Did you know that you can reduce your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol level by 10% to 20% just by giving your diet a heart-healthy makeover?
Heart-Healty Living – Part 3
Heart-Healthy Living – Part 2
In the past, heart disease was a greater problem for men than it was for women, but today heart disease and stroke take the lives of nearly as many women as men. And while most of the risk factors for heart disease are the same for both sexes, women’s hearts are affected by some special factors that don’t apply to men.
Heart-Healthy Living – Part 1
What are Triglycerides…and Why Should you Care?
Triglycerides are a type of fat found in the blood. When we eat, our body converts any calories it doesn’t use right away into triglycerides, which are stored in fat cells. Later, when we need an energy boost between meals, our body releases triglycerides to provide that energy. If we regularly eat more calories than we burn, triglyceride levels build up.
Dr. Art Hister – Pulse Rate
According to a just-released 20-year-long study of 50,000 adult Norwegians, there’s a pretty easy way – you do this sitting down and what can be easier that that? – to help you figure out if you really should be more active to lower your risk of dying of a heart attack: all you have to is sit down quietly for a few minutes and take your resting pulse rate.
A “normal” resting pulse rate is between 60 and 70 (give or take a few beats), so if your resting pulse rate stays steadily over say 80, chances are, according to this study, that you have an increased risk of dying from a heart attack, and the higher your average resting pulse rate is, this study found, the higher the heart attack risk.
But before everyone reading this panics over a slightly fast heart rate, remember that this is just a general measure, it’s not specific to any individual, and even better, even if your resting pulse rate is high, there’s a very good chance that you can offset much of that increased risk of suffering a heart attack just by doing regular exercise.
Anyone up for a jog?
Dr. Art Hister – Active Lifestyles
Although the aerobic benefits of exercise are the ones that get all the attention from fitness experts and doctors – and well they should – there are at least three other aspects to doing regular exercise that we should also all be attending to regularly, especially those of us who are aging (and although we all complain about getting older, hey, it beats the pants off the only known alternative).
So, when you’re working out, you should also focus some time and effort on resistance training – (what most people call weight training) because as we age, our muscles, like most of the rest of us, inevitably shrink but we can significantly delay that muscle shrinkage by doing a bit of weight training regularly
Balance exercises – because again like all our senses, our sense of balance also fades with age and starting in our middle years, falling becomes a major risk factor for chronic health problems (and even death from hip fractures)
Flexibility – since as I’m sure most of you have noticed, your toes seem so much harder to reach than they used to be.
Dr. Art Hister – Stroke Study
The conclusions of a stroke study called the INTERSTRIKE Study should be pinned to everyone’s fridge, patched into their in-box to read every day, maybe even pasted onto their skulls so that everyone they meet can read it because these conclusions are IMPORTANT.
What the study determined after comparing patients who’d had a stroke with patients who hadn’t had a stroke in 22 countries (both developed and 3rd world countries) is that 90% of strokes are preventable, or at least that 90% of strokes are caused by 10 factors that we can control. When you consider the damage that strokes cause – it’s the number 3 cause of death in Canada, and of those who survive, the great majority are left with permanent impairment, much of it severe, so that not only do stroke survivors pay a great price but so do their families – everyone should take strong note of this study.
So what are those factors?
As expected, high blood pressure is number one (with a bullet!), while the others are:
- smoking
- abdominal obesity
- unhealthy diet
- lack of physical activity
- abnormal cholesterol levels
- type 2 diabetes
- excess alcohol intake
- a history of stress and depression
- a history of heart disease.
So it’s in your corner, folks. You can prevent suffering a stroke with a great deal of assurance, but you have to control your unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Dr. Art Hister – Prevent Cataracts and Macular Degeneration
Good news! You can do something to prevent cataracts and macular degeneration, two of the most common eye conditions in seniors.
The bad news is that you need to start early in the prevention program. To that end, you should all make note of two recent studies. The first found a 37% reduction in cataracts in women (the same thing would very likely apply to men, too) who ate a “healthy” diet, which is the same old, same old: lots of veggies and fruits, lots of healthy oils, lots of whole grains and beans, some fish, some dairy, not too much meat and not too much salt.
The second study found a significant increased risk of age-related macular degeneration in elderly smokers (not much of a shock, I know) and a protective effect of higher HDL levels. HDL is the so-called “good” cholesterol, which can be raised by exercise – and perhaps by taking extra niacin, although that’s something that should be discussed either with the family doctor or your pharmacist.
Newsletter
