With Broken Heart Syndrome, the Obesity Paradox, and the Arginine Paradox, it's no wonder people are concerned about their heart health, and confused about what they can do to prevent heart conditions. We've learned throughout history that there are certain preventable, and inherent, non-preventable risk factors for heart disease, mainly a family history, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity, to name a few. However, there are those paradoxes and syndromes that fall outside of the normal risk factors and defy all science.

Broken Heart Syndrome

Stress plays a massive role in heart health and cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. However, stress is a normal aspect of life. It's nearly unavoidable, and always manageable. Stress can wreak havoc on our bodies by increasing blood pressure, chest pains, irregular heartbeat, and more. Without being managed properly, stress can ultimately lead to heart attack and death.

Broken heart syndrome can happen in positive or negative situations, such as after a bad break-up or after winning the lottery. Both experiences trigger a rush of adrenaline and cortisol, which under normal circumstances is not necessarily a bad thing, however under extreme stress as with broken heart syndrome the persistently elevated levels can be detrimental.

The flood of stress hormones can actually cause part of the heart to enlarge, triggering symptoms similar to a heart attack; chest pain, irregular heart rhythm, shortness of breath.

So what can you do to avoid broken heart syndrome? Learning to effectively manage stress can make the difference between a healthy heart and a ‘broken heart.' And yet, stress is a part of our lives every day.

The Obesity Paradox

Another contributing factor to heart disease, and another factor that is incredibly hard to pinpoint, is known as the Obesity Paradox. As mentioned above, traditional risk factors for heart disease and cardiovascular issues include high blood pressure, bad blood lipids, diabetes, obesity, smoking and drinking, poor diet, high stress, poor exercise routine and a family history. Every physician, in fact every individual, around the nation is very familiar with these common risk factors.

(http://www.EraseDisease.com) 

However, take away those risk factors and you take away your risk for surviving your first heart attack. Doesn't make much sense, right? Kind of like the broken heart syndrome, yet another aspect of life that people are finding hard to avoid. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that among a large group of people admitted to the hospital for their first heart attack, those who had traditional risk factors were less likely to die of the heart attack than those who arrived at the hospital without any of them.

The Obesity Paradox says that individuals who are obese and who have an inherently higher risk for cardiovascular diseases, actually live longer with those diseases than their ‘healthier' counterparts. For example, according to EraseDisease.com, a person who is overweight and living with a cardiovascular disease such as congestive heart failure will statistically live longer than a "skinny" individual with the same disease.

The Arginine Paradox

As individuals face these seemingly unpreventable heart disease risks, many of them take arginine supplements that have been proven to show benefits in terms of heart health. Arginine is an extremely important amino acid that single-handedly creates nitric oxide, which has been shown to help increase vasodilation.

The Arginine Paradox states that "even though there may be sufficient arginine in the cells to produce enough nitric oxide for the cell's needs, giving more arginine results in the production of more nitrix oxide." This is the one paradox that should set your mind at ease, because more nitric oxide means more efficient blood flow and a healthier heart.