Heart disease runs deep in my family. My father and grandmother both suffered strokes at 53. My grandfather and several uncles died of heart attacks in their 60s. One of my younger brothers died at 46 during what should have been a routine angioplasty. I knew the odds weren't in my favor. So I tried to do everything right. I exercised, maintained a healthy weight, watched what I ate, and saw a cardiologist regularly. At every checkup, doctors reassured me: your heart looks great.

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So how did I end up in the hospital with a massive heart attack?

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In the next four and a half years, I suffered two more heart attacks, underwent multiple stent placements, and eventually open-heart bypass surgery. After surgery, things seemed hopeful, until a follow-up angiogram delivered devastating news. The bypass graft had failed. My cardiologist was skilled and caring, but direct: there was nothing more he could do. No artery left to stent. No artery left to bypass.

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Five Words That Changed Everything

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Still, I couldn't accept that as the final word. I flew to Michigan to consult with a preventive cardiologist who had written a book on Lp(a), a sticky cholesterol that significantly raises your risk of heart disease and which I had recently learned I had. I expected to learn more about this genetic risk factor. He reviewed my records carefully. Then he looked up and said something totally unexpected: "You need to find EECP." I had never heard of it. But I went home and started digging. What I found was both compelling and bewildering. EECP was an American invention, developed in the 1950s. Yet while the United States had let it slip to the margins of mainstream cardiology, China had embraced and improved it, building thousands of EECP clinics nationwide. Chinese cardiovascular protocols don't just permit EECP,  they recommend it to prevent heart and vascular disease and reduce the need for invasive procedures.

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I had spent six years in the American medical system, surviving heart attacks, stents, and open-heart surgery, and no one had ever mentioned EECP. Not once. But the evidence was undeniable: safe, noninvasive, FDA-cleared, covered by Medicare for patients with end-stage heart disease, used by the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, and supported by dozens upon dozens of published studies. Of course, I wanted to try it. 

The Proof Was in the Images

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Within weeks of beginning EECP therapy, remarkable things happened. My angina disappeared. My energy returned. The swelling in my legs subsided. For the first time in years, I felt strong again.

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Then came the proof. After an unrelated drug reaction landed me back in the hospital, my cardiologist ordered another angiogram as a precaution. The next morning he came to my room eager to show me two images side by side. The first, taken before my bypass surgery, showed my heart with its arteries still intact — narrow and sparse, but there. The second, taken eight months after EECP, told a different story entirely. Where my right artery had been, something remarkable had evolved. A vast network of new collaterals now stretched from my left arteries toward the right side of my heart, feeding and nourishing those essential tissues.

My body had built its own detours around the damage. Here was the proof, visible to anyone who looked. Not a placebo. Not just feeling better. Hard solid proof. I felt like cheering. Or crying.

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At a later appointment I told my cardiologist I was continuing EECP. He gave me advice I will never forget: "Keep doing it. I think it might be saving your life."

What "Better" Actually Looks Like

I still have coronary artery disease. EECP didn't change that. Nothing can. But my cardiologist has gradually reduced my cardiac medications from nine, at the time of my bypass surgery, to three.

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I have five children and eighteen grandchildren. At 78, I am healthy and energetic enough to fully engage with all of them. Last year my husband and I climbed to castles in Portugal, logging 26,000 steps a day. On steep inclines, I sometimes had to rest, but so did my husband and our son. This year I explored caves, fed and bathed elephants, and helped chop down banana trees with a machete in Thailand with my four oldest granddaughters.

EECP has made a difference beyond just me. My only surviving brother, who is nine years younger than me, with seven stents, diabetes, and the same elevated Lp(a), saw his chest pain and the neuropathy in his legs and feet improve significantly after EECP therapy. He says it no longer feels like he's walking on shards of glass.

Why Thrive EECP

My brother and other family members live in Utah. I couldn't learn what I had learned, experience what I had experienced, nor witness the power of EECP therapy and not want to share it. So I recruited skilled professionals and we built Thrive EECP, Utah's first dedicated EECP clinic. I take no salary. I simply want to raise awareness of EECP and its potential to ease the burden of vascular disease for others. Perhaps even yours. Or that of someone you love.

What does this mean for you?

If you have heart disease, you do not have to resign yourself to pain, to limited mobility, to dreading the next event — not without first asking whether EECP might help restore what vascular disease has taken from you. EECP is not a miracle cure, and it isn't right for everyone. But for many, it opens a path to better circulation, less pain, and a better quality of life.

The specialist who changed my life gave me five words. I'm passing them on to you.

"You need to find EECP."