The heart hazard you haven’t been warned about

Most of what we hear about the disastrous health consequences of lead exposure has to do with kids.

And while we know that adults are far from immune to the danger, some new research has just discovered that exposure to lead where grown-ups are concerned is much worse than ever anticipated.

Some just-out findings from a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers say that hundreds of thousands of Americans die every year due to this heavy metal – a number that’s 10 times higher than originally thought.

And lead can hit you the hardest right in your heart.

In fact, these researchers discovered that adults with the highest concentrations of lead in their blood have a 70 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those with the lowest amounts.

These findings make it more urgent than ever to take three simple steps to reduce your lead exposure and learn about a way that you can save your heart… before it’s too late.

No safe level

Before the terrible news from Flint, Michigan, started coming in over three years ago, you could say that lead was on the back burner when it came to media attention – especially where tap water was concerned.

Sure, federal and state health authorities had all kinds of rules and programs in place to try to protect kids, who can be easily exposed to residue from soil, old paint, and right from the faucet, as was discovered in Flint.

But since that time, we’ve discovered that lead isn’t just a problem in Flint. And we know that it can be a major health hazard for adults, too — especially seniors.

New findings from five major research facilities, including UC Berkeley and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, paint a very bleak picture: Researchers tracked 14,000 adults for two decades and concluded that nearly 20 percent of the 4,422 participants who passed away during the study died because of their exposure to lead.

Lead can damage vital heart cells that line the blood vessels, and that can cause “plaques” that can trigger a heart attack to develop. And heart experts are saying that eliminating lead from your body (more on that in a minute) can do more to protect your ticker than any statin or aspirin regimen could accomplish. As if that wasn’t enough, lead can also damage your kidneys, resulting in high blood pressure.

Although lead was taken out of gasoline and paint a long time ago, it’s still a “fixture” in a lot of older homes – and I’m not talking about This Old House, either, but any home built before 1986! Lead plumbing fixtures — such as faucets, pipes, fittings, and what they’re soldered with — can leach it right into your drinking water.

Even if your house is spanking new, however, the service lines that bring water into your home could be made from lead. There are thousands of such lines all over the country — and fixing them, officials say, would take around $45 billion.

From the looks of things, the only way you’re going to reduce your family’s exposure to lead is by taking matters into your own hands and starting with these three important precautions:

#1 Have your tap water tested. You can hire a company to take a sample, or you can buy a DIY kit at most any hardware or big-box store. The EPA has set an “allowable” amount of 15 parts per billion, but as I said, no amount of lead is considered to be safe to ingest.

#2 Filter your drinking water with a filter certified under NSF/ANSI for lead-removal standards.

#3 Never drink or use hot water from the tap for cooking. Even warm tap water can contain higher amounts of lead than cold water, and it’s something that boiling won’t remove. Also, run your tap for a few minutes each morning before making coffee or cooking with it.

Now, as far as blood lead levels go, the CDC has set an arbitrary number on how high is too high, but the agency also says that there’s “no safe” amount.

Go figure the logic in that one.

So, if you believe you may have suffered high lead exposure, chelation therapy is a tried-and-true way to remove it from your body.  This treatment is also known to lower the risk of heart attack and stroke, and it’s even successfully been used in place of bypass surgery – and its benefits aren’t just for those with high levels of lead in their body!

To find a doctor who practices chelation therapy where you live, go to our “Find a doc” page at hsionline.com/findadoc and click on your state.

“US deaths from lead exposure 10 times higher than thought, study suggests” Mark Lieber, March 12, 2018, CNN, cnn.com