4 Silent Signs You May Have Clogged Arteries And The Best Foods To Eat To Prevent It

Preventing heart disease in patients is the main goal, but early
detection is the next best thing. This can lead to changes in
lifestyle and medical therapies that can delay or deny the onset of a
heart attack; almost 80 percent of heart disease is preventable with
lifestyle changes. Many of my patients are shocked to learn about the
following clues to underlying heart disease.

1. Erectile dysfunction (ED) could mean clogged arteries.

Men have a built-in warning system for silent CHD. When achieving an
erection is difficult or impossible, it can be a sign of clogged
arteries in the pelvis that presents before a heart attack hits. There
are, on average, three to five years between the onset of ED and the
finding of CHD, which is plenty of time to detect and to work on
preventing heart issues. If you and your partner are worried about
s*xual performance, look for and treat root causes of diseased
arteries before just popping a blue pill.

2. Baldness could indicate clogged arteries.

In a comprehensive new study of almost 37,000 men, severe baldness at
the crown of the head strongly predicted the presence of silent CHD at
any age. In a separate study of more than 7,000 people (including over
4,000 women), moderate to severe baldness doubled the risk of dying
from heart disease in both sexes.

3. Ear crease might indicate clogged arteries.

One of the stranger markers, a crease in your earlobe (specifically,
an angled crease in the ear that runs diagonally from the canal to the
lower edge of the earlobe) has been mentioned in medical research
reports as a sign of silent CHD for decades. The ear crease may result
from poor circulation, including in arteries in the heart. Although
some medical professionals have argued that a crease is just a general
sign of aging, researchers last year used the most sophisticated CT
scan method to measure silent CHD and found that ear crease predicted
heart disease even after the authors accounted for other risk factors,
such as age and smoking.

4. Calf pain when you walk might mean clogged arteries.

This is known as claudication (from the Latin for "to limp").
Atherosclerosis can block leg arteries, particularly in smokers,
before CHD is diagnosed. This symptom requires an evaluation without
delay. Your doctor will examine the pulses in your legs and perform
simple measurements of leg blood pressure and blood flow to confirm a
diagnosis of poor circulation. It is critical that heart disease be
diagnosed as early as possible because there are many dietary and
medical treatments that can help reverse the issue. Some of my
patients took these early clues to heart. I advised them to eat more
plant-based foods and fewer animal products and to start a walking
program. Their calf pain completely resolved within weeks and has not
recurred for years. Anyone with any of the above signs of silent CHD
should know his or her numbers (blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting
glucose). Ask your doctor if you should be checked for heart disease
with an EKG, a coronary calcium CT imaging, or an exercise stress
testing. To borrow from Ben Franklin, an ounce of prevention (plus a
bowl of kale) is worth a pound of cure.
--healthdigezt.com