Heart Disease
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2.53 Health experts agree that exposing at least 10% of your skin to sunshine (between 10 AM to 3 PM) for at least 30 minutes a day should be sufficient for your body’s vitamin D needs. Apart from sunshine as a major source of vitamin D, lesser source of vitamin D from foods include cod liver oil, oily fish such as tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, cheese, milk, liver, egg yolk, soya milk, button mushrooms, vitamin D fortified foods such as breakfast cereals.
Smoking
2.54 The link between tobacco smoke and cancers is established without doubt. Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, 60 of which including nicotine, arsenic, methanol, DDT, tar, carbon monoxide, benzene are carcinogens. Apart from cancers, smokers are at a much higher risk of blockage of arteries, heart disease, stroke, asthma, tuberculosis, peripheral artery disease etc. etc. Chemicals like nicotine (responsible for tobacco addiction) act as stimulants on the central nervous system, increasing metabolic rate, raise blood pressure, change muscle tension, affect certain brain chemicals and hormones, cause inflammation, increase risk of miscarriage by 25%, reduce birth weight by 200-250 grams of smoker’s babies and make them prone to illnesses later in life and damage the DNA.
2.55 Depending on the number of cigarettes smoked each day, the risk of heart attack in smokers is 2 to 5 times more than non-smokers. Smoking one cigarette a day shortens life span by 11 minutes. Quitting smoking at any age nullifies this risk in 3 years. It is never too late to give up! Smoking speeds up the development of plaque in the arteries, reduces HDL (good cholesterol), increases blood pressure and increases stickiness of blood cells causing blood clots inside the arteries resulting in problems for the heart.
Sedentary Lifestyle/Lack of Exercise
2.56 A healthy heart means a sound body, mind and spirit. Sedentary lifestyle alongwith unhealthy eating habits, smoking stress, obesity with its association as a risk factor for diabetes, high blood cholesterol, hypertension are the leading causes of heart disease and stroke.
2.57 The heart determines how much blood it should pump in a day on the basis of our activity level and gradually falls into this set pattern. The more you demand of it – the more arteries it ropes in to send blood to needy areas. But if your activity constitutes only pushing papers and the remote buttons without any regular exercise, the heart cuts down its pumping activities to the bare minimum required. Unused arteries, like forgotten street overgrown with weeds, then turn into havens for cholesterol deposition and start narrowing. Now if you suddenly increase your level of activity, say post retirement, the heart is forced to pump more blood which, with clogged arteries becomes difficult. And so enormous pressure is exerted on the muscles that are deprived of blood and oxygen. This is why you experience chest pain and other heart complications.
2.58 The role of active lifestyle in heart disease prevention cannot be ignored. Regular exercise slows down the narrowing of the arteries to the heart and brain, encourages the body to burn up stored fat, improves cholesterol levels by increasing good HDL cholesterol in the blood and reduces high blood pressure. Having no heart risk factors at age 50 greatly reduces the lifetime risk of heart disease and increases longevity, so a healthy and active lifestyle can lower risk substantially.
