Early Signs of Heart Disease: Better Act Quickly
If you are like me, you have probably heard this phrase many times; there are no do over’s in life! For the most part that is correct. There is one area however, where if you are lucky enough to get an early warning; you may get a do over.
I refer to your health, and specifically, your heart health. When you are lucky enough to get what may be the early signs of heart disease, you’d better act quickly or you most likely won’t get another chance.
What are some signs of heart disease?
If you are lucky, your body and specifically your heart are telling you in a variety of ways that “I’m sick and struggling, so help me”. Unless you were born with some sort if genetic heart defect, the most common contributor to heart disease is bad cholesterol.
The most common cause of bad cholesterol is what we eat. When we hear about the early signs of heart disease, or any heart related ailment, it sounds very scary to the layman.
The fact of the matter is, just like a computer; garbage in, garbage out. With our body; it’s a very complex design that needs to be taken care of. Only in the last three decades have we started to hear that proper nutrition is essential to good heart health.
Since your heart is the control center for other essential organs, taking care of the heart through managing cholesterol is of maximum importance to avoid several types of serious illness.
If your heart were a factory and your arteries were the assembly line down which your product ran, than cholesterol is what bottles up the assembly line. LDL and triglycerides represent fat in the blood that restricts blood flow to and from the heart.
— Early signs of heart disease include an irregular heart beat; that’s a scary one indeed! Additionally you may feel fatigued more often, have dizzy spells and have troubling breathing.
— Other early signs of heart disease or the progression to possible heart attack can include pressure in your chest, in combination with rapid heartbeat. It’s also common to feel pain in your left arm from the shoulder to your hand and in some cases even pain in the jaw.
If I get these warning signs what can I do?
The first thing to do is to see your doctor. They will prescribe some sort of regimen that includes a battery of tests to determine the extent of possible damage based on early signs of heart disease.
If you are reading this and you haven’t experienced any of these signs, you too can benefit from a course of prevention! Everyone, no matter where they are on this life journey should take preventative measures to avoid ever developing heart disease.
The options available to you include finally kicking the smoking habit for good, as this alone hurts your ability to make good cholesterol in the form of HDL. Keeping your body mass index down to where you should be for your height and age, and getting daily exercise.
Just walking to the point of working up a sweat for twenty minutes a day can do wonders to reduce bad cholesterol. Most importantly, it comes down to avoiding soda, sweets, excess animal fat and dairy products. Remember there are substitutes like egg beaters!
Gradually work your way off these foods by replacing them with foods containing Omega 3. Nutrition essential Omega 3 recommendations from any dietitian will include poultry, sea food with fatty acids DHA and EPA, as well as good things like fruit and green vegetables.
It’s amazing how whole grain pasta tastes with tomato sauce. Guess what, there is no difference except that whole grains have a great degree of Omega 3 fatty acid that fights bad cholesterol.
Nutrition essential Omega 3 recommendations also include cold water fish for one simple reason. The oil contained in fish like sardines and salmon is filled with Omega 3 fatty acid that promotes good cholesterol and fights LDL cholesterol.
Omega 3 fatty acid has been clinically proven to help boost the good or HDL cholesterol that is essential for flushing out that LDL from the blood stream. Good heart health depends on a diet rich in Omega 3 fatty acid.
Conclusion
So it comes down to this. Early signs of heart disease can literally be your last wake up call. On the positive side, there are treatments, but the best thing you can ever do is take preventative good heart health measures by increasing your intake of Omega 3 fatty acid, get a moderate amount of exercise every day and stay away from saturated fat. Do this, and you heart will continue to chug along for many more years!
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