Preventing & Reversing Heart Disease For Dummies®
Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948558
ISBN 978-1-118- 94423-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118- 94424-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118- 94425-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Introduction
As you read this book, your heart is beating away in your chest, sustaining your life. Although it’s about the size of a clenched adult fist and weighs less than a pound, your heart beats 40 million times a year and generates enough force to lift you 100 miles into the atmosphere. What an amazing – and absolutely essential – machine!
So consider these facts:
✔ One American dies of heart disease every 40 seconds – amounting to almost 600,000 deaths every year.
✔ Almost every American adult has at least one of these risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol, smoking, being overweight, diabetes, stress, physical inactivity, or nutrient-poor diet. Not one family in America is left untouched by heart disease.
But here’s the good news: Regardless of your age, sex, ethnicity, and current heart health, you can acquire the knowledge and take action to work toward a healthier heart and the benefits that go with it. This book will help.
About This Book
Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease For Dummies is a commonsense guide for everyone. It discusses simple things that you can do every day to maximize your cardiac health and prevent heart disease. You’ll also find some basic strategies and lifestyle practices to reduce and reverse the risk factors you may have for the major forms of heart disease.
If you (or a loved one) already have heart disease, you also have come to the right place. I explore some facts related to coronary heart disease, angina, heart attacks, hypertension, heart failure, and many other cardiac conditions. You’ll discover ways to work with your doctor to control these conditions and possibly to reverse many of their consequences. Lifestyle modifications provide the foundation for effective change.
There are a few things that you should know about how I put the book together. First, you can read the first part of the book (Chapters 1 to 3) for a brief but comprehensive introduction to heart disease and then go to the chapters that interest you most. Or you can go right to a specific chapter that you need, such as Chapter 5 on creating a beneficial nutrition and physical activity plan or Chapter 9 on managing cholesterol problems. Part V contains more than 40 dishes you can choose from to start making more heart-healthy meals right away. If you want to skip sidebars (where I provide additional tips) or Technical Stuff icons, that’s okay, too. Think of this book as a tool that you can use any way that works best for you.
You will find it helpful to note a few conventions I use:
✔ Atherosclerosis is the medical name for the cardiovascular disease process that starts with fatty streaks in the arteries and progresses to large lesions that narrow the arteries and may rupture and form clots that block arteries.
✔ When atherosclerosis occurs in the arteries of the heart, it is called coronary heart disease and abbreviated CHD. This is the common term I use throughout the book, although this condition is also called coronary artery disease (CAD).
✔ In the recipe section, temperatures are Fahrenheit, olive oil is extra virgin olive oil, and pepper is ideally freshly ground (but that’s optional). (See the appendix for a metric conversion chart.)
Within this book, some web addresses may break across two lines of text. If you are reading a print copy of this book and want to go to the website, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s printed in the text, ignoring the line break. If you are reading this as an e-book, just click on the link to go directly to the web page.
Foolish Assumptions
Every writer envisions the people who will read his (or her) book. Here are some qualities that I think you have:
✔ You care about your heart health and that of your family. And you want up-to-date and practical information that will help you take steps to ensure heart health.
✔ You are not afraid to take action to improve your health. And you want practical steps.
✔