How Do You Heal or Cure Congestive Heart Failure
What can I do to increase my chances of living longer with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure?

• narrowed arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle — coronary artery disease
• past heart attack, or myocardial infarction, with scar tissue that interferes with the heart muscle's normal work
• high blood pressure
• heart valve disease due to past rheumatic fever or other causes
• primary disease of the heart muscle itself, called cardiomyopathy.
• heart defects present at birth — congenital heart defects.
• infection of the heart valves and/or heart muscle itself — endocarditis and/or myocarditis

The "failing" heart keeps working but not as efficiently as it should. People with heart failure can't exert themselves because they become short of breath and tired..." CLICK HERE for the rest of the story

AMA's "What is Congestive Heart Failure"

Congestive Heart Failure (according to the Texas Heart Institute) "... The words "heart failure" sound alarming, but they do not mean that your heart has suddenly stopped working. Instead, heart failure means that your heart is not pumping as well as it should to deliver oxygen-rich blood to your body's cells. Congestive heart failure (CHF) happens when the heart's weak pumping action causes a buildup of fluid called congestion in your lungs and other body tissues...." CLICK HERE for more information including how to diagnose congestive heart failure and some common treatments for CHF.

Alternative Therapies for
Congestive Heart Failure

According to DoctorYourself.com, here are some steps you can take yourself to prevent... or help heal... congestive heart failure:

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is the end product of any of a number of cardiovascular diseases that can degrade the heart’s ability to pump blood efficiently. Much has been written on diagnosing congestive heart failure but rather less is known about treating it. This is because broken hearts are tough to fix. A diagnosis of CHF means that it is too late for nutritional prevention. The horse is long gone by the time most people decide to shut the stable door. But nutritional intervention can still greatly help a damaged heart.

In the past, drugs such as digitalis or one of its ilk were often given to strengthen and to some extent regulate heartbeat. Vasodilators (blood vessel opening drugs) are given to improve cardiac output and relieve backed-up blood from blood vessels throughout the body, especially in the lungs. Fluid buildup (edema) is commonly treated with diuretic drugs. 

It may be possible to naturally augment, or perhaps substitute for, these pharmaceutical drugs.

The article goes on to outline the various ways in which nutrition can help strengthen the heart muscle, eliminate fluid buildup, etc, naturally. CLICK HERE for the rest of the story

All About Congestive Heart Failure and Alternative Treatments ".... You cannot depend on natural remedies to cure congestive heart failure. Where natural remedies can help you is in reducing the symptoms. I've had a number of patients who were on medication for heart failure --the common treatments being digitalis and diuretics and also a drug called Procardia--but were not getting sufficient relief from symptoms. These people have been greatly helped by adopting natural means. One of my male patients had great difficulty sleeping even though he was being treated with a variety of medications. Once he adopted a natural program, he found his symptoms relieved to the point where he sleeps as well as he ever has and rarely experience shortness of breath..." CLICK HERE for the rest of the story

How Healing Anemia Can Mitigate Cardiac Heart Failure

".... Anemia is a major problem in patients with chronic kidney insufficiency. The development of recombinant human erythropoietin has enabled physicians to correct this anemia. Although anemia has not been considered to be a common or important contributor to congestive heart failure, anemia of any cause can lead to cardiac damage and eventually congestive heart failure. Our joint renal-cardiac heart failure team found that anemia was indeed very common in congestive heart failure and was associated with severe, medication-resistant cardiac failure. Correction of the anemia with erythropoietin and intravenous iron led to a marked improvement in patients' functional status and their cardiac function, and to a marked fall in the need for hospitalization and for high-dose diuretics; renal function usually improved or at least stabilized...." CLICK HERE for more of the story

CLICK HERE for the Wikipedia article on erythropoietin

CLICK HERE for the Wikipedia article on erythropoiesis "... Erythropoiesis is the process by which red blood cells (erythrocytes) are produced. In human adults, this usually occurs within the bone marrow. In the early fetus, erythropoiesis takes place in the mesodermal cells of the yolk sac. By the third or fourth month, erythropoiesis moves to the spleen and liver. In humans with certain diseases and in some animals, erythropoiesis also occurs outside the bone marrow, within the spleen or liver. This is termed extramedullary erythropoiesis..."

The Role of Adequate Vitamin D via Exposure to Sunlight Can Help Prevent or Mitigate Congestive Heart Failure

"... A lack of vitamin D may contribute to congestive heart failure, as researchers found that patients with chronic heart failure have lower levels of the vitamin in the blood.

Congestive heart failure occurs when the heart fails to pump blood around the body efficiently and organs are not able to get enough nutrients and oxygen. Previous animal research has indicated a link between vitamin D and heart failure, which spurred researchers to conduct the study on humans.Fifty-four patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) were compared with 34 healthy people, and it was found that CHF patients had vitamin D levels that were up to 50 percent lower than healthy patients. The more severe the vitamin D deficiency, the worse the heart failure symptoms were.

According to researchers, vitamin D may play a role in regulating calcium concentration in cells of the heart muscle. If calcium concentration is not controlled, muscle cells cannot expand and contract properly, which means that blood will not be pumped efficiently around the body...." CLICK HERE for more of this article

See also Mercola's articles:

• "Breakthrough Information You Need to Know About Vitamin D"
• Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency
• Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year
• Critics Now Accept the Sun as Your Healthiest Source of Vitamin D

The Value of CoQ10 in Treating Congestive Heart Failure

".... It is so regrettable that the major cause of death in the Western world is medical ignorance. There are five million Americans suffering from congestive heart failure today, and most of them don’t take any CoQ10. Those that do mostly take the antiquated ubiquinone form that provides very little benefit in advanced cases.

The Life Extension Foundation compiles and publishes avant-garde scientific information and first disseminates it to members. We then provide it to the world (via the Internet) at no charge. If more cardiologists paid attention to what we published last year about ubiquinol, a significant percentage of those who died from congestive heart failure in 2007 could still be alive...."

CLICK HERE for more information on the value of CoQ10 in treating congestive heart failure... and to learn the proper form of CoQ10 to take

".... In her book Miracle Cures, Jean Carper tells the story of a woman in severe heart failure who was not improving with conventional medical therapy.  Her doctor suggested taking 30 mg of CoQ10 each day.  By accident, she began taking 300 mg each day and subsequently experienced considerable improvement.  Similar anecdotal evidence is reported by Dr. Stephen Sinatra in his discussion of two case studies of refractory heart failure successfully managed with high dose CoQ10..." CLICK HERE for news about more studies involving the efficacy of CoQ10 in treating Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

Treatment of Heart Disease with Coenzyme Q10 ".... CoQ10 is known to be highly concentrated in heart muscle cells due to the high energy requirements of this cell type. For the past 14 years, the great bulk of clinical work with CoQ10 has focused on heart disease. Specifically, congestive heart failure (from a wide variety of causes) has been strongly correlated with significantly low blood and tissue levels of CoQ10 (15). The severity of heart failure correlates with the severity of CoQ10 deficiency (16). This CoQ10 deficiency may well be a primary etiologic factor in some types of heart muscle dysfunction while in others it may be a secondary phenomenon. Whether primary, secondary or both, this deficiency of CoQ10 appears to be a major treatable factor in the otherwise inexorable progression of heart failure...." CLICK HERE for the rest of the story

Effect of coenzyme Q10 therapy in patients with congestive heart failure: a long-term multicenter randomized study. "... The improved cardiac function in patients with congestive heart failure treated with coenzyme Q10 supports the hypothesis that this condition is characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction and energy starvation, so that it may be ameliorated by coenzyme Q10 supplementation. However, the main clinical problems in patients with congestive heart failure are the frequent need of hospitalization and the high incidence of life-threatening arrhythmias, pulmonary edema, and other serious complications.... Our results demonstrate that the addition of coenzyme Q10 to conventional therapy significantly reduces hospitalization for worsening of heart failure and the incidence of serious complications in patients with chronic congestive heart failure...." CLICK HERE for more of the story

Congestive Heart Failure and CoQ10 Benefit

"... no area of study has received more attention than the relation between CoQ10 and heart disease. Perhaps here lies our greatest Co Q10 benefit. There are at least two reasons for this.

• CoQ10 is believed to be of fundamental importance in cells with high metabolic demands such as cardiac cells.
• Heart conditions of many kinds are associated with chronically low CoQ10 levels.

Clinical trials have attempted to study the relationship between CoQ10 and many chronic diseases including, but not limited to…

• heart disease
• cancer
• AIDS

But heart disease has gained the most attention; congestive heart failure being one of the primary subjects.

Because heart muscle cells require so much energy to function and CoQ10 is at the core of the cellular energy process it makes sense to suspect that congestive heart failure might be linked to CoQ10 deficiency. With that theory in mind many studies like the ones that follow have been conducted. These trials are presented in thumbnail format...."

CLICK HERE for more information on these trials.