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Jean Carper is America's leading authority on health and nutrition and the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Stop Aging Now!, Food -- Your Miracle Medicine, and The Food Pharmacy. She is a columnist for USA Weekend and lives in Washington, D.C. and Florida.

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You Can Stop Heart Disease--

While heredity plays a great role in a person's disposition to heart disease, biology can be overcome with the right foods and dietary supplements. USA Weekend< columnist and number one New York Times bestselling author Jean Carper--America's most trusted source of cutting edge nutritional advice--now provides all the information you ned to lower the risk of heart disease and its debilitating consequences. The Miracle Heartreveals the most current findings available on the remarkable powers of food, vitamins, minerals, and natural remedies that have been shown to prevent, treat, and even reverse heart disease. here is everything you need to know about:

• vitamins E, B, and C
• beta carotene, calcium, coenzyme Q-10
• the benefit of superfoods such as fish, garlic, avacados, and strawberries
• eggs and cholesterol
• the benefits of tea
• the secret of olive oil
• and much more.

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The Miracle Heart

HarperTorch

Chapter One

The Foods Your Heart Likes Best

Foods That Can Save Arteries and Prevent Heart Disease:

• Seafood
• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Nuts
• High-Fiber Foods
• Magnesium-Rich Foods
• Grains
• Legumes
• Onions
• Garlic
• Olive Oil
• Alcohol in Moderation
• Foods High in Vitamin C and E and Beta Carotene

Fish:
The Universal Heart Medicine

The best way to slash your chances of heart disease is, above all, to eat fish, particularly fatty fish, overflowing with omega-3 fatty acids. The evidence of fish's preventive and therapeutic powers against cardiovascular disease is compelling. Seafood's probable main heart medicine is its unique marine fat, so fish may be the one food where fattier is healthier.

Fish with the most good fat: salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines, herring-fresh, frozen, or canned.

An Ounce A Day

Seafood eaters worldwide have less heart disease and suffer fewer heart attacks. Even eating tiny amounts of fish can have a monumental effect. A landmark Dutch study found that eating, on average, a mere ounce of fish a day cut the chances of fatal heart disease in half. A study at Chicago's Northwestern University Medical School tracking 1,822 men for thirty years found that those who ate the most fish-over an ounce a day--cut their risk of heart disease by about 40 percent and their chance of heart attacks by about half.

A study of 6,000 middle-aged American men revealed that those who ate the marine fat in a oneounce bite of mackerel or three ounces of bass a day were 36 percent less apt to die of heart disease than men eating less fish. Another twenty-five-year U.S. study of 17,000 men found that fatal heart attacks dropped the more fish they ate. Non-fish eaters had one-third more heart disease deaths than those who ate more than an ounce and a quarter of seafood a day.

If you could took inside people's arteries, you would see that the healthiest ones belong to fish eaters and the most diseased ones to non-fish eaters. As an alternative, you could examine their arteries at autopsy. That's what Danish researchers did recently, and came up with remarkable, unprecedented proof of the power of fish oil to prevent atherosclerosis.

The Danes obtained arteries and fat tissue from forty consecutive autopsies at Frederiksberg Hospital in Denmark. They measured the fish oil in the fat tissue, which revealed how much fatty fish the individ. ual had eaten while alive. Undeniably, the smoothest, cleanest arteries belonged to those with the most omega-3 fat in their tissue-who had eaten the most fish. And the most seriously clogged arteries belonged to those with the least omega-3 fat in their tissue, indicating they had made the mistake of skimping on fatty fish.

Further, new evidence reveals that fish oil, like vitamin C, influences all-important vascular function, keeping arteries more relaxed and open so blood can flow through. The omega-3s, like the vitamin, somehow trigger release of nitric oxide, the chemical that tells artery walls to relax.

Fish Prevents Sudden Death

At first, researchers thought fish discouraged heart attacks only by lessening atherosclerosis, the destruction and clogging of arteries. The theory was, fish oil acted as a mild anticoagulant to prevent blood clotting and buildup of plaque that narrows arteries. But exciting new evidence shows that eating fish does much more than previously was thought. It actually protects the muscle of the heart from potentially deadly arrhythmias and cardiac arrest. In short, eating fish can keep you from having a drop-dead heart attack. Indeed, many fish oil authorities, including Harvard emeritus professor of medicine Dr. Alexander Leaf, now believe that regulating heart rhythms is the primary way fish saves lives.

Every year about 250,000 Americans suddenly die when the heart stops because of irregular heart muscle contractions or sudden fibrillation. It can happen without any prior history of heart disease. Recent research finds it happens far less frequently to people who eat fish.

A recent report out of Harvard's long-running Physician's Health Study found that men who ate fish at least once a week had half the risk of sudden cardiac death compared to those eating fish less than once a month. The study tracked 20,551 male physicians aged 40 to 84 years. Incidentally, eating more than one serving of fish weekly didn't mean greater risk reduction, a fact that shows how potent the protection is from such a small amount of fish. In a separate study of more than 800 people living in Washington state, investigators found that those who ate small amounts of fatty fish, such as salmon, her, ring, and mackerel--even one serving a weekreduced their likelihood of cardiac arrest by a remarkable 50 to 70 percent!

Dr. Leaf explains that fish oil affects the electrical activity and "excitability" of heart cells, just as it does brain cells. In impressive studies, Dr. Leaf has shown that it is much more difficult to induce heart arrhyth- mias in dogs that are first given fish oil. Indeed, he consistently found it took a 50 percent stronger elec- trical stimulus to induce cardiac arrhythmias in heart cells that contained high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Dr. Leaf has new research under way to test the theory in humans. In his new study, patients with implanted defibrillators, who have already had heart attacks,...

Excerpted from The Miracle Heartby Carper, Jean Copyright © 2004 by Jean Carper. Excerpted by permission.
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