Heal Your Heart: How You Can Prevent or Reverse Heart Disease

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Summary: The Guide
Review: Dr. Gould's book is a guide for everybody with coronary disease and everybody interested on coronary disease.It is an eye opening book that give hope against the number one killer of the modern era. Being an interventional cardiologist myself I realized the lack of cure achieved with angioplasty or by-pass surgery. An extensive medical literature shows that reduction on cardiac mortality or heart attack can only be achieved with a long term medical therapy and lifestyle changes.
The explanation is amazingly simple: it is necessary to fight the disease if we want to cure it, not the coronary blockages.The cure in this disease cannot be achieved with the "quick fix" of the angioplasty. This book is a Guide, an eye opening for patients who instantly are on charge of their own health and not passive bodies, hoping for the best while awaiting for the next attack. This Guide is based on sound scientific data, not on personal experience. How many times have you seen a list of scientific references in a popular "health" book? I strongly suggest you take advantage of this chance, I doubt your doctor will ever have the time (and may be knowledge?) to explain to you the true. Your future is now, do the right thing.

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Summary: It's time for new ideas
Review: Let's face it: Eating more broccoli and fish does not cure coronary heart disease. Yes, they're helpful parts of a broader preventive program, but I've met lots of vegetarians and health-conscious individuals with heart attacks.

Dr. Gould's well-intended book falls far short of the mark in describing useful new technologies. It is, for the most part, a re-hash of the conventional wisdom. If you want to know more about stress testing or basic coronary anatomy, this book may be useful to you. However, if you're looking for fresh ideas that are not confined to the usual lower cholesterol/hospital procedure approach, this book will disappoint.

The low-fat approach to heart disease works for a small minority of people. Among the newer ideas that will revolutionize preventive cardiology are 1)New technologies that measure and quantify hidden atherosclerotic coronary plaque, and 2)New tests that uncover causes of coronary plaque that go far beyond simple-minded cholesterol measures. Dr. Superko's recent book, Before the Heart Attacks, is one such description of some of the newer technologies available.

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Summary: This is great guidelines for heart patients
Review: My cardiologist recommended Heal Your Heart to me, and it is an invaluable tool. I have 70% blockage in my right artery, and this book answers a lot of questions. This is an excellent book. It gives a definitive explanation of his reversal program for cardiovascular patients.

Not only does Dr Gould explain how we can opt to reverse the progression of heart disease, he also gives sample menus and goes into detail explaining waht effect cholesteral lowering medications have on the heart.

Thumbs up to the author for his extensive research and detailed explanations. This book will certainly be my reference book and diet guide for many years to come

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Summary: Diluted but useful read for a heart patient
Review: This book should be on the reading list of a conscientious heart patient. I admire the research by Dr. Gould which supports the superiority of cholesterol management over angioplasty and bypass surgery and of PET over standard stress tests. This being said, however, I have to confess that I did not like too much the presentation of those important findings. This is one of the books which should have remained a magazine article of 10-15 pages. The volume is expanded by means of endless repetitions, which would make it a suitable read for a patient with severe loss of short-term memory. Certainly this cannot be the only book a heart patient needs (as the author suggests) because it is too focused on the author's research interests and opinions. In fact I am quite happy that the invasive procedures have become so popular that they are widely available. I am not sure if I would have been alive now if the local hospital had had a staff trained in reversal treatment instead of angioplasty when I was brought there with a heart attack. Traditional heartbooks of the AHA and major clinics offer a much more balanced view on the heart disease and should still be consulted first while the books by individual researchers like Dr. Gould's should be regarded as a useful complement.