Catherine Kurosu - True Wellness For Your Heart: Combine The Best Of Western And Eastern Medicine For Optimal Heart Health

T HE HEART IS A PUMP.

And yet, it is so much more than that. Through the ages, countless works of art have been centered on the affairs of the heart: not the mechanical pump that pushes blood through our vessels to nourish our bodies, but rather, the emotional heart that nourishes our souls. Thousands of poems, songs, plays, novels, paintings, statues, and movies have been devoted to the attributes of the heart. These include love, loyalty, courage, and honesty.

Even modern heart specialists, such as famed cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and renowned interventional cardiologists Dr. Mimi Guarneri, Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, and Dr. Kavitha Chinnaiyan, acknowledge that a mechanistic approach to treating heart disease is insufficient. They have all written persuasively about the role that emotional, physical, and spiritual health plays in the healing and even prevention of cardiovascular disease. These physicians, and many more, assert that a reductionist medical model that searches for a single cause for a given heart condition will miss the complex interplay of factors that influence cardiovascular health. Such factors are unique to each person: from genetic predisposition, home environment, and life experiences to socioeconomic status, environmental pollution, and geopolitical issues. These factors affect the body, mind, and spirit and influence all aspects of heart health.

As individuals, we may feel overwhelmed as we strive to change our internal and external environments to promote healing. Large changes in behavior are difficult to implement and maintain, but more and more research is showing that smaller changes in lifestyle choices create internal resilience to external factors that may be beyond our control.

The origins of disease are highly complex, especially with respect to the chronic diseases of Western societies, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, and some gastrointestinal disorders. For many of these conditions, the biomedical model may not be the best way to institute effective health care. A growing body of evidence suggests that optimizing the way we eat, move, think, and sleep can do more to reverse chronic illness than medications or surgery. Adopting such lifestyle changes may even help to prevent these conditions in the first place.

The importance of the idea that what we eat and our levels of activity, sleep quality, and calmness of mind influence our health is not a new concept in medicine at all. In Western medicine, the importance of these factors was considered vital millennia ago and is reemerging today. Increasingly, students of Western biomedicine are being trained to consider all aspects of an individual and their illness. This patient-centered model is called biopsychosocial medicine. Practitioners who hold this viewpoint evaluate not just the biological cause of a disease but also the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and socioeconomic factors involved. All these elements can both affect and be affected by the disease process. Through this understanding, more and more medical practitioners are able to help patients heal and maintain optimal health.

Our purpose in writing True Wellness for Your Heart is to educate readers about how the heart and blood vessels work and how their daily choices can positively influence their cardiovascular health. It is not enough to simply take whatever medication your doctor prescribes. You can be an active participant in your own revitalization, whether you are recovering from heart disease or wish to prevent it. Your decisions about sleep, food, restorative practices, exercise, relationships, and community all affect your heart. Our hope is that you will use this book as a guide to enhance not only your cardiovascular health but also your complete well-being.