Keeping Your Heart Healthy

With Valentines Day upon us, we thought an article about keeing your ticker ticking and happy would be in order...

By Nancy Clark, MS RD CSSD

Although exercise is one of the best ways to improve heart health, even athletes are not immune from heart disease. You have undoubtedly heard reports of marathon runners who die of heart attacks and football players who have strokes. Women, like men, need to pay attention to heart disease; it is the number one killer of women, higher than all cancers combined.

To address the topic of heart disease among active people, the Sports and Cardiovascular Nutrition practice group of the American Dietetic Association (www.SCANdpg.org) featured heart health as the theme of their annual convention (April 2008, Boston). The following bits of information from that conference might inspire you eat wisely to keep your heart beating for a long and healthful lifetime.

• First of all, when it comes to heart disease, you should know your cholesterol numbers. Get your blood tested for total, LDL and HDL cholesterol. Having a low LDL is the primary goal for reducing heart disease. If your LDL is >160 mg/dL, the sooner you lower it to <100,>

• Foods that actively lower LDL include oats, barley, soy, beans, almonds/nuts and plant sterols/stanols (added to margarines such as Benecol). Although each single food might have only a small cholesterol-lowering effect—for example, consuming three glasses of soy milk a day might lower LDL by only five percent, combining several of these foods becomes very powerful.

• Oatmeal is easy to add into a sports nutrition plan. If cooking oats is not your style, simply eat them raw—mixed in with cold cereal. For example, Wheaties + raw oats + slivered almonds + (soy) milk + fruit creates an easy heart-healthy breakfast. Microwaving a packet of instant oatmeal (with a spoonful of peanut butter) creates a tasty, effective pre-exercise and/or afternoon snack.

• Inflammation, caused by cholesterol-filled plaques in blood vessels, plays a role in heart disease. Foods that reduce inflammation include salmon and other oily fish, walnuts, fiber-rich whole grains, fruits, vegetables and even dark chocolate. Among fruits and veggies, the Big Six are apricots, celery, oranges, tomatoes, broccoli and spinach. Eat them often!

• Humans cannot make omega-3s, that 's why we need to eat them. A healthy person can get the recommended intake from fish. Just eight ounces salmon (the richest source) provides a week’s worth of omega-3’s. (Cardiac patients need more, necessitating fish oil pills.) Salmon is also a rich source of vitamin D. Three ounces canned pink salmon provides the daily requirement for D, which protects against high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and many other health issues.

• The risk of heart disease increases with age, particularly as women enter menopause. Menopause increases fat deposition in the trunk/waist area, more so than on the legs and arms. This abdominal fat is linked with heart disease.

And that's where Boot Camp comes in.