status. For that reason, don’t let your daily salt intake fall below about 500 mg.

Managing your salt intake is just one of the natural ways to lower blood pressure that are highlighted here. For even more information on reducing hypertension visit www.drsinatra.com. While there, sign up for FREE e-letters or subscribe to Dr. Sinatra’s monthly newsletter, Heart, Health & Nutrition.

Summer time always brings back-to-back yard basics, gathering on decks and patios to reconnect with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. There is something just so primitive about sitting around a fire source as our ancestors have for centuries to warm ourselves as well as to celebrate rituals, tell stories, sing and chant, or dance to an eternal drum beat. All that is conjured up in spirit as we move outside in warmer months to be more at one with the earth.

But we need be mindful that we face more toxic substances with our artificial fires than in days gone by. For example, Dr. Sinatra and I used to love to barbeque chicken until I realized that grilling any meat over an open flame increases its carcinogenic potential twenty-fold! For a while, Dr. Sinatra even hung up his tongs and put the grill into semi-retirement until we learned some safer ways to grill.

Safe Summer Grilling Basics

Charcoal grilling releases carcinogenic agents—called PAH’s (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and HCA’s (heterocyclic amines)—as fat drips off the meat and onto charcoal. The longer the cook time, the more HCA’s are released by the fat in “muscle meats” whether they are broiled or pan-fried. The National Cancer Institute has identified 17 different HCA’s that we may be getting from pork, fish and foul (not just grilled meats) that increase our risk for colorectal and breast cancers.

Your best option is to use a propane-fueled gas grill.  Unlike charcoal that “burns dirty,” releasing sooty particles that produce natural hydrocarbons, gas grills burn clean.  Plus, you don’t have to worry about dangerous carcinogenic agents like you would with charcoal grilling.

Next, you want to make sure you’re practicing safe food handling.  Because outdoor barbecue grilling involves dry heat, many of us like to marinate food ahead of time to tenderize and flavor it. Dr. Sinatra and I are big marinade fans, but I always keep meats refrigerated during the marinating process.  If I want additional sauce, I set a portion of the marinade aside.  Or, if I decide to flavor the sauce with some of the meat juices, I make to sure to boil it first for at least one minute.

In addition to marinating your meat safely, you want to make sure it’s cooked thoroughly. I like my meat on the medium rare side, to preserve the nutritious enzymes they contain. But I make sure it’s heated up properly to avoid unwanted bacteria.  I cook vegetables the same way—using simple healthy seasonings like garlic and olive oil.

It’s also important to never serve your food on the same plate you used when you brought it out to the grill. The raw juices are full of bacteria. Keep your meat hot; the side of the grill rack is perfect for that. And, of course, scrub up that rack after each grilling so it’s clean for next time!

Finally, you can protect yourself from the high temperatures of barbeque grilling by marinating with a sauce that's 10 percent plain soy sauce and 1 percent sugar. See our August 12, 2009 blog for the recipe, and another discussion on COPs and HCAs, the highly carcinogenic compounds released from the fat of muscle meats.

For even more information on cardiovascular nutrition or other health concerns, visit www.drsinatra.com.

Uncontrolled blood pressure levels (or hypertension) are a leading risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Often, there are no symptoms, which is why hypertension is called the “silent killer.” You may not know you have it unless you have your blood pressure checked regularly.

Your blood pressure reflects how hard your heart has to work to pump adequate blood through your arteries. Each contraction of your heart pumps out a wave of oxygen-rich blood that causes the flexible arterial walls to expand. After the wave passes, the walls deflate. The intensity of this sequence is your blood pressure. The first number is your systolic reading (the pressure of the blood against arterial walls at the wave’s peak), and the second number is the diastolic reading (the pressure when the wave passes).

Years ago, we thought a reading of 140/88 was the upper limit of normal. These days, a reading that high is unacceptable. Research shows that you want your systolic pressure to be in the 120s and your diastolic pressure to be in the high 70s or low 80s.

Unfortunately, our arteries become more rigid and calcified as we age, making it harder to attain these optimum blood pressure levels. Think of your arteries as rivers full of twists and turns. Just as the force of rushing high water can eat away at the bank of a river, high blood pressure has a potentially damaging effect on the inner layer of the arterial wall. The arteries are especially vulnerable where they bend or form branches.

The leading causes of high blood pressure include stress, genetics, being overweight, a high-sugar diet, heavy metal toxicity, and lack of exercise. Stress-related hormones, for instance, cause the peripheral vessels to constrict. This forces the heart to pump harder in order to move blood through the narrowed channels, and leads to more pressure at the bends.

Obviously, it’s better to prevent hypertension than to have to treat it. For more information on natural ways to lower blood pressure, visit www.drsinatra.com. While there, sign up for FREE e-letters or subscribe to Dr. Sinatra’s monthly newsletter, Heart, Health & Nutrition.