It's Never Too Late to Protect Your Heart

Heart disease, the nation’s number one killer, takes the lives of nearly 700,000 Americans each year. Of course, you can’t change your family health history, gender, or ethnicity, which may boost your risk for this condition.

According to David Zukoff, M.D., chief of the department of Cardiology at Riverview Medical Center, "Ongoing research offers plenty of things individuals can do to lower their risk of developing heart disease." Take these latest findings to heart:

1) A British Medical Journal review study concluded that women and men age 50 and older could reduce their risk of developing heart disease by 76 percent. The recipe for success: eating 4 ounces of fish four times a week and consuming the following heart-healthy items every day:

2 ½ ounces of almonds
¹/10 ounce of fresh garlic
3 ½ ounces of dark chocolate
7 ounces of fruit and vegetables
5 ounces of wine

2) Keeping their old friends and making new ones might help women’s hearts. This is the message of a new study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Compared to socially isolated women, those with a large social circle had more than half the risk of dying from heart disease. This study observed more than 500 women with an average age of 59.

3) In a study of men ages 71 to 93, those who walked 1½ miles a day cut their risk for cardiovascular disease in half compared to their peers who walked less than a quarter of a mile daily.

4) A study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms that postmenopausal women also can take strides against heart disease by walking. Those who either walked briskly or performed vigorous exercise for at least 2½ hours per week had about a 30 percent lower risk for cardiovascular events — such as heart attack or stroke — than inactive women. Vigorous exercise included activities such as swimming laps, jogging, tennis, and aerobics. What’s more, those who walked briskly and engaged in vigorous exercise enjoyed a 37 percent lower risk than did their sedentary counterparts.