(no subject)

[serene]

Saw the doctor today. The gist is this: I have some heart stuff (ischemia, among other things) that's not serious enough to land me in the hospital, but is serious enough for him to prescribe heart meds and send me to the cardiologist. Tomorrow. So I need to get to bed so I can get up in time to go to yet another medical appointment. Love and smooches, all! Remind me to tell you the story of how I got my doctor to, of his own volition, give me his word never to bring up weight-loss surgery again. :-)

Nighty-night.

Comments

[karenthecroccy.livejournal.com]

My thoughts are with you ... heart stuff is scary, I know. I still have issues with angina but things are so much better after the medication started working. *hugs* if you'll have them, and I can't wait to hear the story about the doctor and the wls.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

My first thought was 'did she punch him? No, she said 'of his own volition' oh this should be good.

I have some minor heart issue stuff of my own, and am available if you need to talk, here or email, to a person with heart issues experience. Just let me know
And now my somewhat over medicated personal body is going to lie down. Beeen a long and emotional day here.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

That's a story I would love to hear.

[redbird]

I would like the story, either before or after oyu go to the next medical appointment (depending on sleep cycles, how much time you have, and whether there's connectivity in the waiting room).

hawthorn

[betonica.livejournal.com]

If you want some herbal advice, let me know. Herbal meds mostly give your heart and system background strength, so that you are more likely to 1. prevent problems or 2. get through problems faster with less damage.

Good luck with it all!!

[gremlin44.livejournal.com]

*thoughts*

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Yipes! I hope that the medication works well and that all of this goes as smoothly as possible. I really want you to remain well for a long time in the future, since I get to see you only rarely and thus will need a long time to get in a decent quantity of serenejournal time.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

:-) Thanks!

(Between you and me, I haven't yet decided if I'm going to take the meds. I'll talk to the cardio guy and do some research, and then make up my mind.)

Re: hawthorn

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Do you have any studies to cite for those claims?

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very sensible course of action.

Re: hawthorn

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

You are my hero, for a number of reasons. I definitely want to hear the story of how you got your doctor to leave it alone.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

Go you!!

[pameladean]

Of course I'd love to hear the story of the doctor and his volition. 8-)

I hope the cardiologist is sensible and can give you good information.

P.

Re: hawthorn

[betonica.livejournal.com]

There's a *huge* (relatively) body of literature supporting the use of hawthorn (crataegus spp.) for heart health. Most of it is from Germany, but fortunately for me, in English. I'm a few states away from home at my sister's house, but I think I have a large stack of articles (though none really recent) somewhere at home that I can find for you. I haven't done a recent search online, but google scholar and pubmed would probably have most of the more recent hits. I'm betting there are several clinical trials from the last few years, again mostly done in Germany. For some reason they use the leaves and flowers over there, while we use the fruit (and the fruit is the more traditional remedy, as well). The fruit is pretty yummy as an extract (I soak it in brandy) but small and stony, so not the sort of thing to eat plain.

The nice thing about hawthorn is that it's basically a food. This means it won't send your heart racing off in some direction that it shouldn't go - it will just provide it with the strength to do what it needs to do. I'm pretty sure (older research, again) that hawthorn is primarily providing antioxidants to protect your heart tissue from damage, although there might be a few more specific compounds in it doing other heart protecting stuff. The antioxidants in hawthorn may have certain structures that "fit" better in your heart tissue than in other tissues (but I'm speculating here), and if so, that would be why this remedy does more for the heart than other antioxidants do. There probably are some mechanistic studies that explain it. I'm fairly certain that the studies support hawthorn for protecting heart tissue that might come under stress later, and that demonstrate it strengthening the remaining heart tissue after a heart attack has killed off a portion of the heart muscle.

I no longer have access to the best database for searching for citations (SciFinder) but I'd be happy get you a list of citations and some full text PDFs when I'm back home on Tuesday, if you'd like.

There are also other remedies, such as garlic to reduce blood pressure (slightly) and reduce cholesterol (again, slightly). There are other cholesterol and blood pressure remedies with stronger effects (red yeast rice is quite dramatic at lowering cholesterol). I bring this up because there's often a relationship between cholesterol, blood pressure, and heart issues - don't know if they're true in your case, though.

I see from your later post that the heart-stuff is not a big worry, after all? Congrats! But if you want to know about the hawthorn (or anything else) anyway, I'm happy to provide more lit than a rational person desires.