Loving your heart
By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.
Do you know your blood pressure? What is your cholesterol? What's a good resting heart rate – for you? What's a heart-healthy diet? What kind of heart history does your family have? How does that apply to you?
Unless you ask the questions, you will not know the answers. February is heart month, and it's a good time to ask your physician and other health care provider. Prevention is always a better answer than treatment.
Your heart is an amazing pump that beats approximately 100,000 times every day and 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times. The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during a lifetime.
That's a lot of work, and it means that your heart is an amazing muscle. Too much weight can stress your heart as can a diet high in fat that can clog the arteries that bring blood to your heart. A single clot can actually block these tiny arteries, causing a heart attack. Without blood, heart muscle cells begin to die. If the process isn't stopped, you can die. Even if it is, you can lose precious heart muscle, which means that your heart is less able to maintain itself and you.
Understanding things like blood pressure and cholesterol can help you determine if you are doing the right things for your heart or if you need to change lifestyles to insure that it remains healthy.
Today's children, faced with the lure of high-fat fast food and threatened by a sedentary lifestyle, need your encouragement to eat healthy and engage in healthy, active play. You can do a lot for the next generation by simply getting outside and playing with your own child. Children learn from your example.
Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States – in both men and women. Disability from heart disease is costly both in dollars and human terms. Many organizations have tools that can help you assess your heart health and make plans to improve it. The American Heart Association maintains a risk assessment tool at http://www.beatyourrisk.com/.
Give it a try. It may mean that you have a better and healthier life.
