Heart Disease: the number one killer in the United States.

It's scary to think about it.

There are many, many drug and invasive medical procedures to help you prevent and treat heart disease today. We are truly blessed to have this technology available to us.

Yet many of my patients ask me about non-drug ways to treat and prevent heart disease. All you have to do is walk into any health food store and pick up a copy of prevention magazine and you will be overwhelmed by claims that this product or that will help you in your path toward better cardiac health.

What is true?

What has been documented and researched?

How do you decide between help and hype?

As a physician interested in holistic health, I find myself researching these claims. Sometimes I find promising results; sometimes it looks like the claim is all fluff.

Most of us have read that drinking one or two glasses of red wine per day will decrease your heart attach risk. This has been documented in several medical journals, yet I have always felt a bit uncomfortable recommending increased alcohol consumption.

Therefore, I was greatly relieved to read an article in the medical journal Circulation found that the purple grape, the antioxidant effect of the flavinoids, was present in the purple grape juice, as well as, the red wine. This is the first study, but it may well be that enjoying a cup of purple grape juice with your high fiber cereal in the morning may be helping your heart health.

What about those supplement claims?

One of the better supplements for your heart is fish oil. The British journal Lancet reported that taking one gram daily of fish oil reduced the risk of a second heart attack or stroke by 10-15%. (Interestingly, the same study found no benefit from taking vitamin E, which has been claimed to decrease heart attacks.)

This benefit has been reported in several articles in major medical journals. At this point it does look like taking a daily supplement of fish oil has positive effects on your heart.

Are there any vitamins which we can only take to prevent heart disease?

It turns out that evaluation of a compound in the blood called homocysteine results in an increase of heart disease risk.

Homocysteine can be measured, just like cholesterol, and your doctor can then tell you if homocysteine is a problem for you. The treatment for high homocysteine is remarkably simple: take folate! The amount in a multiple-vitamin will do.

Although the medical journals have verified this association between high homocysteine and heart disease, we have yet to complete the studies which prove that lowering homocysteine will eliminate the risk. None the less, I find the evidence compelling enough for me to suggest a multi-vitamin for all of my patients.

We can't talk non-drug management of heart disease without talking about stress management. The Archives of Internal Medicine reported that teaching heart disease patients stress management techniques reduced subsequent heart events by 74%.

The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that feeling of tension, frustration and sadness more than doubled the risk of cardiac ischemia (the heart not getting enough blood to itself) in people who have heart disease.

There are obviously many non-drug and non-invasive ways to help your heart.

Be sure to ask your doctor not just for the best drugs in the market for heart disease, but also for advice on non-drug ways to make you more heart healthy.