That's Fit

If I told you six ways to help prevent heart disease, would you follow them? I'm just a writer -- so maybe, maybe not. Fair enough. But what if the leading heart disease experts told you six ways to stave off this leading cause of death, would you listen then? Cool. I was hoping you would.

According to a recent WebMD article, if everyone in the U.S. were to follow only a few easy-to-follow steps, it could prevent more than 27 million heart attacks and about 10 million strokes over the next 30 years.

Step One - Quit Smoking

Step Two - Lower your Body Mass Index (BMI) out of the range considered obese

Step Three - Rein in your LDL ("bad") cholesterol

Step Four - Lower your blood pressure to a safe level

Step Five - Get your blood sugar under control, especially if you have diabetes

Step Six - Take aspirin if your physician tells you to due to your heart attack risk

The article goes on to say that 78 percent of U.S. adults aged 20-80 do not currently follow at least one of these steps when necessary.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition has determined that when it comes to cholesterol screening in kids, more is better.

Previous recommendations called for kids who were at known risk for high cholesterol or whose familial medical histories were unknown to be tested for high cholesterol. The updated guidelines have added some additional criteria. Any child who has a risk factor for heart disease -- obesity, family history, diabetes, high blood pressure, and so forth -- should be tested. Cholesterol testing can begin as young as two-years-old, and should take place before the child's 10th birthday at latest.

The optimal LDL ("bad" cholesterol) level for most kids is 110 or lower.

Want to know another reason -- beyond those you can already think of -- why you should keep doing all those pull-ups, running all those miles, hiking all those trails, swimming all those laps, and playing all those sports? See how this one suits you: staying out of the dentist's chair.

The Journal of Periodontology reports that regular exercise can greatly reduce a person's risk of gum disease. In tests, men who put in a solid 45-minute workout three times a week were 40 percent less likely to develop gum problems than men who avoided workouts like ... well, like most people avoid the dentist.

Maintaining healthy gums is important for overall health. Numerous studies have linked periodontal disease to more serious health issues, such as an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

An eye-opening study from the University of Miami revealed that by ages 12 to 14, half of obese children have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that predicts type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

This information is cause for concern, as the numbers of obese children has continued to rise steadily since the data for this study were collected (between 1999-2002, at which time more than 17 percent of chidldren aged eight to fourteen were obese).

As these children age, their chances of facing a lifetime with a chronic illness escalates if they're weight is not reined in. As one researcher from the University of Miami study states in a WebMD article, "If a kid is age 8 with metabolic syndrome, it will take 10 years or less for that child to become a type 2 diabetic or develop heart disease."

The study analyzed data data on some 1,700 children as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Mushrooms are very tricky. Eat one kind, and you're noshing on a tasty pizza topping or stir fry ingredient; eat another kind, and your Bruce Lee poster speaks to you and your bedroom fills up with lemonade and Care Bears; and eat yet another kind, and you can wind in the morgue. It goes without saying, then, that the kind of mushrooms that Arizona State researchers have linked to a reduction in heart disease risk must be those mentioned first.

In the study, it was discovered that a particular antioxidant in the fungi (known as ergothioneine) prevented the accumulation of the artery-clogging plaque. Evidently, this specific antioxidant helps reduce the number of adhesion molecules that cling to plaque-forming cells in your blood and pull them into blood vessel walls.

In separate studies, mushrooms have also been found to bolster immune function, suppress breast and prostate cancers, and help decrease tumor size.

Statistically speaking, who has a greater chance of dying from heart disease - men or women? My guess would be men ... and I would be wrong. There's little harm in me not knowing that women are actually at greater risk than men for heart disease. However, it would do a great deal of harm if I were a doctor and I still didn't know the correct answer to this question.

An article in Men's Health suggests that this is alarmingly the case with many doctors. A study from Rush University found that fewer than one in five doctors knew that women are at a higher risk of heart disease than men, which may serve to explain why women are also six times less likely to be prescribed statins, aspirin, an beta-blockers.

It remains unknown why this presumption of better heart health in women persists, though its implications -- with respect to proper treatment and preventative care -- can be significant.

Can you remember the last time you had a candy bar? If you can't, it may be due to the fact that you've eaten too many of them. That's because spikes in blood sugar can have damaging effects on your short-term memory.

A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that when adults were given memory tests after consuming a sugary drink, those with the highest resulting blood glucose levels exhibited the worst recall ability.

High blood sugar has also been linked to a number of other health complications, including obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Thankfully, it's often possible to avoid blood glucose-related issues by limiting your diet to foods rich in protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates, and by following a regular exercise program.

If your partner seems to have taken a "sex has left the building" approach to your love life, it may require some shrewd tactics to get him or her interested in being intimate again.

You can first try telling them that sex ranks quite high among possible stress-busters. Ironically, it's stress that's often to blame for a lack sexual desire, so this shouldn't be a tough sell. You may also want to mention the importance of overall health, for both of you. Studies from the University of Bristol in England show that people who have sex three times a week reduced their risk of heart disease by 50 percent, something you may want to casually mention over dinner one evening.

I'm not sure using stress-reduction and the risk of health complications as an excuse for more sex is the best way to work things out with your partner, but if it works, I doubt either of you will have any trouble getting over that small bit of deceitfulness.

New research is shaking up the belief that a low-salt diet benefits heart health. A low-sodium diet has long been recommended to lower blood pressure, but this new research suggests that lower sodium may not impact heart health as much as previously thought ... if at all.

Through surveys, researchers followed the health of over 8,000 participants over a period of years. After adjusting for other risk factors, the participants who consumed the least salt were 80% more likely to die from cardiac disease.

It's important to note that the researchers are not implying that a low-salt diet could be a causative factor for heart disease. Rather, they're questioning the efficacy of low-sodium diets for heart health and questioning whether it makes sense for doctors to recommend lowering sodium intake for people who have no other health problems. Personally, I'm having a hard time shaking the low-sodium belief. What do you think?

It looks like it may be time to pop open another bottle of Cristal, playa. Nothing screams decadence and unnecessary expenditure like this choice champagne, which is why it flows like water in so many hip-hop videos. But it turns out that paying $250 per bottle may actually be worth it in the long run.

The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry published the results of a recent joint study by the University of Reading and University of Cagliari that showed moderate consumptions of Champagne may help the brain cope with the trauma of stroke, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease. Antioxidants found in red wine -- called polyphenols -- are also found in abundance in champagne.

I know what you must be saying -- why spend $250 on a bottle of Cristal when you can spend about $10 on a bottle of Korbel? There are two reasons: 1 - Cristal is made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, the two varieties scientists linked to the greatest reduction of stroke risk, and 2 - Because you'll be carrying around the coolest medication of all time.

There's new evidence the childhood obesity epidemic may be leveling off. The past three decades have been an utter disaster in terms of childhood obesity, with the percentage of obese six-to-11-year-olds rising from 6.5 percent in 1980 to 16.3 percent in 2002. Currently, 32 percent of American schoolchildren are overweight or obese.

After analyzing 1999-2006 survey data, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report the level of overweight and obese schoolchildren in America has plateaued at around 32 percent. The rates have remained constant for the first time in 45 years. It's not clear whether kids have simply gotten as heavy they're going to get under current lifestyle habits or if family, school and community interventions to eat right and exercise are making a difference. Some wonder whether a 'fat ceiling' could be a false ceiling -- researchers acknowledge more time and data are required before the obesity rate is definitively deemed stable.

As a fan of fitness and nutrition, I'd like to think advocacy for healthier living is strongly pushing back against obesity's four-decade rising tide. But that's the optimist in me. The hearts of advocacy organizations such as The Alliance for a Healthier Generation must be enjoying a lighthearted moment right now -- AHG's immediate goal was to halt the rise of childhood obesity by 2010. But the moment must be brief as our nation has an immense amount of work to do -- 32 percent is no number to celebrate. In the 1960s, childhood obesity stood in the single digits.

The results of a recent study show that an aspirin taken at bedtime lowered the blood pressure of pre-hypertensive patients, whereas an aspirin taken in the morning didn't have the same effect. While the exact reasons are unknown, researchers suggest that nighttime aspirin usage could slow the production of clot-producing hormones and other substances that are typically generated at night.

The three-month study followed 244 adults with blood pressure that hovered just below the 140/90 mark. (Consistent readings greater than 140/90 are considered high blood pressure (HBP). Readings that are just below that threshold are considered pre-hypertension -- a warning that the patient is at risk of HBP. The group was divided into thirds: one group followed a blood pressure reducing diet, the second took a 100 mg aspirin at bedtime, the third took an aspirin in the morning.

The group that took the aspirin before bedtime saw the best results -- an average drop of 5.4 points in systolic pressure and 3.4 points in diastolic pressure.

It's important for everyone to have an active, healthy lifestyle. For those who have beat cancer, it's possibly even more important. More than 10 million Americans have survived the disease -- but the impact it had on their health puts them at higher risk for conditions such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and a reduced quality of life... not to mention the risk of cancer recurrence.

Exercise, eating healthfully, and not smoking can help counteract that increased risk. But, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS), too few cancer survivors adopt a healthier lifestyle. Though approximately 75% of cancer survivors do stop smoking, the ACS isn't seeing as good of an improvement with healthy eating and physical activity.

The ACS recommends a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day (at least five days a week) and a diet that includes at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Less than 48% of survivors are meeting the exercise requirements and less than 20% are eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables.

I distinctly remember speaking with an unknown elderly couple many years ago while seated next to them at a restaurant. I don't recall what started the conversation, but I do know that it had something to do with food. At any rate, the elderly couple -- who both looked rather healthy, despite the fact that they were both in their late 80s -- proudly stated that the key to their longevity was not eating. "Huh," I muttered through a mouthfull of pasta primavera, only to be told once again by these fine people -- who dined only small bowls of soup -- that they attributed their long lives to eating very, very little food.

Fast forward several years and millions of calories later, and I found myself thumbing through a copy of Men's Health magazine at Border's while I chomped on a protein bar. Amazingly, I came across a small article on how many people in Okinawa, Japan consume 700 calories less per day than the average Westerner. Apparently, this low-calorie diet is based on the eating principle known as hara hachi bu -- only eating until eight-tenths full. Researchers posit that this may be part of the reason why Okinawans have among the lowest rate of heart disease, osteoporosis, and hormone-dependent cancers.

And then, just when I thought I couldn't possibly find any more information to support the claims made years prior by the elderly couple I met, I came across a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Said study validated their assertion, showing that eating fewer calories extended the average lifespan.

The lesser known sister of coronary artery disease (CAD), peripheral arterial disease (PAD) involves clogging of the arteries around the body -- often in the legs. The two conditions often go hand in hand, but researchers have recently reported that, of the two, patients with PAD often fare worse.

Researchers based their findings on comparisons of CAD patients who underwent coronary angioplasty and PAD patients who underwent a variety of surgical interventions such as abdominal aortic surgery and lower limb reconstruction. The annual mortality rate for PAD patients was 5.7% -- 2.7% higher that than for CAD patients.

Researchers state that PAD patients are less likely to receive medication for their condition. The undertreatment could be the cause of the higher mortality rate.