Cigarette smoking can mask angina, the chest pain which is an important sign of heart disease. This may be why smokers have such a high rate of silent ischaemia; that is, oxygen deficit to the heart muscle without feeling pain. Without the warning sign of angina, patients may not be aware that they must curtail activity and thus are more vulnerable to heart attack.

Cigarette smokers are two to three times more likely to have strokes than non-smokers. Quitting cuts your risk of stroke in half.

Regardless of the number of cigarettes smoked, lifelong smokers have a much greater incidence of clogged arteries in the neck. The longer you smoke, the greater the risk. But, again, quit and the risk gets cut in half. Here’s a reason to quit entirely rather than just cutting down.

Smokers’ coronary arteries have smaller lumens, with less blood flow, regardless of development of atherosclerosis. Couple the reduced flow with a spasm of the artery, from stress for example, and one could face total shutdown, perhaps resulting in heart attack.

Smokers have a lower level of the protective HDL cholesterol; this is now known to be an independent risk of heart disease. Smokers’ children, and others around them as well, also have lower HDLs. Quit and everyone’s HDLs will go back up.

Smokers are more susceptible to claudication, the leg cramps that come on during exercise owing to clogging of the leg arteries. Those who quit smoking, watch their diet, and get into a regular program of walking can frequently totally eliminate those pains.

Cigarette smokers are lousy lovers, and not just because their breath smells like an ashtray. Blockage in blood vessels in the penis—even as little as 25 per cent—can prevent an erection. Those who quit often find their problems with impotence go away with the smoke.

Cigarette smokers have a significantly greater number of sick days every year. Those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired should quit.

Smoking puts you at risk of other degenerative diseases as well, including lung cancer and emphysema. If you’ve ever known anyone in the last stages of emphysema, unable to even walk across the room without panting for breath and needing an oxygen tank with tubes running into the nose, you know that this is a terrible way to die. Lung cancer’s no day in the park, either.

Smokers flat-out don’t feel as well as non-smokers. You just have no idea what it’s like to breathe normally, to have greater stamina than you can remember for years, and to receive a sudden gift of vitality. It’s all yours in trade for a couple of weeks of withdrawal and a real effort in the willpower department. I know what it’s like, having been there myself. I never knew just how well I could feel until I finally beat my habit. It’s hard to explain; you’ve got to feel the difference to understand it.

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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol

During 1987-8, while considering the subject of chelation for inclusion in the fortnightly alternative health column I then wrote for the Guardian, I tried to find people who had had negative experiences. The fact that they were not to be found I attributed as much to early cases being in extremis with their circulatory condition, and therefore well pleased with any results they received than to the success of the treatment – after all the first clinic in London had only opened in 1985, and they and their patients were still finding their way.

However, continued evidence of patients’ general experience of abatement in physical symptoms, such as claudication, angina, breathlessness, TIAs (Transient Ischaemic

Attacks – little strokes), cold extremities, sight and hearing problems, varicose vein ulcers, gingivitis, diabetes/demand for insulin, etc, suggested it was the therapy that was working rather than their pressing need for it. That it was working in extremis made it all the more remarkable. Furthermore, improvements often continued for months or years after the treatment course had ended.

During, or soon after, the treatment people found they could run for the bus when they could not walk more than a few steps before: they could lower their drug dosage and sometimes come off supportive medication altogether. In general they spoke in glowing terms of how they could now get on with their lives.

High blood pressure was one symptom which almost generally abated, sometimes to normal levels. Since high blood pressure damages artery walls, stresses the heart and exacerbates arterial disease this was significant.

I spoke to some of the patients that I had spoken to before. An overview was emerging of feelings of general wellbeing and homeostasis (that is, health remaining stable), but did they need further treatment? Some did, some didn’t – it varied.

In Holland, the most senior of all the European chelating physicians, Professor Van Der Schaar (since 1979 he has given over 110,000 treatments to over 5,000 patients), gave his professional opinion that a treatment every 17 days was the ideal mode for those with established or advanced arterial disease. In London, pioneer patient, Valerie Tomkins, said she had settled on a maintenance programme of one treatment about every six weeks. In her seventies now, she is typical of patients having chelation therapy for whom it is not surprising that they will have to work harder to maintain homeostasis than people in their forties and fifties with little disease.

There are however a number of patients who seem to be able to change and adapt their lifestyle sufficiently not to need top-ups at all, or only sporadically. Valerie Tomkins admits she has a stressful family life which has persisted since her heart attack in 1983.

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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol