Cardiologist Offers New Hope For Women With Heart Disease

In a letter to the editor in today's USA Today, board-certified cardiologist Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C., offers hope to women who suffer from a rare and often misunderstood form of heart disease. Responding to a March 13th, 2008 article about a mother of twins who developed peripartum cardiomyopathy, an uncommon and mystifying type of heart failure, Dr. Sinatra offers a solution to this rare and tragic disease.

"Although peripartum cardiomyopathy is poorly understood, many similar cardiomyopathies are nutritional in origin," he writes. "And many unexplained heart failure cases, including peripartum and postpartum cardiomyopathy, have responded to nutraceutical support to assist cellular mitochondrial function, which is responsible for the genesis of energy in the heart. In simple terms, heart failure means a depleted, energy-starved heart." Dr. Sinatra is the best-selling author of the newly updated and revised The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology (Basic Health, 2008).

Sinatra, who's been in practice for over 30 years, first encountered the problem in 1990 when he treated a young woman who had been placed on the heart transplant list for cardiomyopathy secondary to pregnancy and childbirth. After just four weeks of being treated with CoEnzyme Q-10 supplementation, her name was removed from the list. As part of a growing group of metabolic cardiologists, Sinatra is well versed on the importance of energy metabolism for cardiovascular health. "We now have more nutrients that support energy generation in compromised cardiac muscle: carnitine, magnesium, and D-ribose substantially reduce suffering and improve quality of life in patients with heart failure. The restoration of energy in the energy-starved heart provides the missing link that has eluded physicians for years," he writes.