✔ You want to work as a partner with your doctor(s).
✔ You realize that a healthy lifestyle, not medicines or medical procedures, is the foundation of overall health, including heart health.
✔ You are ready to commit to creating new healthful habits and taking control of your heart health.
Icons Used in This Book
This book uses the following icons to point out different kinds of information:
Beyond the Book
“But wait there’s more … !” Don’t you hate those infomercials? I’m happy to say that the extras that come with this book actually give you brief “stuff” you can use.
Need the basic steps and tips for keeping your heart healthy? Need to refresh your memory of nutrient-rich foods before you hit the deli? Need a little inspiration to work some exercise into your day? Got a check up and need to know what to ask the doctor? Access the Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/preventingreversingheartdisease.
Each part of the book also has additional online articles. You can find tools for managing weight, tips for eating out, a checklist of essential equipment for your kitchen, and more. Head to www.dummies.com/extras/preventingreversingheartdisease.
Where to Go from Here
As I note earlier, you can start with any chapter you like in this book. The simplest approach – and one that refreshes your understanding of the basics of heart health and the risks of heart disease – is to start by reading (or skimming through) Part I and then go to the chapters that most interest you or answer your current questions.
If your primary interest is adopting a heart-healthy way of eating and increasing your physical activity, then start with Chapter 5 which tells you how to embrace a healthy diet and lifestyle. If you also want to lose weight, then head on over to Chapter 10 on managing weight. Or if you have received a diagnosis of high blood pressure (Chapter 8) or of high cholesterol problems (Chapter 9), you can get immediate information and tips in those chapters.
Couples starting a family or raising one want the best health for their children. Overall health and heart health are family affairs. Chapters 7 and 23 give you invaluable tips.
Just as there are many habits and conditions that put your heart as risk, there are many pathways to heart health. This book opens the gate to these pathways. So here’s my invitation to take the first step on the path that works for you.
Part I
Getting Started with Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease
✔ Find the basic information you need to begin taking control of your heart health.
✔ Understand how heart disease can affect your life and what you can do about it.
✔ Discover how the miracle machine that is your heart works and how heart disease develops.
✔ Look at how heart disease progresses to such events as chest pain or heart attacks.
✔ Find out what behaviors and conditions increase your risk of developing heart disease and what you can do to stop these risks in their tracks.
Chapter 1
Taking Charge of Your Heart Health
In This Chapter
▶ Reviewing the good and bad news about heart disease in the United States
▶ Looking at heart disease as an equal opportunity health problem
▶ Finding out that you can improve your heart health
▶ Reversing your risks of heart disease – what’s possible
Human health, daily performance, and life itself depend on the heart. The heart and the cardiovascular system have amazing sophistication, strength, and durability. At the same time, the health of the heart rests in a fragile balance. When even small parts of its complex machinery are a little bit out of whack, the heart can cause great discomfort, pain, and even death.
Despite the emotional energy we attach to our hearts and the heart’s crucial importance to life itself, most people are pretty ignorant about the heart and how it works. You know you can’t live without one. You know that heart disease is pretty common and more than a little scary. So when your doctor says your cholesterol levels or elevated blood pressure are raising your risk of heart disease, it’s a little alarming. And the bottom falls out of your stomach if your physician says, “I don’t think that chest pain is a muscle strain. We’d better do some tests to rule out heart disease.” At moments like that, you wish you knew more about that small pump thumping away in your chest and all the things that threaten it and what you can do about them. That’s where Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease For Dummies comes in.
In this chapter, I show you first why heart disease is such an important health problem for Americans and why you should care about that. More important, however, I give you an overview of how possible it is to prevent heart disease for you and your family. Even if you already have risk factors for heart disease or have been diagnosed with heart disease, you will see that you can take steps to reverse these risks and to control or even reduce some symptoms or manifestations of heart disease. This chapter outlines the good news and practical strategies that I discuss in detail in each chapter in this book.
Facing the Bad News about Heart Disease
Heart disease is public health enemy number one in America. In one or another of its manifestations, heart disease touches virtually every family in the United States. Although the death rate from heart disease in the U.S. has been declining steadily – about 31 percent between 2000 and 2010 – the health burden and danger of heart disease remains alarmingly high. Consider these startling facts:
✔ Almost 84 million Americans – more than one in every four – have one or more types of heart disease.
✔ Heart disease and stroke cause more than one of every three deaths.
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