Day Fourty-Seven: Your Beautiful Heart

Each February, top celebrities slip into beautiful red dresses and walk on a runway in an event called "The Red Dress". Their purpose: To create awareness to American women that heart disease is still our #1 killer.

Let's talk about that.

Our heart is a fascinating thing. I'll never forget the way that I felt the first time my OB-Gyn let me listen to my child's heartbeat. Hearing the strong little beating signaled that there was a beautiful life growing inside. My child was no longer just a mass of cells. He had a heartbeat.

Our heart beats about 75 times each minute, distributing oxygen to the tissues so we can think, talk, and live. It is muscular, chambered, and beats on its own. It can enlarge causing problems with our heart valves, irregular heart rythms, angina, or heart attack.

Many of us have a genetic predisposition for heart trouble. This includes a family history of high blood pressure or cholesterol levels. Our family history is out of our control, so someone with a genetic predisposition has do even more due diligence to ensure that their environment is a healthy one. In essense, if the average person should have healthy habits, then the person with a poor family history should have super-mega-ultra-lightning-healthy habits.

How do we change our environment? Four contributing factors to heart disease are at the top of the list..

1. Diet... Eating foods high in fiber and nutritional density and low in saturated fats.
2. Exercise...At least three times a week of productive exercise.
3. Smoking...The leading cause of high blood pressure, and ultimately stroke & heart attack.
4. Alcohol...Consumption of alcohol on a daily basis can cause alcohol-induced hypertension. This puts the individual at risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, aneurysm, congestive heart failure, heart attack, damage to blood vessels, and that's just in relation to the heart...we all know about the other organs that are affected by prolonged heavy drinking.

All four of these items are within our span of control, so it's completely up to us to give our body what it needs, and reduce the things that make it work harder for our beautiful heart to do it's job.

I challenge you to go red. I challenge you to take care of your beautiful heart in every way that you can.