Hildreth on Health: The importance of blood circulation

Good morning, folks. I’m looking out on a beautiful clear morning. The smell of blossoms is in the air and the mountain peaks to the south in the sky.

The topic for this column is the importance of blood circulation. Let’s start out with a few phrases to whet the appetite and hopefully your interest:

The rule of the artery is supreme. This comes from an old professor I had in medical school.

Physiologically and anatomically, there are only two reasons for high blood pressure. First, too much liquid or blood for the size of the container which is made up of arteries and veins; second, a shrinking of the container (arteries and veins) for the normal amount of liquid or blood.

This is from Robert Butler, M.D., director of the National Institute on Aging. If exercise could be packaged in a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine in the nation. A pretty strong statement, huh?

And, the one we have all heard a million times…If you don’t use it, you lose it.

All of these quotes can be applied and we will apply them to the vascular system and circulation.

The heart is one of the strongest and most durable organs in our body and yet more people die of some form of heart trouble than any other cause.

In this day and age, we have less physical strain on our heart than ever in the past. We have more medical procedures and drugs to keep the heart going than ever before.

We have more diagnostic capabilities to monitor the heart and its activity and function than ever before.

We are certainly spending more money in keeping the heart going than ever before.

There was a research study done in the late 1930s or early 1940s that I remember reading about when I was in medical school that comes to mind.

The study involved a chicken heart that they dissected out of the body carefully, hung it by a string so that the heart was constantly bathed in a vessel of nutrients that was known to be correct for the heart muscle and nerves.

The heart continued to beat for 30+ years in the laboratory of this medical institution and research lab without faltering.

When the research project was terminated, the heart was still beating as it did in the beginning.

Though a chicken’s lifespan is relatively short compared to ours and with all of the medical backing that we have at our disposal, you would think we could do better.

It is obvious to me that all the medical care is supportive and not the preventive answer that possibly we need.

When I was very young on the farm and under the watchful eye of a very strict English father, I remember some simple words quoted more than once in a rather crude way but still effective.

Those words were “Keep it simple, stupid.” But, to keep it simple you must know and follow nature’s rules.

Although each can be expanded upon, we will direct our attention to three simple but all-important rules.

These three are: Stress input, cellular nutrition, and exercise.

Let’s look at each individually and how it influences or may alter heart function.

Two forms of stress upon the body that are very significant are emotional stress and environmental stress.

Both are very toxic to the heart and both activate the “fight or flight” mechanism of the body.

All of the glands of the body are influenced. However, the primary gland affected would be the adrenal glands.

The adrenal glands, besides expressing multiple hormones (particularly adrenaline and cortisone in the form of epinephrine and cortisol) also alert most of the other hormone glands of the body.

All of this activity prepares the body and heart for fight or flight.

If this continues year after year beginning at early age, the longevity of the heart would be influenced and probably shortened.

As you would assume, the chicken heart would not have been influenced by emotional or environmental stress.

The second rule nature has laid out is that of cellular nutrition.

The heart demands an input of balanced nutrients and the constant removal of cellular waste.

Both were managed to perfection in the laboratory in that research experiment. Within our daily lives, natural carbohydrates and fat intake can be governed by body weight and that be determined by height, body build, and sex.

White sugar and flour should be kept as close to zero as possible as well as omega-6 fats which are made up of animal fats and certainly with zero trans fats.

As Dad used to say, “Keep it simple, stupid.”

All fresh, natural and unaltered foods should be used, limiting anything containing white sugar and white flour and animal fats to not more than twice a week.

As you noticed, I referred to cellular nutrition. That is assuming that what is good for us that goes into the mouth gets to the heart.

This is where the digestive tract and the blood circulation mechanism must be performed adequately.

The third rule is exercise. We can cope with a less than perfect #1 and #2 if we have #3.

Appropriate nontraumatic exercise has shown that it can increase return venous circulation and lymphatic drainage, thus reducing intracellular toxic byproducts and cellular waste within the body organs such as the heart.

Good muscular tone and upper back alignment and flexibility not only assist circulation carrying nutrients to the heart but waste products away.

Good lung expansion and aeration also play a major role. Nontraumatic exercise techniques are being studied and researched at this time.

It has to be a form of beneficial exercise that is nontraumatic, even with patients that cannot ambulate without support.

The heart has shown to have amazing recuperative powers if nature’s rules can be fulfilled.

The amount of improvement noted would relate to the amount of permanent damage that has taken place.

I have learned through my years of practice that we have a tendency to underestimate organ potential for recovery.

Hang in there. It’s the only body you’ll have. Go for it! In future articles, I will take each of the nature’s rules and be more explicit. The more you understand, the more likely you will carry through with that which is required.

Contact Green Valley Dr. DeWall Hildreth at (520) 625-1101 or cnhcgv@ yahoo.com . His column appears biweekly in the Green Valley News