– posts here focus on how to address your risk factors to help prevent heart disease
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Dr. Marvin Lipman and the editors of Consumer Reports on Health have come out with a useful little book called The Best of Health: 275 Questions You’ve Always Wanted To Ask Your Doctor.
Let’s take a look at their Q&A page about high blood pressure, or hypertension – a common risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease. Continue reading “Four questions about blood pressure you’ve always wanted to ask”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
If you are one of those misguided sods who still believe in the exercise axiom: “No pain, no gain” – you can stop reading right now. The rest of you – rejoice! According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, taking a long daily walk may be a better way to improve heart health, lose weight and feel better compared to shorter periods of more strenuous exercise.
A randomized controlled clinical trial funded by the NHLBI compared two exercise programs for heart attack survivors:
Walking, rather than weight-supported exercises (such as cycling or rowing), was preferred to maximize calorie expenditure, which was targeted at 3,000-3,500 calories per week. The protocol was essentially to “walk often and walk far.” All heart patients studied were considered overweight before starting the program. Each subject also received 16 hours of group dietary counseling, and were given a target goal of consuming 500 calories per day less than their predicted maintenance calories.
What did their results show? Continue reading “Women’s heart health advice: “Walk often, walk far!””
Every hour you spend watching television each day increases your risk of dying from heart disease by almost a fifth, say scientists in Australia.
The findings were reported last month in Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Prof. David Dunstan, the study’s lead researcher from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia, had this message for members of the public:
“In addition to doing regular exercise, avoid sitting for prolonged periods and keep in mind to ‘move more, more often’. Too much sitting is bad for health.”
Couch potatoes were warned that their lifestyle also increased the risk of death from other causes including cancer. Continue reading “Warning: watching too much TV can be really, really bad for your heart”
Cornell University researcher and food psychologist Dr. Brian Wansink knows that there are other reasons to eat besides just being hungry.
Dr. Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, a book described by CBC television as the “Freakonomics of Food“, says:
“If we knew why we ate the way we do, we could eat a little less, eat a little healthier, and enjoy it a lot more.”
He is talking about that bag of corn chips your hand keeps dipping into while you watch TV, or that big 13-inch dinner plate you load up – whether you’re hungry or not.
He says that we make about 200 food decisions a day, like:
- Should I have coffee?
- Should I put milk in it?
- Whole or skim?
- Should I butter my toast before I spread the peanut butter on?
- Do I pour my orange juice into a short, wide glass (you’ll drink more)
- or a tall, narrow glass (you’ll drink less)?
He also cites these eight factors that can influence what goes into our mouths that have nothing at all to do with hunger. Do any of these sound familiar to you? Continue reading “Mindless eating: 8 reasons women eat when we’re not even hungry”
Heart Sisters 