The Heart and the Circulatory System

Next time you find yourself philosophizing about the nature of progress, stop and consider cardiac disease, which is generally considered a twentieth-century ailment—and for good reason. Cardiac disease afflicts mainly people who live in Western, industrialized nations. It kills nearly one million Americans a year and is the leading cause of death in the United States. Scientists who study the history of disease believe that heart disease was rare among our earliest human ancestors.

The heart can be likened to an engine that drives the body. It uses a vast network of blood vessels to pump blood to every cell in your body. As you probably know, blood is responsible for transporting important life-giving commodities such as oxygen, nutrients, chemical messengers and infection fighters to your cells. It also carts away unneeded debris, such as carbon dioxide, urea and lactic acid, to your kidneys for disposal. Together the heart and blood vessels are called the cardiovascular system.

How have we managed to create a modern-day plague on the most basic of our bodily systems? Medical science points an accusing finger at a diet rich in fat, salt and too many processed foods, among other risk factors. People are taking this knowledge to heart, and dietary changes alone have dramatically reduced deaths from heart disease in the United States.

Stress and lack of exercise are also commonly named as factors contributing to heart disease. In addition, the American Medical Association warns that cigarette smoking increases your chance of dying from heart or artery disease by up to 300 percent! This is because nicotine constricts arteries and the carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood.

Nothing can completely offset the effects of an unhealthy modern lifestyle, but in addition to eating healthily, exercising and not smoking, the use of humble herbs can reduce your risk of heart disease. Treating a heart condition is certainly more drastic than soothing a simple sore throat or headache, and a doctor's advice is required. That said, herbs do offer some of the best support for a healthy heart, especially when combined with exercise and a well-balanced diet. No, I do not suggest that you toss your heart medication into the trash and head for the garden, but herbs can help keep many heart and circulation problems from getting worse and can even prevent some of them from developing at all.

If your doctor has prescribed any type of heart medication, do not take it upon yourself to add herbal remedies to your regimen without consulting your doctor. Combining herbs with drugs can be tricky business, and the results can be disastrous. For example, hawthorn, a popular herbal heart tonic, can make you more sensitive to the potent prescription heart medication digitalis (which, by the way, is derived from the poisonous herb foxglove), slowing your heart's rate and increasing the force of its contractions. If you cannot find a doctor who is knowledgeable about herbs, your safest bet is to use the advice in this section only to treat minor disorders that have not yet developed into full-blown disease or to use my suggestions to help avoid heart problems in the first place.

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