Study: Heart Has Ability To Repair Itself

CBS Evening News: Radioactive Cells From Nuclear Tests Diminish Over Time As Heart Regrows

(CBS)  Heart disease kills more Americans than anything else. One-third of all deaths in the United States are caused by heart disease - nearly 2,400 a day.

Proper diet and exercise can prevent heart disease, but doctors have always wondered if the heart can heal itself. Now, new research offers an answer and a clue for treating heart disease, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.

A mushroom cloud half a century ago has helped clear up a vital medical question: Can the heart make new cells and repair itself?

"I would say that in the heart field, that this is one of those important studies that is going to change the way that we think for a very long time," said Dr. Richard T. Lee, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Scientists solved the mystery by going back in time.

Until it was banned in 1963, nuclear weapons testing above ground produced slightly radioactive carbon dioxide gas all over the planet. It entered the food chain. So if you were alive then, the radioactive material ended up in your DNA.

Today's study found that - over time - the amount of radioactive carbon in the heart decreases, suggesting old muscle cells are being replaced by new ones. They estimate that by the time you reach 50, almost half the muscle cells in your heart have been replaced by new ones.

"The results are unexpected," said study author Bruce Buchholz of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "We weren't expecting this rate of turnover. Typically after a heart attack you don't see the repair."

A huge mass spectrometer at the the Livermore Laboratories in California enabled scientists to measure the extraordinarily tiny amounts of radioactivity, not thought to be harmful, that are present in people born before 1963.

"It allows us to really change the way we're thinking so that over the next five years, 10 years, we'll be able to re-set our approaches to heart disease," Lee said.

One new approach may be in treating heart attacks. When its blood supply is cut off, heart muscle dies and the scarred segment no longer beats normally.

If the heart can make new cells on its own, there may be ways to accelerate that process and speed up healing.

"There's a promise this may be a way to get the heart to repair itself," Bucholtz said.

From the era of the mushroom cloud, an unexpected silver lining.

[honestabe8]

enjoylife: still a hateful little cuss, aren't you?

[johngaltwho]

Inane comments...
Physicians recognize the certitude of evolution although acknowledge that not everything is yet understood
Rational people recognize the fallacy that serves as the foundation of "intelligent design" which holds that if we don't understand every detail of a natural occurence that it must be supernatural.
By that logic, the posts on this board should be powerfully inspirational as the depth of displayed ignorance is profound thus proving that there must be a deity.

[valh1]

Well, finally some good news. Thank you very much!

NEWS FLASH....every part of the human body has the ability to repair itself except for the teeth. Please tell us something we don't know. Posted by Baileyccc

[swingset4u]

I wish the brain would repair itself. Then we would'nt have morons, like some who post here, ramble about absolutely NOTHING!

[Honorplease]

Posted by Hyptnotized_Liberals

You Dumb like monkey

[Hyptnotized_Liberals]

The socialist Democrats don't have to worry about heart or brain disease because they don't have either.
Posted by enjoylife63

-Oh they have hearts alright, they're just black.

[Hyptnotized_Liberals]

Most doctors don't agree with evolution. They see the DESIGN of the human body and the miraculous complexity of a tiny cell and God's handiwork is obvious.

[willcaine]

The socialist Democrats don't have to worry about heart or brain disease because they don't have either.
Posted by enjoylife63 at 1:52 AM : Apr 4, 2009

A man's scheduled for a heart transplant. The doctor says, "Sir, you can choose between the heart of an 18-year-old track star or the heart of an 80-year-old Republican banker."

The patient says, "Give me the banker's heart."

The doctor says, "Why would you choose that?"

"I want one that hasn't been used."

[Hermotimus]

I am living proof that the heart can repair itself. In 1997 I suffered an MI that killed the muscle in the bottom of my heart. The damage was shown by floroscope to be the entire bottom back of the heart, totalling 25% of the entire heart. By 2003, the heart muscle floroscope revealed that my heart had regained at least 15% of that "dead" muscle. In 2005, the floroscope from a heart catherization revealed the the entire heart was beating normally with no sign of damaged muscle as was clearly indicted in the floroscope films from the MI in 1997. My last Heart Catherization in April 2006 showed that my heart muscle is still beating completely normally. The heart doctors who have handled my case over the years have the videos and pictures of the floroscopes and have been unable to give me any coherent answer as to why or how my heart muscle regenerated the 25& of the bottom back of the heart that died due to an MI in 1997.

[ricmarc2001]

what is it with the right? every single news story and they have to bash those libs or dems. enough already! the rest of us are sick and tired of it.

[tomineaston]

That atherosclerosis is not only preventable, but reversible, through proper diet and exercise has been pretty well-documented for years. Unfortunately, this seems to be viewed by many as too "radical" an approach by a society that more readily accepts statin drugs, stents, and coronary artery bypass grafts as a "normal" part of life.

Read about the work done by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, Caldwell Esselstyn, MD, and John McDougall, MD, for some eye-opening information about this (google the names).

Better yet: read, and follow what they say in, their books. For me, it's been a life-changing experience.

Good Health!