Heart

The Good Heart

Regular exercise can keep your heart healthy

In order to get 1.2g of plant sterols daily to effectively reduce cholesterol, you will need to eat 255 tomatoes or 125 carrots.

Understanding how blood flow to the heart can be obstructed is the first step towards preventing heart disease.

The Star/Star2/Health/Thursday, 27 October 2016

WE suspect that caring for the heart is not a top concern for most Malaysian adults. But as one of the hardest working organs in the human body, the work that our hearts per­form certainly deserves to be appreciated more.

It is the “engine” of the body, and like every other engine, requires us to maintain it through proper care.

Every adult should understand how their heart works, how heart disease occurs, and what they can do to prevent it.

The heart is actually a muscle, like the muscles of our legs and arms. The heart muscle has to be in good condition to ensure that blood is able to circulate in the body, providing us with oxygen and nutrients, as well as carrying away waste.

Good condition means that the organ does not have an excessive amount of fat - this will lower its muscle flexibility and contrac­tions for smooth blood flow.

Another important condition is to ensure that there are no cholesterol plaques build­ing up in the organ’s blood vessel. Cholesterol plaques can block blood flow in arteries, making the process of blood flow less efficient.

The heart is divided into two pumps that work in tandem.

The right side of the heart pumps blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen. The left side of the heart receives the oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and pumps it back to the body.

With the onset of heart disease, our hearts can become unpaired and do not work properly.

Heart disease can result from unmodifiable risk fac­tors such as age and gender, as well as modifiable factors such as physical activity, diet and smoking.

Even if your risk of developing heart disease is higher because of unmodifiable factors, you can still man­age this through modifiable factors - by get­ting enough daily physical activity, eating a balanced diet, and quitting smoking Coronary arteries supply blood and oxy­gen to the muscles of the heart. Over time, fatty deposits called plaque can build up in the walls of the coronary arteries.

If the plaque becomes unstable and rup­tures, the clotting process, called thrombosis, starts inside the artery. This can lead to a reduced blood supply to the heart mus­cle, and muscle tissue can start to become damaged.

If the clot completely blocks the coronary- artery, all muscle tissue below the blockage can die.

A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of the heart is blocked. Without oxygen­ated blood, the heart muscle can be dam­aged.

A stroke is a “brain attack”, a consequence of vital blood flow and oxygen to the brain being obstructed. A stroke happens when a blood vessel feeding the brain gets clogged or bursts.

There are many things we can do to ensure good heart health - the truth is that Malaysians need to take care of their heart health now instead of much later in life.

We know that Malaysians are getting heart disease at a younger age, and that many Malaysians suffer from high cholesterol.

High cholesterol levels are a primary risk factor in the development of heart disease. Unhealthy fats such as trans and saturated fats are present in the majority of foods that we eat.

But there are ways in which we can still take charge of our heart health.

A brisk walk daily can cut the risk of heart dis­ease symptoms such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high blood cho­lesterol, together with eating a balanced diet and annual medical check-ups.

One way to reduce the risk of heart dis­ease is to manage your cholesterol levels by adding plant sterols to your diet. Plant ster­ols can also be found in grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

However, you may have to eat very large amounts of these items to have an effect on your cholesterol.

For example, in order to get 1.2g of plant sterols daily to effectively reduce cholesterol, you will need to eat 255 tomatoes or 126 car­rots!

The easier way to get sufficient plant ster­ols needed to lower your cholesterol level is through supplements or low fat milk enriched with added plant sterols.

Taking care of our hearts should be a pri­ority for every adult, and a healthy heart is a beautiful heart indeed.

Fun Facts

The heart beats about 100,000 times daily, and over a lifetime, it will beat more than 2.5 billion times.

The heart also pumps about one million barrels of blood over an average lifetime, enough to fill three super tankers.

The “thump-thump” of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves of the heart closing.

A woman’s heart beats faster (78 times per minute) than a man’s heart (70 times pet minute).

Because the heart has its own electrical impulses, it can continue to beat even when separated from the body, as long as there In an adequate supply of oxygen.

This article is courtesy of Nestle Omega Plus.