Blood clot factors can save your life

A prominent health official, Dr.Serge C.Renaud says preventing blood clots
can sharply cut your chances of heart attack within a year....

The surprising fact is that the way your blood clots is probably the single greatest determinant of whether you suffer a heart attack, a stroke or blood vessel damage. Experts now know that thrombotic factors-how the blood flows, its viscosity, its Stickiness, the tendency for clots to form and enlarge-are primary in determining Such catastrophes. Diet can have enormous influence on blood clotting factors. Indeed evidence suggest that the major influence of diet on heart disease has more to do With blood clotting factors than with blood cholestrol. The benefit of eating to modify blood clot factors are likely to kick in fairly quickly. A prominent health official, Dr.Serge C.Renaud says preventing blood clots can sharply cut your chances of heart attack within a year, whereas it usually takes longer to reduce heart attack risk by lowering cholesterol. However, many foods, such as onions and garlic, do both, so you get double benefit

Cardiologist once thought the narrowing of arteries from plague buildup triggered heart attacks by leading to heart rhythm disturbance. It is now widely accepted that a blood clot is the immediate cause of 80-90 per cent of heart attacks as well as strokes. Several factors strongly affected by diet, are critical to whether or not you form clots. One is how prone your platelets -the smallest of blood cells- are to aggregate or clump together, enabling them to form clots and better cling to vessel walls. Another factor is blood fibrinogen, a protein that is raw material for clot formation. High circulating levels of fibrinogen are prime predictors of heart disease and stroke.
Also crucial is your "fibrinolytic" system, which breaks up and dissolves unwanted and dangerous clots. The vigour if this clot dissolving along with fibrinogen levels is the "number one determinant of heart disease," says Harvard Cardiologist Dr. Victors Gurewich

How food can control blood clotting

Doctors Routinely warn against taking aspirin before surgery. The fear is that aspirin can "thin the blood," slowing the blood clotting. Therefore you may bleed longer, causing complications and jeopardizing your recovery, when you need rapid blood clotting to plug the wound made by the scalpel.

Did you ever have a surgeon tell you not to eat Chinese food before an operation or avoid heavy doses of ginger, garlic, black mushrooms, and fatty fish like salmon and sardines? The truth is that all of these foods are also anticoagulants that may dramatically retard blood clotting tendencies and often by exactly the same biological mechanism aspirin - by blocking a substance called thromboxane that clamps down on platelet clumping or aggregation, a crucial step in clot formation. In contrast, fatty foods like cheese and steak make the blood sluggish by making platelets stickier and more apt to clot.

Additionally certain food raise or lower blood clot- essential fibrinogen and rev up or slow down the clot dissolving activity. Still other foods influence blood viscosity and fluidity, setting the stage for or staving off inappropriate clots that cause blood vessel blockages in the heart, brain, legs and lungs. Undeniably, foods in very small quantities regularly eaten can have powerful pharmacological effects on the tendency of blood to clot and thus, can help save you from cardiovascular tragedies.

One of your greatest weapons- if not your primary one - against heart attack and stroke is to eat foods that benefit blood clotting factors.

Here's what to eat and not to eat.

Garlic and onions: Ancient clot fighters.
Its an ancient truth: garlic and onion are strong medicine against unwanted blood clots. An early Egyptian papyrus called onions a tonic for the blood. Early American doctors prescribed onions as "blood purifiers." French farmers feed horses garlic and onions to dissolve blood clots in their legs. The Russians claim vodka spiked with garlic improves circulation. It's no longer unsubstantiated folklore. Garlic and onions are full of potent clot-fighting compounds and powers.

Eric Block, Ph.D., head of the chemistry department at the state university of New York at Albany, isolated a garlic compound named ajoene (after ajo, the Spanish word for garlic) that has antithrombotic activity, equal to, or exceeding that of an aspirin, a well organized blood clot inhibitor. Indeed aspirin performs only one way as an anti-coagulant by stifling production of thromboxane

From Food Your Miracle Medicine, by Jean Carper, Published by Simon & Schuster, and distributed by India book Distributors(Bombay) Ltd.,