5 Heart Disease Prevention Tips

Heart attacks are a scary thought. Did you know that according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US? However, you can lower your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, especially if you team up with others. 

“Studies show that having positive, close relationships and feeling connected to others benefits overall health, blood pressure, weight and more,” said NHLBI’s Dr. David Goff, director of cardiovascular sciences.

Our Cardiologists recommend the following to help lower your risk of developing heart disease:

Keep moving:

Try to get at least 150 minutes of exercise every week. Walk. Ride a bike. Join an aerobics class. The more active you are the better. 

Eat Healthy:

Talk to your primary care doctor or cardiologist about a healthy eating plan. Prepare your meals at home so that you can control what the ingredients are and how the meals are prepared.

Quit Smoking:

It's never to late to quit smoking, even if you've smoked for years. Join a support group and  talk to your doctor. Additionally you may connect with a trained counselor at 1-800-QUIT-NOW or smokefree.gov.

Get Plenty of Rest: 

Did you know that by getting a good nights rest (7-8 hrs.) improves your heart health? Try not to nap, and go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.

Manage Your Stress: 

Talk to your family doctor or a qualified mental health provider. Take a walk, try yoga or meditation. 

These health tips are not a substitute for speaking to a qualified health-care provider, talk to your primary carephysician or specialist today.

PMA Medical Specialists’ Educating Individuals on the Importance of Heart Healthy Living

Did you know that people who have close relationships at home, work, or in their community tend to be healthier and live longer? One reason, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), is that we’re more successful meeting our health goals when we join forces with others.

Here are some facts, how-to tips, and resources to inspire you to join with others to improve your heart health. 

Heart disease is a leading cause of death in the United States. Most middle aged people (90 to 95 percent) and young adults (75 to 80 percent) have one or more risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or high blood cholesterol, or being a smoker or overweight. Having more than one risk factor increases your risk for heart disease much more than having just one.

Why Reaching Out Is Good

Having positive, close relationships and feeling connected with others benefits our overall health, including our blood pressure and weight. Having people in our lives who will motivate and care for us helps, but having feelings of closeness and companionship helps our health too.

Making the following heart healthy lifestyle changes will be easier and more successful if you work with other motivated people:

·        Get physically active

·        Achieve a healthy weight and maintain it

·        Eat heart healthy foods

·        Quit smoking

Remember, you don’t have to make big changes all at once. Small steps will get you where you want to go. Here are some tips to get you going.

Move More

Invite family, friends, colleagues, or members of your community to join you in your efforts to be more physically active:

·        Ask a colleague to walk with you on a regular basis, put the date on both your calendars, and text or call to make sure you both show up.

·        Join an exercise class at your local community center and bring a neighbor along. Carpool to make it a regular date.

·        Grab your kids, put on some music, and do jumping jacks, skip rope, or just dance.

·        Make your social time active and encourage everyone—family and friends alike— to think of fun things that get you off the couch and moving.

If you have a health condition, including heart disease or high blood pressure, talk with your doctor before increasing your activity.

How much is enough? Aim for at least 2½ hours of physical activity each week—that’s just 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. In addition, do muscle strengthening exercises 2 days a week. Can’t carve out a lot of time in your day? Don’t chuck your goal, chunk it! Try 10 or 15 minutes a few times a day. NHLBI’s Move More fact sheet provides ideas to get and keep you moving.

Aim for a Healthy Weight

If you’re overweight, find someone in your friend group, at work, or in your family who also wants to lose weight. (Every little bit can help!) Check in with them regularly to stay motivated or join a weight loss program together. Do healthy activities together, like walking or playing on a neighborhood sports team, and share low-calorie, low-sodium meals or recipes. (Pregnant women should not try to lose weight, but they can exercise.)

Eating Heart Healthy

We tend to eat like our friends and family, so ask others close to you to join you in your effort to eat healthier.

Quit Smoking

To help you quit, ask others for support or join a support group. Research has shown that people are much more likely to quit if their spouse, friend, or sibling does. Social support online can also help you quit. All states have quit lines with trained counselors—call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669). You’ll find many free resources to help you quit, such as apps, a motivational text service, and a chat line at the websites BeTobaccoFree.hhs.gov and Smokefree.gov.

If you need extra motivation to quit, consider the health of your friends and family: Being around other people’s smoke, called secondhand smoke, is dangerous. Thousands of adult nonsmokers die of stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke.

While heart disease risk begins to rise in middle age, heart disease develops over time and can start at a young age, even in the teen years. It's never too early, or too late, to take action to prevent and control the risk factors for heart disease. 

Hidden Sugars and the Impact on Your Health

Hi, I am Eric Sodicoff, M.D. Primary Care Internal Medicine doctor and Obesity Medicine Specialist at PMA Medical Specialists. I frequently query my patients about how much sugar they consume throughout the day. Happily, I have discovered many people are making some efforts to cut out sweets. But let’s back up a second and discuss why too much sugar is a problem. 

First, what is sugar anyway? 

Common table sugar, scientifically known as sucrose is a disaccharide. That means it is composed of two basic sugar units. In the case of sucrose, those are glucose and fructose. Blood sugar is only glucose; it’s what diabetics are checking when they prick their fingers. It isn’t very sweet. White rice for example is almost pure glucose, and most people don’t consider it sweet at all. Glucose circulates throughout the body 24/7. Cells throughout the body can use it as fuel. Red cells use it as their only source of energy and it powers most people’s brains most of the time. Glucose molecules get strung together and stored in the liver to be used between meals. The liver also can convert protein into glucose in a pinch.

Fructose, on the other hand, is the sweet stuff. It makes sugary soda, candy, cakes and ice cream so irresistible. Fructose comes from plants such as sugar cane, sugar beets, fruit, and since the 1970s, artificially and cheaply synthesized from corn. This is known as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Fructose, either naturally sourced or synthetic, presents something of a challenge to our bodies. It must be converted to glucose in order to be used and there is only one location in the body that does that: the liver. The liver’s capacity to manage fructose can be overwhelmed by eating or drinking too much of it. When fructose is over consumed it becomes liver fat and then belly fat too. Fatty liver is presently an epidemic and is overtaking viral hepatitis and alcoholism as the main cause of liver failure. Fructose is very fattening.

How much sugar is too much? 

There are different answers. The American Heart Association sets the limit at 24 grams per day for women and 36 for men. The World Health organization say 50 grams. How much is that you might be asking? Just one serving of strawberry yogurt has 26 grams of sugar. Yup, just one so called healthy yogurt for breakfast is enough to break through a woman’s daily sugar budget. It’s not even considered a dessert!  Processed foods that aren’t even particularly sweet contain huge amounts of added sugars too. The processed food manufacturers have discovered people really, really love sugar and buy more when it is added to products. It pops up in unlikely places even foods that usually aren’t sweet at all.

-Check the labels and you’ll find it in jarred spaghetti sauce, whole wheat bread, ketchup and peanut butter.

- A breakfast bar made with "real fruit" and "whole grains" lists 15 grams
of sugar.

 - A single cup of bran cereal with raisins, in a box advertising "no high-fructose corn syrup," contains 20 grams of sugar per serving.

 - A cranberry/pomegranate juice product, also advertising "no high-fructose corn syrup" and "100% Vitamin C," contains 30 grams of added sugar per 8 oz. serving. Some of the sugar is naturally occurring, but some of it has been added.

 74% of all supermarket groceries have added sugar!  How does one avoid the epidemic of sugary foods? This is how I do it. Just eat real food. Avoid ultra-processed refined foods. They have long complicated ingredient lists that invariably contain something bad. There are at least 61 different synonyms that food manufacturers use that all mean sugar (see sugar names list below). As a general rule, avoid the center aisles of the supermarket.

Eat Real Foods

Choose real food that comes from a field, forest or sea. It doesn’t pass through a factory first. Real food is single ingredient. Real food doesn’t require reading an ingredient list because it’s whole and unprocessed. That being said, some fruit such as bananas and grapes do have high natural sugar content. If you are diabetic or are struggling with weight it is best to curb consumption of those as well. Above all else cut out all sugary drinks: Soda, all juice, sport drinks, sweetened teas and sweetened coffees. Many of my patients have made a big dent in their weight problems by only nixing sugary drinks.

61 Names for Sugar

●       Agave nectar--- Sorry Dr. Oz.

●       Barbados sugar

●       Barley malt

●       Barley malt syrup

●       Beet sugar

●       Brown sugar

●       Buttered syrup

●       Cane juice

●       Cane juice crystals

●       Cane sugar

●       Caramel

●       Carob syrup

●       Castor sugar

●       Coconut palm sugar

●       Coconut sugar

●       Confectioner's sugar

●       Corn sweetener

●       Corn syrup

●       Corn syrup solids

●       Date sugar

●       Dehydrated cane juice

●       Demerara sugar

●       Dextrin

●       Dextrose

●       Evaporated cane juice

●       Free-flowing brown sugars

●       Fructose

●       Fruit juice

●       Fruit juice concentrate

●       Glucose

●       Glucose solids

●       Golden sugar

●       Golden syrup

●       Grape sugar

●       HFCS (High-Fructose Corn Syrup)

●       Honey--Yup, honey is basically bee sugar, not better than any other type.

●       Icing sugar

●       Invert sugar

●       Malt syrup

●       Maltodextrin

●       Maltol

●       Maltose

●       Mannose

●       Maple syrup

●       Molasses

●       Muscovado

●       Palm sugar

●       Panocha

●       Powdered sugar

●       Raw sugar

●       Refiner's syrup

●       Rice syrup

●       Saccharose

●       Sorghum Syrup

●       Sucrose

●       Sugar (granulated)

●       Sweet Sorghum

●       Syrup

●       Treacle

●       Turbinado sugar

●       Yellow sugar

    Eric J. Sodicoff, MD

Source: http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/

Further reading about sugar:

Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

by Robert H. Lustig

Link: http://a.co/grXC1Ia

Fun documentary:

That Sugar Film

Amazon Video ~ Damon Gameau

Link: http://a.co/17SASzR