One of the greatest benefits of a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables is a healthy heart.  Guest blogger Millie Bruce tackles 5 common myths of heart disease.  We hope our readers find Millie’s post enlightening as well as informative. 

For both males and females of any age, coronary disease may possibly be the main killer. It kills more people than ALL kinds of cancer combined. If you’re African-American or over sixty-five, your risk of a heart attack is much higher.  However, it must be noted that coronary disease is an equal opportunity destroyer.  Any individual, anyplace, anytime could have a hearth attack [1].

Myth #1: Only adults need to worry about their cardiovascular system.

Things that trigger heart disease accumulate with time. To be a couch-potato, over-eating and never training are typically really bad habits that could begin in childhood. Increasingly more doctors are starting to get heart attack patients in their twenty’s and thirty’s compared to the more traditional victims in their fifty’s and sixty’s.

Being in good shape and at the right bodyweight will not make you safe from heart attacks. Although, both exercising regularly and maintaining the right bodyweight helps. You will still need to look at your bad cholesterol and blood pressure level. A good blood cholesterol (or lipid profile) range is under 200. The best blood pressure level is at or below 120/80.

Myth #2: I’d feel unwell if I had high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

They call these, “silent killers” for the reason that they show NO signals. One-third of all mature people have hypertension. Of those, one-third don’t know they have it.  High cholesterol is a measure of the fats stocked through your blood stream. Fats may be dropped anywhere in your body, but tend to congregate all-around internal organs, as well as your heart. This predisposition may run in family members. Therefore, even if you’re at a good bodyweight and don’t smoke, it’s important to have your cholesterol and blood pressure examined on a regular basis. Please note, once may not be sufficient [2].

Myth #3: Both women and men DON’T feel the same signals.

Women and men CAN have precisely the same signals, however often times they do not. Females tend to get the subtler symptoms and males often have the kind of strokes seen in the movies. However, both genders can have any of the typical signals.

The subtler warning signs, which include jaw achiness, nausea or vomiting, breathlessness and extreme physical weakness, are likely to get described away. “My jaw hurts mainly because my lunch sandwich was on whole-grain bread and I was forced to chew very, very hard.” Or, while clutching their stomach, “I shouldn’t have had that additional piece of pizza.” “Half of women don’t have chest pain in anyway,” announces Kathy Magliato, a heart specialist at California’s St. John’s Health Center.  Put all the little indicators and symptoms to each other and listen to your system.

Keep in mind, both women and men could experience the “grab-your-chest-and-fall-down-gasping” form of cardiac event, however you already know, that’s not the only way.

Myth #4: So long as my blood glucose level is in check, Type 2 diabetes will not be a risk factor.

Though trying to keep your blood sugar level with a normal range (80ml-120ml) keeps you healthier, just having the additional blood sugar in your system takes its toll on arterial blood vessels. It is necessary to exercise and eat healthier to help take control of your diabetes, bear in mind to test your blood pressure level and blood cholesterol, too.

Myth #5: My medical professional would order medical tests if I were at risk for heart disease.

From time to time, most of us ignore to tell the physician about the little pains we’re feeling. The medical professionals, with no knowledge of the various things we consider as insignificant, could pass over heart exams.  “Mammograms and Colonoscopies are normally recommended by doctors,” says Merdod Ghafouri, a cardiologist at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Va, [3] “and are required, but heart scans usually are not routinely conducted.” A heart scan can find plaque build-up in the arterial blood vessels before you even find out you have a problem.

Do you have the motor oil and transmission fluid examined in your car every 5,000 miles? Have other preventive auto repair done? Doesn’t your only heart deserve as much care as your car?

Links to Complementary Guides About Heart Disease:

- [1] Web MD is a very good source for good and timely medical and health facts and information.

- [2] Mediterranean Book is the National Board for the preservation of the Italian healthy eating traditions. It’s a non-profits website managed by Italians that encourage the Mediterranean Eating Plan. They offer headlines and health related research linked to the many advantages of the Mediterranean diet.

- [3] Life Extension is a world wide authority on nutrition, health and fitness as well as a specialist of clinical facts about heart disease therapies. They cover a different component of heart health by correlating  gingivitis and cardiovascular disease.

About the author:

Millie Bruce was born in Banffshire, Scotland on August 2, 1944. She had an undergraduate college diploma in Traditional medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1962. She have done nutrition guidance and she educated adult nutrition in Adult Day Care Treatment centers. She worked for medical reporters and testers that produced articles for the New England Journal of Medicine. Now she’s retired and from 2005 to the present she has been a guest writer for health-related websites and blogs and forums.