5 Strategies You Can Adopt Today To Prevent Heart Disease

Heart disease is often preventable by following a heart-healthy lifestyle. See what five strategies you can adopt now to protect your heart.
Heart disease may be the leading cause of death for both men and women, but that doesn't mean you have to accept it as your fate. Although you lack the power to change some risk factors — such as family history, age and race — you can always control your lifestyle choices.

Take steps to avoid heart disease by not smoking, getting regular exercise and eating healthy foods. Prevent heart problems in the future by adopting a healthy lifestyle today. Here are five strategies to get you started.

1. Don't smoke or use tobacco products
"If you smoke, quit," advises Sharonne Hayes, M.D., a cardiologist and director of the Women's Heart Clinic at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. "That's the most powerful, preventable risk factor for heart disease."
No amount of smoking is safe. Smokeless tobacco and low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes are also risky, as is exposure to secondhand smoke.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,800 chemicals. Many of these can damage your heart and blood vessels, making them more vulnerable to narrowing of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Atherosclerosis can ultimately lead to a heart attack.

2. Exercise, exercise, exercise
You already know that exercise is good for you. But you may not realize just how good it is for you
Regularly participating in moderately vigorous exercise can reduce your risk of fatal heart disease by nearly a quarter. And when you combine exercise with other lifestyle measures, such as maintaining a healthy weight, the payoff is even greater.

Regular exercise helps prevent heart disease by increasing blood flow to your heart and strengthening your heart's contractions so that your heart pumps more blood with less effort. Physical activity also helps you control your weight and can reduce your chances of developing other conditions that may put a strain on your heart, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Exercise can also reduce stress, which may also be a factor in heart disease.

3. Eat a heart-healthy diet
Consistently eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products can help protect your heart. Legumes, low-fat sources of protein and certain types of fish can also reduce your risk of heart disease.

Limiting your intake of certain fats is also important. Of the types of fat — saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and trans fat — saturated fat and trans fat increase the risk of coronary artery disease by raising blood cholesterol levels. Saturated fat is the more worrisome offender because foods containing this type of fat are more prevalent in typical American diets. Major sources of saturated fat include beef, butter, cheese, milk, and coconut and palm oils.

4. Maintain a healthy weight
As you put on weight in adulthood, you gain mostly fatty tissue. This excess weight can lead to conditions that increase your chances of heart disease — high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
How do you know if your weight is healthy? One way is to calculate your body mass index (BMI), which considers your height and weight in determining whether you have a healthy or unhealthy percentage of body fat.

5. Get regular health screenings
High blood pressure and high cholesterol can damage your cardiovascular system, including your heart. But without testing for them, you probably won't know whether you have these conditions. Regular screening can tell you what your numbers are and whether you need to take action.

Support A Healthy Cardiovascular System With Resveratrol

Chemically, Resveratrol is a polyphenol that includes the flavanoids and proanthocyanadins, both very powerful antioxidants. These are very useful for the destruction of free radicals that threaten your health and well-being in this age of excessive pollution and vehicle emissions, and also excessive exposure to the harmful factors of sunlight through the erosion of the ozone layer that acts as a filter against these harmful free radical-inducing rays.

Biohemically it is a phytoalexin, a chemical used by a plant to protect against and destroy invaders. Each phytoalexin is specific to a particular invader, whether it is an insect, a bacterium or a fungus. They can take the form of terpenes, alkaloids or any other chemical that disrupt the cell walls of or otherwise destroy the enemy to the plant concerned.

Resveratrol is particularly well known for existing on the skins of red grapes, but can also be produced synthetically and marketed as a nutritional supplement. The so-called ‘French Paradox’ relates to the low incidence of coronary heart disease in Southern France in spite of the high saturated fat content of their diet. At least part of this is claimed to be due to the Resveratrol content of the red wine they drink, although the quantity even in a whole bottle is very small.

However, before considering the nutritional benefits of the extract, apart from red grape skins where else can resveratrol be found? Japanese knotweed is a bushy perennial plant, about 4 to 10 feet high, is a very rich source of resveratrol, and is the more important natural source of the two. Red grape skins hardly contain enough to be worthy of extracting. It is also present in minor quantities in pine nuts, peanuts and various other vines and grapes.

It has been under study for many years now for its effect on the heart and other parts of the body, and the antioxidant effect of resveratrol has been found to be unique. The effect of free radicals on the arteries is to help, along with cholesterol, to promote the thickening and hardening of the artery walls. Damage to the arteries by free radicals, and the resulting scar tissue, causes the production of even more free radicals and a vicious circle of damage and even more free radical production occurs.

The antioxidant action of resveratrol is in the enhancement of the nitric oxide content of the blood. Free radicals can reduce the levels of blood nitric oxide that in turn increases blood pressure. An increase in nitric oxide by appropriate antioxidants can help to reduce blood pressure closer to normal. Resveratrol is more effective in achieving this than any of the vitamin antioxidants, A, C or E. It does so by opening up the arteries and reducing the resistance to blood flow through them. .

It also helps to prevent blood cells from sticking together and forming clots that can lead to serious cardiovascular problems, and has been found by Canadian studies to be effective against a much wider range of chemicals that promote blood clotting than any other anti-clotting components of wine. In fact it has now been established, and more or less confirmed by the medical profession, that drinking red wine significantly reduces the effects of cardiovascular disease and can even go a long way towards curing it. Napa Valley here we come!

Inflammation is a condition that is caused by the immune system of the body, the purpose of which is to protect us against foreign invaders. However, once inflammation starts, it triggers even further immune responses itself, that if not controlled can lead to extremely painful and sometimes very serious conditions, even after the major trigger for the initial immune response has been dealt with.