Cardiovascular Health as the 6th Core System
February 27, 2024
Cardiovascular Health as the 6th Core System
To reiterate and highlight the significance of the functional medicine perspective at Oasis Clinics, we approach your health as a complex system that is underpinned by seven essential interlinked core systems. Among these, cardiovascular health is identified as the sixth core system but stands out as a crucial foundation within this framework.
This guide provides essential background information on how the circulatory and lymphatic systems influence heart health. It highlights the negative impact of modern dietary habits on these systems and offers actionable advice for optimising cardiovascular health through diet and lifestyle changes. Key topics include dietary strategies to support vascular and lymphatic health, the significance of blood pressure management, and the role of diet and exercise in promoting overall heart health.
Summary: The Most Important Takeaways for Your Diet
Include:
Whole foods, an anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic, high-fibre, phytonutrient- and omega-3-rich diet. Pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, turkey breast, soybeans, and seaweed, omega-3 fats from wild fish, green leafy vegetables, ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, avocados, garlic, nuts, seaweed, citrus fruits, and cranberries. Phytochemically rich herbs can also help, like echinacea, astragalus, coriander, and parsley. Magnesium, found in foods we eat too little of: nuts, seeds, beans, and greens.
Exclude:
Industrial, processed, high-starch, high-sugar, and high refined-fats inflammatory diet. Salt, environmental pollution, heavy metals.
Optimising Core System 6
Your transportation systems-circulatory and lymphatic-clear the metabolic waste from your tissues and return it to the heart to be cleansed by the liver and kidneys. What drives dysfunction in blood vessels and lymphatic flow and promotes heart disease? You guessed it.
Our modern industrial, processed, high-starch, high-sugar, and high refined-fats inflammatory diet, which is low in protective medicinal foods. A single fast-food meal hurts blood vessels. Much of the adverse effects can be offset by consuming phytonutrients13 and anti oxidants. Eating a nutrient-dense whole foods diet rich in phytonutrients will prevent the damage in the first place.
The other important foods for vascular health are those that increase nitric oxide, which increases blood flow. Your body needs the amino acid arginine to produce nitric oxide, and the best food sources are pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, turkey breast, soybeans, and seaweed. Omega-3 fats from wild fish also help improve endothelial function (the function of the lining of the blood vessels) and prevent dangerous clotting. The heart-healthy benefits of olive oil come from the effect of polyphenols on endothelial function and reducing blood vessel inflammation.
High blood pressure leads to heart attacks, heart failure, strokes, and kidney failure. But what leads to high blood pressure? While genetics, salt sensitivity, environmental pollution, and heavy metals are factors, for most people, high blood pressure is driven by insulin resistance. If you have belly fat, it is likely causing your high blood pressure. If you are like about 40 percent of people, you are also magnesium deficient. And low magnesium leads to high blood pressure. Magnesium relaxes blood vessels. Stress, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar all deplete magnesium. It is found in foods we eat too little of: nuts, seeds, beans, and greens.
The heart pumps blood through your blood vessels, but your lymphatic vessels need movement, muscle activity, and breathing to pump waste fluid back into your heart. There are lots of ways to improve lymphatic circulation, which can be covered after thorough checkups, but what you eat today matters a lot too. Common culprits that tend to impair lymphatic function are processed foods, dairy, sugar, sweeteners, and excess salt. Yet many foods help improve lymphatic function, including green leafy vegetables, ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, avocados, garlic, nuts, seaweed, citrus fruits, and cranberries. Phytochemically rich herbs can also help, like echinacea, astragalus, coriander, and parsley.
Background Knowledge
Taking Care of Our Blood Vessels
How do all the messages get to where they need to go for the body’s optimal functioning? How does the food you eat, and all the magic it contains, find the right receptors to act upon? How does the body clear waste? Through our transportation systems: our circulatory system (the-blood vessels and heart) and our lymphatic system, a parallel set of vessels that clears metabolic waste from your tissues and sends it to the liver and kidneys for removal.
Our body contains about 100,000 miles (160,000km) of blood vessels, enough to go around the Earth about two and a half times. But these vessels are not just inert tubes that carry blood; they are also immune and hormonal organs and require the right diet to function optimally. The lining of the vessels is called the endothelium. When it is dysfunctional it gets stiff and can cause high blood pressure·, and it can lay down dysfunctional cholesterol and cause hardening of the arteries. The result? Cardiovascular disease, the number one killer worldwide.
Many of the key hallmarks of ageing, including inflammaging, damaged proteins, and altered nutrient sensing (insulin resistance), cause damage to your blood vessels and are at the root of heart disease. If your blood vessels are sick, so are your heart, brain, and every other organ and system in your body. Heart disease is largely caused by insulin resistance. The consequences: heart attacks, high blood pressure, strokes, amputations in diabetics, and even dementia. Our approach has been to bypass the problem, literally, with heart bypass operations and angioplasty or stents, or to lower cholesterol with medication. But none of these addresses the root causes of the problem. Cholesterol is not the problem. Heart disease is triggered when inflammation and hormonal changes turn cholesterol into fragile plaques that coat our arteries.
Ninety percent of heart disease can be prevented with a healthy diet, exercise, and not smoking. Heart disease, it turns out, is an inflammatory and hormonal disease. What causes the most inflammation and hormonal chaos (direct downstream effects of insulin resistance)? Our diet. While environmental toxins, stress, our microbiome, and genetics all play a role, our diet is the biggest driver of cardiovascular disease. It is the high-sugar, high-starch, low fibre, nutrient-depleted, phytonutrient-poor, ultra-processed-food, damaged-fat diet. Eating a whole foods anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic, high-fibre, phytonutrient- and omega-3-rich diet is key to protecting yourself from the ravages of heart disease.
Bottom line: Optimising diet and lifestyle (exercise, stress management, sleep) for-longevity, a process laid out in upcoming Oasis Clinics checkups and programs, will address most of the risks for heart disease.
Taking Care of our Lymphatic Flow (Our Other Transport System)
A much neglected aspect of our health is our lymphatic system. We can’t see it, we can’t touch it, it doesn’t show up on an X-ray, but it is working all the time to clear metabolic waste, the by-products of all our cellular processes, from our tissues. Our lymphatic system absorbs fats from the gut and transports them into our general circulation, and brings white blood cells to and from lymph nodes to help us fight infection and cancer. It also connects our immune system to our circulation because the lymph vessels empty into the veins that go into your heart. A high intake of processed foods, low levels of nutrients, and a lack of physical activity can throw it out of balance and contribute to arthritis, headaches, digestive and skin disorders, excess weight, and fatigue. When our lymphatic system is not functioning well, we retain fluid and are puffy, swollen, and sluggish.
The heart pumps blood around our blood vessels, but your lymphatic vessels need movement muscle activity and breathing-to pump the waste fluid for detoxification through your liver and kidneys. There are lots of ways to improve lymphatic circulation, including exercise, lymphatic massage, hot and cold showers, steam and saunas followed by cold dips, dry brushing, lots of hydration, and deep breathing. Of course, what you eat matters too. An ideal program set by your doctors at Oasis Clinics will be designed to optimise both your circulatory and lymphatic-systems.