Ways to Take Care of Your Heart

Some people don't pay much attention to their own heart health unless they experience chronic chest pain. After a severe chest pain, your doctor might recommend a few changes you need to make. At this point, it has become increasingly obvious that you definitely need to think about your own heart health before these unwanted issues develop.

Here are some ways on how to take care your heart:

1. Regular exercise. You should know that regular exercise is good for your heart. Exercising does not only help you shed excess ponds, but it can also protect you from heart disease. Taking care of your heart through regular exercise does not necessarily mean you have to hit the gym everyday. Any form of exercise with a heart rate between resting and maximum is good for your heart health.

2. Include low-fat meals in our diet. Eating foods that contain essential vitamins and minerals will help you maintain a good heart health. Make sure you include fruits and fresh vegetables to your daily diet. Try to curb your fat intake because it is not good for your heart. Include fish and lean chicken on your daily meal for these are foods that contain low fat.

3. Get enough sleep. Getting enough sleep is good for your overall health. Many studies show that lack of sleep can lead to certain heart conditions. According to experts, 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night is good while 5 hours or less can be detrimental to your heart health. Try not to get too much sleep for it can also lead to heart problems.

4. Reduce your level of stress. According to studies, stress can lead to heart problems. It can also deplete the level of your hormones in the body. When you are stressed or burned out, you tend to lose your appetite. You no longer focus on exercising or even eating healthy foods. You can improve the health of your heart by taking time to relax every time you are feeling strained or exhausted.

5. Don't forget your fish oil supplements. Studies show that omega-3 fish oil supplement is good for your heart. If you happen to have high triglycerides in your body, you may develop heart problems. With omega-3 fish oil supplement, you can lower the triglycerides in your body and keep them at a healthy level.
Remember that it is never too late to take preventive measures in taking care of your heart. It is crucial that you consult your doctor as early as possible before heart problems develop. These 5 tips can help you maintain a good heart health.

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Getting Heart-Strong With Stats, Warning Signs, and Health Tips, Too

In case you missed it, red was the color of choice when choosing what to wear last Friday, as the first of February marked the tenth anniversary of the American Heart Association's National Wear Red Day. Its purpose: to help raise awareness of heart disease in women, while at the same time, launching American Heart Month.

Be aware, too, that The Million Hearts™ national initiative sponsored by the American Heart Association and others is also making headlines right now. Introduced by the Department of Health and Human Services in September, 2011, its aim is to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes in the U.S. over a 5-year period. To that end, this month Walgreens has engaged "its 26,000 health care providers to offer free blood pressure testing in consultation with a Walgreens pharmacist."

Is the need great? You bet. Just take a look at these unsettling facts of life about cardiovascular disease, the umbrella term for all heart and blood vessel diseases, including heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and aortic aneurism:

1. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women.
2. About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the U.S. every year-or one in four.
3. Every year, some 935,000 Americans have a heart attack; about 610,000 first-timers.
4. Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease, killing more than 385,000 people every year and costing the U.S. $108.9 billion annually in services, medications, and lost productivity.

Meanwhile, recognizing the warning signs is key to survival; experience any of them and call 911 immediately:

• Chest pain or discomfort
• Upper body pain or discomfort in arms, back, neck, jaw, or upper stomach.
• Shortness of breath.
• Nausea, lightheadedness, or cold sweats.

Know, too, that while the most common sign is chest pain or discomfort, women are somewhat likelier to feel short of breath, nauseous, and/or experience jaw pain.

Meanwhile, be advised that lifestyle is a determining factor, so be forewarned if you don't exercise, enjoy a high fat, sodium, and/or sugary diet, smoke, are overweight/obese, and/or have diabetes. To be in the know, head to your primary care doctor for a physical and make it an annual event. These are the numbers you'll want to hear:

• A blood pressure reading less than 120/80
• A total cholesterol that's less than 200 mg/dl
• An LDL ("bad" cholesterol) that's less than 100 mg/dl
• An HDL ("good"cholesterol) that's more than 50 mg/dl for women and 40 mg/dl or higher for men
• Triglycerides that are less than 150 mg/dl
• Blood glucose levels that are less than 100 mg/dl

To get you there, take time to de-stress every day, allowing yourself some "chill" time to meditate, garden, walk, and so on. You get the idea. And then:

• If you smoke, promise to stop. There's lots of quitting help out there, everything from gums and lozenges to patches and hypnosis. Online assistance is right at your fingertips, too. Need motivation? Quitting before 40 reduces the risk of death by about 90% finds an American Cancer Society study. Plus, smokers die, on average, about 10 years earlier than non-smokers.
• Get moving, aiming for at least 30 minutes a day of low to moderate intensity activity. The upside: lower blood pressure and triglyceride numbers, as well as higher HDL levels. Do it all in one outing or break it up into 10- or 15-minute workouts that can include walking, jogging, dancing, gardening, even playing outside with the kids. Then add just two weight training sessions a week-about 20 minutes or so each-and you're on your way.
• Start every day with a heart-healthy breakfast, as in oatmeal, a smoothie made, for example, with frozen berries, a banana, yogurt, and skim milk, a veggie-filled egg-white omelet, or even peanut butter on whole wheat toast sprinkled with ground flaxseed. Tempted to skip it and go right for the coffee? Keep in mind that eating breakfast cancels out the need for a mid-morning pick-me-up or heavy lunch, thus helping prevent weight gain.
• Eat a heart-healthy lunch and dinner, too, ones that are rich in fruits, veggies, fiber, whole grains, low-fat, calcium-rich dairy, and lean protein. Aim for two servings of fish each week, too. Not sure how much produce you should be consuming every day? The CDC has the answer for you.
• Take an inventory of what's on your pantry shelves when it comes to snacks, soups, salad dressings, etc. and consider tossing a few of them. As you read the nutrition labels, keep in mind that you want to limit your daily sodium intake to less than 1,500 mg and less than 150 mg of cholesterol. Then opt for better-for you alternatives like baked chips, nutrition-dense granola bars, heart-healthy soups and frozen dinners, and so on. While you're at it, put away the salt shaker and replace sugary drinks with plain water or sparkling water with a spritz or two of lemon juice.
• Be heart-savvy when eating out, too. Need some help as you peruse the menus of your favorite restaurant chains? There's actually an app for that, and it's called "Restaurant Nutrition."

In the meantime, need an easy, heart-healthy recipe to get you started? 

You will need:

• 1 cup halved walnuts or pecan (unless allergic)
• 1 cup dried cranberries or cherries
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta or blue cheese (unless allergic)
• 2 cored, thinly sliced apples or pears
• 1 bag of pre-washed spinach (or salad greens)
• 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 cup of virgin olive oil

Steps to Take:

1. Place spinach or greens in large salad bowl.
2. Add nuts, dried cranberries/cherries, sliced fruit & cheese.
3. Toss.
4. Add the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and toss well.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

As they say in France, à votre santé.

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Leg Pain Can Mean Heart Danger, Expert Says

David Dow thought he was having back problems, and that his legs were hurting as a result. As it turns out, that pain may have saved his life.

An otherwise healthy 57-year-old, he figured he just needed to learn some back-strengthening exercises, so he found a personal trainer to help him. But despite the workouts, his leg pain got worse making it hard for him even to walk from the car to the grocery store entrance. He and the trainer suspected something else was wrong and he sought the advice of his doctor.

Soon his doctor's tests revealed the true cause: blockages in the blood vessels of his legs. In fact, the arteries going to his lower extremities were nearly 100 percent blocked. The cause? Years of heavy smoking and high-fat meals, and other factors had caused cholesterol, scar tissue and blood clots to build up inside his blood vessels.

Most people think this kind of clogged artery disease, or arteriosclerosis, only happens in the heart. But as Dow's case shows, it can happen throughout the body. When it does, it's called peripheral arterial disease, or PAD.

And in some people, PAD causes leg pain that acts as an 'early warning' that someone is at high risk for a heart attack or a stroke, says a University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center expert.

"This is the hallmark of a disease that's all over," says James Stanley, M.D., a director of the U-M CVC and the vascular surgeon who operated on Dow. "It's like gray hair you don't just get it on one side of your head. So if you've got this kind of blockage in your leg, you're going to have it other places."

In fact, nearly a quarter of people who have leg pain due to PAD will be dead in five years, mostly due to heart attacks and other heart problems, Stanley says. For people like Dow, whose leg pain kept them from walking even short distances, the odds are even worse: as many as half will die by five years.

Fortunately, Dow got diagnosed and treated before that happened to him. Stanley performed a bypass operation to open his blocked leg arteries, similar to the bypasses that heart patients have. A recent checkup showed he's doing well.

"For sure, it's a wake-up call," says Dow, who has quit smoking and changed his eating habits. "You know that old saying, 'Where there's smoke, there's fire'? I'm sure that I not only have the vascular issues in my lower extremities, but I'm sure I have them in other parts of my body."

Dow isn't alone, says Stanley, who has operated on thousands of patients with severe PAD in his decades as a professor of vascular surgery at the U-M Medical School. Nearly 30 million people in the United States have some form of PAD, though the vast majority are "silent" cases that don't cause symptoms. Among people over age 70, nearly one person in five has PAD.

Who's most at risk for PAD? People over 50, smokers, people with diabetes, people with high blood pressure, people with high cholesterol, and people who are overweight or obese, Stanley explains. In other words, it's the same group of individuals who have a high risk of heart attack and stroke.

So, the advice for preventing PAD, or stopping it before it gets serious, is largely the same as the advice for preventing a heart attack or stroke: Quit smoking, eat healthier, get more exercise, control your blood sugar if you have diabetes, lose weight, and get your blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked. And ask your doctor if you should take a daily aspirin to prevent clots, or drugs to reduce your blood pressure and cholesterol.

Even though PAD makes people's legs hurt or feel tired when they walk or exercise a symptom that doctors call '"claudication" which feels like a "Charlie horse" type cramp one of the best things to do is to walk more, says Stanley.

"The more a patient walks, the more likely it is that they will develop little 'detour' blood vessels, called 'collateral' vessels, around the obstruction," he explains. The large majority of people can develop these vessels that will ease the pain.

But in some people, PAD has already gotten bad enough to cause pain or numbness even when the person is sleeping something called "rest pain." Stanley says this pain often awakens patients from sleep. It most often occurs in the ball of the feet and may feel like someone has wrapped a bandage around the foot. This level of symptoms is ominous, he says, because it indicates a more severe blockage without adequate collateral vessels.

Another sign of severe PAD is the development of painful sores, or ulcers, on the feet and toes. These occur because the blood flow to the lower leg isn't enough to feed the tissue, and it begins to break down. People with diabetes, whose bodies have an especially hard time healing such ulcers, are most at risk. Left untreated, skin ulcers can get worse and even turn into gangrene often leading to amputation.

The vast majority of PAD cases are nowhere near this serious. But people who don't get help for symptoms when they first start may find their problem becoming much worse over time.

So, Stanley recommends that anyone who has discomfort in their leg or legs, especially new pain that lasts more than a week, should talk to a doctor. She or he might perform a Doppler examination a painless, non-invasive ultrasound test that detects blood pressure in the extremity.

The Doppler test can tell whether someone has PAD and how bad the blockage might be. Depending on the result, the doctor might recommend an MRA (magnetic resonance arteriogram) of the leg, or a conventional arteriogram that involves injecting dye into the leg arteries through a device called a catheter.

If a severe blockage is found, like in Dow's case, there are several options. Two are similar to those for heart patients: a minimally invasive procedure like an angioplasty that opens blockages with a tiny balloon, or bypass surgery to place a new graft to carry blood into the blocked area.

There are also promising new options on the horizon, to help the body grow new blood vessels in the blocked area. The U-M CVC the first place in the world where patients with severe PAD can volunteer for an experimental new gene-therapy treatment called MultiGeneAngio.

The MultiGeneAngio trial takes cells from a vein in the patient's arm, adds in new genes that encourage the growth of blood vessels, and then injects the cells into the blocked artery using a minimally invasive technique. Right now, it's still being tested for safety and to find the right dose of cells, says Michael Grossman, M.D., the U-M interventional cardiologist who is leading the study at U-M. But if the study proves successful it may one day become a new treatment option for patients.

Until that day, the best weapon against PAD is better knowledge of the fact that pain in the legs is more than an inconvenience. "If one has PAD there are two issues," says Stanley. "What happens to your leg, and what happens to your life."

Facts about peripheral arterial disease or PAD:

• Peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, is sometimes called peripheral vascular disease. Both names describe the blocking of blood vessels in the peripheral parts of the body, away from the heart.
• The blockages are caused by the buildup of cholesterol, scar tissue and blood clots within the blood vessel - the same thing that happens in the blood vessels that feed the heart.
• PAD interferes with the flow of blood to the legs and feet, which can cause pain or numbness in the legs. When the pain occurs while a person is walking or exercising, it's called claudication. When it occurs as a person is sleeping, it's called rest pain.
• Similar blockages in the heart or brain may cause a heart attack or stroke.
• People with PAD, especially PAD that causes pain, have a much higher than normal risk of having a heart attack or stroke. PAD is considered a warning sign for more serious, life-threatening problems.
• PAD is more likely to develop in people who have an inherited (genetic) tendency to develop blocked arteries, and in people over age 50. It's also much more common in people who smoke, people who have have diabetes, high levels of blood fat (for example, cholesterol) and high blood pressure, and in people who are overweight. African-Americans appear to have a higher risk than other groups.
• PAD can be diagnosed using an ultrasound test.
• People who have PAD should quit smoking if they haven't already done so.
• PAD can be treated using exercise, dietary changes, good blood-sugar control, and medications to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. Severe cases are treated with minimally invasive procedures or surgery.

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