Study Identifies Top Six Factors
Predicting Heart Attack Risk
March 12, 2015
Story at-a-glance
A 20-year long study involving women uncovers the
top six lifestyle factors that predict heart attack
risk, and several relate to diet and exercise
Chronic stress throws your central nervous system
into imbalance, placing significant stress on your
heart
Women have a harder time recovering after a heart
attack than men, possibly due to the stress of their
multiple roles in family and work
By Dr. Mercola
Heart disease claims the lives of about one million Americans
every year, making it the leading cause of death for both men and
women. One in every three deaths in the US is attributed to
cardiovascular disease.
This year alone, 920,000 Americans will have a heart attack, and
nearly half will occur suddenly and without warning.1
Remember the most common symptom of heart disease is actually sudden
death.
A heart attack occurs when part of your heart muscle begins to
die, and even if you survive, the resulting scarring can cause
severe health problems down the road, such as increased risk for
sudden cardiac arrest.2
How much of your cardiac risk is under your control? Quite a bit,
according to the latest studies.
Six Choices That Can Make or Break Your Heart
According to new research published in the Journal of the
American College of Cardiology,3
young women who follow six lifestyle guidelines can all but "heart
attack-proof" themselves.
The study, which followed nurses over the course of two decades,
starting around age 37, identified the six lifestyle factors of
greatest impact on heart health.4
Women who adhered to all six guidelines lowered their heart
disease risk by 92 percent. Based on that, researchers estimated
that more than 70 percent of heart attacks could be prevented by
implementing the following:
1. Healthy diet
2. Normal BMI (body fat % is actually more accurate)
3. Getting at least 2.5 hours of exercise each week
4. Watching television seven or fewer hours per week
5. Not smoking
6. Limiting alcohol intake to one drink or less per day
None of these factors should come as a surprise, but the impact
they collectively have on your cardiac risk is impressive. The
results of this study echo the results of a 2014 study5
concluding that essentially the same health habits could prevent
nearly 80 percent of first-time heart attacks in men.
With respect to BMI, it should be noted that your waist-to-hip
ratio is a more reliable risk predictor because it reflects visceral
fat. And more reliable still would be an accurate assessment of body
fat percentage.
What if the Real Cause of Heart Attacks Is Not What We Thought?
The conventional view holds that the primary problem with heart
disease occurs in your arteries—related to blockage from the buildup
of plaque. But what if this premise is false?
Most experts believe that the majority of heart attacks result
from a blockage in one of your four major coronary arteries, but
Thomas S. Cowan, MD challenges this notion in an article we featured
in December 2014.
Dr. Cowan makes a strong argument that heart attacks are caused
by a malfunction in your central nervous system (CNS)—specifically,
an imbalance between your sympathetic and parasympathetic
branches—rather than by clogged arteries and compromised blood flow.
I encourage you to read his article, but in short, he presents
compelling evidence that arteries more than 90 percent blocked, in
almost all cases, compensate for that blockage by forming a
collateral blood supply.
In other words, your body naturally performs it's own natural
"bypass" if a vessel becomes significantly blocked. This explains
why the majority of angioplasty and bypass surgeries provide only
minimal benefit for most people.
According to Dr. Cowan, most heart attacks happen as a result of
the following mechanism: A person experiences decreased healing
activity of his or her parasympathetic nervous system over time,
typically from chronic stress.
Then a strong emotional stressor activates a sympathetic
response—but there is no parasympathetic response to compensate.
This causes an uncontrolled release of adrenalin, which breaks
down the myocardial cells and interferes with their metabolism,
depriving the heart of its normal fuel sources. This in turn impairs
the heart's ability to contract and a heart attack occurs.
According to Dr. Cowan, heart attacks typically occur without any
disruption in blood flow. So it's the heart muscle itself that
experiences the problem—not the arteries. If Dr. Cowan's
theory is correct, the implications are enormous with respect to the
effects of unmanaged stress on your heart.
Is Stress Making You a 'Heart Attack Waiting to Happen?'
Not only does
stress increase inflammation, but it activates your sympathetic
nervous system (the "fight or flight" response) and suppresses your
parasympathetic.
If heart attacks result from a suppressed parasympathetic nervous
system, then preventing them obviously requires nurturing and
protecting this part of your CNS—which means keeping your stress
level under control. It's well known that stress can trigger
heart attacks, but stress may be even MORE deadly if you're a woman.
A Yale study6,
7 found that young and middle aged women have a harder
time recovering after a heart attack than men, potentially due to
the stress of multiple roles between family and work. Women are also
twice as likely as men to die within the first two weeks following a
heart attack.8
Research9,10
has also linked having a bout of intense anger with an 8.5-fold
higher risk of experiencing a heart attack in the following two
hours. Stress and pain also often go together, and a number of pain
medications, including aspirin,11
ibuprofen and Celebrex can heighten your heart attack risk.12
Practices such as yoga, meditation,
mindfulness training, and
EFT (emotional freedom techniques) reduce stress in part by
rebalancing your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
A study from Brown University13
examined whether having something called "dispositional
mindfulness"—which they define as being very aware and attentive to
what you're thinking and feeling at any given moment—is important
for heart health.
They found that people with high mindfulness scores had an 83
percent greater prevalence of good cardiovascular health. Being
mindful doesn't necessarily mean that you're regularly practicing
mindfulness exercises like meditation but is more about having
mind-body awareness.
People with higher mindfulness may be more aware of the impact
their lifestyle choices have on their bodies, and be more likely to
change their habits. For some people, being present is a natural
part of their personality, but for others, it must be learned. By
being more mindful, you will likely make better lifestyle choices
for yourself and your family. Another recent study found that
optimism can cut your heart attack risk in half, but the
tendency to always expect the worst is linked to a 25 percent higher
risk of dying before age 65.
Conventional Wisdom Is NOT So Wise About Cholesterol
Cholesterol has been blamed for just about every case of heart
disease for the last 30+ years, but in reality, you need cholesterol
in order to be healthy. Your body uses cholesterol for cell
membranes, hormones, neurotransmitters, and overall nerve function.
This is important to understand before discussing what constitutes a
heart-healthy diet. High cholesterol does not cause heart
disease, but insulin resistance and leptin resistance are major
players.
These metabolic problems are caused by modern lifestyle factors,
including a diet high in processed carbohydrates, refined
sugars/processed fructose,
and industrial seed oils, as well as insufficient exercise, chronic
sleep deprivation, environmental toxins, and poor gut health. Your
total cholesterol number is not a good indicator for cardiac risk,
but a test called NMR lipoprofile can be quite useful as it measures
LDL particle number and other markers related to insulin and
leptin resistance. To learn more, please listen to my interview
with Chris Kresser, L.Ac, above.
What Constitutes a Heart-Healthy Diet?
In addition to stress management, proper diet and exercise are
your best allies in reducing your risk for
heart disease. When it comes to “proper diet,” keep in mind that
many of the conventional dietary recommendations are highly flawed.
The recommendation to limit sodium is one. While the American Heart
Association recommends limiting sodium to 1,500 mg per day, recent
research14
found no benefit at all among elderly people with low sodium
consumption. They also found no indication of harm among those who
consumed higher levels. Also, in addition to what you eat, an
equally important consideration is when you eat.
Intermittent fasting, which can rapidly normalize insulin
resistance, also has a number of other health benefits, including
improved cardiovascular health, reduced cancer risk, gene repair,
and increased longevity.
More than half of the American population is insulin resistant,
and intermittent fasting can be tremendously helpful for normalizing
this condition and help your body remember how to burn fat for fuel.
It's not something you have to continue for life, however. Nor is it
necessary if you're not struggling with insulin resistance or
symptoms thereof, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart
disease, or excess weight for example. Recent studies show that when
your body begins burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel,
your risk for all kinds of chronic disease will drop. Several basic
nutritional guidelines are outlined in the table below. For more
comprehensive information about what constitutes a truly
heart-healthy diet, I suggest reviewing
my
Optimized Nutrition Plan.
Limit or eliminate all processed foods, and focus your
diet on fresh whole foods
Limit fructose to less than 25 grams per day, from all
sources, including whole fruits. If you have insulin
resistance, diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, strive
to keep your fructose consumption below 15 grams per day
Avoid artificial sweeteners of any kind
Eliminate gluten and other highly allergenic foods from
your diet
Eat organic foods whenever possible to avoid exposure to
harmful agricultural chemicals such as glyphosate
Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw)
Increase your consumption of fresh vegetables
Incorporate naturally
fermented foods into your diet, such as cultured
vegetables and dairy, which help build healthy gut flora
Swap all trans fats (vegetable oils, margarine etc.) for
healthy fats like avocado, raw butter, and coconut oil
To rebalance your
omega-3
to omega-6 ratio, take a high-quality omega-3 supplement
such as krill oil, and reduce your consumption of processed
omega-6 fats from vegetable oils
Drink plenty of pure water
Your Heart Needs the Right Kind of Exercise
Exercising is extremely important for every aspect of your
health, including your heart and blood vessels, but in order to
maximize your benefit, it has to be the right kind of
exercise. Recent research has given us a much better understanding
of exercise physiology, and many of our past notions have been
turned upside-down, in terms of how long and how hard you can push
yourself without doing damage. Research shows that overdoing
endurance training can actually do more harm than good--especially
if you have a history of heart disease.
High-endurance training, such as running for an hour at a time,
puts extraordinary stress on your heart. And while stressing a
muscle usually makes it stronger, extremely high stress can
have the opposite effect—and when it comes to your heart muscle,
this is bad news. To strengthen as well as protect your heart, focus
on high intensity interval exercise instead of endurance training.
Short bursts of intense activity are safer and more effective than
conventional cardio—for your heart, general health, weight, and
overall fitness. For optimal benefits, make sure you allow your body
plenty of recovery time between sessions.
Excessive Sitting Raises Your Cardiac Risk—Even if You Go to the Gym
Sitting is the new smoking, raising your risk for lung cancer by
more than 54 percent. It's actually worse for you than secondhand
smoke! Prolonged sitting has significant negative impacts on your
cardiovascular and metabolic function. The combination of prolonged
sitting and inadequate exercise has been shown to double men's risk
of heart failure. Studies show that these risks hold true no matter
how much you exercise. In one recent study, six hours of
uninterrupted sitting was found to negate the positive health
benefits of one hour of exercise.
This means
intermittent movement may be even MORE important than spending
time at the gym. Standing up as much as possible and moving more
throughout the day have been shown to help prevent the damage done
by sitting. Ideally you want to sit less than three hours a day. If
that happened in the US, life expectancy would increase by three
years. Additionally walking 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day can be
another powerful tool. This is in addition to, not in place of, your
exercise program. This goal may be easier to achieve with a fitness
tracker. And try to do some of that walking outdoors!
Low Vitamin D Levels Raise Your Heart Attack Risk by 50 Percent
Cholesterol, sulfur, and vitamin D from sun exposure all work
together to protect your heart, brain, and blood vessels, so it's
important that you have sufficient amounts of all three.
Vitamin D reduces your
risk for hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart attack, and stroke.
One recent study found that postmenopausal women with higher vitamin
D levels had higher levels of HDL and lower levels of LDL and
triglycerides.
According to longtime vitamin D researcher Dr. Michael Holick,
vitamin D deficiency can increase your risk of heart attack by 50
percent, and if you have a heart attack while you're vitamin D
deficient, your odds of dying from that heart attack creeps up
toward 100 percent. The best source of vitamin D is from exposing
your skin to the sun so that your body will produce much-needed
cholesterol sulfate. That said, newer research shows that many foods
that were previously thought to be devoid of vitamin D actually do
contain it, so sun exposure,
food, and supplements are all viable sources.
The only way to determine whether or not your vitamin D level is
sufficient is to have regular blood tests. I recommend getting your
vitamin D level tested at least once a year, when your levels
are likely to be lowest, which is typically January or February if
you live in the northern hemisphere. To benefit from vitamin D, you
need a level of at least 40 ng/ml, and to get there, you may need
around 5,000-6,000 IUs or more of vitamin D3 per day, from all
sources. Ideally, strive to maintain a level between 50-70 ng/ml for
optimal health.
Grounding Benefits Your Heart and Blood
As you can see, there are many simple and inexpensive ways to
prevent becoming a heart attack statistic. Last but not least,
pioneering cardiologist Stephen T. Sinatra, MD, and coauthor of the
book Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?
has extolled the
benefits of grounding as a tool for heart health, as well as
overall health and vitality. When you walk barefoot, free electrons
are transferred from the earth into your body, and this grounding
effect is one of the most potent antioxidants known. Grounding also
helps thin your blood by improving its zeta potential, which means
it improves the energy between your red blood cells.
Grounding is a powerful way to reduce inflammation throughout
your body. Inflammation thrives when your blood is thick and you
have excess free radicals and excess positive charges in your body.
Grounding alleviates inflammation because it thins your blood and
infuses you with negatively charged ions, which enter through the
soles of your feet. Surfaces that allow for proper grounding include
sand and grass, bare dirt, and untreated concrete or brick.
Leather-soled shoes also allow you to ground while walking, whereas
rubber-soled shoes disconnect you from the earth and block this
beneficial electron flow.
Copyright 1997- 2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.