By Pax Beale

I like to call the Body For The Ages Nonprofit’s version of weight-resistance training an “angioplasty au natural.” Here’s why.

a 70-year-old who can’t touch their toes, and force them to do it with one effort. Ouch! However, if they practice 270 times a week, they will adjust to a toe touch. Take a 70-year-old and put a balloon in their artery and force the artery open with one effort (repetition or “rep”), which is what an angioplasty procedure does. No wonder many have to be redone. The pain can be initially masked by anesthesia. Worse yet, the artery can shrink back to its original size, so the doctor repeats the angioplasty, but even twice doesn’t expand the artery wall without a cost.

There is a reason the artery wall remains larger with only one or two angioplasty balloon expansions: you have to exceed the limits of elasticity of the artery wall, and create minor fissures in the artery wall. It’s similar to expanding a rubber band to its max, where you can see the fissures, and it rebounds slowly.

With angioplasty, ultimately the artery wall is forced open. The cost can be minor tissue tears, weakening of the tissue, and pain after the anesthesia wears off, from exceeding the limits of elasticity.

The balloon also impacts plaque on the wall of the artery, and the plaque can be compressed, but it would be presumptuous to assume there’s no pressure on the artery wall.

Sometimes a stent can be an adjunct to balloon therapy. It’s used to permanently force the wall from contracting back to its original size. The stent is like putting an inflexible tube into your artery, to force it to remain expanded. More potential “ouch,” because the same problems can exist, along with permanent pain in the artery, which will have been forced to retain its expanded size. Angioplasty is expected to have a life of less than ten years, while there is no reason not to expect the effects of “angioplasty au natural” (anaerobic weight-resistance training) to last a lifetime.

Well, all that is better than death.

Assuming death is not imminent, there is another way: Body For The Ages Nonprofit’s Prescription Method of Training. Applying gentle, gradual repeated pressure surges from the repetitive effect of weight-resistance training, using the proven method that I used on myself in my research. It’s anaerobic training (you become short of breath, e.g. without oxygen), as opposed to aerobics (you breathe easily, e.g. with oxygen). The controlled weight-resistance training exercises can easily be up to 270 gentle repeated outward blood pressure forces on the artery wall per workout. Just like the 70-year-old who practices touching his toes 270 times, as opposed to forcing it with one effort. The end result is what I call an “angioplasty au natural,” and no tears in the artery wall.

It would be foolish to say that an angioplasty heart procedure is without some merit, but you wouldn’t think so if you read John McDougall M.D.’s The Angioplasty Debacle as one example. Even some medical doctors are backing off of angioplasty.

Furthermore, angioplasties have been unnecessarily performed. Medicare has retrieved millions of dollars as a result of angioplasty procedures being grossly over-utilized at a Northern California hospital. The concern is the pattern of overutilization is widespread.

Unfortunately, weight-resistance training is not taught in medical school, but the art and science is one key component of the Body For The Ages Total Commitment Wellness Program. It’s discussed in detail at bodyfortheages.org.

My expertise comes from more than my research. I evaluated doctors’ performances for more than a third of a century, to protect the integrity of the two acute general hospitals I controlled, and I monitored doctors who acquired medical malpractice insurance from an insurance operation I founded.