Better Recovery With Heart Surgery Nutrition for Angioplasty, Coronary Bypass, Reperfusion Injury

Medical researchers are showing why heart surgery nutrition is critical for protecting against further damage that is caused by the oxidative stress that accompanies:

Angioplasty, coronary bypass, thrombolysis -- the use of medications to dissolve blood clots -- and the reperfusion injury that results when oxygen is again supplied to deprived tissues.

• Medical researchers are in fact recommending that people take protective measures against the exceptionally heavy oxidative stress that accompanies heart attacks, strokes and heart surgery.

Scientists are finding two key elements:

1) very high levels of free radical damage and

2) the absence of the body’s own antioxidant, glutathione in people undergoing heart surgery or a heart attack.

Both exceptionally high oxidative stress and very low levels of protective glutathione accompanies heart disease, they are finding, and both of these occur when:

1) Blood flow to the heart muscle is obstructed by a blockage of a coronary artery (cardiac ischemia),

2) Or during a sudden, severe blockage that leads to a heart attack (myocardial infarction).

• Fortunately, heart surgery nutrition can easily be added to any medical treatment to improve outcomes and protect against further damage by supplying antioxidants and protective nutraceuticals that increase glutathione levels.

Here are some of the latest discoveries about why heart surgery nutrition is crucial for better recovery:

How To Prevent More Damage

• They suggest that the use of antioxidant therapy prior to procedures such as angioplasty, coronary bypass, and thrombolysis may help prevent complications.

Without adequate protective mechanisms to combat free radicals and lipid peroxidation, (when fats become rancid and break down, making more harmful free radicals), our vascular systems are quickly overcome by atherosclerosis.

M.J. Kendall’s team of Birmingham University examined over two thousand patients with confirmed coronary artery disease in a randomized clinical trial and found that:

• Patients taking antioxidant supplements reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 47%.

• Cardiologists at the University of Brescia in Italy have shown significant glutathione depletion after cardiac ischemia.

• A study in the Japan Heart Journal by A.Usal, measured the red blood cell glutathione of 21 patients with heart attacks and found evident glutathione depletion, indicating that this event presents a major demand for glutathione.

How The Body’s Own Antioxidant Protects

It protects all cells, and this applies to the endothelial cells of the arteries as well as red blood cells and platelets.

University of British Columbia researchers led by Kimberly Cheng showed the connection among cholesterol levels, glutathione levels and plaque formation in the aorta.

L.L. Ji, D. Dillon and E. Wu showed that decreasing GSH levels as we age contribute to the formation of atherosclerosis.

Although antioxidants like vitamins C and E are considered important, the naturally occurring antioxidant in the cell is GSH. GSH also serves to recycle these other antioxidants into their functionally active form.

• Taking glutathione in pill form is not effective, because it is digested and does not get to the cells.

Instead, adding a nutraceutical to replenish the antioxidant glutathione is the best heart surgery nutrition strategy, both before and as postoperative nutrition.

Recommendation for Supplements and Replenishing Glutathione:

Protecting Reperfusion Injury

If a blood clot deprives tissue of blood and oxygen for more than a very brief period, its ability to produce life-giving energy is compromised. The immune system responds by building up neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, further compounding the damage by releasing even more products of oxidation.

When bypass surgery or thrombolytic drugs break down the clot and re-establish oxygen flow, the tissues are said to be “reperfused”.

But when the fresh blood floods into the starved tissue, it responds with a surge of energy production that places exceptionally heavy oxidative stress on the tissue at the very time that its antioxidant resources have been depleted, paradoxically causing further damage.

This condition is called reperfusion injury, making heart surgery nutrition critical.

Reperfusion injury is relevant to many fields of medicine. This type of injury (I/R) occurs following every successfully balloon angioplasty or tPA induced thrombolysis.

Pharmacologists such as K.S. Kilgore and B.R. Lucchesi from the University of Michigan long ago suggested that antioxidants should be administered alongside thromobolytic therapy -- the use of a medication that dissolves blood clots --as heart surgery nutrition.

Heart Surgery Nutrition: Replenishing the Master Antioxidant

Raising glutathione has been shown to:

1) diminish the oxidation of fats = going rancid (lipid peroxidation),

2) decrease circulating cholesterol,

3) minimize the inflammatory response around arteriosclerotic plaque,

4) stabilize platelets and protect the sensitive lining of the arteries.

These are all important ways to combat hardening of the arteries that accompanies heart disease.

In addition, increased glutathione, or GSH levels have been shown to improve reduction of overall cholesterol levels by raising the activity of the enzyme cholesterol hydroxylase.

X. Zhang and A.C. Beynen compared various proteins that reduce cholesterol in the blood and liver. Their results showed that whey proteins were more effective than other milk proteins or amino acid mixtures. The authors suggest that the lower cholesterol levels result from the inhibition of cholesterol synthesis in the liver.

J. Gutman, MD, FACEP, explains that replenishing glutathione levels is ideal as a heart surgery nutrition, because you are:

“stopping the oxidation of fats and thereby keeping them in a safer state. When fats become oxidized they become stickier end up gumming up the arteries, so the presence of glutathione can prevent this from happening.

Because glutathione is the body’s Master Antioxidant, it stops the oxidation of fats by making glutathione peroxidase, which keeps the fats in a safer state.”

(For a detailed discussion of glutathione and heart disease, see Dr. Jimmy Gutman, “GSH, Glutathoine, Your Body’s Most Powerful Protector.”)

Oxidative Stress, The “New Villain” in Heart Disease

OXIDATION MAKES FATS RANCID

When fats in our blood stream are “oxidized” this chemical change is called lipid peroxidation and causes fatty deposits to stick to the artery walls.

The corresponding formation of free radicals leads to further lipid peroxidation and subsequent hardening of the arteries.

The science of free radical biology is helping create new strategies for better protection and improved recovery by using pre - heart surgery nutrition as well as heart surgery postoperative nutrition. These strategies can be effectively and safely used alongside any medical treatments.

Links

Heart Surgery Nutrition, Glutathione In The New England Journal Of Medicine How Nutrition Helps Heart Health Compared to Meds Lowering Cholesterol Without Meds Better Predictor than Cholesterol? New Research Links Heart Rate Variability and Nutrition Brain Strokes Found As Warfarin Side Effects

New Discoveries For Heart Surgery Nutrition and Heart Surgery Postoperative Nutrition