This daily Jewish ritual can prevent heart attacks

Wearing tefillin improves your heart function and can even save your life, a new study reveals.

A study by researchers at the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC) suggests that Jewish men who take tefillin every morning could benefit from cardiovascular benefits.

The ritual, which involves tightly wrapping an arm with leather rings as part of daily prayer, can generate remote ischemic preconditioning (RIC) that results in protection during heart attacks. ICN is an experimental method of protecting the heart and other organs by temporarily limiting blood flow by triggering the body's natural protective mechanisms against tissue damage caused by low oxygen levels.

Jack Rubinstein, MD, associate professor in the Division of Health and Cardiovascular Diseases and a cardiologist specializing in health, said he had studied 20 Jewish men living in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, nine of whom carried tefillin daily and 11 non-tefillin , all aged 18 to 40 years old. all in good health.

His researchers recorded participants' vital signs, collected blood to analyze circulating cytokines and monocyte function, and also measured blood flow in the uncoated Tefillin arm early in the morning and then after 30 minutes of wearing. Tefillin.

"We found that people who wear tefillin in the short or long term have a measurable positive effect on their blood circulation. This has been associated with better results in heart disease, "says Rubinstein.

Blood flow was higher in men who wore tefillin daily and had improved in all participants after wearing it once, Rubinstein explained.

Men who carried tefillin daily also had fewer circulating cytokines, reporting molecules that could cause inflammation and adverse effects on the heart, than non-users, indicating that daily use produced an effect similar to that observed with other methods to induce remote ischemic preconditioning effect.

Researchers have studied preconditioning by inducing small heart attacks in animals and found that they protect the animal from larger, more serious heart attacks. This same preconditioning could be used by partially blocking blood flow in one part of the body and thus serving as a protective element in another part of the body to reduce damage, says Rubinstein.

"The problem with this translation to people is that we do not know when someone will have a heart attack," says Rubinstein. "It's almost impossible to pre-condition anyone unless you want to do something every day for yourself. The use of tefillin can actually offer protection because it is worn almost daily. "

Rubinstein says that there are also studies that have shown that Orthodox Jewish men were less likely to die of heart disease than unorthodox men. This protection is not found in orthodox women who do not usually wear tefillin.

By World Israel News Staff and the University of Cincinnati