Contents

2. Circulation

3. The Misery Index

4. The Geometry of the Heart

6. What Doesn’t Cause Heart Attacks

7. What Does Cause Heart Attacks

9. Treating the Heart

10. The Cosmic Heart

11. A Heart of Gold

Afterword

Appendix A: The Cowan Heart Diet

Appendix B: Preventing and Treating Angina, Unstable Angina, and Heart Attacks

Appendix C: Cholesterol and How to Read a Lipid Profile

2. Circulation

Rudolf Steiner’s idea that the three most important “things” for the further evolution of humanity are: (1) that people stop working for money, (2) that people realize there is no difference between sensory and motor nerves, and (3) that the heart is not a pump.

Blood stops moving in the capillaries until the gas exchange has finished. Then it oscillates slightly and flows into the veins. If it stops midway inside the capillaries, the capillaries themselves must act to force the blood through.

Depending on the conditions, every substance exists in a state of solid, liquid, or gas, and these are all the possible states that exist. Water, however, exhibits properties that seem to defy this three-state model. As a substance moves from gas to liquid to solid, the molecules get closer together, and the substance becomes denser. As a result, the volume of a given liquid substance is heavier than an equivalent volume of the same substance in its gaseous state, and the solid is denser and heavier still than the liquid. Only with water does the solid phase (ice) float on the liquid phase (water). If solid water were heavier than liquid water, aquatic life as we know it could not exist.

Pollack has found that water exists in four “phases.” The fourth phase is between liquid, or bulk, water, and the solid phase of ice. It is called the exclusion zone or exclusion layer. The author calls it structured water. It forms best at around 4C, and it highly structures bulk water, which is why jelly doesn’t leak.

This ability of hydrophilic substances, especially proteins, to structure water is central to biological life. Most of the water in biological systems is structured, such as inside cells. As water becomes structured, the electrical charges separate. The structured water becomes negatively charged while the bulk water is positively charged. The pH levels are also different. By putting a hydrophilic tube within the water, you can separate the charges, and the bulk water will begin to flow through it indefinitely unless stopped.

For a stream or river to be healthy—for it to have clean, pure water that flows continuously and supports varied and abundant plant and animal life—it has to have two attributes:

• The flow pattern must be in a vortex or spiral pattern.
• The water temperature, particularly at night, must be close to 4C.

When the water of a stream is healthy, this results in a balance of gravity with the forces of levity. Trout could remain motionless in the balance between these forces, allowing nutrients to flow to them and only moving when it is time to spawn.

When the forests are cut down, and the streams are straightened and dredged, the forces of levity are lost, and the trout has to swim for its life to maintain its position in the stream.

A Redwood tree’s xylem channels are highly hydrophilic tubes, which have a layer of negatively charged structured water lining the tube, allowing water to go against gravity to the top of the tall tree. This is the force of levity.

If you do the above tube experiment in an entirely lead-encased box, there is no flow within the hydrophilic tube. But if you expose the beaker with the tube of water inside to ambient sunlight or the infrared frequencies coming from the palms of our hands or the electromagnetic field of the Earth, the flow resumes.

In veins, there are contributions of the muscles squeezing to help the blood return to the heart, but they are most helpful for maintaining a spiral movement that supports the flow. There are also valves to prevent the blood from succumbing to gravity. But the primary revelation here is that this system of hydrophilic tubes energized by the ambient sunlight, Earth energy, and the infrared wavelengths emanating from other living beings is all that is needed in any biological system for the maintenance of abundant, robust, perpetual flow.

Varicose veins, congestive heart failure, and poor circulation may have a higher risk when forests are cut down, we are kept away from the sun and Earth, or we consume deficient quality nutrients and water. The exclusion zone excludes toxins, solutes, and other substances from eroding the blood vessels. Without the exclusion zone protection, the walls protect themselves from high pressure with plaque.

3. The Misery Index

Since the Truman administration, the Misery Index has been in use and is calculated roughly by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. A higher number on the index indicates a higher rate of societal misery. According to the Misery Index, Americans were far less miserable under President Johnson (6.77), President Kennedy (7.14), and President Clinton (7.8) than we were under President Ford (16.00) and President Carter (16.26).

Illich’s perspective on the whole thing was different. If you want to calculate the Misery Index for society, the most important rate to factor in is the employment rate. In traditional and indigenous cultures—rapidly declining in number, though they are—few people hold “jobs,” yet many people are pretty happy. In industrialized countries and countries that are frantically trying to become industrialized, however, there are high levels of employment and high rates of misery.

Rudolf Steiner envisioned the human being as a three-part organism: the nervous system centered in the head, the rhythmical system centered in the heart and lungs, and the metabolic system centered in the abdomen. Steiner also argued that healthy societal organization should reflect this same threefold principle based on: (1) human rights and equality such that no person’s voice or autonomy shall be repressed or controlled by anyone else, with decisions made by consensus; (2) artistic, intellectual, and cultural freedom such that every individual can pursue their path in life without interference from a state or governing body; and (3) cooperative economics driven by a sense of brotherhood and mutual care for others (the French revolution – liberty, fraternity, and equality).

4. The Geometry of the Heart

The venous blood flows into the right atrium, the pressure in the right atrium builds up, the tricuspid valve opens, and the blood enters the right ventricle. The fluid arriving in the right ventricle converts into a vortex before emerging out of the pulmonary valve and changing the blood from vertically oriented laminar flow to a horizontal vortex to head towards the horizontally opposed lungs. The blood then travels through the lungs, moving into the capillaries due to the structured water’s “fourth phase” tendency to flow within the high resistance hydrophilic tubes. It continues its horizontal movement into the left atrium, the valve opens, and blood flows into the left ventricle. The left ventricle then turns this laminar flow into a vertically orientated vortex. Combined with the pressure buildup, this vortex opens the aortic valve, and the blood is released through the arteries to the rest of the body. Making the heart more of a hydraulic ram than a pump.

Furthermore, the aortic arch would straighten out under pressure during systole if the heart were a pump. Instead, it bends at a more acute angle—typical of negative pressure creating suction.

6. What Doesn’t Cause Heart Attacks

Microbes are partly scavengers of dead matter (especially fungi), somewhat agents of digestion (mainly bacteria), and finally agents of modifying genetic materials (viruses). But rather than studying the intricacies of the interactions between microbes and other forms of life, or even how microbes contribute to and modify entire ecosystems, we start medical school by learning that the strep bacteria cause sore throats, and we kill it with penicillin.

When doctors say “heart disease,” they’re often referring to events or conditions that happen in the coronary arteries (angina, unstable angina, myocardial infarction), such as coronary artery disease, which can block blood flow to the heart and lead to a heart attack.

By understanding the actual pathophysiological events behind heart attacks, we can adopt a heart-healthy diet (Weston A. Price–type diet, not a low-fat diet), the use of safe and inexpensive medicine (such as g-strophanthin), and other nontoxic and effective therapies. Most importantly, understanding the events in the heart that precede a heart attack will force us to look at how heart disease manifests the actual cost of modern life to human health.

A heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), is an event that leads to the death of myocardial cells. These cells lead to the necrosis of the tissue. Myocardial infarction is diagnosed by an elevation of cardiac enzymes that generally reside inside the cells of your heart. When these cells die, they lyse, releasing their contents, including the enzymes, into the blood.

Until recently, it was thought that most heart attacks were caused by progressive blockage created by plaque buildup in the major arteries leading to the heart. The plaque was felt to be cholesterol buildup in the arterial lumen, which eventually cut off blood supply to a particular heart area, resulting in oxygen deficiency, causing pain (angina), then progressing to myocardial infarction (heart attack).

The problem with clearing with a stent or bypassing the blocked area with a coronary bypass grafting is that only high-risk patient whose life is in danger benefit from the surgery. The heart gets blood flow from both the four major blood vessels and a network of collateral vessels, compensating for the interruption of flow.

The soft plaque is thought to be an inflammatory “buildup” and LDL. When a person suffers a heart attack, there is often the formation of a blood clot within a heart vessel (acute thrombosis), but it is a consequence, not the cause.

When you put heavy metal dye under high pressure into an artery (angiogram), the artery reacts with a spasm. So, imagine you have an artery, of which 50 percent of the cross-section of the interior is blocked with plaque. Then push heavy dye through it, causing the artery to spasm, suddenly the interior dimension is narrower, making the plaque block 70% more of the artery.

Thrombosis has only been associated with no more than 50% of heart attack deaths.

7. What Does Cause Heart Attacks

The most common risk factors are being male, having diabetes, smoking, and experiencing chronic psychological/emotional stress. None of these factors are directly linked with the pathology of the coronary arteries. Diabetes and cigarettes cause disease in the capillaries, not the large vessels, and stress has no direct effect on the coronary arteries that we know of. The drugs tend to be beta-blockers, nitrates, aspirin, and statin drugs.

The SNS signals to the adrenal medulla to release adrenaline, which results in biochemical responses that accelerate the breakdown of glucose for quick energy. The PNS is centered around the adrenal cortex and uses acetylcholine, nitric oxide, and cyclic guanosine monophosphate as its chemical mediators. People who have ischemic heart disease have, on average, a reduction of PNS activity, which can be brought on by smoking, emotional stress, inactivity, poor diet, and hypertension. It has been shown that women have a more robust vagal tone than men, potentially explaining the difference between sexes.

Nitrates stimulate nitrous oxide production, which upregulates the PNS. Aspirin and statins also produce nitric oxide and acetylcholine production, mediators of the PNS, until a rebound effect decreases PNS activity. Beta-blockers block the activity of the SNS. Their impact on the plaque is of minor relevance.

MI patients often get tired, with the increase in SNS activity, adrenaline release, and glycolysis and glucose utilization (moving away from fatty acids and ketones). There is also a dramatic increase in lactic acid in the myocardial cells, resulting in localized acidosis, making calcium unable to enter the cells, and therefore, unable to contract properly. This causes localized edema, hypokinesis, diminished muscle function in heart walls, and eventually tissue necrosis and heart attack. The localized edema alters the hemodynamics of the arteries, causing pressure that ruptures unstable plaques, which further blocks the artery and worsens the hemodynamics of the heart further.

The things that nourish our PNS are contacted with nature, loving relations, trust, economic security, and sex. A medicine that supports all aspects of the PNS is G-strophanthin (ouabain), an endogenous hormone made in our adrenal cortex from cholesterol, whose production gets inhibited by statins. It stimulates the production and liberation of acetylcholine and converts lactic acid into pyruvate, which is one of the preferred fuels of myocardial cells. This may be why the Chinese say that the kidneys (adrenals – where ouabain is made) nourish the heart.

Suppose there is a less-than-optimal layer of exclusion zone water, particularly at high-stress areas in the blood vessels. In deteriorating deterioration of the vessel, which we see pathologically as inflammation. If this inflammation goes unchecked, the body will try to stiffen the weakened artery to withstand the pressure of the blood flow. It does so by putting a kind of plaster cast made of calcium onto, and even into, the artery (plaque).

The three most potent energy sources for structuring water are energy from sunlight, the electromagnetic field from the Earth, and the infrared energy that emits from any other living being—the energy from the palms of the hands is a particularly effective way of stimulating blood and water flow.

Instead of using statins to reduce CRP, it would be better to reduce inflammation by addressing hyperinsulinemia. Too many carbohydrates force excess insulin release, resulting in obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and inflammation. Inflammation in the joints results in arthritis and arteriosclerosis in the blood vessels.

The next step in preventing and reversing arteriosclerosis is to eat lots of fats, which contain vitamin K2. K2 directs calcification away from soft tissues and into the bones and teeth where they belong. This would reduce calcification of the arteries as inflammation subsides, the exclusion zone can be rebuilt, and the protective coating of plaque is no longer needed.

The final step in preventing angina, unstable angina, and MI is enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP). The patient lies on a bed, and inflated “balloons” are put on both legs and around the pelvis. The device syncs up the timing of the inflation of the balloons with an EKG so that the balloons are squeezing the legs and pelvis during diastole (relaxed heart). After an hour at a time, five days a week, for seven weeks, pressurized venous blood creates a new collateral circulation of the heart—a nontoxic bypass of sorts.

9. Treating the Heart

He asks his patients when they were last feeling well and tells their story up to the current point. No advice or opinions during this time about what may have caused it; just listen with empathy (a healing and SNS reducing process in itself).

Then: What do you eat? When and how do you sleep? What do you do most of the day? How do you move your body? Do you sit most of the time? Whom do you spend your time with? How are your family relationships and other details that make up a life?

• When the patient answers, listen to their “heart” rather than the words. How do they feel about the way they discuss these details?

A physical exam is then carried out. Blood pressure, pulse (rate, character, strength, and integrity), eyes, irises, tongue (swollen moist person or dry withered type?), heart, and lungs.

• Starting at the upper border of the left side of the sternum and working down the left sternal border and over to the apex of the heart, you hear the different intensity (loudness) of the two sounds. In a healthy person, very near the bottom of the left side of the sternum, the two sounds are of equal intensity; this equal intensity suggests that the sympathetic nervous system influences from above (the head, the nervous system) are in balance with the parasympathetic nervous system influences from below (the metabolism) in this central meeting space of the heart.
• In most people with heart disease, the sympathetic nervous system is predominant at the lower left sternal border. There is a “LUB-dub” sound even over to the apex of the heart.

He then feels the abdomen, looking for swollen organs, especially a congested liver, suggesting that the metabolism is burdened and sick. Then he examines the legs, looking for signs of swollen or congested veins.

Testing. HgbA1c, the hsCRP, and a stress echo.

• The HgbA1c (glycosylated hemoglobin) tells the average blood sugar over the past eight weeks. A person with a consistent HgbA1c result of less than 5.3 will typically have no evidence of heart disease, suggesting tight blood sugar control, low insulin levels, minimal or no inflammation, and no capillary disease. 6.2 and over suggests significant plaque, metabolic dysfunction of the heart, autonomic imbalance, and small vessel disease. Diet and movement can be used to address metabolic restoration.
• HsCRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein) is a marker for inflammation, usually related to the A1c. This number tells us about the inflammation in the blood vessels. An ideal number is less than 0.5. Significant inflammation is typical when it approaches or exceeds 3, and plaque and blood vessel disease. Diet and movement program.
• The stress echo assesses the heart’s ability to move under the stress of physical exertion. A stiff or inflexible heart area suggests a blocked artery.
• Blood flow through large vessels (coronary arteries) and small vessels (capillaries) impact myocardial cells’ integrity and ability to metabolize fuel and eliminate waste products. Therefore blood flow also influences the movements of the heart as a whole, which is what the stress echo evaluates. Part of the heart’s ability to move healthily is due to the influence of the metabolism, whether or not inflammation is present and if the autonomic nervous system is in balance. If we see impaired heart movement, we assess whether our heart therapy can restore a regular movement pattern in the heart.

Treatment

• Nourishing Traditions–type diet: liberal fats and low carbohydrates, which is especially effective in treating the metabolic defects reflected in the elevated A1c and hsCRP levels underlying heart disease.
• For movement: thirty minutes per day of barefoot walking, when possible, on a beach for those who live near the ocean, or thirty minutes per day of vigorous outside walking if barefoot walking is not possible. Making our water (i.e., blood) move is an essential component of healthy circulation, of which the heart is a part. Increased blood flow means increased metabolism, which translates to a restoration of the heart’s health as a muscle. Vigorous barefoot walking is a key to improving blood flow and overall circulation. Also, lymphatic flow. 
• HIIT once per week to encourage new small blood vessel formation and muscle growth.
• G-strophanthin is taken at a dose of three milligrams two to three times per day, usually first thing in the morning and the evening. Strophanthus is also available as an extract, in which case it should be used at five to twenty drops three times per day, before meals.
  • The effect they are looking for is a sense of relief in symptoms: steadier rhythm, less pain, more stamina, less psychological tension, better sleep, and overall better function. After a few months, they check to see if the stress echo has improved, suggesting better metabolic function of the heart. Often finding the correct dose and staying on it indefinitely.
• Also, emu oil for vitamin K2, and its plaque dissolving and artery softening effects.
• Finally, if possible, they do a seven-week course of EECP to reduce chest pains, improve functional capacity, and restore standard small blood vessel or collateral circulation. Usually, this seven-week course of treatment effectively relieves angina and improves the patient’s functional ability. Overall, blood flow improves, the blood flow in the heart is more robust, and stamina improves significantly. EECP protects the heart from damage, and generally, it need not be repeated for 5-7 years.

10. The Cosmic Heart

Consider this as a place to start: We have already seen that the form of the heart can be visualized as a chestahedron that sits in a cube at an angle of slightly more than 36 degrees to the left of the center. This is the same angle the heart sits in the chest and the approximate centigrade temperature of standard human body temperature. We refer to a compassionate person as warm-hearted; maybe our human warmth comes from the heart.

Research from the HeartMath Institute has shown that the heart acts as a conductor in the body, and other organs entrain on or pick up rhythms from it. They are becoming integrated into one whole living system.

• A human being takes an average of 25,920 breaths per day (average 18 breaths/minute × 60 minutes × 24 hours); it takes the sun about the same number of years to traverse the twelve signs of the zodiac—the so-called Platonic year.
• The sun travels one degree of the zodiac every 72 years, the approximate length of human life. In 72 years, there are approx. Twenty-six thousand days – the approx. A number of breaths in a day.
• Finally, between each cycle of inhalation and exhalation, there is a slight pause that helps prevent hyperventilation. There is a similar pause in the cycle of the year. At the solstice, the sun “rests” for a moment and then swings back the other way (observed as such from Earth).

These geocentric observations would have allowed traditional people to become familiar with their rhythms to navigate, plant, and harvest crops and understand seasonal patterns.

Geocentric people felt or knew they could trust what they saw and experienced. They knew they were tied to a place and other beings within a cosmic order that they could broadly understand, use, and rely on. Out of this familiarity, trust, and uniqueness, love and care can arise.

You won’t care for your piece of land if, when you “use it up,” you just move on to the following similar field to grow the same crops. We don’t love all women equally; we love our mother or soul mate. We don’t love and care for all children equally. Through experience, trust, and connection, we love our children. We don’t all love land equally; we love the land we have a connection to, which provides us with what we need to maintain life.

11. A Heart of Gold

Like silver, gold is a noble metal, all of which resist corrosion and oxidation and, according to most people, are incapable of the lack of electrical resistance that characterizes superconductivity. However, some people argue that a “pure” form of gold is known as Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements (ORME or ORMUS). ORME describes a change in the form that can occur in gold, silver, and platinum metals. In gold, electrons circle the nucleus and form bonds with other atoms, resulting in compounds. Under certain vortex-creating conditions, the atoms can pull in their electrons and assume a high-speed condensed form, making it impossible to form compounds.

Elements in this state are called monoatomic, although they can form in pairs or even triplets, and they are called elemental because they can no longer form connections with other elements.

ORME can no longer conduct heat or electricity; typically, silver and gold compound wires are among the best conductors of heat and electricity. They also have a lighter weight than their conventional counterparts, subjected less to gravity than to levity. While ORME elements can’t conduct heat or electricity, they become superconductors capable of conducting a variety of impulses virtually at the speed of light. Dramatically reducing the friction and energy required and substantially increasing the speed at which something can travel. Finally, ORME elements cannot be measured by conventional atomic measuring devices such as spectrophotometers because these devices depend on the interaction of the element and the device.

Afterword

• Eat good food and only good food. Start with Nourishing Traditions and adjust from there.
• Drink only good water—water that is pure, mineralized, and structured. Visit www.dancingwithwater.com and explore from there.
• Get as much sun exposure (without burning) as you can.
• Walk with your bare feet on the earth as much as possible, especially at beaches, lakes, rivers, and oceans. 
• Try to restore to health as many living beings as you can. This can include plants, animals, mountains, fields, rivers, lakes, relationships, and others. Nurture them and be the one responsible for ensuring their wellbeing. Love them, protect them, fight for them, care for them.

Appendix A: The Cowan Heart Diet

Principle One: Quality Matters

1. Animal foods. When choosing foods from animals, land, or sea, select the animals grown in a way most compatible with that animal’s nature. 

2. Seed food. All plants “enjoy” growing in a diverse ecosystem rather than in the mono-crop environment of conventional agriculture. We know that biodiversity is related to resilience and that growing many different plants together is one of the best ways to ward off pests and ensure the health of our food plants.

• The permaculture food forest concept teaches that growing nut trees alongside other food crops improves the soil and trees’ health and can also maximize yield.
• Seed foods should be soaked for 12-24 hours or sprouted before cooking. This breaks down some of the antinutrients contained in the seed that keep the seed dormant. Soaking or sprouting makes seeds, nuts, grains, and legumes easier to cook, taste better, and more digestible.

3. Vegetables and fruit. In general, the percentage of vegetable to fruit consumption should be about 80 percent vegetable 20 percent fruit. Again, these foods should all be sustainably grown.

Principle Two: How to Eat Vegetables

Eating small amounts of at least five to ten different vegetables per day. You should eat green vegetables (leaves), red/orange vegetables (carrots/beets/squash), white vegetables (onions, leeks, garlic), and purple/black vegetables (tree collards, indigo apple tomatoes) on most days. You should include root vegetables, leaf vegetables, and fruit vegetables (squash, zucchini, peppers), as well as some annuals. See his booklet How (and Why) to Eat More Vegetables for more detailed guidelines.

Principle Three: Intermittent Fasting

Our bodies are designed so that when we don’t eat for twelve hours, we first run out of constituents in the food that keep our blood sugars within the normal range, and then we run out of stored starch in our liver (glycogen), the next readily available source of blood sugar. Once this twelve-hour mark hits, our metabolic/hormonal state shifts, and we transition into a catabolic or breakdown phase.

• Glucagon catalyzes our fat stores’ mobilization, hence breakdown and turnover, to be the next line of defense against a dropping blood sugar. As this temporary fasting state continues, the body shifts more of the blood flow to our heart, brains, and muscles, possibly to get us more mentally and physically focused on finding some food.
• Nature and our bodies are so sophisticated that one explanation for getting sick is that we need to spend more time in this catabolic state. We will get sick, stop eating, increase our temperature, flush out stored toxins, and then get back on our feet.

After twelve hours, you run out of glycogen and start burning fat. Suppose you extend this to seventeen or eighteen hours, one to six days per week. In that case, you have a powerful strategy to burn fat, lose weight, reverse diabetes, lower your blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and increase mental acuity.

Eat an early dinner, finishing by 6 p.m. Go to bed and wake up at your normal time. Instead of a typical breakfast, drink plain water and do vigorous activity until about noon. Eat your usual high-quality foods between noon and 6 pm.

Principle Four: Macronutrient Content of the Diet

To increase metabolic flexibility, gradually reduce carbohydrates and increase grass-fed butter or ghee and coconut oil intake. Then adjust the number of starchy vegetables and fruit based on how you feel, especially with regards to your energy. If you are sluggish, add more carbohydrates. If your energy remains good, you are adapting to using cleaner fats as fuel.

Excessive protein subjects us to too much nitrogen and unnecessarily burdens our kidneys. Too little protein creates weak muscles, fatigue, mental lethargy, and, eventually, poor immune function. A happy medium is to eat a combination of daily broth, which contains valuable essential amino acids, 1–2 eggs per day, and fresh food (meat, organ meats, fish, poultry).

Principle Five: Water

He gets rid of the water’s chloride, drugs, metals, and chemicals with a multistage filtration device (Nikken filter). He removes the fluoride with a teaspoon of Adya Clarity mineral solution and lets it sit in a gallon jar of water for 24-48 hours. This allows fluoride precipitate to be filtered out through a carbon filter. This water then gets put through a vortex machine (Duet Water Revitalizer), remineralizing it and putting it in a vortex motion for 9 minutes. He then stores the water in Flaska bottles in their refrigerator.

Principle Six: Trust Your Instincts

Eating must remain a joyful and social experience, not a clinical and mechanical process, and everyone must ultimately find their own diet. He can give principles based on his understanding of physiology and disease to guide you in making sound food choices. Still, ultimately you must carefully listen to and observe how you react to the foods you are eating.

By starting over, sticking to simple, wholesome food, you will learn the lessons of how you need to eat. Become your own doctor, your own body’s wisdom becomes the guide, and you will be on the road to better health.

Appendix B: Preventing and Treating Angina, Unstable Angina, and Heart Attacks

1. Adjust your diet following the guidelines in Appendix A until the hsCRP (for inflammation) and HgbA1c (for blood sugar control) are normal. The optimal A1c level is between 4.9-5.4. The hsCRP should always be less than 1; less than 0.5 is better.

2. Emu oil (3 caps per day)

3. Strophanthus. Strophanthus is currently hard to obtain in the United States. The most to least favorite options are:

• a. G-strophanthin (oubain). Comes in 3mg capsules from a German company Max 18mg dose.
• b. Strophanthus extract. Contains g-strophanthin. Teebrasil seems to be the only company that sells it.
• c. Strophactiv D4. German homeopathic product. The dose is 20 drops in a teaspoon of water three times per day before meals, best held in your mouth for one minute before swallowing.

Appendix C: Cholesterol and How to Read a Lipid Profile

From a conventional cardiology perspective, you want a cholesterol/HDL ratio of less than 3.5 and an LDL of less than 100 or, if you have had prior heart disease, less than 80.

Statin use does not change the possibility of dying; it only creates a modest and possibly suspect reduction in the risk of heart disease.

LDL is mainly responsible for preventing infections, and people with the lowest LDL levels have the highest overall mortality rate. Patients below 100 are the most at risk for death based on all-cause death rates (death from any cause, not just heart disease).

He counsels his patients that the lipid profile is a questionable tool for assessing their risk of heart disease. If their cholesterol/HDL ratio is less than 3.5 (or close to 3.5), no intervention is needed or helpful. Lastly, suppose their ratio is higher than 5.5 (usually because of high triglycerides and low HDL). In that case, they stand to benefit substantially from the guidelines in appendix A, including a low-carbohydrate diet to lower the triglyceride level, as well as a more active exercise program. Apart from that, there is little else of value that can be learned from this test, in my opinion.