February is National Heart Disease Awareness Month. As a trusted advisor of Heart Health in New Jersey, MD Wellness is posting a series of articles addressing targeted age groups.
Each day, heart disease, “the silent killer” destroys the lives of thousands of people in the United States. In fact, the Center for Disease Control estimates that 600,000 Americans die of heart disease each year, the cause of roughly 1 in every 4 deaths. Furthermore, every year almost 935,000 suffer from a heart attack. This is indeed very disturbing news. The good news is that heart disease is almost completely preventable. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” definitely applies to heart disease. Do not wait, start protecting yourself today!
An Age of Awareness
You are over the age of 40, and you are now past your potential peak of physical health. But if you do the right things you can still look forward to decades of healthy living. For many of you, your children are grown, your career is well established, and you begin to feel renewed. However, you may also begin to feel the effects of aging. You may be experiencing little aches and pains, weight gain, sluggishness, and other signs of dysfunction. As you hit “middle age” you have an increased risk of manifesting all sorts of chronic degenerative disease, including heart disease. Now is a prime time to pay extra attention to your health needs.
A Balanced Diet is a Prerequisite for a Healthy Life
Primarily, an optimal diet can significantly affect how rapidly you age and if you will go on to develop catastrophic vascular disease like a heart attack. Nutritional requirements don’t vastly differ as you age. You require the same types of wholesome foods whether you are a baby, an adolescent, a young adult or middle aged or elderly. When eating, you need to supply your cells, tissues and organs with the vital nutrients required for growth and repair. Simply put, a regime of non-processed (and preferably organic) meat, fish, poultry, eggs and cheese, plenty of low starch vegetables and restricted amounts of carbohydrates (grains, fruit, and starches), and adequate amounts of spring water is ideal. As you get older, you may feel the effects of dietary indiscretions more so than when you were younger. This is because as you age, you likely have reduced reserves of vitalizing substances in your body and therefore are less able to compensate for any unhealthy habits you may have. Keeping to a healthy diet will provide you with decades of benefits. The joy of healthy living is a much greater and longer lasting reward then a transient moment of indulging in unhealthy practices. This does not mean that you cannot enjoy and indulge on occasion, but these treats must not be excessively frequent or deleterious.
The Importance of Proper Exercise
Healthy exercise is pertinent at any age. However, as a middle aged person, you must make sure not to over work yourself. Too much exercise is actually much more harmful than too little exercise. “Listen” to your body to maintain awareness of when you may be overdoing your training. The proper balance between activity and rest is vital to your overall wellness. Make sure to give yourself at least 2 days off each week to recover. Resistance training, such as using weights, is necessary for building your muscle mass. Muscle is where you store your amino acids (protein) and one sign of aging is loss of muscle mass. Make sure to do your resistance training with a full range of motion in order to avoid setting yourself up for tendon injuries. Additionally, daily stretching, especially in your core muscle groups are extremely important to maintain your flexibility and keep you limber.
Avoid Health Misinformation
There is so much information out there for mainstream consumption. Unfortunately, most of this information is really misinformation being disseminated by corporations that are more interested in profit than your health. Consequently, much of the health information you hear is designed to provoke some sort of behavior on your part. Even more unfortunately, if you are highly interested in obtaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle you are very likely at the highest risk for being misled.
Engage Professional Guidance
Dr. Michael Rothman explains that if you are in your forties or fifties, you would benefit greatly in meeting with him. You may be suffering from nagging symptoms like weight gain, fatigue, aches and pains, sleeplessness, anxiety, gastrointestinal problems and other symptoms of chronic unwellness. These symptoms are a result of years of well-intentioned but inadequate diet, excessive work, lack of rest and an overall overstressed lifestyle. By working with Dr. Rothman, you can review your current dietary and life style habits and analyze your medications and nutritional supplements. You may be putting a lot of effort into your health, but that effort can yield much better results when guided by an experienced, knowledgeable and caring holistically minded doctor. A Metabolically Directed Wellness consultation with Dr. Rothman at MD Wellness in Red Bank, NJ would allow you to utilize an individualized plan combining nutrition and exercise. This personalized program can help you to identify your stressors, rebalance your body chemistry and set a course for a long, fulfilling life
Don’t have time to make it into the office? Purchase Edibolic Stress, How The Lies You Are Being Fed Are Making You Sick by Michael E. Rothman M.D., FACEP and Editor/Co-writer Ken Bruck.
