Ways to prevent or reverse arterial plaque....

Today's post: Tuesday, 9-30-2008

1. We’ve often covered ways to increase your HDL levels, lower triglycerides, and increase the amount of antioxidants you take in from your supplements and foods.

Doing that tends to prevent arterial plaque. Here’s a quick summary.

Eating wild caught fish, taking DHA and purified fish oil supplements; eating onions; eating organic vegetables and not eating junk foods with refined grains and high fructose corn syrup or drinking any kind of soft drinks tends to lower your triglyceride levels.

Taking 300 to 600 mg a day of niacin increases your HDL level, so does moderate drinking of alcohol, with red wine most protective in other ways, tends to increase HDL levels. So does taking 400 to 600 mg a day of magnesium; 200 micrograms a day of chromium in chromium polynicotinate. Taking 30 to 45 mg total of zinc but not more and balanced by 2 or 3 mg total of copper also helps increase HDL levels. Eating nuts increases HDL levels. Eating organic blueberries and other berries increases your HDL levels. (So taking such supplements as bilberry extract and grape seed extract high in the anthocyanins like those in berries likely does as well.) Using extra virgin olive oil instead of high omega 6 oils such as corn and soy and canola also helps keep your HDL levels high while keeping your LDL levels low.

Regular exercise, particularly progressive strength training and interval cardio do both things! They increase your level of HDL AND lower your triglyceride levels. So they are quite effective in preventing plaque build up.

The researches have found that when you raise HDL and lower triglycerides at the same time, the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL in your blood that is literally so small it sticks in your artery walls building up plaque goes way down.

(This is why NEVER ingesting transfats or the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils containing them is so important. Transfats INCREASE the dangerous small particle LDL in your blood.)

Then, if you eat plentiful organic fruits and vegetables and take antioxidant supplements, you also prevent the LDL you do have from becoming oxidized. Oxidized LDL tends to build up plaque. Vitamin A and the carotenoids in red and yellow vegetables and hidden in broccoli are antioxidants. So is 200 iu a day of natural vitamin E. And so are 200 mcg a day of selenium, 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid, & CoQ10. Cocoa & many spices are very effective antioxidants as well.

Taking 500 to 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C is also an antioxidant. But it also helps your body to prevent the small tears in your artery walls that your body would otherwise try to coat with plaque. So taking vitamin C is very valuable to prevent or reverse plaque.

(The other thing to do that is a basic health habit is to completely avoid cigarette smoke. Tobacco smoke is a reliable cause of INCREASES in your arterial plaque. This kills many more people than the cancers smoking causes. So it’s important to stay completely away from tobacco smoke.)

2. You can also take other supplements that tend to prevent or reverse arterial plaque. A recent health email I got included these.:

(Warning: Since many of these supplements “thin” the blood and one tends to thicken it a bit, it may not be wise to combine taking them with taking aspirin daily. Since aspirin also tends to produce stomach bleeding, I think the supplements are as effective and a far safer way to prevent excess blood clotting anyway.

And, if you are also taking a prescription blood thinner such a warfarin or Coumadin, you need to work with your doctor to get very frequent blood tests to be sure the effect of the supplements plus the drug doesn’t thin your blood to a dangerous level. However, if you take the supplements and eat right and exercise initially, you are far less likely to need such a prescription in the first place.)

Eating some foods regularly with some crushed raw garlic or taking the deodorized garlic capsules from Kyolic tends to prevent arterial plaque in everyone. And, in people who do the other things in this post, particularly taking vitamin C supplements, it may reverse plaque.

(Eating wild caught fish and taking the omega 3 supplements apparently is so effective at lowering triglycerides that just doing this step tends to prevent plaque build up.)

Natural vitamin E in all of its four forms and its cousin tocotrienols not only is a superb antioxidant, it may also help prevent or reverse arterial plaque. Extra virgin olive oil, nuts, avocados, some kinds of leafy green, and wheat germ and its oil all have vitamin E. Since all of these foods have other health benefits and clearly have the natural form of vitamin E, I recommend them highly.

But the best way to get vitamin E in the larger quantities that seem to be most helpful is to take supplements. Solgar makes a 200 iu of alpha tocopherol vitamin E supplement that also has some of the beta, delta, & gamma forms. (I’m sure one a day of these is good for my health. Since there have been some reports of problems with very high intakes, I do not take more. Two a day or 400 iu of vitamin E may be OK & some health experts recommend it. 600 or more I think is clearly too much.)

Vitamin K1 is in broccoli and many other cruciferous and green, nonstarchy vegetables. It’s in green tea as well. And, you can get vitamin K2 supplements. This one can thicken the blood slightly, so you definitely want to do the other blood thinning steps if you add the K2 supplement. But vitamin K apparently causes your body to put calcium in your bones to prevent osteoporosis AND it prevents calcium from getting added to your arterial plaque. And, if you also do the other things, getting enough vitamin K may even take calcium out of your arterial plaque. So, since calcium build up in your arteries is one of the most accurate predictors of future heart attacks, this is an unusually important one to include.

Nattokinase is the active ingredient in the fermented soy food natto that the fermentation bacteria use to make the soy proteins digestible. There is some evidence that adding this supplement to these other steps tends to digest & remove plaque from your artery walls.

So, if you do all or most of the most effective of these steps you can prevent plaque build up and may even reverse it.