I was 100% convinced that if I ate right, exercised, and didn’t drink or smoke, I had zero chance of ever having a heart attack. And yet I had one. How could I have made such a cataclysmic mistake? As a teacher of truth I was upset, angry and aghast that I held such a mistruth or half-truth. When I experienced chest pains, my wife had the presence of mind to give me a dropperful of Dr. Schulze’s “Cayenne” in some water, so my pains subsided and I walked into the urgent care facility 10 minutes later.

The same weekend I had a heart attack, Cheryl, my administrative assistant, had a pastor friend die while exercising. He felt something wrong, called his associate, and when the associate arrived 4 minutes later, the pastor was dead in the gym in their church. This pastor preached on healthy living and exercise, and practiced what he preached!

Yet I had another pastor friend who went into the hospital with chest pains and they told him he had 95% blockage and immediate surgery was required or he would die. He stayed in a couple of days under their watchful care while he researched heart disease and then decided to go home and make some lifestyle changes. He chose no surgery and is doing fine today.

So maybe I could have gone with his option and not had surgery, but I was so startled by the fact I had chest pains, when I believed it could never happen to me, that I chose to let them do heart bypass surgery on me. Both Patti and I have peace that we made the right decision.

Clinical studies have found that from 40 to 50 percent of the time, the first recognized symptom of heart disease is a fatal heart attack. It is the number one killer of people between the ages of thirty-five and sixty.

Apparently, the belief that if you eat healthy and exercise you will not have a heart problem is not totally correct. So can we get to the bottom of this? I began researching, seeking counsel from wise RN’s and PA's, and journaling intensely about heart attacks.

Links which overview heart disease

Sixof the above nine I didn’t haveand while my body naturally produces higher levels of cholesterol, it is debatable if that was a contributing factor as I have seen evidence that cholesterol is NOT the issue. (Note: Experts Review of 107 Scientific Studies: Cholesterol Does Not Cause Heart Disease – Statin Drugs are Useless.)

Genetics, yes, that is present in my family line and yes, stress. I normally abide in Christ but I do seem to live with internal stress. So according to this list, there is really very little reasonfor me to have had a heart attack with me NOT having 7 of the 9 contributing causes for a heart attack. If you weight each of the nine items evenly, at 11% each, then I had a 22% chance of heart disease. This is why I believed I did not need to worry about having a heart attack. (If you consider the order as an indication of the weight of the factor, my probability is even lower.) However, maybe this is NOT the proper list of factors which cause heart disease.

The book, The Great Cholesterol Myth, has only four items on the list: inflammation, oxidation, sugar, and stress. So stress on this list would potentially be 25% of the cause of a heart attack - a much higher percentage than the above list of 9 items. And I could concede that I had oxidation which leads to inflammation also, so now my chance of a heart attack just rose from 22% to 75%! On the author's website, he offers a free download of 100 heart-healthy recipes and other free reports.

In the hospital, the Lord spoke to me about where I had allowed stress into my life. He showed me how to repent and remove it. Concerning oxidation, about a month earlier our main H2 gas injection into our drinking water had begun leaking (for a second time), and did a lot of damage to our home so I returned it to the manufacturer. I had not yet gotten my portable H2 unit out of the closet and into use. (By the way, the portable unit puts just as much H2 into water as our main, under-the-sink model did.) The main function of H2 gas injected into water is the tremendous health benefits it provides as it gives drinking water anti-oxidant properties which have been shown to positively influence 170 different diseases.                                                                     

Reflections on what led up to my heart attack

I believe the cause of my heart attack was stress, emotional and spiritual. I loved what I was doing and was going overboard with it. Plus God had given me some directions about curtailing some of these activities, and I was bargaining with Him about stretching those rules. Then, heart attack.

So now I must learn to live more relaxed, taking more time to express the different kinds of energy available to me - not just mental energy, but energy from my heart (love) toward my wife and those I touch, and spiritual energizing as I play my autoharp and sing in worship unto the Lord.