Heart Disease Advice for Women

Heart disease and heart attacks, were sterotypically, "men's diseases." How many movies have shown the father of the bride dying of a massive heart attack at the wedding; or the executive suffering a sudden, heart-driven death after losing the big contract?

The American Heart Asscoiation has tried to make heart disease more relevant for women, and, according to Gregg Fonarow, Director of the Cardiomopathy center at UCLA (quoted in USA Today, Feb. 15th), "Every minute there's a death due to cardiovascular disease in women. This constitutes 422,000 deaths a year-more than cancer, respiratory disease, Alzheimer's and accidents combined."

The AHA has been publishing guidelines for women since 2004. In the 2011 report, they have included personal and socio-economic factors, to make it less clinical and more "real" for women.

The guidelines recommend that women:

*Avoid smoking and second-hand smoke.

*Get 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, or 75 minutes of vigourous exercise.

*Establish a risk-reduction routine if they are diagnosed with heart disease or have a heart "event": ie: exercise or dietary change!

*Achieve a healthy body weight.

*Eat a diet with a lot of fruits and vegetables; whole-grain, high-fiber foods; oily fish, at least twice a week; and low in saturated and trans-fats, cholesterol and sugar.(Eating sensibly, basically!).

* Get omega-3 fatty acids, either through fish or capsules.

All of this is very sound, basic advice, for men or women, in my opinion. Leave that last slice of pizza for the kids, and walk through that next episode of your favorite show!

Julia Harvey Weight Loss Tips

I recently read an interesting article about Julia Havey, author of the Dr. Oz acclaimed book "The Vice-Busting Diet."
Ms. Harvey, 48, weighed nearly 300 lbs. at one time. Her life was a humiliating mess, which you can read in more detail in her book. When a homeless man outside a convenience store drew laughs from onlookers when he heckled her about eating a candy bar, she knew a change had to be made.
She felt the food the she was having way too much of was ice-cream, and simply cut that out. After three months, she dropped 30 lbs.!
The "career dieter" then thought of her second biggest vice: fast food. She eliminated that, and then soft drinks. She also started to exercise.
Eliminating one bad habit after the last was mastered, she eventually reached 150 lbs., exactly half of her heaviest weight!
She emphasizes this isn't a diet, which she feels are too restrictive for people to stick with. It's just one change at a time!
Interesting tidbits of her thoughts:
*The most basic change is drinking water instead of soft drinks.
*The biggest obstacles to losing weight are soft drinks, fast food, portion sizes, and
television (unless you're on the treadmill while watching, I guess)!
*It's easier to go for full abstinenece on certain foods, than eating them in
moderation. "If people can eat them in moderation," she points out, "we wouldn't
have an obesity pandemic in America."
*The best exercise is one that you'll continue to do. Her favorites: the elliptical
machine and golf!
All this is very sensible advice, in my opinion. Havey has a goal of helping 1 million
people to lose weight. With that in mind, her program is available free, online, at
www.vice-bustingdiet.com.