Page 55 - Summer 2017 Journal

decades it was the principal medicine for the prevention and treatment of heart disease.
The Strophanthus plant is a huge vine with seeds. The active chemical in the seed is called g-strophanthin, which we call oua- bain in America. It turns out that ouabain is a copy of an endogenous hormone made in the adrenal cortex. It’s made from cholesterol by the part of the adrenal gland that controls the parasympathetic nervous system. We know it’s endogenous because you can take cholesterol and radioactively tag it, and when you assay for ouabain in the blood six hours later, you will find trace amounts of radioactively tagged ouabain in the circulation.
What does this substance do? It goes to the heart. It has the specific action of converting the lactic acid into pyruvic acid, which is the main fatty acid fuel for the mitochondria in the heart. By converting the lactic acid into the primary fuel for the heart, the whole cycle is broken and the heart can relax. It decreases the oxygen con- sumption in the heart cells themselves, putting the heart in a relaxed state. What an amazing gift! This plant out in nature supports all the parasympathetic neurotransmitters and even makes the red blood cells more flexible so they can move more easily through the circulation. It also has an anti-platelet effect like aspirin.
The range of dose of g-strophanthin/oua- bain depends on what form of Strophanthus you use. Right now, there is only one compounding pharmacy in Germany that makes pharmaceu- tically active g-strophanthin, but you cannot import it. The dose is between three and six milligrams, one to three times a day. The other form is an herbal extract from Strophanthus seeds, which I prefer to use because it is made from the whole seed, which is intensely bitter. I have tested the Strophanthus extract for ouabain
content and found that it has a known amount of ouabain. The dose of extract varies between two and twenty drops (about 0.2 to 2 milligrams), two to six times a day. (People who think this medicine might help them should find a health practitioner to work with. The health practitioner can call me and I will explain how to use it and where to get it.)
My work with Strophanthus does not negate the importance of ad- dressing diet. There is an excellent new documentary called “The Big Fat Fix” by a British cardiologist.5 The film traces the history of the diet-heart connection and says you have to eat a certain amount of butter, olive oil and other good fats. It also talks about the importance of movement and stress reduction. A nourishing diet can go a long way toward helping someone come off of medications, even after a stent or heart surgery.
NOT A PUMP
Rudolf Steiner, the early twentieth-century thinker whose ideas led
to the development of anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic farming, and Waldorf education, made an enigmatic statement to the effect that one of the most important things needed for the development of humanity is to understand that the heart is not a pump. I heard that statement as a young anthroposophical doctor thirty-two years ago, and I have spent over two decades reflecting on it.
William Harvey introduced the notion that the heart is a pump in 1628 in his book called De Motu Cordis (“On the Motion of Heart and Blood”). Harvey declared that the reason the blood moves in the body is because it is pumped by the heart. For some fourteen hundred years before Harvey, physicians had said that some force generated through water moves the blood. Harvey came along and said, “That’s nonsense.”
I think one of the reasons that Steiner thought this was so important is that Harvey’s pronouncement marked the end of vitalism as a theory. What this means is that we stopped believing that there is any differ- ence between death and life, or between living organisms and non-living entities. We came to believe that we could study human beings or other living systems through dissection and that we could learn everything we needed to know about the life of the human being by studying biochem- istry and physics, as if we were inanimate objects. Nowadays, if you dare to mention something about “life forces” or “souls” or anything of that kind, you will be derided by the medical community. In fact, we have enshrined a particular view of science (“that which can be measured and quantified”) as a national religion, although the true definition of science is “the search for truth.”
AMAZING STROPHANTHUS
I have observed the effects of Strophanthus over and over again in the last ten years, even in people who can hardly walk to the mailbox. I use a Strophanthus extract, and when I find the right dose, it provides immediate relief, not only in people’s ability to exercise but in their sense of well-being. In 1984, one hundred and twenty-two out of one hundred and fifty heart patients in West Berlin were free from angina after just one week of taking the proper dose of g-strophanthin/ouabain only, and all but four were free from angina after two weeks. In fact, in Germany doctors used to have a diagnostic test called the strophanthin test—if you gave someone a dose of oral Strophanthus in the midst of chest pain and it broke the chest pain, it confirmed the fact that the person had heart disease.
SUMMER 2017
Wise Traditions 55