Health and medical news blog » Cardio & Blood- Сholesterol

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND SALT

admin — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:29:18 +0000

The flow of blood created by the rhythmic pumping of your heart exerts a natural pressure on your artery walls; this is what’s known as blood pressure. If your blood volume is within a normal range, and if the tension within the muscle surrounding the artery wall is normal, your pressure should likewise be safe (in fact, pressure that’s extremely low can be very serious or even life-threatening). But if your blood volume is increased beyond a safe level, as can happen if you consume too much salt, hypertension develops: The additional blood volume puts extra pressure on your arteries, and your blood pressure rises, possibly to a dangerous level.There are actually two types of high blood pressure: primary (or essential) hypertension, and secondary hypertension. The exact cause of the first is not known, but excessive salt – or possibly sodium – intake may be an important factor. Secondary hypertension, on the other hand, has its origins in an underlying disorder such as kidney disease or hyperthyroidism.In the vast majority of cases, hypertension is “primary,” and appears to be influenced largely by eating and life-style habits – especially by a diet high in salt as well as in fat (although obesity, alcohol consumption, and a sedentary life-style may also contribute to increased blood pressure).Other factors have an effect on blood pressure, too: Emotional or physical stress will make your blood pressure rise temporarily; in fact, it’s a normal reaction. However, if the source of the stress goes away and your blood pressure remains high, then you’ve got a problem. For people who fall into this group, salt may be a primary villain.How exactly can too much salt contribute to high blood pressure? While our kidneys are designed to dispose of excess sodium, when we overwork these natural filters with enormous amounts of sodium in the form of salt, they may become less efficient at their cleanup job over time. And because our bodies seek to maintain an unchanged concentration of sodium, if excess sodium is not excreted it will prompt the fluid retention necessary to keep this sodium concentration in balance. Blood volume then increases as one result of this additional fluid.*16/345/5*

PREVENTION OF HEART ATTACKS: FORMATION OF ATHEROMA (FATTY DEPOSIT) – THE RISK FACTORS – WORK AND RECREATION – IF HARD WORK CAN PRODUCE PROBLEMS IN OLD AGE, WOULD IT NOT BE CORRECT TO GIVE UP ACTIVE WORK ALTOGETHER ? WHAT ABOUT RECREATION ?

admin — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:40:40 +0000

Q. If hard work can produce problems in old age, would it not be correct to give up active work altogether ? A. No, one should try and remain active as long as possible in order to maintain physical and mental health and one’s dignity. Inactivity is not conducive to good health, neither physical nor mental. Activity within one’s capacity should be undertaken. However, long hours of continuous work should be avoided; there should be adequate periods of rest in between.Q. What about recreation ?A. Recreation is equally essential, but it also demands more physical effort or less depending upon its nature. Recreation should be such that it is not too much of a drain on the limited energy available. It has become fashionable these days to advocate almost unlimited physical activity for old people including those who have sustained a myocardial infraction. The pendulum has swung far too much from almost complete inertia to unlimited physical activity. It is time we realise that the physical activity is beneficial to a certain extent, but when the limits are exceeded it can prove really harmful. Therefore, too strenuous recreational activity, skiing for example, may be left to the younger people to enjoy. Cinema, theatre, television, reading and writing for pleasure, non-competitive games are the activities to indulge in. Holidaying should be comfortable and enjoyable. If in the hills, climbing steep heights should be avoided.*85\328\8*

DIETARY AND NUTRITIONAL FACTORS IN CIRCULATORY DISEASE: FOOD COMBINING

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:37:32 +0000

Dr William Hay was an American doctor whose ideas, like those of many innovative thinkers, did not meet with widespread favour during his lifetime. Looking to address illness with diet he discovered that the energy used to digest food could be released for body maintenance and life in general if foods were used selectively.

He suggested that since an acid medium was required to digest protein and an alkaline medium was required to digest starch, to combine the two in any meal meant that one type of food waited in the stomach while the other was digested, thus doubling the length of time (and energy required) for the absorption process.

In the resultant Hay diet, no food was banned, just eaten separately. The diagram provides the main guidelines for this weight-reducing principle. For those interested in discovering more about this remarkably simple diet, Doris Grant and Jean Juice.

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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol

THE ROLE OF CHOLESTEROL IN HEART DISEASE

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:44:59 +0000

The idea that high cholesterol plays a role in the development of heart disease was started by the Framingham Heart Study. This study began in 1948 and monitored 5 000 healthy women and men living in Framingham, Massachusetts, USA. Researchers tried to establish which factors went on to determine if a person suffered a heart attack. High cholesterol was one factor that had some influence on who had a heart attack, but it was only one of 240 risk factors identified. Some other factors that influenced who got a heart attack included short stature, creased earlobes, male baldness, and being married to a highly educated woman!

Cholesterol was latched onto because it is a modifiable risk factor; that means there was an opportunity for drugs to be developed to lower cholesterol. There was potential to make great profits! Many scientists believe the results of the Framingham Study were misinterpreted, and cholesterol has been inappropriately focused on. The study only found an association between cholesterol and heart disease in young and middle-aged men; however over time we have all been instructed to fear cholesterol.

In the late 1950s, researchers came up with the “lipid hypothesis”, also known as the “diet-heart idea”. This claimed there is a direct relationship between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet, and the incidence of coronary heart disease. This hypothesis has received much publicity, and is the basis for why low fat, low cholesterol diets are the hallmark of nutrition recommendations. It is also the basis of prescribing cholesterol lowering medication to anyone who has levels above the desired limit.

Since then several researchers have discovered flaws in this hypothesis. Before 1920 heart disease was rare in the United States. This is a period of time when consumption of foods such as butter, lard and dripping was much greater than now; these are all foods very high in cholesterol. Many traditional diets of native populations are very high in fat and cholesterol, yet these populations have very low rates of heart disease.

The Masai tribes of Africa consume a diet of mostly milk, blood and beef; 60 percent of calories they eat are derived from fat. However, the Masai do not have elevated cholesterol, and are free of coronary heart disease. Inuit people (Eskimos) eat an extremely high fat diet; 80 percent of their calories come from fat. These people have healthy blood vessels and there is no evidence they suffered with heart disease. The traditional Australian aboriginal diet contained large amounts of fat in the form of eggs from birds and reptiles, turtles, eels and possums. Many insects are high in fat, such as witchety grubs (67% fat), the green tree ant and bogong moths; their abdomens contain a lot of fat. The aborigines were a fit and healthy population; obesity and diabetes were almost unheard of.

Many researchers believe that it was the introduction of sugar, white flour and alcohol that has led to the explosion of diabetes, obesity and heart disease in this population.

One explanation for this contradiction is that the meat these native populations consumed was quite different in fat composition to the meat we buy from the supermarket or butcher today. Wild game meat is much lower in total fat, and particularly saturated fat than farmed meat. It is also higher in omega 3 essential fatty acids, which help your metabolism. This is why it may be a good idea to include game meat in your diet occasionally such as kangaroo, emu and rabbit. Much of the fresh fish we purchase today is farmed, and unfortunately this type offish is much lower in omega 3 fats than wild fish. This is because it is fed a type of “pet food”, vastly different from the natural diet. Whenever you purchase fish, make sure you ask if it has been farmed or caught wild.

A very interesting study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, highlighting the difference in rates of heart disease between people living in northern and southern India. The northerners ate a lot of meat, used ghee in their cooking and had high cholesterol levels. The southerners were predominantly vegetarians, they used vegetable oil and margarine to cook with, and they had lower cholesterol. You may be shocked to know that the vegetarians had a 15 times greater incidence of heart disease than the meat and ghee eaters!

Proponents of the “lipid hypothesis” claim that when our intake of cholesterol and saturated fat is high, the saturated fat is turned into cholesterol which accumulates in the arteries. These deposits of cholesterol get thicker, form a plaque, and eventually narrow the arteries so much that blood flow is restricted. Plaques can also break off and form a blood clot in a vessel.

High levels of HDL “good” cholesterol protect us from heart disease by transporting excess cholesterol away from the arteries to the liver for removal. A high level of LDL “bad” cholesterol means that a lot of cholesterol must be depositing itself on the lining of our arteries, increasing our risk of heart attacks and strokes. This is true to a large extent, but is a very simplistic view of atherosclerosis (formation of fat plaques in the arteries). We now know there are many other factors involved.

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