Heart disease  continues to be the number one killer, cancer number two and not far behind.  The tragic aspect of these deadly diseases is that all could be cured.

Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania.

It is still the number one killer even greater than cancer in both men and women today. This disease should be rare do to a lot of cardiac disease is inflicted upon humans through being overweight through just bad healthy habits practiced. Obesity can cause diabetes II, heart disease, high blood pressure, and more. High blood pressure is called the “silent killer” because it often has no warning signs or symptoms, and many people don’t realize they have it. That’s why it’s important to get your blood pressure checked regularly. The good news is that you can take steps to prevent high blood pressure, or to treat it if it is already high.

What we can do is make some changes in our living. We westerners create an increase in diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. AMERICA WE NEED TO WAKE UP AND MAKE A CHANGE. TO THE MAIN CULPRITES we are talking about sugars and fat (OUR DIET). GLUCOSE and LIPIDS!. The typical American diet is consisted and loaded with sugar and fats. Lack of exercise and stress doesn’t help the situation. Get peace of mind through again making changes in your life if you are striving to become healthier. Let’s look at cholesterol = 2 types HDL and LDL. LDL is the bad cholesterol. Know if your LDL is type A or type B. If you have a high HDL level and a low LDL that is good but ask your doctor to see if you can get a blood test checking both type A and type B of your cholesterol that will give you the knowledge if you need to take an action. Go to CDC.org to see the different number ranges of both men and women on their levels and more. Just knowing your cholesterol level isn’t enough but does give the doctor some direction. Knowing if your type A or type B LDL helps even more with knowing your risk of heart disease.

Cholesterol only becomes a problem if the LDL gets too high with high pattern type B which is worse with stress and smoking and processed foods in high amounts eaten. Particles called lipoproteins carry cholesterol in the blood. There are two kinds of lipoproteins you need to know about: LDL and HDL. The plasma lipoprotein particles classified under high-density (HDL) and low-density (LDL) lipoproteins enable fats to be carried in the blood stream.

-Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cholesterol make up the majority of the body’s cholesterol. LDL is known as “bad” cholesterol because having high levels can lead to a buildup in the arteries and result in heart disease.

-High-density lipoproteins (HDL) cholesterol absorb cholesterol and carry it back to the liver, which flushes it from the body. High levels of HDL, or “good” cholesterol, reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Apolipoprotein A1 (apoA1) is the major protein of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and apoB is among the major proteins of very low-, low- (LDL), and intermediate-density lipoproteins. Because of their associations with the respective lipoproteins, apoA1 is inversely and apoB is positively associated with cardiovascular risk (2). In fact, evidence suggests that apoA1 and apoB are better predictors of heart disease risk than are HDL and LDL cholesterol levels (3-5). Apolipoproteins may also offer advantages over lipoprotein cholesterol measurements because they are direct measurements, whereas LDL, for example, is calculated from other lipoproteins from a fasting blood sample.

You can take several steps to maintain a normal cholesterol level.

Get a blood test.

Eat a healthy diet.

Maintain a healthy weight.

Exercise regularly.

Don’t smoke.

Treat high cholesterol.

“A healthy diet and lifestyle are your best weapons to fight cardiovascular disease. It’s not as hard as you may think!   Remember, it’s the overall pattern of your choices that counts. Make the simple steps below part of your life for long-term benefits to your health and your heart.

American Heart Association

When a doctor prescribes the cardiac diet for a patient, it’s usually because he is at high risk for a heart attack, according to the Cardiac Diet website. It is also because the patient has had or is at high risk for cardiac disease (Coronary Artery Disease), atherosclerosis, arterio-sclerosis, hypertension.  The diet can benefit people who aren’t at risk, though, as a PREVENT-ATIVE measure against heart disease. Rules for choosing cardiac diet menu foods include options with reduced fat/choles-terol, a large amount of fruit and vegetables, low-sodium products and foods prepared in healthy ways, like broiling, roasting, baking or steaming.

A healthy diet in general and protective of cardiac diseases and other diseases is the following by AHA:

The American Heart Association, World Cancer Research Fund, and American Institute for Cancer Research recommends a diet that consists mostly of unprocessed plant foods, with emphasis a wide range of whole grains, legumes, and non-starchy vegetables and fruits. This healthy diet is replete with a wide range of various non-starchy vegetables and fruits, that provide different colors including red, green, yellow, white, purple, and orange. They note that tomato cooked with oil, allium vegetables like garlic, and cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, provide some protection against cancer. This healthy diet is low in energy density, which may protect against weight gain and associated diseases. Finally, limiting consumption of sugary drinks, limiting energy rich foods, including “fast foods” and red meat, and avoiding processed meats improves health and longevity. Overall, researchers and medical policy conclude that this healthy diet can reduce the risk of chronic disease and cancer.  Like we are always taught do things in mode- ration including foods you eat.  Eat more healthy versus unhealthy and highier odds you will have less disease but include in that diet routine exercise balanced with rest.  Think about it, you may like the results.

American Heart Association (AHA) Healthy Diet Guidelines:

At the heart of good nutrition are dietary guidelines.  All of our recipes are designed with these, and your health, in mind.  The American Heart Association’s Heart Healthy Diet Recommendations are based on a 2,000 calorie diet and include:

• Balance the number of calories you eat and physical activity to maintain a healthy body weight (this means not eating more calories than you need).

• Make your diet rich in fruits and vegetables. A typical adult should try for 9-10 servings (4.5 cups) of fruits and vegetables every day.

• Choose whole grains and high-fiber foods (Three 1-oz. servings per day). A diet rich in fiber can help manage your weight because fiber keeps you feeling fuller longer, so you eat less.

• Eat fish, especially oily fish like salmon or albacore tuna, twice a week to get omega-3 fatty acids.

• Limit saturated and trans fat and cholesterol by choosing lean meats, selecting fat-free (skim), 1 percent and low-fat dairy products and avoiding hydrogenated fats (margarine, shortening, cooking oils and the foods made from them).

  • A person needing 2,000 calories each day should consume less than 16 g saturated fat, less than 2 g trans fat and between 50 and 70 grams of total fat and limit cholesterol to no more that 300 mg each day.

• Limit the amount of added sugars you consume to no more than half of your daily discretionary calorie allowance. For most American women, this is no more than 100 calories per day and no more than 150 calories per day for men (or approximately 6 teaspoons/day for women and 9 teaspoons/day for men).

  • Limit sugar-sweetened beverages to no more than 450 calories (36 oz.) per week.

• Choose and prepare foods with little or no salt (sodium) to maintain a healthy blood pressure. Keep sodium intake to 1,500 mg per day or less.
  Try to eat four servings per week of nuts, seeds or legumes (beans).

  • Limit processed meat (such as sandwich meat, sausage and hot dogs) to fewer than two servings per week.

• If you choose to consume alcohol, do so in moderation. This means an average of one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.

• If you eat out, pay attention to portion size and the number of calories in your meal.

“In general the term ‘enlarged heart’ refers to heart failure,” said Clyde Yancy, M.D.

Clyde Yancy MD (past president of the American Heart Association and chief of the Division of Cardiology and the Magerstadt Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.)

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.  I know because I have done it a thousand times.”

Mark Twain

Here are some simple facts about smoking, which are consequences you face if you decide to start it and continue doing it. Through an accurate reference the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who wants to save lives and protect people, support the following: Smoking is estimated to increase the risk—

• For coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times^1,6
• For stroke by 2 to 4 times¹
• Of men developing lung cancer by 25 times¹
• Of women developing lung cancer by 25.7 times¹

Smoking causes diminished overall heath, such as self-reported poor health, increased absenteeism from work, and increased health care utilization and cost. Smokers are at greater risk for diseases that affect the engine of the body=The heart and its branches=The circulatory system (putting a smoker at high risk for cardiovascular disease).

• Smoking causes stroke and coronary heart disease—the leading causes of death in the United States.
• Even people who smoke fewer than five cigarettes a day can have early signs of cardiovascular disease.
• Smoking damages blood vessels and can make them thicken and grow narrower. This makes your heart beat faster and your blood pressure go up. Clots can also form.
• A heart attack occurs when a clot blocks the blood flow to your heart. When this happens, your heart cannot get enough oxygen causing starvation of food, being oxygen to the heart tissue. This damages the heart muscle, and part of the heart muscle can die, which is what exactly happens with a heart attack where angina (lack of 02 is reversible).
• A stroke occurs when a clot blocks the blood flow to part of your brain or when a blood vessel in or around your brain bursts causing again starvation of food, being 02, just in a different tissue part. Get it oxygen is the food to all our tissues of the body
• Blockages caused by smoking can also reduce blood flow to your skin and legs (For example Peripheral Vascular Disease= PVD). Ever see the commercial with a person telling you to stop smoking with fingers surgically removed or limbs, PVD is what occurred to that individual and the person didn’t stop smoking. Due to this behavior what happened the vessels of the individual’s limbs became so narrowed that it cut off oxygenated blood supply to those tissue parts causing ischemia-lack of oxygen, which led to necrosis of the tissue (death) and the part had to be surgi-cally removed. Now that individual can’t walk or grasp things with those limbs that were operated on. Is smoking worth this consequence? I don’t think so, what about you? Just think about it if you still smoke.Smoking can cause lung disease by damaging your airways and the small air sacs (alveoli) found in your lungs. What actually happens to the lung tissue is the pin point openings (alveoli) keeps expanding to a wider opening. The alveoli is responsible of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange when we inhale and exhale but with the alveoli stretched the exchange of the gases gets poor.
• Smoking effects the transmission of the body=The Lungs

• Lung diseases caused by smoking include COPD, which includes emphysema (especially) and chronic bronchitis.
• Cigarette smoking causes most cases of lung cancer.
• If you have asthma, tobacco smoke can trigger an attack or make an attack worse.^1,2
• Smokers are 12 to 13 times more likely to die from COPD than nonsmokers.

Smoking can cause cancer in almost every area of the body.  If nobody smoked, one of every three cancer deaths in the United States would not happen.  Smoking increases risk of dying from cancer and other diseases in cancer patients and survivors. For those who quit smoking what risks you reduce:

• Quitting smoking cuts cardiovascular risks. Just 1 year after quitting smoking, your risk for a heart attack drops sharply.²
• Within 2 to 5 years after quitting smoking, your risk for stroke could fall to about the same as a nonsmoker’s.²
• If you quit smoking, your risks for cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder drop by half within 5 years.²
• Ten years after you quit smoking, your risk for lung cancer drops by half.

Again, if you smoke you may want to consider stopping; give it a thought.

“Any amount of smoking, even light smoking or occasional smoking, damages the heart and blood vessels. For some people, such as women who use birth control pills and people who have diabetes, smoking poses an even greater risk to the heart and blood vessels.”

NIH (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute)

The heart is like the engine to a car but for us it’s the “pump” for the human body; without the engine the car won’t run and without the pump we won’t live. The normal size of the heart is about the size of your fist, maybe a little bigger. It pumps blood continuously through your entire circulatory system. The heart consists of four chambers, 2 on the right and 2 on the left. The right side only pumps low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels of blood.  The right side of the heart carries used up red blood cells where all the oxygen was distributed to the tissues of the body and returns to the heart in the right upper chamber  of the heart.  The blood on the right side of the heart ends up going to the lungs to allow used up red blood cells to get more oxygen and release their carbon dioxide that gets released out of the body through exhaling. From the lungs it than goes to the left side of the heart.  The flow of blood on the right side of the heart to the lungs is a very short distance as opposed to where the blood on the left side of the heart is pumped. The L side of the heart pumps blood from the heart all the way to the feet, brain and all the tissues in between distributing high oxygen levels of blood. This is why the L side of the heart does more work than the R side since the blood leaving the L side has a longer distance in distributing oxygen. The heart pumps the blood with high oxygenated blood levels to reach all your tissues and cells, going to the feet, brain, and to all other tissues in between returning home again to the right side of the heart (upper chamber) to get sent to the lungs again for more oxygen. This is why the muscle on the L side of the heart is larger than the right, it works harder. Every time your heart beats (the sound we call lub dub) the organ is sending out a cardiac output of blood either to the lungs for more oxygen or to the body tissues through the aorta to give oxygenated blood to your tissues and cells. This is the mechanics of how the heart works in our body. Let’s see what can occur if the heart doesn’t function properly. If your heart is not pumping out a sufficient amount in your cardiac output to either the lungs (from Rt. side) or to the tissues (from the Lt. side) than it tries to work harder where it does ok at first but over time weakens. As this weak heart struggles to pump blood the muscle fibers of the heart stretch. Over time, this stretching leaves the heart with larger, weaker chambers. The heart muscle and tissue expands/stretches out (called cardiomegaly). If this continues to go on this could go into R or L sided heart failure. When this happens, blood that should be pumped out of the heart backs up in the lungs (L sided failure) or in the tissues (R sided failure). The side the failure is on doesn’t allow proper filling of the chambers on that side and back up happens; so if on the L the fluids back up in the lungs or the R the fluids first back up in the veins which can expand to hold extra blood but at some point dump the extra fluids in your tissues (This is edema in feet first due to gravity). This is all due to overloading of the blood not filling up in the chambers of the heart to make a good cardiac output of blood and in time the fluid backs up (bad pumping=backup of blood=fluid overload in the lungs (pulmonary congestion) to fluid staying in the skin (first the lower extremities due to gravity=feet which we call edema working its way up the legs.). This condition in time with no treatment will go into congestive heart failure (CHF) to the other side of the heart if not controlled. CHF can range from mild to severe. There is 670,000 cases are diagnosed with this every year and is the leading cause of hospitalization in people over 65 y/o. Causes of CHF are: heart attack, CAD (coronary artery disease), cardiomyopathy, conditions that overwork the heart like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity (These diseases can be completely preventable or at least well controlled). There is many of us in this world with knowing how our activity/exercise, eating, and habits could be better for health but do little action if any on our own to change it, which is a large part for certain diseases being so high in America (diabetes, stroke, cardiac diseases=high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis to CHF and more). If people were more healthier and more active regarding these diseases alone it would decrease in population creating a positive impact on how our health system with insurance presently (a disaster) with our economy for many could get better. A healthy heart can pump to all parts of the body in a few seconds which is good cardiac output from the organ but when it gets hard for the heart to keep up with its regular routine it first compensates to eventually decompensates causing ischemia (lack of oxygen to the heart tissue). It’s like any tissue in the body, lack of oxygen=lack of nutrients to the body tissue=STARVATION and with lack of oxygen will come PAIN eventually to death if not treated.  That is reversible since it is heart pain due to not enough oxygen to the heart tissue=no damage but if left untreated what will lead into  a heart attack=myocardial infarction (MI) and this is permanent damage.  What happens here is actual scarring to the heart tissue causing injury to the heart. Let’s understand what the heart can develop over time when it is a  unhealthy heart due to bad health habits. If you smoke with eating too many foods high in sodium for a long period of time your vessels will narrow in size. By allowing this you increase the pressure in the vessels that increases your blood pressure called hypertension. If you are also inactive you are at risk of obesity which puts stress on the heart and in time causing high B/P. Constantly be in a high B/P and this could cause the vessel to rupture (at the heart=possible heart attack, at the brain=possible stroke, also called CVA with both on high occurrences in our population of the US.). With bad habits (especially poor diet, inactive, and smoking) you can cause over time atherosclerosis=a blockage in the artery with the resolution surgery (from a cardiac catheterization up your groin or having difficulty in the arm to the heart where an angiogram to an angioplasty with possibly a stent is performed or if the blockage to blockages is so bad a CABG=coronary artery bypass=a 6hr plus operation where diversion of a vein from your leg (donor graft site) around the blockage is done. Smoking can lead to this but it also can cause your vessels to become brittle=arteriosclerosis. Healthy Habits would impact a positive result for all people who have had this diagnosis before but most important be a great PREVENTATIVE measure for people not diagnosed with cardiac disease. There are 4 things you have no control over heredity, age, sex, and race but healthy habits are sure to benefit you by keeping the odds down of you inheriting, help your age factor, and race a lot can be associated with eating cultural habits. If you make the decision to live a life that’s healthy for your heart through proper eating, doing healthy habits and doing some exercise or activity with balancing rest in your busy schedule and would like direction or want to expand your diet/exercise/healthy habits then you came to the right blog. Go to my website for no fee, no charge, no hacking, just letting you check us out to look further in understanding how to take a healthier shape for your life with Dr. Anderson and even myself as your health coach in helping you learn what healthier habits or changes you feel you need and want for a healthier way of living. It allows you to make all the decisions in what you want to do regarding your health. Includes what to eat (diet), what exercise/activity, and what healthy habits you want to add in your life. We just provide the information and healthy foods in your diet through information to broaden your knowledge even a catalog on diet foods, if you so choose to do so. You make all the choices. Wouldn’t you want less heart disease or obesity or diabetes for yourself and for others throughout the nation including the future generations? Than join me and others. Thank you for taking the time to read my article in how we can help you with others gets healthier you including a healthier USA. Click onto heathyusa.tsfl.com and I hope to hear from you soon. If you like what you see spread the good cheer. Let’s build a stronger foundation regarding HEALTH in America and start by not smoking or quit if you do than diet with living a healthy routine in activities with balancing rest and exercise.

“Menthol cigarettes have been found to be even more addictive than regular cigarettes.”

The Real Cost.com