Cardiomyopathy New Hope For A Cure
Wayne is a lifetime friend. We Grew Up Together In A Small town along the Missouri River in South Dakota. His father was my baseball coach all the way through high school, and even though Wayne is younger than me, we always seemed to be competing neck and neck in sports.
Table of Contents
- In fact, when I was a senior, I set a local high school track record in the half-mile; Wayne broke it two years later. Wayne and I both went on to attend the University of South Dakota where we ran together on the USD track team.
- Following our years at the university, Wayne continued his athletic pursuits, was an aggressive cyclist, and still ran on occasion. I admired his continued drive to stay in peak physical condition.
Read And Learn More: Nutrition Medicine Physicians Defense Notes
- Knowing his athleticism, then, I was quite concerned when my friend walked into my office one midsummer day. Wayne’s color was poor, and he complained that his heart felt like it was going to jump right out of his chest.
- My former competitor looked tired and washed out as he informed me that he had come down with the severe flu about three months earlier and just never seemed to get over it. It seemed that anything he did completely wore him out.
- He was the manager of a restaurant and didn’t know how he could continue working-it was that taxing to his body? As I examined my friend, I noted right away that his heart was indeed beating rapidly and irregularly.
- Wayne’s heart sounded like a washing machine. It was clear that he was in serious trouble, and I informed him that he needed to be admitted to the hospital.
- Wayne went directly to the hospital, where one of our local cardiologists examined him. An x-ray revealed that Wayne’s heart was significantly enlarged, so the doctor immediately ordered an echocardiogram (a sound-wave study of the heart).
The results were shocking: Wayne’s ejection fraction (a measure of how strong the heart is beating) was only 17 percent. A normal ejection fraction is between 50 to 70 percent.
- When an ejection fraction drops below 30 percent, the patient is a possible candidate for a heart transplant. Wayne’s heart was huge, filled with blood clots, and in atrial fibrillation (beating irregularly). His situation was critical.
- The cardiologist then performed a cardiac catheterization, in which he injected a special dye into Wayne’s heart and coronary arteries.
- His arteries were fine, but his heart had definitely suffered trauma. The next test, a biopsy of the heart muscle, showed that as a result of suffering a viral infection of the heart, Wayne had developed cardiomyopathy (extreme weakness of the heart muscle).
- The infection had most likely occurred in the spring when Wayne contracted what he believed was the flu. He’d actually contracted viral myocarditis, which caused severe damage to his heart.
- The cardiologist prescribed the blood thinner Coumadin and placed Wayne on several other medications in an attempt to strengthen his heart. He was then able to leave the hospital, though he was very weak and could hardly move.
- Follow-up studies of Wayne’s heart a few weeks later showed that his ejection fraction had improved to 23 percent. The cardiologist wasn’t very optimistic, though, and felt that this was probably the most Wayne’s health would ever improve.
- His heart was still filled with blood clots, and he still was in atrial fibrillation. The only other option the cardiologist had to offer was the possibility of sending Wayne to Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis, where he could be put on a heart-transplant list.
You can imagine how difficult it was for me to discuss this with my patient, my friend. I also had to inform Wayne’s parents, two people I had grown to love and admire, that their son’s life was in serious jeopardy.
- To make matters more painful still, they had recently lost a younger son to lung cancer. It seemed like I was a messenger of hopelessness.
Wayne wanted to hold off going to Minneapolis and instead work with the local cardiologist and visit me on a regular basis. - We placed him on a potent antioxidant and mineral supplement while he continued with his other medications. His blood clots finally cleared, and the cardiologist was able to convert Wayne’s heart rhythm back to normal with electrical shock therapy.
- About this same time my wife, Liz, and I were flying to the great Northwest when she showed me an article she was reading about a study on a natural nutrient, Coenzyme Q10.
- Liz handed me the article written by Dr. Peter Langsjoen, a cardiologist and biochemist practicing in Tyler, Texas.
- Dr. Langsjoen had been able to significantly improve the health of his cardiotomy-apathy patients by simply adding supplements of the nutrient called CoQ10 to their daily medications.’
- As soon as I returned home, I thoroughly researched the medical literature about the use of CoQ10 and decided that it was safe to try with my friend.
- What did Wayne have to lose? I asked him into my office the next day and started him on a dosage of CoQ10 similar to what Dr. Langsjoen had been recommending.
- Because Wayne was being so closely monitored by his cardiologist, I did not see him for three or four months, and when he did return to my office, he came to discuss the possibility of applying for total disability income. My hopes sank.
Total disability? Wayne explained that because he had not worked for the past eight months, his friends and business acquaintances had strongly urged him to consider going on disability.
- When I asked how he was doing, however, he told me that he was feeling fine and was actually able to ride his bike an average of five miles a day. He was even able to run a little.
- Grinning, I told Wayne that I would have difficulty recommending him for disability when his activity level had so dramatically improved. I suggested that we get another echocardiogram to see how his heart was doing.
- He agreed. I was astonished when I got the results. Wayne’s ejection fraction was back into a normal range at 51 percent! The only explanation for his miracle- lous improvement was lots of prayer and the nutrient CoQ10.
- The next week I ran into Wayne’s cardiologist in the doctors’ lounge, and I happily shared what had happened with our patient. But the cardiologist didn’t reflect my enthusiasm. He simply did not believe me.
- In fact, this doctor insisted that Wayne’s echocardiogram be repeated on “his” machine. Wayne was called to his cardiologist’s office, but I didn’t hear anything about the results for several weeks.
- When a letter finally did come, I learned that Wayne’s ejection fraction on the cardiologist’s machine was 58 percent. Yes! That is even better, I thought. A week after I received the letter, I was grabbing a snack in the doctors’ lounge when the cardiologist approached me.
- Our interaction was a bit different this time. Amazed at Wayne’s improvement, the doctor was anxious to see some of the research studies on CoQ10. I told him I would send copies of the studies right over.
“Ray,” he said, “you remind me of a doctor I used to listen to on the radio during my commute to work. He would talk about all these medical studies on nutrition and supplements.
- I was sure he was off his rocker. Slamming his topics became one of our favorite pastimes at the hospital. Man, we shredded him well.”
The cardiologist continued, “The most critical doctor was Jim. - In the doctors’ lounge, he would trash this radio guy up one side and down the next. This continued over the next few months until one day Jim’s partner confronted him.
- ‘Jim, if you feel this strongly about the subject, why do you take nutritional supplements?” “Well,’ Jim replied, ‘just in case I am wrong.”
- Wayne did not go on disability and is back to working full-time. His first visit to my office occurred more than four years ago.
- My friend is now able to do all that he wants to physically and his follow-up echocardiograms continue to show that his ejection fraction is normal. Let me assure you, though, that Wayne’s heart has not been “cured.”
- He still has cardiomyopathy. But with the addition of the nutrient CoQ10, Wayne’s heart has its needed fuel source, which now allows his heart to compensate for its weakened state.
Diseases Of The Heart Muscle
The heart is not a complicated organ. It is primarily a muscle whose main job is to pump blood throughout the body. In the last couple of chapters, we concentrated on the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart.
- This chapter will now focus on the muscle of the heart itself. Congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy are diseases of the heart muscle.
- An electrical system triggers this muscle to beat in a coordinated and efficient manner. The heart’s valves then open and close, allowing the blood to flow efficiently through its four chambers.
- As the primary muscle with the responsibility of pumping life-giving blood to every organ in the body, the heart must continue beating consistently at all times and therefore has remarkably high energy requirements.
- Congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy have numerous causes: hypertension, repeated or severe heart attacks, viral infections, and infiltrative heart diseases like lupus or scleroderma, to name a few.
- In each case, the disease weakens the strength of the heart muscle so that it is unable to handle the amount of blood it receives from the body. The heart tries to compensate for its weakened state by dilating and beating faster.
- But blood eventually backs up into the lungs, filling them with fluid. This is called congestive heart failure. The patient essentially begins to drown in his or her own fluid.
- Sometimes failure occurs primarily on the right side of the heart, which means the liver becomes congested and the patient’s legs begin to swell. When one’s heart becomes severely weakened and dilated, as in Wayne’s case, physicians call this cardiomyopathy.
- Cardiomyopathy is a very severe case of congestive heart failure. An uncommonly large, dilated heart is its hallmark.
Diseases Of The Heart Muscle What Is Coenzyme Q10?
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), or ubiquinone, is a fat-soluble vitamin or vitamin-like substance that is also a potent antioxidant. Trace amounts of CoQ10 exist in a variety of foods, such as organ meats, beef, soy oil, sardines, mackerel, and peanuts.
- The body also has the ability to make CoQ10 from the amino acid tyrosine, but this is a complicated process that requires at least eight vitamins and several trace minerals to complete.
- A deficiency in any one of these nutrients can hinder the body’s natural production of CoQ10. Coenzymes as a group are cofactors essential for a large number of enzymatic reactions within the body.
- CoQ10 is the cofactor for at least three very important enzymes used within the mitochondria of the cell. Remember, the mitochondria are essentially the battery or furnace of the cell, where the energy of the cell is produced.
- Mitochondrial enzymes are needed for the production of the high-energy phosphate and adenosine triphosphate, upon which all cellular function depends.
- You will recall that the mitochondria are where the oxidative process occurs. Not only does energy start here, but the dangerous by-products, free radicals, are also created.
- As a strong antioxidant, CoQ10 is extremely important in helping neutralize free radicals; however, its most important function in this situation is to help create energy.
- CoQ10, which helps fuel human mitochondria, was first isolated from beef heart mitochondria by Dr. Frederick Crane in 1957. In 1958, Dr. Karl Folkers and coworkers at Merck, Inc. determined the exact chemical structure of CoQ10 and began synthesizing it.
- The Japanese then perfected the technology in the mid-1970s and are now able to produce large amounts of pure CoQ10.
CoQ10 Deficiency And Heart Failure
Not only have numerous investigators established the normal blood levels of CoQ10; they have identified what seems to be a direct correlation between the severity of heart failure and the correlating depletion of CoQ10.
- Significantly decreased amounts of CoQ10 have been noted in periodontal disease, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
- Deficient levels of CoQ10 have been most clearly established, however, in the blood levels of patients with congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy.
- CoQ10 deficiency can be the result of several conditions: a poor diet, impairment of the body’s ability to synthesize CoQ10, and/or the body’s excessive utilization of CoQ10.
- Investigators in the early 1980s began trials in which patients took CoQ10 supplements. Over the past twenty years, interest has continued to mount and numerous clinical studies have tested the results of CoQ10 in cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure patients.
- No fewer than nine placebo-controlled clinical trials have taken place around the world. Eight international symposia have been held on the biomedical and clinical aspects of CoQ10, at which physicians and scientists from eighteen different countries presented more than three hundred papers.
- The largest of these international studies was the Italian Multi-Center Trial by Baggio and Associates, which involved 2,664 patients with heart failure.
- In this particular study, nearly 80 percent of the patients improved when they started taking CoQ10, and 54 percent of these patients had major improvements in three major symptom categories.
- Put simply, studies and real-life examples show that CoQ10 is an enormously helpful supplement in treating patients with life-threatening heart conditions. While it doesn’t cure them, it certainly hinders the progress of the disease.
Treating Patients With Cardiomyopathy
Have you ever wondered what a heart transplant costs? Was your guess $250,000? Were you aware that more than twenty thousand patients under the age of sixty-five are on the heart-transplant list? Thousands more patients over sixty- five also have cardiomyopathy.
- But they are not even eligible to be placed on the heart-transplant list because of their age. Although they may receive maximum medical treatment, most will remain totally disabled.
- Only one in ten patients who are eligible for a heart transplant will actually receive one; the other nine usually end up dying from their disease fairly soon.
- These numbers don’t include the hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from congestive heart failure. Drs. Folkers and Langsjoen reported a study in the medical literature in 1992 that I believe brings this dilemma to an obvious conclusion.
- They placed eleven exemplary transplant candidates on CoQ10. Three of the patients moved from the worst classification, Class IV, to the best classification, Class 1, under the New York Heart Association guide.
- Four patients improved from Class 3-4 to Class 2, and two others improved from Class 3 to Class 1.
The New York Heart Association classifications for functional capacity:
Class 1: No limitations; ordinary physical activity does not cause undue fatigue, shortness of breath, or heart palpitations.
Class 2: Slight limitation of physical activity; such patients are comfortable at rest. Ordinary physical activity results in fatigue, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, or angina.
Class 3: Marked limitation of physical activity: although patients are comfortable at rest, less than ordinary activity will lead to the symptoms noted above.
Class 4: Inability to carry on any physical activity without discomfort; symptoms of congestive heart failure are present at rest. With any physical activity, increased discomfort and symptoms will occur.
Against the backdrop of substantial clinical trials already reported in the medical literature, Folkers and Langsjoen showed undeniable proof of the efficacy and safety of the use of CoQ10 in patients with end-stage heart failure who were awaiting transplantation.
- Here is a prime example of a natural vitamin or antioxidant shown in several clinical trials to be effective and safe. This is nutritional medicine at its core.
- When the heart muscle is weakened, for whatever reason, it places an increased demand on the nutrients the heart cells need in order to create energy.
- Because of excessive utilization of these nutrients, the heart muscle eventually becomes depleted of CoQ10, which is the most important nutrient needed to create energy.
- When patients take this nutrient as a supplement, the weakened heart muscle is able to replenish its stores of CoQ10, generate more energy, and compensate for its weakened state.
- Doctors should use CoQ10 in support of traditional medical treatment, not in place of it. This is complementary medicine, not alternative medicine.
- Although in the studies many patients improved so much they were able to stop taking several of their medications, they were not cured of their underlying heart disease. It is important to note that patients should continue taking supplemental CoQ10 over the long term.
- Clinical studies report that when patients discontinue using supplemental CoQ10, the needed fuel source becomes depleted again and heart function slowly decreases back to its previous poor level.
- On the other hand, Dr. Langsjoen reported after a six-year follow-up study of patients that those who maintained their supplemental dosage maintained their heart function improvement.
Treating Patients With Cardiomyopathy Why Don’t Physicians Recommend CoQ10?
- Here we have a life-threatening disease for which traditional medical therapy offers little hope for improvement. The cost of taking CoQ10 supplementation is about a dollar (US) a day.
- Not considering the reduced costs of hospitalization, this is substantially less than the $250,000 heart transplant for which most of these patients are waiting! Furthermore, the use of CoQ10 has never shown any side effects or problems.
- In fact, most of the studies show marked improvement within four months. So why don’t physicians recommend a trial of CoQ10 to their cardiomyopathy patients?
- What doctors don’t know maybe killing you?
- I have never heard a discussion of the use of CoQ10 at any medical meeting or with any cardiologist other than my interaction with Wayne’s physician.
- And I’ve never heard of a cardiologist placing any of my patients with congestive heart failure or cardiomyopathy on CoQ10.
- After reviewing these studies I too am amazed at the unwillingness of the medical profession to offer this option to their patients. Only 1 percent of the cardiologists in the U.S.
- Recommend CoQ10 to their patients with heart failure or cardiomyopathy.” It is not as if they have a good alternative therapy in mind. The National Institute of Health has funded most of the studies involving CoQ10 in the United States.
But unlike the plethora of synthetic drugs, CoQ10 is a natural product, and as such cannot be patented through the FDA.
- Pharmaceutical companies are not going to spend the $350 million needed to get a natural product like CoQ10 approved by the FDA if there is no economic incentive.
- It is also very costly for a company to promote the use of its medication to physicians. It is just not going to happen. I’ll tell you why physicians don’t recommend CoQ10. Physicians are pharmaceutically trained.
- We know drugs, but we don’t know much about natural products. As much as we hate to admit it, the pharmaceutical sales representatives who come to our offices daily control much of what we learn in regard to new treatments.
- And I have yet to see a pharmaceutical sales rep show me a study on CoQ10 and its effects on cardiomyopathy. There simply is no money in it.
Emmas Story
Emma is a delightful patient of mine in her early eighties. About four years ago, her cardiologist diagnosed her with cardiomyopathy. An ejection fraction of 20 percent severely limited Emma’s life. Her cardiologist prescribed several medications, including Cardarone, which she took to control her irregular heart rhythm. However, this medicine made her very sick, and she was soon unable to eat.
- Not only did she lose a lot of weight, but the medication also destroyed her thyroid gland. Thyroid medication was started but, needless to say, Emma remained very ill.
- Her cardiologist did not give her much hope and, because of her age, she was definitely not a candidate for a heart transplant. The traditional treatment Emma received only made her much worse.
- In desperation, she came to see me because she heard about how I was able to help others with similar problems. After evaluating my new patient, I could see she was having a significant reaction to the Cardarone.
- She wanted to quit taking the drug, and I agreed with her. I personally felt if she stayed on this medication she would live only another month or two. After easing her off Cardarone, I started my new patient on 300 mg of CoQ10.
- To Emma’s delight, her appetite and strength improved and her shortness of breath abated. Her activity level soon returned to normal.
- Four months later, her cardiologist repeated an echocardiogram and was pleased to see her ejection fraction had improved to 42 percent.
- Emma has become more concerned about her arthritis than her heart. In fact, she was able to have her left knee totally replaced not bad for a lady who was not expected even to live!
- It has been four years since Emma received her cardiomyopathy diagnosis, and she continues to live a healthy and happy life.
Leave a Reply