Book Review: Understanding the Heart- Stephen Hussey
Introduction
Stephen really knocked it out of the park with this one! This is one of the best books I have ever read on health! Even though he is focused on the heart, he also manages to find space in the book to talk about the metabolic theory of cancer (which is probably the correct theory as opposed to genetics), evolution, and most importantly mitochondrial health. I have just recently been getting into quantum biology, and his ability to link sunlight and the earth to the 4th phase of water (exclusion zone water) to heart hearth was a brilliant hypothesis- and most importantly he is probably more right than wrong.
7 Major Takeaways:
**Magnesium and Vitamin E can be used as blood thinners (magnesium in research has been shown to be as effective as aspirin to prevent arterial occlusion). Funny enough- aspirin is chelated with magnesium, so it’s unclear which compound is even doing the majority of the work- I have a good guess though
In thermodynamics (I am not a physicist by any means), there is a concept called entropy. This is essentially when energy is dissipated (so spread out), the technical words would be disorder or chaos, but really it is just the spreading out of energy. The theory is that the earth uses living beings to dissipate energy from the sun.
In my opinion, all health is related to mitochondrial health, and all disease is related to mitochondrial dysfunction. The mitochondrial have very specific needs, and have very specific action- they even have their own DNA (comes from the maternal side of the family). Our ability to absorb light from the environment determines whether a cell is functional or dysfunctional- and a dysfunctional cell is where chronic disease begins.
A free radical (unpaired electron) damages other cells by stealing electrons from them (because electrons want to be paired). Antioxidants (such as glutathione) function to provide electrons to free radicals to neutralize them. What's ironic is that during glucose metabolism (process of creating ATP from acetyl-coa) the free radicals can actually steal electrons from the mitochondria. This damages the mitochondria and they can’t dissipate energy as well (see bullet 2) leading to dysfunction and chronic disease. The body is much more efficient at using fat for fuel- there are way fewer free radicals (reactive oxygen species) produced.
The heart especially prefers using ketones as fuel as opposed to glucose
The autonomic nervous (ANS) when constantly turned out causes a constant stress response- this is because we can think and therefore think ourselves into stress, no other mammal has this ability. The implication here is that having the ANS constantly turned on (being stressed) is one the major drivers of cardiac problems
Something I actually did not know- but makes total sense to me, is that the heart is not actually a pump (in terms of pushing blood through the body). The blood is actually able to travel through the zone because it is propelled by the 4th phase of water (exclusion zone). The heart's 2 main functions include 1. Keeping similar pressure on the arterial and the venous side of the cardiac system 2. Creating a vortex to infuse energy into the blood.
Conclussion:
This truly was an amazing book to read. I read a lot- hence all my book reviews- and I am confident in saying that Stephen’s book is the best book on the market on heart health. He not only explains what to do, but why to do it.
Understanding the Heart- Stephen Hussey