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What You Can Do To Reduce Your Risk Of Blood Clots

Over 300,000 people in North America die each year from stroke. Another 700,000 die each year from heart attack. The most common type of both stroke and heart attack is ischemic disease, caused by a blood clot. Damage occurs when the blood clot reduces – and then totally blocks – circulation in an artery. The tissue nourished by that artery begins to die almost immediately.

The Nature Of Blood Clots

Blood clots are a miracle when they occur in the right place at the right time. If a blood vessel is injured it sends out chemical distress signals that cause platelets to seal the leak. Platelets are small, white cells that are normally very slippery. They become sticky when the lining of the blood vessel (the endothelium) is damaged.

1. The endothelium sends chemical messages to the platelets.
2. The platelets send chemical messages to attract fibrin proteins.
3. Fibrin proteins are like string that becomes very sticky and ties the groups of platelets together. This is an immature or “white” blood clot.

If the leak is not sealed by this “white” clot, larger red blood cells are tied to the platelets by fibrin to form a “red” clot.

Blood Clots In The Wrong Place – At The Wrong Time

Problems occur when these clots happen in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, one probable cause of migraine headaches is inappropriate communication between blood vessels and platelets. If a single blood vessel cramps or spasms it can signal platelets to become so sticky that they restrict circulation in the rest of the brain. Ischemic strokes and heart attacks are often caused by mature red clots breaking free of the injured area and blocking arteries in the heart or brain.

Interestingly, blockages from blood clots can occur in any area of the body. For instance, a person can have a “stroke” that injures the lungs or kidneys. Deep vein thrombosis in the legs is the exact same kind of vascular disease that causes stroke or heart attack.

The key to preventing damage is to make sure that the clots form only when and where they are supposed to. This is only possible with accurate communication between the endothelium in the blood vessels and the clotting mechanisms in the red blood cells, platelets and fibrin. Simple nutrients can have profound effects on improving this communication – and I make several suggestions later in this report.

Working Smarter, Not Harder

Blood thinners force platelets and fibrin to ignore clotting signals from the endothelium. When a person is having a stroke these drugs are life-saving because the blood vessels, platelets and fibrin are getting the message to clot in the wrong place at the wrong time. One new class of drugs triggers the release of nitric oxide to open the blood vessels. Nitric oxide also helps the blood vessels, platelets and fibrin proteins communicate clearly. To prevent blood vessel miscommunication in the first place, high nitric oxide levels are needed.

Nitric oxide is made from nitrogen; nitrogen comes from fruits and vegetables. Eating up to nine servings of fruits and vegetables every day will make your clotting system very smart! Plant-based foods have been proven to improve your health – including the health of your circulatory system.

Smart Nutrients

Adaptogen 10 Plus®

Dr. Nathan Bryan, cardiologist and specialist in nitric oxide communication, recommends Adaptogen 10 Plus to help increase nitric oxide. Adaptogen 10 Plus also helps protect against stress. Stress alone – without any help from cholesterol – causes blood vessel spasms which may result in blood clots. So, a good first step in improving the health of your circulatory system is to eat your fruits and vegetables every day and take whole-food supplements like Adaptogen 10 Plus.

OmegaPrime®

Essential fatty acids such as those in OmegaPrime can help keep the platelets from getting sticky at the wrong time. Dr. Dwight Lundell, cardiologist and specialist in bypass surgery, recommends the Omega-3 EFA in OmegaPrime as a prime tool to help protect against inappropriate clotting. We need 1–4 grams of Omega-3 every day (2–6 OmegaPrime soft gels).

HCY Guard®

Dr. Kilmer McCully, cardiologist and specialist in vascular health, recommends the protective nutrients found in HCY Guard to help your body reduce homocysteine (HCY). HCY is one culprit in forming clots at the wrong place and time. Taking a single HCY Guard sublingual lozenge daily can help your body reduce homocysteine up to 35% – in as little as 42 days!

Other nutrients such as Vitamin E, turmeric and ginger, and Vitamin C all provide information for your blood clotting system to work smarter. Smart nutrients are the key to making good decisions about where and when to activate this miraculous system!

Upcoming Weekly Wellness Reports…

• Recognizing a Stroke
• Deep Vein Thrombosis
  

Send us your topic suggestions!

If you have specific health topics you’d like Brazos Minshew to discuss in upcoming reports, click here to submit your suggestions.

Please note that Weekly Wellness Report topics will be chosen at the discretion of Brazos Minshew and based on general relevance.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

The Unexpected Benefits Of Vitamin C

A professor of mine once told me that newly graduated doctors have 100 cures for every disease. Experienced doctors often use one remedy for 100 diseases. It seems that this is proving to be quite true with our old friend, Vitamin C.

The Best Vitamin C

There are many types of Vitamin C. Some supplements contain diverse minerals while others contain related ingredients like bioflavonoids. There are good reasons for each of these additions. Yet, time has not proven the fancier forms to be superior to the natural, non-acidic form of Vitamin C (sodium-L-ascorbate).

The primary pathway for Vitamin C transport into the bloodstream is through the sodium transport channel. Now, sodium has a really bad reputation because many of us put too much salt (sodium chloride) on our food. But, the fruits and vegetables we eat are naturally very high in sodium. Our blood is naturally high in sodium. In fact, the sodium content of our blood is about 32 times greater than the potassium level in our blood. It is comparable to the sodium content in sea water.

Dr. Libby’s Vital C has the best profile for absorption of this important nutrient.

New Uses For An Old Remedy

Three articles in medical literature recently caught my attention.

Toxins

The first one was a two-year-long discussion about the protective effects of Vitamin C against pesticides and other environmental toxins. This is important because we dump 2.5 million tons of pesticides into our biosphere every year (Environmental Medicine part 4, Dr. Walter Crinnon).

The discussion of Vitamin C and pesticides was published in 2007 and 2008 in the journal Toxicology and Industrial Health. It clearly shows the protective effect of large amounts of Vitamin C against common environmental toxins.

Cholesterol

The second article appeared in the February 2008 edition of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. It demonstrated another benefit of Vitamin C in people with elevated cholesterol. You see, Vitamin C in the liver binds excess cholesterol and drains it through the bile ducts into the intestines. Fiber in the intestines soaks up the cholesterol and carries it out of the body. If our diet does not have enough fiber to eliminate the cholesterol we will likely reabsorb it. In fact, most of the cholesterol in our bloodstream has been excreted and reabsorbed numerous times.

Vitamin C binds cholesterol and takes it out of the liver. Vitamin C also helps protect the lining of blood vessels – making them like Teflon to sticky LDL cholesterol. Instead of damaging the blood vessels, oxidized LDL slides off the walls of your arteries and is carried back to the liver by HDL cholesterol.

Blood Pressure

The third article came from the October 2008 Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypertension. It clearly showed how large reservoirs of Vitamin C can help reduce high blood pressure. Antioxidants (especially Vitamin C) may reduce poisons in the tissues called aldehydes – think of the poison formaldehyde as a good example. Poisons drive up blood pressure; Vitamin C helps drive down poisons and can result in blood pressure reduction.

Conclusion

Health is built one habit at a time. The more we learn and live the 10 Essentials for Health and Wellness, the healthier we become. Essential #4 tells us to eat nutritiously – including the proper use of supplements. Science is firmly behind using nutrients and nurturing to improve the quality of our lives.

Upcoming Weekly Wellness Reports…

• Strokes and Thrombosis
• IBS/Bad Breath/Acid Reflux

Send us your topic suggestions!

If you have specific health topics you’d like Brazos Minshew to discuss in upcoming reports, click here to submit your suggestions.

Please note that Weekly Wellness Report topics will be chosen at the discretion of Brazos Minshew and based on general relevance.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.