Fad diets, fewer fatty foods, more fruits and vegetables or more
exercise simply won't do the trick for those seeking a healthy
heart. The key is excess weight and getting rid of it.
"What I find happens is that people tend to focus on one thing,"
says Riska Platt, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the
American Heart Association. "They just add in fish to their diet
and feel that they've taken care of everything. There are selected
foods that have excellent properties in the management of heart
disease but you've also got to look at your total diet."
While cardiologists still recommend cutting back on salt and
fat, in the past few years their advice has shifted for the average
patient. Rather than encouraging people to eat certain healthy
foods, doctors, more than anything, want patients to consumer less
calories.
"The point for people in the U.S. is to eat less," says New
Jersey-based Dr. Augustine E. Agocha, lead physician at Advanced
Heart, Lung and Vascular Care and chief of cardiology at Deborah
Heart and Lung Center. "It's about calories."
Agocha says too many people who attempt a high-fiber diet, for
instance, overdo it and give up after two months. He tells men to
limit themselves to 2,500 calories a day, and women 2,000. If you
can't resist a cheeseburger, that's OK, he says, as long as you cut
back the rest of the day. You can always buy yourself more calories
by exercising, too.
This is important because excess weight negatively affects
cardiovascular risk factors, increasing LDL, or bad cholesterol,
triglyceride levels, blood pressure and blood glucose levels and
lowering HDL, or good cholesterol. It also increases the risk of
coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and cardiac
arrhythmias, according to the American Heart Association.
"Weight isn't the only thing that determines whether you get
heart disease," says Dr. Thomas H. Lee, editor in chief of the
Harvard Heart Letter and professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. "But if I
were to be given one wish with patients, my first wish would be
that they maintained normal body weights."
(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2007)