The heart, the central ticker of the human, is the most essential organ that allows life to inhabit the human body. For this reason, it’s the organ that gets most press and most attention with regards to research and treatment. And still the incidence of heart disease has only gone up in the past four decades since the Framingham studies that framed “Cholesterol” as the real problem and cause of heart disease. We have seen this rise because we have focused our attention on the wrong enemy. This series will address these controversies and offer real, natural alternatives for treatment for heart health.

For a long time, the physical function of the heart was thought to be limited to pumping blood through our blood vessels… This function ensures that every cell of the body get oxygen and nutrition; as well as, provides opportunity to get rid of waste and toxins from the cellular environment. In recent years, we have also learned much about the role of the heart in nervous system activity. Additionally, the heart is also considered to have emotional and spiritual functions. These cannot be understood through physiology; rather, a study of our language helps us to get a sense of these functions. The root of the word ‘courage’ is derived from the latin word for the heart, which is ‘cor’. Thus, the etimology of the word courage is to have “strength of heart” or “abundance of heart”. In our culture, we see the use of the phrases like “he or she has got heart” or we may hear “it takes heart” to get something done; this is describing the courageous quality of achieving something extraordinary. The heart is often recognized as central to our emotional experiences of love, generosity, compassion, and sympathy.