Heart HealthHeart Health********************************************************************* "When your heart ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" ********************************************************************* No truer statement could be made for your health. In order for every system in the body to work properly your heart and circulatory system has to be in tip top shape. The heart is a powerful muscle, the most important muscle of your body. It is responsible for pumping 2 gallons of blood throughout your body every 60 seconds. It is responsible for carrying every nutrient to your body, the most important oxygen. The best way to prevent the tragedy of heart disease is to deal with the cause. Your first line defense and healing is a low-fat, no cholesterol diet, daily exercise, and healthy living habits. *You can prevent heart disease. *You can reverse heart disease. Heart disease is the number one health epidemic in the United States today. While you should worry about how flat your abs are it is more important to worry about how strong your heart is. 1.25 million heart attacks will occur each year in the United States. Half of these people will die before they see the inside of a hospital. The most common form of heart disease is atherosclerosis. It is a blockage to the arteries in the heart. Small plaques form on the interior walls of the arteries causing restricted blood flow to the heart. When these blockages become large enough you have a heart attack. Eating a rich diet packed with fats and cholesterol leads to the formation of these plaques. Heredity also plays a part. We can't help that, however, but we can stop stuffing ourselves with artery clogging food. The pain of a clogged artery can start small as a little twinge in your chest or what you might think of as indigestion. Or it can be a knife in the chest just before you drop over as another statistic. It has been shown that a low-fat diet started immediately after a heart attack can increase circulation to the heart almost immediately. When you eat a high-fat meal the fat goes into the bloodstream from your gut and coats your blood cells making them stick together and clump. This makes it almost impossible for oxygen and nutrients to get to the heart muscle. This is why there is an increased risk of a heart attack after an extremely high fat meal. It has been shown that it only takes a few hours after you change to a starch-based diet that the oxygen content of the blood increases. Chest pain will diminish and even disappear. A low-fat diet can relieve chest pains and can allow sick arteries to heal. If you are suffering from chest pain it is your body's way of screaming for help. So help yourself. *Get to a doctor. *Change your diet to a starch-based vegetarian diet. *Start getting aerobic exercise six days a week. *Watch your intake of alcohol. *Control stress in your life, meditate. *Quit smoking. *Know your blood pressure. Make sure it is within healthy limits. *Control your blood sugar. Get tested for diabetes. *Maintain a healthy weight. *Know your cholesterol and triglycerides and keep them under control. ********************************************************************* The number one way to control all of these is by DIET... *********************************************************************
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