The purpose of smoke detectors in our homes and fire alarms in public buildings is to give us an early warning of fire danger, allowing us to escape the ravages of fire.

What if someone invented an auto accident detector that would give you a 30 second warning before you were going to have an accident?   What would that be worth to you?

How about an early warning system for a cardio-vascular event? What would you pay for something that warned you, ahead of time, that you were in imminent danger of a stroke or heart attack?

I'll bet you'd make that investment at any cost...right?

I’ve got good news for you!  There is such a warning device.  It's called a "C-Reactive Protein" test. 

You can’t order it yourself, so you might want to ask your physician to include it in your next blood work.  Out of curiousity, I called a medical testing lab in my area, and was quoted $60 for this test.

Until recently, the gold standard, for predicting heart attack risk, was cholesterol screening. Yet, an article in the Harvard University Gazette quotes Paul Ridker, a cardiologist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, as saying “nearly half of all heart attacks occur among men and women with normal cholesterol levels.” 

"In fact, the amount of risk associated with high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein is almost twice that associated with high levels of low density cholesterol."   In other words, you're twice as likely to suffer a heart attack if you have high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein than if you have high ldl cholesterol.

What is C-Reactive Protein and why would a C-Reactive Protein test help determine your risk of a heart event?

C-Reactive Protein is a by-product of the inflammatory process. 

Inflammation, according to a Time Magazine article, Feb. 23, 2004, links deeper and deeper into the fundamental, or root cause of illnesses. "Hardly a week goes by without the publication of yet another study uncovering a new way that chronic inflammation does harm to the body".

Claudio Franceschi, the scientific director at the Italian National Research Center on Aging is quoted as saying "Inflammation is probably the background and driving force behind all major age related diseases."

Scientists have long believed that there might be a common cause for all disease.

Chronic inflammation has been linked to these and other diseases: Alzheimer's, Kidney Disease, Breast Cancer, High Cholesterol, Parkinson's, Allergic Disease, Respiratory Disease, Heart Disease, Autism and the list goes on.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, March 30, 2005, "the Women's Health Study, a landmark research program involving almost 28,000 women, has found that women with the highest measures of inflammation in their blood face a seven-fold increased risk of heart attack or stroke...people who take anti-inflammatory drugs seem to get Alzheimer's disease later in life than those who do not."

That's the good news, the bad news is that anti-inflammatory drugs are fraught with their own harmful side effects.  Take them at high risk of blowing out your liver or something worse!  Many times the side effects of pharmaceuticals are worse than the condition they are designed to treat.

Also, it seems that you can treat the side effects of one drug by taking another drug which has it's own side effects that can be countered by another drug and on it goes until you're taking a whole shoe box full of drugs.

Where's that gonna lead you?

What if you found an all natural product that was a powerful anti-inflammatory with no side effects?  What if there were other beneficial effects and, on top of all that, it actually tasted terrific?

Introducing  mangosteen, the national fruit of Thailand.