by Paul Fassa

Health Impact News

A natural substance was accidentally discovered from a plant in Africa to have rapid positive effects on heart conditions in the mid-19th Century. Eventually, it became part of mainstream heart medicine in Germany, but administered only by IV under clinical supervision.

This natural heart attack remedy and preventative is currently known as ouabain (wah-bay-in) also known as strophanthin (stroe-fan-thin), which was initially extracted from the African tree Acokanthera ouabaio, leading to the English name version ouabain.

By the 1950s, after ouabain in capsules were introduced to enable oral ingestion and make access more available, a German cardiologist named Berthold Kern, MD, used oral ouabain on 15,000 patients for 21 years without losing even one from maycardial infarction (heart attack).

Currently, there are many German doctors prescribing ouabain or G-strophanthin, and they want to keep it that way even though it’s natural and can’t be patented as a pharmaceutical drug, which is another reason that little is known of it outside of Germany.

Even there, Dr. Kern was officially disgraced and silenced by medical authorities for his proclamations that G-strophanthin (ouabain) was the solution for heart attacks and angina pectoris while challenging the current “official” causes of heart disease.

See:

The Latest Understanding of Heart Attacks and How Ouabain Works

Very similar to the experts in the review above, Dr. Thomas Cowan, MD, debunks the current official explanation of heart disease by analyzing the inconsistencies and paradoxes of actual heart attack cases compared to the accepted arterial clogging explanation.

Dr. Cowan is a holistic MD practicing in San Francisco, California. He states by having his heart patients on ouabain he has not lost any of them to heart attacks. His new understanding of heart disease and subsequent successful use of ouabain is attributed to the German doctor Knut Sroka, MD, who calls ouabain “an outstanding plant drug ignored by academic medicine”.

Dr. Cowan explains how the arterial explanations do not explain how many cases with apparent “clogged arteries” didn’t have heart attacks. It’s often because latent undeveloped auxiliary or collateral blood vessels are present from just after birth that can develop into arteries and organically bypass the clogged artery.

He discloses evidence showing how stents, bypasses, and angioplasties do not demonstrate a significant record of preventing heart attacks. However, he concedes that stents or bypass surgeries may be valid for extreme cardiac cases where those collateral blood vessels are developing too slowly.

Thus a newer, more accurate assessment of the cycle of heart disease leading to heart attacks has to resolve the discrepancies of current heart disease dogma.

Dr. Cowan explains what he has learned about heart disease from ouabain pioneer Dr. Knut Sroka’s literature:

[Heart disease begins with] leading the metabolism of the heart away from its preferred and most efficient fuel source, which is ketones and fatty acids. This explains why heart patients often feel tired before their events. This also explains why a high-fat, low-glucose diet is crucial for heart health. As a result of the sympathetic increase and resulting glycolysis, a dramatic increase in lactic acid production occurs in the myocardial cells. This happens in virtually 100% of MIs [myocardial infarctions or heart attacks], with no coronary artery mechanism required. As a result of the increase in lactic acid in the myocardial cells, a localized acidosis occurs. This acidosis causes the calcium to be unable to enter the cells, making the cells less able to contract. This inability to contract causes localized edema, dysfunction of the walls of the heart (called hypokinesis) … the hallmark of ischemic and eventually necrosis of the tissue, which we call an MI [myocardial infarction or heart attack]. The localized tissue edema also alters the hemodynamics of the arteries embedded in that section of the heart, causing the sheer pressure that ruptures the unstable plaques, which further blocks the artery and worsens the hemodynamics in that area of the heart. (…) Only this explanation accounts for all the observable phenomena associated with heart disease. The true origin of heart disease could not be more clear. [Emphasis added] (Source)

Ouabain Can Be Considered the “Insulin of the Heart”

Dr. Cowan uses ouabain on his heart patients with great success.

Ouabain also addresses another component of heart attacks, parasympathetic nervous system stress. It’s generally accepted that heart attacks often occur from sudden emotional shocks or an accumulation of nervous system stress overload.

Our culture has endured a disconnect from nature and loving, soothing companionship. Current lifestyles are conducive to overburdening our parasympathetic nervous systems, which are involved with the heart’s mechanical functioning as well as other functions.

Ouabain or G-strophanthin is a hormone created in the adrenal cortex from cholesterol. Of course, we know by now that statin drugs impede the body’s cholesterol production as well as CoQ10, a vital heart muscle co-enzyme.

Adding this hormone from external sources is safe and often necessary for preventing heart attacks in a culture that encourages coping with stress, consuming nutritionally vapid foods, and coping with environmental toxins.

Ingesting edible ouabain or G-strophanthin for better heart health stimulates production of ACH (acetylcholine), a major parasympathetic nervous system neurotransmitter. The heart is influenced directly by the parasympathetic nervous system.

Ouabain or G-strophanthin also converts the toxic lactic acid that builds up in myocardial cells as a precursor to myocardial infarction (heart attack) to pyruvate, which heart cells openly accept as a fuel or nutrient.

Lactic acid from overworked muscles creates painful cramping that can only be relieved with rest or intense massage. The heart muscle cannot rest, and massaging it is untenable. So the lactic acid build-up must be prevented and the parasympathetic nervous system needs to operate smoothly around the heart.

Ouabain is considered the solution for a happy heart, physiologically speaking, by a growing number of cardiologists who are aware of the leaks within the current heart health dogma of clogged arteries from cholesterol and saturated fats.

Conversely, they agree that cholesterol is necessary for good overall heart health, and the heart thrives on fatty acids from untainted saturated fats.

This current clique of doctors who have abandoned heart health “conventional wisdom” agree: Arterial plaque break-ups, clogged arteries, and severe coagulation in nearby heart arteries are the results of heart failure as described by Dr. Cowan and his predecessors and colleagues. They are not the cause of heart attacks.

When heart health begins to deteriorate, their new approach demands using ouabain to prevent heart attacks without side effects. Current purported medical remedies, statin drugs and surgically implanted stents or bypass surgeries, rarely, if ever, prevent heart attacks while inflecting adverse side effects or limitations.

Where You Can Get Ouabain (Strophanthin)

An early internet search of ouabain yielded homeopathic versions and tinctures. The homeopathic versions, also plant-based, tend to be less pricey than importing the German encapsulated plant medicine used by physicians in Germany.

E-Bay also showed some good deals for various versions of G-strophanthin or ouabain. But a natural remedy group, Lyra Nara in Canada, offers what appears to be a wholesome version of this plant medicine. It’s a bit pricier, but it provides a two to three-month-supply depending on dosage.

Health Impact News has no affiliation with any of those product sources. The Canadian site Lyra Nara also includes a valid educational and historical perspective of ouabain. The following educational video is from that site. Below this video are resources available for further research.

Resources you can access for further research: