Explore the body's heart, arteries, and kidneys to learn how you can win the war against cardiovascular disease - a war that claims a million casualties a year in the U.S. Top physicians tell you who the enemies are and how they can be defeated. Diet, exercise, and being tobacco-free can put you on the road to wellness.

What Is Wellness?

What is wellness? It isn't simply the absence of illness. A better definition of wellness is provided by the World Health Organization: "A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." But wellness doesn't just happen to us. Wellness is an active process. It means becoming aware of, and making choices toward, a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness is first and foremost a decision to assume responsibility for the quality of your life. In doing so, you'll reduce your medical costs, improve your productivity, increase your energy, and enhance virtually every aspect of your life. Read more

Quit Smoking

Smoking will kill about 650 million of all the people alive in the world today. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the US, where it kills about 440,000 people each year. Tobacco is a very toxic drug. Smoking even 1-4 cigarettes a day can lead to serious health problems, including a higher risk of heart disease, lung cancer, and dying at a younger age. Smokers are twice as likely to die of a heart attack as nonsmokers, and are much more likely to die within 1 hour of a heart attack. Read more

Smoking & Your Arteries

Peripheral Artery Disease
The nicotine and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke damage the arteries, causing them to harden and clog with fatty deposits called plaque, which restricts blood flow. When the arteries outside of the heart become clogged with plaque, blood supply to the arms, legs, and feet can be reduced or cut off altogether. This condition is called peripheral artery disease. Peripheral artery disease can lead to open sores that don't heal, injury, and infection of the feet and legs. In extreme cases there can be tissue death (gangrene), sometimes requiring amputation of the affected limb. Read more

Eat Healthy

Eating a healthy diet can be an effective, and enjoyable, way to prevent cardiovascular and other disease. Good eating means focusing both on the foods you shouldn't eat and on the foods you should eat. Read more

Foods to Avoid

Salt
The danger of eating too much salt is that it can lead to high blood pressure (hypertension) or make it worse, and hypertension is an enormous contributor to strokes, heart failure, and heart attacks. If you don't have high blood pressure, high salt intake can lead to it, so be moderate in your salt intake. The recommended range for healthy adults is 1,500-2,400 mg/day. People who are older than 50, are black, or have hypertension or other health conditions like chronic kidney disease or diabetes may be more sensitive to the blood pressure raising effects of salt. They should aim for the lower end of the recommended range. If you have any of these risk factors, talk to your doctor about how much salt you should eat. Read more

Foods to Enjoy

Many foods can have a positive, health-enhancing effect on you. Olive oil has been shown to lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels while raising HDL ("good") cholesterol levels. Onions and garlic may fight cancer and have other health benefits. Diets rich in fruits and vegetables lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. Many fruits and vegetables, especially those with bright coloring like beets, berries, and dark leafy greens, contain substances called antioxidants that fight cancer. Whole grains and beans contain fiber, B vitamins, and other important nutrients like selenium, potassium, and magnesium. Oily fish are high in omega-3 fats that can help keep your blood from clotting, keep your arteries healthy, and prevent heart disease. Read more

Fiber Helps Lower Cholesterol

Fiber
You probably know that fiber is great for keeping you regular, but you might not know that it's good for you in other important ways. Just 10 grams or more of soluble fiber a day decreases your total LDL-cholesterol levels by slowing absorption of cholesterol. And fiber may even fight cancer. Fiber discourages the growth of unhealthy bacteria in intestines, which secrete cancer-causing enzymes. And it encourages the growth of health-promoting bacteria that crowd out the dangerous kind. Read more

Good Fats: Omegas 3 & 6

Not all fats are bad for you. Your body needs essential fatty acids (EFAs), found in unsaturated fats, to be healthy. EFAs nourish your skin and hair, reduce blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels and the risk of cardiovascular disease, prevent arthritis and inflammation, and lower the risk of blood clots. They play an important role in brain development and the transmission of nerve impulses as well. Read more

The Daily Nutrition You Need

The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) is a system of nutrition recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and is composed of:

• Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the amount expected to satisfy the needs of 50% of the people in a given age group
• Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), the daily dietary intake level of a nutrient considered sufficient to meet the requirements of 97-98% of healthy individuals in each life-stage and gender group

Read more

Portion Control

In portion control, a serving isn't just what you decide to put on your plate. Portion control means managing your caloric intake each day by knowing the recommended serving size of a given food, and eating only that much. Each serving is a specific amount of food determined by common measurements. Research shows that many people underestimate how many calories they are actually consuming each day by as much as 25%. Knowing what one serving looks like is a good way to more accurately estimate the calories you're eating. Read more

Daily Exercise

Regular physical activity makes you look and feel better. More than that, it keeps your body healthy, and a healthy body can fend off disease much better than an unhealthy body. If you need to lose weight, many experts feel that exercise is better for you than dieting, because it's sustainable over the long term and provides lasting benefits. Read more

Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic means "oxygen-producing." Aerobic exercise, sometimes called endurance training, improves oxygen consumption by your body and strengthens your cardiovascular system and endurance. Activities like walking, running, swimming, and biking, in which you remain in motion and your heart rate increases for an extended period of time, are considered aerobic. When your heart is beating more rapidly, more blood is circulated around your body and more oxygen is provided to your tissues and cells. Read more

Speed Up Your Metabolism

Metabolism is the process by which your body converts food into energy. Your metabolism determines the rate at which you burn calories and how quickly you gain weight or lose it.

Your metabolism slows down as you age, at a rate of about 2% every 10 years, beginning at age 30. If you eat the same amount of food as you did when you were younger, you will gain fat. Read more

Benefits of Exercise

Physical activity is critical for the health of your body. The risks posed to your health by a sedentary lifestyle are similar to those posed by hypertension, high blood triglyceride and cholesterol levels, and obesity. Read more

Lose Weight

When it comes to carrying extra fat, a little goes a long way. Being as little as 5% over your ideal weight is associated with a shorter life expectancy. A 50-year-old man who is 50 pounds overweight has half the remaining life expectancy as a man with normal body weight. Excess poundage can make existing health problems worse, causing symptoms of disorders to appear earlier or making them more severe than they would be otherwise. Read more

Measuring Fat

It's not just the amount of weight that a person carries that matters, it's also where they carry it. "Apples," people who carry their fat in the abdomen, are more likely to have diabetes and heart disease than "pears," people who deposit weight on the hips and thighs. Waist measurement is a better indicator of risk than body mass index. Waists larger than 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women are in the danger zone. Abdominal fat is thought to be dangerous because it is deposited as visceral fat, fat deep inside the abdomen, as well as subcutaneous (under the skin) fat. Inside the body it wraps around the vital organs of the abdomen. The toxic chemicals that visceral fat secretes go straight to the liver and may interfere with its functions, including helping to regulate glucose and cholesterol. Read more