10 Steps to a Healthy Heart
November 4, 2008Simple ways to reduce your chance of a heart attack by up to 90 per cent
Dr Michael F. Roizen
Even if you follow just the first seven tips below (and don’t smoke, of course), you’ll reduce the chance of having a heart attack by as much as 90 per cent compared to a typical person your age!
Tip 1: Walk 30 minutes a day every day, no matter what – and then call someone. Walking a half hour a day decreases the risk of having a heart attack by about 30 per cent. I’ve found if you succeed at walking daily, you can also succeed at doing other things to improve your health. If you skip, you’ll start compromising your health in other ways too. Calling someone every day is crucial; that’s the real commitment. Find a person who’s supportive and will not nag but will call if you haven’t called her. And by the way, it usually is a ‘’her.'’ Men tend to be lousy at this!
Tip 2: Know your blood pressure and do whatever it takes to get it down to 115/75. Your blood pressure number may be even more important than your cholesterol. And you can lower it yourself. The best way? Getting a little exercise and losing some belly fat. The omentum is what hangs over the stomach. The fat that’s stored there feeds the kidney, liver and other vital organs. But when you gain weight, you add fat inside the relatively rigid ‘’kidney capsule.'’ This fat pushes on the kidney and more blood pressure is needed to drive blood through. So it releases hormones that cause increased blood pressure. When you lose a little of that fat, your blood pressure goes down really fast.
Cutting back on salt may help, but for some people reducing sugar and saturated fat in the diet may help even more. But if your blood pressure is over 140/90 and you’re not going to do these things reliably, then you should probably go on blood-pressure medication. New drugs can reduce blood pressure without major side effects.
Tip 3: Eat an ounce of nuts a dayNuts raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) good cholesterol and decrease inflammation. But they have a heart benefit independent of those too. We’re not sure why. Nuts have healthy omega-3 fatty acids, healthy protein and some fibre. And this tip is easy to do! Nuts that are raw, fresh and unsalted have the most benefit. You can develop a taste for them if you give them a chance. But if you want to roast, say, (shelled) walnuts, put them in the oven at 175 degrees Celsius for about nine minutes. If you do it yourself, it won’t cause any bad fats or dangerous chemical acrylamides to form.
Leiomyosarcoma
I became curious about this particular kind of cancer. Presently, one of my patients suffers from it and just last night, he was in severe pain that he was extremely agitated, already yelling at me. I understand his condition and I couldn’t see any reason for us nurses to be offended by such behavior. It’s just something that shouldn’t be taken personally. I pray for the healing of people afflicted with this rare, painful disease, as well as for their families and significant others.
