Blood Viscosity: A Major Player in Heart Disease

Blood Viscosity:

A Major Player in Heart Disease

(And what you can do about it)

By
Dr. Anthony G. Payne

One of the lynchpins of the plague-building process in people is blood viscosity. When blood is viscous -- think of Karo syrup or "grade D motor sludge" -- it damages blood vessel walls. The cells that line damaged arteries and veins will attempt to adapt to the assault and offset the impact by actually building up plague ("Atheromas" in medical parlance). This, at least, is the contention of researcher Kenneth Kensey, MD of Rheologics, Inc. (www.rheologics.com). Dr. Kensey's contentions are well argued, supported by lots of data, and are logical and forthright.

If you smoke, have high blood pressure, are diabetic, drink excessively, do drugs, have a high homocysteine level, etc. -- guess what? Blood viscosity goes up! As does the risk of developing significant blockage in circulatory vessels that are get the blunt of the movement ("shear stress) of this sticky, viscous blood.

Since heart disease is the #1 killer of adult Americans, it follows that a lot of us are walking around with "grade D motor sludge" in our circulatory systems. How can this viscosity be reduced so that the damage will slow or stop -- if not reverse?

Here are some of the things high risk people can do:

· If you smoke, you should stop

· If you drink excessively, you should curtail your intake or stop

· If you use recreational drugs, stop doing so and look into IV therapy to help your body repair the multiorgan damage
( Call 1-800-300-1064 and ask Laura, Noyemy or Kathy about the IV detox program. )

· Take a B multiple. This will help the body deal with artery-damaging homocysteine

· Take an antioxidant supplement (Antioxidants help the body deal with the cell damaging free radicals generated by viscous blood)

· If you are obese, get the excess weight off slowly under medical supervision ("The Paleodiet" is highly recommended)

· Eat food low in saturated fat. Favor omega-3 rich foods over those high in omega 6 fatty acids
(Check out the paleo diet http://14ushop.com/wizard/living-longer.html)

· If you are diabetic, keep your condition under control and ask your doctor about Carnosine and other protective factors

· If your LDL ("bad cholesterol") is high, work with your MD or DO and/or an RD to reduce this

· If your triglycerides or fibrinogen are high, ask your MD or DO about niacin or other approaches to reducing this

· Clean up dental infections and inflammation in the body (Make sure your MD or DO monitors your C-reactive protein level)

· If you are stressed out or depressed, consider stress management courses and/or Cognitive Therapy

Consume lots of brown algae foods such as Wakame, Kombu, and such. These alga contain compounds called heparin-like fucoidans that act as mild blood thinners (Which reduces blood viscosity).

_______________________________________________________________

Thromb Res. 2001 Dec 1;104(5):371-4. , Links

Changes in blood viscosity by heparin and argatroban.
Hitosugi M, Niwa M, Takatsu A.
Department of Forensic Medicine, Jikei University School of Medicine, 3-25-8 Nishi-shinbashi, Minato-ku, 105-8461, Tokyo, Japan. hitosugi@jikei.ac.jp

Anticoagulants are effective for preventing both venous and arterial thrombosis. Although antithrombotic agents have been reported to reduce thrombin formation, to our knowledge, the relation between blood viscosity (BV) and antithrombotic agents has not been examined. We examined the effects on whole BV of various dosages of the antithrombotic agents-heparin sodium and argatroban. Thirty microliters of either drug was added to 3-ml samples of blood obtained from healthy male volunteers. Whole BV was then immediately examined with an oscillation-type viscometer. When either agent was added, BV decreased and coagulation time increased dose dependently. BV was 4.5+/-0.3 mPa.s in untreated blood but decreased in a dose-dependent manner to a minimum of 2.5+/-0.3 mPa.s with heparin sodium and decreased dose dependently in a sigmoid manner with argatroban. Because thrombin generation is inhibited in all antithrombotic therapies, this inhibition might be reflected by changes in BV. Our results suggest that BV in accordance with blood coagulability are indexes of thrombotic tendency and that decreasing BV prevents life-threatening thromboembolic conditions.