Metabolic Cardiology
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Mary's Metabolic Cardiology Success Story
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"When I first saw Mary in the intensive care unit in Connecticut’s Manchester Memorial Hospital in October of 1996, she lay comatose and respirator dependent, responding only to verbal command and pain stimulation. Sadly, her days appeared numbered. Recently transferred from another community hospital, Mary was suffering from congestive heart failure complicated by pneumonia. She was seventy-nine years old, and, except for childbirth, it was the only time she had been admitted to a hospital. Until now, she had been a healthy, vibrant woman.
Mary’s son, Bob, a Ph.D. biochemist, was an expert in coenzyme Q10 and other nutritional supplements. He had asked the doctors at the community hospital if he could place his mother on coenzyme Q10, but they’d refused. He had brought in realms of research literature for them to read and review, but the doctors still wouldn’t hear of it. Bob became so upset that he finally went directly to the hospital administration, but instead of interceding on his behalf, they asked him to leave the hospital. Lawyers became involved. It was a disaster.
Because of their lack of knowledge about coenzyme Q10, as well as their fear about and bias against nonconventional therapies, the doctors refused to even consider this alternative treatment for Mary. Her concerned family was labeled “interfering.” Rather than read the research brought to them and try a no-side-effect substance that’s made naturally by the body, Mary’s doctors stood by their foreign-to-the-body drug solutions, despite the fact that they obviously weren’t enough. Instead of yielding to the only hope that Bob felt they had, Mary’s physicians asked her family to discontinue life support. But to Mary’s credit, on both of those occasions, her loving daughter staunchly refused to “pull the plug” on her mom.
When Bob reached me by telephone, I was very direct. “I can’t possibly take your mother in transfer. They’ll have to bag breathe her for over forty minutes in the ambulance. That’s too long. She’ll probably die,” I had to warn him. The quick reply was, “At least with you she’ll have a fighting chance, Doc. Because if she stays where she is, she’s certainly going to die.”
Bob agreed that the family would accept responsibility for his mother’s shaky transfer – and her life. They were willing to take that chance. Funny, the hospital was willing to take Mary off the respirator, but then blocked the family’s attempt to transfer her out, declaring that her own children were jeopardizing her life. Luckily, the hospital’s attorney struggled with his decision, but finally agreed to give Mary that fighting chance.
Mary’s body and spirit survived that trip to Manchester Memorial and she was brought directly into intensive care where she was placed back on full respiratory support with the same ventilatory settings. The only change I made to her therapy was nutritional: the addition of 450 daily mg coenzyme Q10 delivered daily through her feeding tube. Mary also received a multivitamin/mineral preparation of my design, in addition to one gram of magnesium intravenously on a daily basis.
I did see some hope for Mary after she endured that move. But, despite the fact that I had lobbied to get coenzyme Q10 on our hospital formulary for several years, the other critical care doctors and nurses were extremely skeptical of using coenzyme Q10 in this life-threatening case. Mary looked like a train wreck with all her tubes and physical issues. What they were all about to observe was truly a resurrection.
On the third day, Mary started to come out of her coma. After ten days she was weaned off the ventilator. Four days later, Mary was sitting up in a wheelchair and using only supplemental oxygen. At that time, she was discharged to an extended care facility. Mary saw me in my office several times after her ultimate discharge to her own home. She enjoyed a good quality of life on conventional medical therapy plus 360 mg coenzyme Q10 per day, and even reorganized a vast library of about 3,000 books all by herself.
The day the hospital attorney came to visit her at her home, she baked him cookies – and then comforted him as he broke down and cried. He admitted that he’d almost prevented the ambulance ride that saved her life because he had believed hers to be a hopeless case. We all learned a lot from Mary and her children. She lived an additional six years and finally died of natural causes at age eighty-five."
Mary's story has been excerpted from: The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology, © 2005, 2008 Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C.
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Pulsation...
Is the key element in health. When a cell is in a well-nourished, oxygenated, environmentally balanced state, an effortless pulsation occurs. When a cell becomes contracted due to metabolic, environmental, or emotional factors, pulsation is disrupted and healthy functioning is disturbed. The heart is the ultimate organ of pulsating muscle, engaging the energies and interactions of mind, body, and spirit.
-Heartbreak and Heart Disease
