When it comes to heart attacks, doctors and patients seem to rely heavily on the signs and symptoms. While that is very important life-saving information to know, we have learned that the symptoms are varied — and in some cases nonexistent: Nearly half of the men (and more than half of the women) who die of a heart attack have no prior warning signs of serious heart disease.
That’s why it’s extremely important to understand what your risks for cardiovascular disease are to understand how to prevent a heart attack from happening to you. In fact, I believe if you want to survive a heart attack, doing everything in your power to decrease these risks really should be your top priority.
Why coronary artery disease?
Heart attack from coronary artery disease is still the leading cause of death in American adults. Each year about 1.1 million Americans will suffer a heart attack, and nearly half of these will be fatal.
Medical professionals and scientists know what causes cardiovascular disease to develop. The bigger questions are these… why would you have a heart attack? And what do you need to know and do to prevent it?
First off, you can’t change your family history of heart disease. However, you can definitely influence your genetic tendency for having heart disease express from your genes.
What do I mean? While your own symptoms and disease progression are an expression of your genes, this expression does change depending on your own lifestyle and other factors. This is called epigenetics. In other words, you can reduce your underlying genetic predisposition for heart disease by optimizing your modifiable risk factors, especially these most well-known ones:
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Smoking
- Poor nutrition
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Stress
Nutrition for a healthy heart
When you doctor recommends that you “eat healthy foods,” what does that mean to you? I’ll tell you a few important criteria for heart-healthy food.
- Eat more than 90% of your total food consumption as living whole foods. What are living whole foods? For example, a fresh strawberry is a whole food. A frozen strawberry is significantly less healthy but still counts. Strawberries baked into a pie have a lot less health value but still have some whole food components. But strawberry jam or syrup are not and have almost no health-promoting value. Therefore, foods grown or raised in nature are whole foods, and the more they get altered or processed the less whole food nutrition it has for you.
- Eat more than half of all your food consumption as raw food such as fruits, vegetables, nuts/seeds, healthy oils, and grains that are sprouted or milled (but not baked into bread).
- Take phytonutrient supplements/foods. I don’t recommend vitamins (synthetically created in a laboratory). However, phytonutrients from living whole foods, herbs, and spices are completely different somehow, and are proven 1 to lower heart disease. Take a look at this short list of foods and their bioactive phytonutrients known to significantly reduce oxidized LDL-C (oxidized LDL-cholesterol is what makes your cholesterol “sticky” to form atherosclerosis):
Foods and bioactive phytonutrients
- Fish: Omega-3 fatty acids
- Green leafy vegetables: Carotenoids
- Citrus fruits: Vitamin C
- Tomato: Lycopene
- Extra virgin olive oil: Polyphenolics & oleic acid
- Green tea: Tea polyphenols
- Soy proteins: Genistein, daidzein, glyceitin
- Dark chocolate: Flavonoid
- Pomegranate: Polyphenols
Sedentary lifestyle
If you rarely exercise then I would ask, why not? Initiating an exercise routine for the non-athlete is by far the most difficult step. I liken it to making huge dietary changes: your brain simply does not enjoy it yet. And just like with a new healthy food, there has to be something you enjoy about exercise in order for you to continue doing it. If you have to, make it a social event or put music to it. Friends and music with exercise are like spices and sauces on healthy foods. Exercise can be a great stress reducer too.
Stress
Poor stress management is a vicious cycle. The more you get stressed about little things or that big thing, the more you focus on it and then the more stress shows up in your life. So, it begins with a realization that you are the one getting in your own way with how you choose to think. If you entertain a stressful thought for more than 17 seconds it begins to create an ill emotional response in your body. These ill energies in motion create more disease the longer they persist.
For those of you who just can’t seem to keep your mind from wandering into stress territory, there are some actions you can do to over-ride those pervasive stressful thoughts (thus controlling the negative emotions and subsequent illness they create).
Consider practicing one or more of the following:
- Take 10 minutes to slowly breathe while visualizing something you enjoy, with no stressful distractions.
- Write how you feel (journaling) to soft music about your major concern.
- Get active into the services of someone else: connect with someone via text, email, phone, or personal visit.
- Spend an evening out with a loved one or a favorite friend(s)
- Experience sexual intimacy with your committed companion; be creative
- Meditation, yoga, Tai Chi or other meditative exercises
- Get massage therapy, reiki, or emotional clearing
- Find your best music and listen to it often while you direct your thoughts to something you enjoy. You must continue to focus for at least 17 seconds and then notice your body begin to relax as stress chemicals dissipate inside you.
Supplements
There are nutrients, herbs, and other natural treatments you can read about here which are proven heart healers but are shunned by mainstream medicine.
When you put all your heart disease risk factors together with diagnostic test measurements it will be like a detailed heart health map showing you what you need to know and do to best prevent a heart attack. Watch for that information in my next post.
To feeling good for health,
Michael Cutler, M.D
Easy Health Options
[1] Alissa EM, Ferns GA. Functional foods and nutraceuticals in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases. J Nutr Metab. 2012; 2012:569486.
