#CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE: 7 HEART-HEALTHY TIPS FOR WOMEN

In 1999 the American Heart Association (AHA) published a set of guidelines for heart disease prevention in women and revised them in 2011.  What follows are the newer guidelines are based on clinical trials that examined the protective efficacy of lifestyle measures and drugs:

1.  Quit smoking; avoid second-hand smoke.   The worst thing you can do to your heart and your other organs, and those of persons around you is to smoke.  Smoking causes about two-thirds of heart attacks among young and middle-aged women, and if you smoke while taking birth control pills, your risk is even higher.

No level of smoking is safe. The bad news:  The risk of heart attack rises with every cigarette smoked daily.

The good news:  Your risk of heart attack is reduced the minute you quit smoking.

2.  Know your blood pressure; keep it under control.  A blood pressure (hypertension) test may well be the cheapest, simplest and most valuable medical test of all.  More black women have hypertension than white women and tend to develop it about 10 years sooner than white women.

Early awareness of prehypertension coupled with attention to exercise, diet, weight control and drugs, if needed, can help you keep it from developing into full-blown hypertension.

3.  Know your blood cholesterol levels; keep them in a healthy range.  Optimal LDL (“bad”) levels are less than 100 mg/dL, and acceptable levels are less than 130.

Optimal levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol for women should be at least 50, compared to 40 for men.

Total cholesterol levels should be less than 200.

Diet and exercise can improve your levels.

4.  Have your blood sugar level checked; control it if it’s high.  Women with diabetes or with prediabetes are at greater risk for heart attack and stroke than are men with those conditions.  You can control your blood sugar through diet, weight loss, exercise and, if needed, medication.

5.  Eat a heart-healthy diet.  Include plenty of fruits, vegetables, (dried) beans, whole grains and low-calorie dairy products.  Eat oily fish two or three times a week for their omega-3 fats.  Keep portions of lean meats, such as skinless poultry breast and well-trimmed cuts of other meats, small.

Avoid trans fats and saturated fats, but eat moderate amounts of unsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds, avocado and vegetable oils.

Eat sparingly of sugary foods and refined carbohydrates, such as white potatoes, bread and pasta.

6.  Cut back on sodium to reduce risk of hypertension and stroke.  For people over 50, for all blacks and those with hypertension, diabetes or kidney disease, the recommendation is a daily limit of just 1,500 milligrams.

Others should aim for less than 2,300 milligrams.

All this translates into your having to cut way back on processed foods, restaurant meals and fast foods.

7.  Stay active.  For heart benefits, walk briskly or do some other aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes most days of the week.  Current recommendations are for a total of 150 minutes per week.

You may want to assess your 10-year risk of having a heart attack based on your age, gender, cholesterol levels and blood pressure at the government’s National Cholesterol Education Program at  http://www.tinyurl.com/risktool

SOURCE:  University of CA, Berkeley Wellness Letter, Special Winter Issue, 2012    American Heart Association

Coming up:  7 More Heart-healthy Tips for Women 

#CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE: WOMEN’S NUMBER 1 KILLER

NO PHOTO AVAILABLE   I found zero photos of a woman having a heart attack vs. endless photos of men having heart attacks.  That says a lot about why women don’t realize our danger from heart attack.

In total, cardiovascular disease claims the lives of 7% more US women than men.

It claims the lives of more than 20 times as many women as does breast cancer in a year (420,000 vs. 39,500).

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), it kills one in every three women, more than women’s combined deaths from all cancers, chronic respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s and accidents.

Though far fewer women than men have heart attacks, nearly as many women as men die from them.

A couple of decades ago, women had a higher death rate than men during heart surgery because surgeons were using the same larger surgery instruments on women’s smaller hearts that they used on men’s larger hearts.  That rather obvious oversight has been corrected in most cases, but not in all.

Still, today women are twice as likely to die during or soon after surgery, largely because we delay getting medical help because we don’t know that the indicators of our having a heart attack differ from a man’s indicators of a heart attack.

Though chest pain is the most common symptom for both men and women, more women, especially in middle age, don’t have this symptom.

Instead, our first symptom is unusual fatigue, acute anxiety, shortness of breath, pounding heartbeat, nausea, and/or pain in the neck, jaw, shoulder, back or ear.

Another contributing factor is that we have our first heart attacks at an age considerably older than men having a first attack and are therefore generally more susceptible to death than we would have been had we had the attack at an earlier age.

NB:  A significant number of US women under 54 years of age have heart attacks; Rosie O’Donnell had one last August at age 50.   While the incidence of death in men under 54 has been dropping, the incidence of death among women under 54 is rising, probably because more younger women are obese and have diabetes and also because of the existing gender gap in recognizing and treating heart disease.

It’s of critical importance that women learn how to protect our cardiovascular health and consult with our health care providers (educating them, if necessary) about our risk factors and appropriate strategies to prevent cardiovascular disease.

You may want to assess your 10-year risk of having a heart attack based on your age, gender, cholesterol levels and blood pressure at the government’s National Cholesterol Education Program at  http://www.tinyurl.com/risktool

SOURCE:  University of CA, Berkeley Wellness Letter, Special Winter Issue, 2012

Coming up:  7 Heart-healthy Tips for Women  But wait–there’s more!

Followed by:  7 More Heart-healthy Tips for Women 

IS THE LOW FAT, LOW CARB OR MEDITERRANEAN #DIET FOR YOU?

Almost any diet will take off pounds, even if only in the short run.

How much, why and what we eat is influenced by genes, family, friends and environment, so we shouldn’t be discouraged if a diet plan that worked for others doesn’t work for us.

A good diet should provide lots of choices, few restrictions and no long lists of expense and difficult to obtain foods.

It should nourish our hearts, bones, brains and digestive organs as well.

It should be sustainable over years, not over weeks.

It won’t deliver a quick fix.  But it will deliver a lifetime of delicious and healthy choices good for the total of what we are, not just for some parts of us.

Here’s a rundown on the pros and cons of three approaches to dieting:

Low Fat:  Low cal, but less flavorful, less filling and less satisfying for a long-term approach

Carbohydrates contain only four calories per gram, while fats contain nine.

Theoretically, we could take in more food without taking in more calories if we avoided fats and took in more carbs, especially fruits and vegetables.

But we’d be ignoring the healthy fats that promote weight loss and those that are healthy for the heart.

And if we ate refined carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, white potatoes, etc.), that are rapidly digested, we could sabotage our well-intentioned plan to lose weight:

Quickly digested, refined carb food boost blood sugar, which triggers a surge of insulin from the pancreas, which in turn rapidly drops blood sugar and causes us to experience hunger.

Low Carbs, aka Atkins diet:  Quick weight loss, but long-term risks to health

When we cut out carbs from our diets, our bodies mobilize their own carbohydrate stores from liver and muscle tissue, thereby mobilizing water.

The result is rapid weight loss—of water.  After a couple of months, as with other diets, the process reverses itself.

The American Heart Association warns against following the Atkins diet because it’s too high in saturated fat and protein, which can be hard on the heart, kidneys and bones.

The lack of carbohydrate-rich fruits and vegetables is a matter of concern as well because these foods tend to lower the risk of stroke, dementia, and some cancers.

Most experts consider less restrictive low-carb diets, such as the South Beach diet, as more reasonable choices.

Mediterranean style:  Healthy fats and carbs with lots of fruits and vegetables

There is growing evidence that in and of itself, a Mediterranean style diet reduces cardiovascular risk and the development of diabetes.

Mediterranean diets have moderate amounts of fat, most of it healthy fats.

Healthy fats are the monounsaturated fats found in avocados, olives, olive and other oils.  Healthy polyunsaturated fats are found in fish, flax seeds and flax oils, sunflower seeds and sunflower oils, peanuts and peanut oils, sesame oil, canola oil, walnuts and other foods.

The carbohydrates in the diet come from unrefined, fiber-rich foods such as whole wheat and beans.

These diets include lots of fish, fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds with only modest amounts of cheeses and meats.

My Take on the diets:  I didn’t forget the cons regarding the Mediterranean style of eating—there aren’t any.

Opa!

Source:  Harvard Medical School HEALTHbeat, August 25, 2012    And other sources

HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: KEEP THE HIDDEN BURDEN OF HYPERTENSION AT BAY

Hypertension is a gateway to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, and kidney disease.

Probably because of its interference with health, on average the life span of people with hypertension is five years shorter than that of people with normal blood pressure.

Hypertension directly leads to 60,000 deaths a year and contributes to another 300,000 deaths.

Quite naturally, if you’re working to control it, you’re burdened with concerns. You must reprogram your eating and exercise habits and begin a regimen of one or more pills a day, pills which may be expensive.

Spanish researchers uncovered another hidden burden associated with high blood pressure: its effect on survival after both admission and readmission to hospitals.

Over a 10-month period, they studied 1,007 men and women admitted to a hospital for any heart-related problem, including chest pain, fainting, heart attack, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and pericarditis.

In this group of patients, 69% had pre-existing hypertension before being admitted. At the end of one year, 17% of those with high blood pressure were dead compared to only 9% of those with normal blood pressure.

Patients rehospitalized for a cardiac problem had similar outcomes: 31% with pre-existing high blood pressure died within a year compared to only 18% with normal blood pressure.

There are many things you can do to keep your hypertension under control and even prevent the condition from developing. Here are the recommendations of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the American Heart Association:

Achieve & maintain a healthy weight for your height.

Exercise regularly.

Eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Limit sodium intake to under 2,300 milligrams (one teaspoon) a day.

Get plenty of potassium (4,700 milligrams) a day.

Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all.

Reduce stress.

Monitor your blood pressure regularly, and work with your doctor to keep it in a healthy range.

from Harvard Medical School Healthbeat June 7, 2012

TUFTS UNIVERSITY: EXERCISE MAY NEGATE EXTRA GENETIC ALZHEIMER’S RISK

from Tufts University Health & Nutrition Update, January 20, 2012

Results of a new observational study at Washington University in St. Louis, published in the Archives of Neurology, offer hope to those genetically disposed to Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers imaged the brains of 163 participants, ages 45-88, with PET scans.  All were normal on a test for cognitive decline.

Fifty-two participants carried APOE epsilon-4, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s.  But the scans of the group of carriers who were physically active, meeting the American Heart Association guidelines for regular exercise, showed no more build up of amyloid plaques than found in the brains of non-carriers.

Though the study hadn’t been designed to prove cause and effect, scientists noted that the genetic risk “makes beneficial lifestyle factors, such as exercise, preferentially important.”

My Take on the study:  Sigmund Freud said anatomy is destiny.  This study says, not as long as people are aware of their choices and the consequences of their choices.