Heart News You Can Use

A good laugh is good for your heart. That’s the word from researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Watching a funny film may increase blood flow to the heart by up to 50%.
Got high blood pressure? If you’re overweight, modest weight loss—only 5 percent of your body weight—may be enough to bring your blood pressure down.

Research from Harvard Med School says obesity can be socially contagious. One explanation is that friends affect one another’s perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, being fat may not look as bad. We’re also influenced by other people’s eating habits: when everyone around us is eating, we join right in.

The Dr. Ornish diet, a nonfat vegetarian diet, may be the best plan for heart health, according to researchers at the University of Massachusetts who compared 8 popular diets. The only problem: it’s strict and can be hard to stick to long term.

Participants in a Penn State University study consumed 20% fewer calories when they started their meals with soup. Begin your meal with a low-calorie broth-based soup to ward off unwanted, unhealthy pounds.

Stay Heart Healthy

Submitted by admin on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 01:01

February 2010

TRUTH: Donating blood may lower your risk of heart disease.
The life you save may be your own. Preliminary studies suggest you can lower your risk of heart disease by regularly giving blood, which helps mitigate the amount of iron in your blood and body. We take in too much iron, mostly from eating red meat. Excess iron is thought to aid in the creation of free radicals in the body, speeding the aging process and raising the risk of heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. Until menopause, women are naturally protected from iron overload, but after that the danger of overdose climbs.

TRUTH: Unfiltered coffee can raise your LDL, the “bad” cholesterol.
It turns out that filtering coffee with paper filters removes a natural compound called cafestol that can increase levels of artery-clogging LDL cholesterol in your blood. So sacrifice a little richness and save the strong unfiltered coffee like espresso, cappuccino, Turkish coffee, and the coffee brewed from those French press coffeemakers for an occasional treat.

TRUTH: Eating eggs will not raise your cholesterol.
Eggs are a great source of protein, and the white part is healthier and leaner than the yolk where most of the cholesterol is concentrated. One egg contains about 213 milligrams of dietary cholesterol. According to the American Heart Association, the daily recommended cholesterol limit is less than 300 milligrams for people with normal LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels. So you can enjoy eggs several times a week, if you limit cholesterol from other sources—and skip the frying.

TRUTH: Thin people die of heart attacks every day.
Just because your weight is normal doesn’t mean you are out of the woods. Knowing the health of your blood and your heart is just as important as knowing your weight. Some people are born with a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol. They may look like the picture of health from the outside, but inside they can have dangerous plaque blocking the coronary arteries that surround the heart. Know your total cholesterol, the breakdown of the “good” and “bad” components of cholesterol, and your triglycerides.

TRUTH: It’s better to be fit than thin.
The Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation, a large study of women with heart problems, found that active women, no matter how thin or fat, were much less likely to have a heart attack or other cardiac problems than women who didn’t exercise. Being skinny is not the same thing as being fit. But don’t mistake the message: this is not a license to pack on pounds. The bottom line is to move, stay in shape, and think like an athlete.

TRUTH: Body build can indicate an increased risk of heart disease.
Think apple and pear. Knowing which fruit best describes your body may help you understand your predilection for heart disease. If you tend to put on weight in the upper body or in the stomach or mid-section, you are an apple. The fat you see on the outside is also on the inside. This is toxic fat that is linked to diabetes and heart disease. If you carry most of your weight on your hips, you’re probably pear-shaped. This fat can be just as tough to take off, but there isn’t as strong a link to cardiovascular disease.