Exercising Hearts is a Medical Technology Yet Ahead of Us

   When it comes to living and dying, the heart is the heart of matter.
   We could save about 610,000 lives a year by simply solving heart failure. That's eliminating one in every four deaths. All we got to do is to get a larger supply of hearts, get the practice down, and get people into the replacement hearts faster than their old ones can expire.
    Did you catch that, and the significance of it? One in four deaths, eliminated, or at least postponed. I understand, the five-year survival rate after a transplant is now about 76 percent. Heart transplants are working.
   But, we need more hearts. People are going to their deaths simply for lack of available hearts. The possible solutions include persuading more people to be organ donors. And, then, there's cross-species transplantation. With the improvement of medicines that help the body not reject the hearts, perhaps we should consider this more. Imagine, the heart of lion, literally, being in your chest.
   But, I wonder if the best thing to do, is to master the art of keeping the hearts we have in good shape -- and returning them to good shape once they get worn. Work on persuading folks to avoid stress, to exercise and to live clean. Yes, that is a good strategy.
   Now, here's what all my talk on hearts leads me. Here's my idea. I wonder if one of the best solutions to repairing the heart is not even being explored. An artificial heart is not the same as an artificial knee. A knee is a solid, not-as-living thing. A heart is made of tissue, and the art of creating that tissue has not been mastered. So, the heart is a living thing, more so than a knee or hip. So, replacing it is not so much the option.
    Repairing it becomes the better course of action.
    What are we doing right now? There are artificial valves to repair them. And, there are heart pumps. And there are heart monitors. But, there isn't such a thing as rejuvenating the same unaltered very beat-up and somewhat old heart into a brand new heart. We do have some wonderful pills, and they repair a lot of hearts. But, the hearts we are helping aren't quite so wasted as many of those that are failing.
   Is the answer a better drug? Or using existing drugs that currently aren't being applied to the heart? If the heart is a muscle, and creatine and steroids are muscle builders, is there a way for them to be injected into the heart?
   Here is something that might not be being done. There is no such thing as taking the heart and exercising it back to life. At least, that is not part of current technology, I don't think. If there were a way to exercise the heart without killing it, then, there you might have an answer to saving some of the 610,000 deaths a year.
   I'm thinking, artificial exercise, not artificial heart. Artificial exercise, as in, the person doesn't, on their own, just go run and jump and play until his heart comes back, because obviously they cannot do that.
    But, is there a way to leave him laying in bed, and give his heart exercise, anyway? Music and peace and happy energy might be part of the answer. But, is there a way to actually open up the chest and put an exercise machine in it? Or, would the patient survive if we strapped them into a running position, unable to fall down even if they tried, and placed them on a treadmill and gave them a workout?
      Gave their heart a workout. Ever, this has been the way of building muscles: exercise them. The heart is a muscle. So, maybe treadmill therapy would work.
   Maybe they would have to rename such a treadmill, and call it a deadmill. I don't know. But, somehow, I half think it would work. You wouldn't run the guy at full speed, and you might not start him at anything but a walk. But, yes, I wonder but what this might work. Although what I'm calling for probably isn't being done, it does have a precursor. Patients right now, as part of their therapy, get up and walk around.
   Artificial exercise, not artificial heart. I do wonder but what it might help.