Healthy Heart

Although heart disease is an umbrella term for a variety of different diseases affecting the heart, it usually refers to coronary artery disease. When cholesterol accumulates in the coronary arteries the flow of blood is obstructed. As a result the oxygen supply to the heart is reduces and various symptoms including chest pain are experienced. High cholesterol diet, smoking, obesity, and stress are considered the most important factors in causing heart disease. More than 15 million people die of heart diease every year. As of 2007, it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, killing one person every 34 seconds in the United States alone. The incidence of heart disease has been rising in the developing countries as well. The World Health Organization predicts that heart disease would reach epidemic levels in many developing countries including Bangladesh unless immediate steps are taken.

Under conventional treatment, medicine, angioplasty or bypass surgery is recommended for clearing away cholesterol and normalizing blood flow, depending to the extent of blockage. This treatment however, has some major limitations. It cannot prevent blockages from recurring: One of the most important risk factors in heart disease is stress. But any effective treatment of stress is usually absent in conventional treatment. As a result, when the patient resumes his old lifestyle following the surgery, he gradually develops various complicacies of the heart once again. Studies show that between 25 to 50% of the patients suffer from restenosis or recurrence of significant blockages within 4 to 6 months of an angioplasty. 1 in 20 people suffer from a second heart attack after surgery. 1 in 40 people suffer from stroke. A second bypass surgery increases this risk by 10 to 20 percent. Harmful side effects of medicine and surgery: Open heart surgery involves cutting the ribs open to access the heart. Needless to say, such a procedure takes a huge toll on the patient and diminishes his energy and vitality. Even angioplasty and the medicine that usually accompany it frequently give birth to complications such as hematoma, drop beats, fluctuations in blood pressure etc. Huge expense For many patients, bearing the cost of these procedures is a huge burden. The minimum cost of an angioplasty is roughly $15,000 and of a bypass surgery roughly $40,000 dollars. A recent edition of Davidson's Principles and Practices of Medicine clearly states that angioplasty and bypass surgery, while successfully treating symptoms, fail to have any impact on the survival rates of heart patients. PCI (coronary angioplasty & coronary artery bypass graft surgery) provides an effective symptomatic treatment but there is no evidence that it improves survival in patients with chronic stable angina. (p 586)

Experts have seen that a change in lifestyle and diet is more effective. For years it was believed that once a blockage was formed there was no way to treat it other than angioplasty or bypass surgery. Dr. Dean Ornish, a specialist from California, was the first to strike a blow to this conservative notion. While working as a specialist in a hospital in California, Dr Ornish noticed, to his amazement, that 30 to 50 percent of heart patients were being readmitted to the hospital with new blockages within four to six months of angioplasty or bypass. Later, influenced by the philosophy of Guru Swami Satchidananda, he decided to conduct research on the effect of yoga, low cholesterol diet, and meditation on heart disease. In 1987, he divided 48 heart patients into two groups of 28 and 20. The first group was given a low cholesterol diet and taught to practice meditation and yoga for a year. In addition, they were successfully motivated to cease smoking and encouraged to develop compassion and empathy. The 20 members of the other group were treated according the guidelines of the American Heart Association. After one year, it was seen that for the first group, blockage had not only stopped, but reversed. Blood circulation to the heart had also increased significantly. On the other hand, for those undergoing conventional treatment, blockage had increased significantly. A detailed report on Dr. Ornish’s experiment was published in the Journal of American Medical Association in 1998. This ground breaking work created a huge stir in the US. Dr. Ornish wrote a book called Program for Reversing Heart Disease describing the program and its astonishing impact, which instantly became a national best seller. In an article entitled Going Mainstream, the June 26 issue of Newsweek reported that after Dr. Dean Ornish published the results of his earlier study, Mutual, an insurance agency based in Omaha, funded a two year study in which 200 subscribers enrolled in Dr. Ornish’s program, which cost $5500 dollars, instead of reporting to hospitals for $ 15,000 angio-plasties or $40,000 bypass operations. 190 stuck with the program, of them, only one needed surgery. After this tremendous success, hospitals from all over the country sent teams to receive training in Dr. Ornish’s program. This process not only saves the cost of expensive operations, but also relieves the patient from side effects and costs of the medicines that patients have to take lifelong following a heart surgery. Ornish’s program has gained such widespread acceptance that it hardly qualifies as alternative anymore, it is considered part of the mainstream treatment of heart disease.