Eating for a Healthy Heart

Nutrition and Diet to Help Prevent Heart Disease

Recent studies have suggested that eating a heart-healthy diet can cut the risk of developing heart disease or stroke by 80%. Considering that heart disease is still the number one killer of both men and women in the United States, this is news worth considering!

Weight control and exercise are the first steps to a healthy heart, but there are additional ways to boost the body’s immunity to heart disease. Take a closer look at how specific food choices impact our ability to help manage or prevent heart disease and high blood pressure— two of the biggest health challenges we face today.

Healthy heart diet:

While age and genetics play a role, doctors have identified six controllable risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity. The first steps in preventing heart disease are to quit smoking and incorporate exercise into your life. The rest of your heart healthy plan can focus on your diet what you eat, and what you don’t eat.

Coronary heart disease is caused by blockages in the arteries that supply blood to the heart. When the blood supply is obstructed, the heart muscle becomes deprived of oxygen and essential nutrients needed to function properly, which can result in angina (chest pains) or a heart attack. The primary substances responsible for narrowing of the arteries are cholesterol and fatty deposits making dietary cholesterol and saturated fat the two major dietary culprits that affect your heart health,

In order to protect your heart, certain foods should be drastically reduced or eliminated from your diet, while increasing foods that support cardiovascular health.

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Allergic To Everything will teach you how to protect yourself from toxic chemicals and poisonous practices before you ingest any of the products on the latest recall lists.

DISCOVER HOW "safe" practices and processes may already be harming or killing you...and how to determine which items you put on or in your body are truly safe for consumption.

You may be the most diligent consumer, yet still be taking home bags and bags of toxic chemicals from the grocery store each and every visit. Sure you read labels, but do you really know what they mean? How many of those twelve syllable words can you actually pronounce, let alone understand,

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The Healing Power of a Slinky Posted

"Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body." ~ Cicero

In ancient Greece, doctors served the God of medicine, Askeplios, while healers served the God of health, Hygeia. Medicine means “the tool by which to restore health by correcting imperfections.” Health means “the natural order of things.” These are two contrasting views. So many prescription drugs simply suppress disease rather than correct disease. Sometimes suppression is beneficial and absolutely necessary. But as Dr. Andrew Weil says, by aligning with the natural order, one triggers the body’s tremendous healing capacity and need not be so dependent on the outside cure.*

The “natural order” might sound intimidating like a 30 day fast; or a special diet to suit your blood type; or a complex ayurvedic analysis. That’s all fine and good but “natural order” is so incredibly simple. The institute of hearmath in Colorado has proven what the yogis have practiced for 5,000 years. When a human being reaches a combined state of relaxation, positive emotion, and focus, heart rhythms change immediately. “A shift in heart rhythms may not seem important but in fact it creates a favorable cascade of neural, hormonal and biochemical events that benefit the entire body.”

How do you get to this combined state? No matter your stress, no matter your busy schedule, no matter your crazy life…you take the time to lie down right smack in the middle of your day and relax. As Sark said, "Healing doesn't care about the years or about the counting. I think it is timeless and without age. It waits for our souls to shift into acceptance."

Here are some tips on aligning with the “natural order" and triggering the body's healing capacity:

1. Make Time
   
   It’s all too often we don’t have time to exercise or relax or do something positive for the mind and body.
   
   “If you don’t have time for exercise, you’ll have to make time for illness.” - Robin Sharma
   

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Notes

Some Notes on Fasting

In relation to the article, "Perfect Health," I received some six or eight hundred letters from people who either had fasted, or desired to fast and sought for further information. The letters shared a general uniformity which made clear to me that I had not been sufficiently explicit upon several important points.

The question most commonly asked was how long should one fast, and how one should judge of the time to stop. I personally have never taken a "complete fast," and so I hesitate in recommending this to any one. I have fasted twelve days on two occasions. In both cases I broke my fast because I found myself feeling weak and wanted to be about a good deal. In neither case was I hungry, although hunger quickly returned. I was told by Bernarr Macfadden, and by some of his physicians, that they got their best result from fasts of this length. I would not advise a longer fast for any of the commoner ailments such as stomach and intestinal trouble, headaches, constipation, colds and sore throat. Longer fasts, it seems to me, are for those who have really desperate ailments, such deeply-rooted chronic diseases as Bright's disease, cirrhosis of the liver, rheumatism and cancer.

Of course if a person has started on a fast and it is giving him no trouble, there is no reason why it should not be continued; but I do not in the least believe in a man's setting before himself the goal of a forty or fifty days' fast and making a "stunt" out of it. I do not think of the fast as a thing to be played with in that way. I do not believe in fasting for the fun of it, or out of curiosity. I do not advise people to fast who have nothing the matter with them, and I do not advise the fast as a periodical or habitual thing. A man who has to fast every now and then is like a person who should spend his time in sweeping rain water out of his house, instead of taking the trouble to repair his roof. If you have to fast every now and then, it is because the habits of your life are wrong, more especially because you are eating unwholesome foods. There were several people who wrote me asking about a fast, to whom my reply was that they should simply adopt a rational diet; that I believed their troubles would all disappear without the need of a fast.

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Diffrent disease info

Keep cholestrole down:

LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) level down under 100 is a target level. It’s also helpful to raise the “good” or HDL level with an increase in aerobic exercise, weight loss and dietary changes. An optimal diet is low in animal (saturated) and hydrogenated fats, low in sugar and refined grains (e.g. white flour, white rice, white pasta & bread) and high in fiber. You should be getting about 20 grams of fiber daily for every 1000 calories you eat.
Lower your Lipoprotein(a):

Lipoprotein(a) is one of the “bad” forms of cholesterol, with a particular tendency to run in families and cause stroke. Lp(a) levels can be lowered with supplemental vitamin B3, a.k.a. niacin. Before you start taking niacin supplements check your Lp(a) level with a fasting blood test – your result should be less than 30.
Control your level homocystine:

A high homocysteine level is a strong, independent risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Homocysteine is an amino acid – one of the building blocks of protein. A simple blood test will measure your homocysteine level. Your level should be less than 9.0. Homocysteine levels can be lowered by taking supplements of folic acid, along with vitamins B6 and B12. I recommend that everyone take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily as a bare minimum. B6 and B12 supplements should be 25-50 mg, and 100-1000 mcg, respectively. If your homocysteine level is elevated you may need much higher amounts of folic acid.
Eat :

Independent research has suggested that a lower intake of calories, as well as saturated fat and cholesterol can cut the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in half in certain people. Fewer calories mean fewer free radicals the dangerous byproducts of metabolism caused by the processing of food with oxygen. These free radicals have been shown to cause the type of brain injury (known as “oxidative damage”) seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
Eat better:

rich in colorful fruits and vegetables, olive oil, avocados, nuts & seeds, small fish, beans & whole grains and lean protein sources including eggs, soy and nonfat dairy products are recommended.

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Alzheimer's disease information

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects about 4 million Americans and is the 8th leading cause of death, accounting for about 50,000 deaths per year in the U.S. The chance of having Alzheimer’s disease doubles every 4 to 5 years after the age of sixty. Although the risk at age 60 is low (1%), by the age of 75 this reaches almost 10%, and by age 85 between a third and half of Americans have some form of dementia (of which about 75% are the Alzheimer’s type of dementia). Estimates place the risk at about two-thirds of Americans age 90 and above.

This is particularly disturbing news for all of us, since the average American lifespan has been steadily increasing – most women will live to be over 80, and men now average over 75, which means that more than one in ten of us will develop Alzheimer’s disease in our lifetimes.

Despite the many millions of dollars being spent on Alzheimer’s research, the treatment options remain extremely disappointing. Even with earlier, more sensitive diagnostic tests, no effective therapy to has been shown to halt or reverse the disease. The four FDA-approved drugs on the market for Alzheimer’s disease (Aricept®, Exelon®, Reminyl® and the seldom-prescribed Cognex®), only marginally improve function in less than half of patients.

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