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Organized blood vessel torture saves hearts and lives

Remote ischemic preconditioning, uses a blood pressure cuff, to deliberately cut off the blood supply – it’s cruel, but in the end, practice makes perfect

You’re a card carrying member of the “heart attack waiting to happen” club.  Eish !

You’re taking half a dozen drugs, to stave off the event.

And, you’re TRYING to BE HEALTHY.

But, you find lettuce leaves, unpalatable and  jogging round the block, is quite frankly, beyond you.

You’re worried…………so is your doctor, does this describe you ?

Waiting for a heart attack

A team from the Cardiology Department at Zhengzhou University, had just such a group of patients.  There were 40 in total,  these folks, had progressed to the point, they were on the precipice of a disaster and had been scheduled for coronary artery bypass surgery.

At this point, our team, decided to try, something a little different.

Remote ischemic preconditioning, RIPre for short.

So what is RIPre ?

Basically, it’s blood vessel torture.

Not unlike a heart attack.

Which could be described as torture of the blood vessel, supplying blood to the heart, which then causes, death and destruction, to the heart.

In the case of the heart attack….

The blood vessel being tortured, is the coronary artery.

The mode of torture, is INTERNAL.

And ACCIDENTAL.

A bit of “dirt”, get’s sloughed off and as it makes, the trip round the body, lodges in the main blood vessel, supplying the heart, with “goodies”,  stopping blood flow.

In the case of RIPre………….

The blood vessel being tortured, is the one running down your arm, supplying the tips of your fingers, with blood.

The mode of torture, is  EXTERNAL.

The vessel is occluded, by the force of a blood pressure cuff, pressing down on it.

And, there is NOTHING accidental, about this  “suffocation”,  it is 100 % DELIBERATE.

However, there is METHOD to the madness, because it’s PRECONDITIONING !

Practise makes perfect

Anytime, blood flow is blocked,  unhappiness follows.  There is much wailing and nashing of teeth, and alarm bells ring.

Both at the site of the anguish.

And everywhere else.

The EVERYWHERE else is important….

Rescue services are dispatched

Now one group of cells, that is dispatched, are the endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs for short).  They are dispatched from deep inside the bones…………

They whizz round the body, looking for “holes”, in the blood lining.

Any holes that they find, are patched.

So, quick as a flash, all damaged blood vessels, look as good as new.

Now, these guys are part of the furniture…

Except when you’ve got CVD

They are a bit thin on the ground….

You can blame it on BAD BODY CHEMISTRY.

The problem is, there is LOTS of damage and not enough EPCs to go round.

But, by routinely torturing arm blood vessels, coronary blood vessels, CAN and DO, benefit.  This is what our team found….

20 days of torture

They took half of their, heart attack waiting, to happen patients and tortured, their arm blood vessels, for 20 days, before doing  coronary artery bypass surgery, to “fix” their stenosis.

And then, because they had access to arterial blood vessel tissue, since fragments of artery are removed during the surgery, they analysed what happened.

Involved pumping up a blood pressure cuff, to the 200 mmHg and then leaving it, on for 5 minutes.

Normally, when a blood pressure cuff, is pumped up,  the cuff, is immediately allowed to release and the point, where blood begins flowing,  is used as a reference, for how high the blood pressure is.

5 minutes is a seriously long time.

But, it’s NOT long enough, to do permanent damage.  Your fingers will turn white and catch a chill, but as soon as the cuff is released, the blood flow is restored, so NO HARM, NO FOUL.

NOTE :  Doing it for longer, can cause PERMANENT DAMAGE ! 

A daily ritual

Now, our team, implemented the torture regimen

4 times a day, over a 20 minute interval,

20 days in a row.

But, it did make a difference….

Better blood flow

At the time of the surgery, flow mediated dilation of the brachial artery,  was significantly better…..

It wasn’t quite normal, but it was a whole lot better, than were it was, before the torture started.

NOTE : The control in this study, came from patients who underwent breast cancer surgery.

When they analysed the tissue,  they found significantly more EPCs doing the rounds, as can be seen here.

Effects of RIPre on endothelial cell numbers. The fluorescent bits, show the location of cells expressing the CD34+ tag, this tag is associated with EPC cells. A is what blood vessels from the breast cancer surgery looked like, panel B are the blood vessels from the “torture” victims and panel C, is from the untreated CVD patients.

So what ?

These guys, still had the surgery !

Yes, but…

Tropinin levels decreased

Monitoring troponin, is a routine measurement, in cardiac patients,  our team found, the patients who had RIPre, had lower troponin levels, indicating that they had experienced, less heart damage.

NOTE : Tropinin is a protein, that is exclusively found in the heart.  It should be IN THE HEART,  not in the circulation.  

So the take home message…………

Blood vessel torture can save hearts and lives

Now, routine physical activity, IS  torturous for blood vessels…………

It’s one of the reasons, MOVING MORE, is so GOOD FOR YOU.

But, if MOVING MORE, is beyond you – you can HACK IT, with the device, you use, to keep tabs on your blood pressure.  Give it a try, if you’ve got BAD BODY CHEMISTRY.

NOTE : You probably don’t need to do it every day, to see the benefit, a couple of times a week, should do the trick. Make sure you don’t leave the cuff on for longer than 5 minutes, and allow the blood vessel for fully recover i.e. leave it for at least 5 minutes, before repeating.  If it starts to hurt like crazy, loosen the cuff.  You want to create stress, NOT corpses.

Further reading

Want to discover more ways to create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY ?