Heart Health Archive

For years, experts recommended low-fat diets as a way to lower cholesterol and heart disease risk. Today, we know that low-fat isn't the way to go after all. A healthy diet includes plenty of "good-for-you" fats — and limits the unhealthy ones.  Current dietary guidelines recommend that you get 20% to 35% of your daily calories from fat. Even more may be fine, if you follow these simple guidelines.

Favor the "good" fats.

The best sources of healthy fats are oily, cold-water fish, such as salmon and tuna; plant sources such as avocados and nuts; and vegetable oils, such as olive, canola, soybean, and cottonseed oils. These fats promote heart health because they lower cholesterol levels — and they may even fight chronic inflammation, which may contribute to heart disease. It's okay to get up to 35% of your daily calories from fat — as long as most of it comes from sources like these.

It's usually best to get calcium, magnesium, and potassium from food. Are you getting enough?

A healthy, balanced diet plays a major role in blood pressure control. And you should consume some specific minerals on a regular basis for good blood pressure management: calcium, magnesium, and potassium. But do most of us get enough of these? "If you're eating a healthy diet, you probably have nothing to worry about. But people eating a diet of processed and canned foods or taking certain medications might not be getting enough of these micronutrients," says Dr. Randall Zusman, director of the Division of Hypertension at the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center.

Try losing weight, changing your diet, and exercising.

Sometimes getting your blood pressure under control requires that you take several medications each day, such as a diuretic and a calcium-channel blocker. But some therapies don't involve medication. "People who have drug intolerances or are unwilling to take medications can try pill-free therapy, and it can also be used to make a medication regimen more effective," says Dr. Randall Zusman, a cardiologist and Harvard Medical School associate professor.

This checklist can help ensure accurate readings both at the doctor's office and at home.

 Image: © Maica/Getty Images

Blood pressure is a key indicator of cardiovascular health. So it's vitally important to make sure that you check yours regularly — and accurately. But according to the American Heart Association (AHA), health care professionals don't always follow the proper techniques when measuring a person's blood pressure. The AHA cites seven common errors (detailed below) that can lead to an artificially high blood pressure reading.

Plus, there's one additional step that may be overlooked after you get a blood pressure reading of 130/80 mm Hg or higher, a level that defines high blood pressure, says endocrinologist Dr. Naomi Fisher, director of the Hypertension Service and Hypertension Innovation at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

News briefs

There's a silver lining in a recent study that found older women who were sedentary for long chunks of time had a much higher risk for developing cardiovascular disease than women who sat less. The observational study, published Feb. 22, 2019, in Circulation, analyzed activity patterns of more than 5,000 older women (ages 63 to 97) for a week, and then followed them for another five years. Both the total time spent sitting each day and the duration of each period of inactivity was measured with fitness trackers. The key finding: an additional hour of total sedentary time was associated with a 12% higher risk for cardiovascular disease during the follow-up period, and when that sitting time was made up of long uninterrupted sedentary sessions, the risk was far higher (as much as 54%) than when it was accumulated in short, regularly interrupted bouts of sedentary time. The silver lining: reducing sedentary time by an hour per day was linked to a 12% lower risk for cardiovascular disease and a 26% lower risk for developing heart disease during the study period. Even better: researchers say the one-hour reduction each day doesn't have to be accumulated at one time. The moments spent jumping up to get a glass of water, running out to your mailbox, or darting across the house to get the phone can all add up. The key is to interrupt your sitting time with activity that will get your heart and lungs pumping.

Here's the latest thinking about how estrogen or testosterone therapy may affect cardiovascular risk.

The two main sex hormones — estrogen and testosterone — have wide-ranging effects in the body. Produced primarily by the ovaries (estrogen) and testes (testosterone), these hormones affect not just your sexual function but also your bones, brain, and blood vessels, for example.

As people age, the natural decline in sex hormone levels sometimes causes undesirable symptoms, such as hot flashes or a flagging sex drive. Doctors can prescribe pills, patches, gels, and creams containing estrogen or testosterone to ease those symptoms. But are these products safe for your heart?

Ask the doctor

Q. Why are the blood pressure readings in my right and left arm different even when they're taken within a minute or two of each other?

A. The answer depends on how big of a difference you're talking about. A difference of just a few points (that is, a few millimeters of mercury, or mm Hg) is nothing to worry about. It's actually quite normal, even when both arms are checked almost simultaneously.

Make sure you're getting enough of this healthy carbohydrate in your diet.

When we think about following a healthy diet, we often fixate on what we shouldn't be eating, such as sugary desserts and fatty fried foods. A better strategy may be to focus on what we should be eating — especially more foods naturally rich in fiber.

Even though fiber passes through our bodies without being digested, it provides many health benefits, particularly for the heart. Fiber-rich diets may reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke by as much as 30%, according to a review article in the February 2 issue of The Lancet.

After a serious heart-related event, cardiac rehabilitation can help you feel better and live longer.

If you have a heart attack, heart surgery, or another cardiac event, what's the best way to prevent future heart problems? Participate in cardiac rehab, a program that provides supervised exercise and teaches you the fundamentals of a heart-healthy lifestyle over a three-month period.

"The benefits of cardiac rehab are indisputable. It's more effective than any other intervention for preventing future heart-related problems and hospitalizations," says Dr. Hicham Skali, associate director of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. Eligible people who participate in cardiac rehab have a 24% lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease compared with those who do not attend a rehab program. Cardiac rehab has also been found to improve your ability to exercise and your quality of life, he adds.