guidetohealth.com

It has been noted that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But in the case of cardiovascular disease, an ounce of prevention might just be worth a ton of cure. How so? As the number one cause of death in the United States, cardiovascular disease is a scourge without parallel in American history. But happily, for many people, the destruction wrought by this dreaded epidemic can be prevented. By taking small steps that eventually lead to major lifestyle changes, you can help eradicate this all-too-common tragedy and increase your chances for a long, healthy life. Here's how:

Exercise
Researchers have found that exercise can give your body's systems the capacity to work as well as someone 20 years younger. So it is not surprising that physically active people-regardless of their biological ages-have lower rates of heart disease and are less vulnerable to strokes. Exercise is so important that cardiologists often prescribe (not just recommend or suggest) exercise for patients with heart disease, observes Alan Rozanski, M.D., director of nuclear cardiology and cardiac stress testing at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City. In one study, researchers followed 68 patients who were on a waiting list for heart transplants and who also participated in an exercise program of graded walking. After three to six months, the hearts of 30 patients had improved to the point that they no longer needed new hearts. Two years later, their hearts were still going strong. Read more...

Diet
When he wasn't acting or directing classic films like Citizen Kane, Orson Welles ate. Reportedly, it wasn't uncommon for him to eat four to five large portions of caviar a day, and three huge steaks and mounds of rich desserts for dinner. His lifetime of gluttony weakened his heart and dangerously elevated his blood pressure. Welles died at age 70 of a massive heart attack. "To my mind, Orson Welles's health was the antithesis of what you want to experience as you get older," says Michael Klaper, M.D., director of the Institute of Nutrition Education and Research in Manhattan Beach, California. Read more...

Nutrition
For at least a decade, doctors have known that the most important ways to prevent a heart attack are to avoid tobacco smoke, eat a low-cholesterol diet, keep dietary fat to a minimum, sweat through at least three workouts a week and reduce stress across the board. But today doctors are also beginning to realize that specific nutrients-particularly vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene-may be just as important. Nobody knows whether a lack of these nutrients can actually lead to heart disease, but it's certainly starting to look that way. In the ongoing Nurses' Health Study, being conducted at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, researchers compared the diets of more than 73,000 nurses and found that a diet rich in vitamin E reduced heart attack risk by 52 percent, a diet rich in vitamin C reduced risk by 43 percent, and a diet rich in beta-carotene, one of the nutrients that give orange and yellow vegetables their color, reduced risk by 38 percent. What's more, nurses who got a rich supply of all three nutrients were 63 percent less likely to have heart attacks than those who did not. Read more...

Positivity
As with the fabled Fountain of Youth and mythical Atlantis, the search for the connection between mind and body has been an elusive one. But researchers are discovering that the link between positive feelings and health is neither a fable nor a myth. Compelling research is beginning to show that a positive outlook on life can magnify the health-protecting powers of diet and exercise and can help dampen a multitude of ailments, including heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Even if you develop one of these three diseases, experts say joy, hope, and optimism can improve the quality of your life and enhance your chances of recovery. "Most illnesses have a lot of psychological underpinnings. A person's lifestyle, character, and the way they cope with life have a big influence on what diseases they get, how long they live, and how they survive in their older years," says Roger Thies, Ph.D., professor of physiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. Read more...

Reducing Stress
You wake up late, dive into the shower, scramble into your clothes, grab a stale muffin from the kitchen, dash out to the car, roar out of the driveway and drive smack into the middle of a massive traffic jam. At the office, your boss and two impatient clients wait for you. Welcome to the world of stress, an inescapable reality of modern life that has been linked to many disorders ranging from allergies to asthma, from stomach problems to heart disease. In fact, some physicians estimate that at least 80 percent of their patients have stress-related symptoms. Read more...

Quitting Smoking
Ponder these facts: Within 8 hours of quitting smoking, your pulse rate and blood pressure drop, and oxygen levels in your body rise. Within 24 hours your risk of a heart attack dips. At around a month your circulation improves, your energy levels surge, and your lung function expands by up to 30 percent. By 1 year your risk of heart disease is half that of someone who continues to smoke. In 5 years, your stroke risk begins to slide; and in 10 years, your chances of getting lung cancer are the same as that of someone who has never smoked. "I've had 75-year-old patients tell me that the day they quit smoking, in their thirties and forties, was the greatest day of their lives. The feeling of finding something that you had thought you had lost-your health-is better than if you had never lost it at all. And to know that your risk of sudden death from smoking-related heart disease has dramatically decreased-is tremendous," says Alan Blum, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Read more...