Matters of the Heart

Last night my niece and I spent about a half hour on the phone talking about healthy food choices for my sister. Let's face it, we all need to follow a healthier diet so this was a good exercise! Today's New York Times would agree:

Most people think heart-healthy living involves sacrifice. Give up your favorite foods. Break a sweat. Lose weight. But some of the best things you can do for your heart do not involve deprivation or medication. Simple and even pleasurable changes in the foods you eat can rival medication in terms of the benefit to your heart.

“Almost everyone has something they can do in their diet or activity that will impact their risk of heart disease,” said Dr. Graham Colditz, adjunct professor of epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s not about taking anything to the extremes of major deprivation, extreme marathon running or becoming a vegetarian.”

Even so, many people are not getting the message. While doctors still advise patients to diet, exercise and stop smoking, the medical community has adopted an almost singular focus on cholesterol-lowering drugs as the fastest and best way to battle heart disease. Americans spend $18 billion a year on cholesterol-reducing drugs, making them the nation’s biggest-selling class of drugs. [...]

But an important lesson from the last 50 years is that when it comes to improving heart health, it is important to look beyond the medicine cabinet.

Just a few small changes — eating more fish, vegetables, nuts and fiber — can have a major impact on your risk for heart problems. For some people, drinking moderate amounts of wine may offer additional benefits. Even a 55-year-old man who is about 20 pounds overweight and does not exercise regularly will have a heart-disease risk far below average if he regularly consumes fish, nuts, fiber and vegetables and drinks moderate amounts of wine.

It’s hard to believe that such simple food changes can make a meaningful difference, but data from hundreds of studies show they can.

So what is your risk? Below are a few ways you can assess your risk.

Take this test to assess "Your Disease Risk"

My risk is above average: "Above average risk doesn't mean you'll definitely get heart disease. It's just an estimate based on your risk factors, some of which you may not be able to change."

Check out how your heart works here.

The American Heart Association offers a Learn and Live quiz. Take it now.

Check out the Beats and Breaths calculator here.

The beats and breaths calculator will amaze you … and may even leave you breathless. In a typical minute your heart beats about 72 times and you take in about 15 breaths. In terms of numbers for beats and breaths, that's more than 4,000 heartbeats and 900 breaths in an hour. And in your lifetime? Let us do the math with our beats and breaths calculator! By entering the month, day and year of your birth we'll estimate your beats and breaths so far.

Number of heart beats since my birth: 2,110,081,104
Number of breaths since my birth: 439, 600,230

Wow!

And finally, the Tailgater's Handbook for a healthy heart! Hummm ... now if I could only get my friend DCup and her family to move to DC, she could prepare some of these delicious items for me!

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