February is heart month last week we talked about stroke and Parkinson’s. This week we are going to talk about our hearts, balance, and memory. What does balance and memory have to do with the heart? As it turns out…a lot.
Like Parkinson’s, cardiovascular disease becomes more common as people get older. People with PD have a 60% higher chance of getting heart disease. Additionally, the people who have Parkinson’s and heart disease have increased memory and balance problems typically associated with the disease.
Before you get discouraged, you can take action to prevent a heart attack or stroke; what you do really matters!
How to Decrease the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease
Here are the controllable risk factors; guess which of these can be controlled by exercise and a healthier diet?
- Sitting too much
- Obesity
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Smoking
- Stress
Every single one. Yes; ALL OF THEM! Let’s break it down.
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- Sitting too much (sedentary lifestyle). Sitting is the new smoking. If you are sitting more than you are moving, you are sitting too much. Moving your body keeps your system humming and in good health. Daily exercise and sitting less helps prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, the list goes on.
- Overweight/obesity. Exercising aerobically with added resistive training, helps you burn extra calories and stored fat; it also helps curb your appetite. A healthy calorically-balanced diet with a lot of healthy vegetables, grains and fats, can help you lose excess fat and replace processed foods.
- High cholesterol.Eating healthier and daily exercise will help your bad cholesterol (LDLs and Triglycerides) go down and good protective cholesterol (HDLs) to come up. Eat more fish to boost that good cholesterol.
- High blood pressure. If you eat healthier, watch your sodium intake, exercise every day, and maintain a healthy weight, you can control high blood pressure. If you are overweight, losing 10% of your body weight can significantly lower your blood pressure.
- Diabetes. If you eat healthier and lose weight your blood sugar (glucose) will be easier to manage (A1c will go down). The term pre-diabetes is a misnomer, you are either Type 2 diabetic or you are not. If you are told you are prediabetic, you are already in the danger zone and need to take action now! You can control this. Your body still produces insulin, but it’s insulin resistant because of excess body fat. Lose the weight and eat healthy. Get your numbers under control. If you have both high blood pressure and diabetes, which is a common combination, your risk for cardiovascular disease doubles.
- Smoking. Withdrawal symptoms and cravings for cigarettes decrease during exercise and up to an hour after exercising. Exercise decreases desire to eat and stress, this helps when you are trying to quit. You will feel more energetic and healthier.
- Stress. Exercise in any form helps reduce distress (bad stress), and improves your mood and sleep. Add meditation for a bonus.
There are other risk factors you can not control like age, gender and family history, so control what you can. Two or more risk factors are a loud message to take action.
If your risk factors are too high and you’ve been prescribed medication to help control it, do yourself a favor…help your medicine work! Exercise, eat healthy, get back to your fighting weight, build muscle. Impress your doctor with the new you. Your doctor may even decrease or eliminate some of your meds. Isn’t that what we all want? Fewer meds, less hassle, save money, feel great!
Be as healthy as you can and feel better, move better.
~Coach Kimberly