Tag Archives: heart disease

Reversing Heart Disease and An Anniversary To Celebrate

Progress Reports, , , , , , ,

Well trumpets please, today is an important day!

It marks the 5-year anniversary of Bill’s “event.”  He prefers “event” to heart attack, and says it was the whack upside the head he needed to realize it was time to up his game.

reversing heart disease fixitplan

Five Years Ago Today …

Chugging along back then, Bill was overweight, struggling with uncontrolled blood pressure (though recently on BP medication),  his cholesterol was somewhat elevated along with his LDL and triglycerides.  Even though we thought we ate pretty good, and even though we exercised 2-3 times a week, his heart attack fired the warning shot.   We had work to do!

We are SO fortunate to have been in the ER checking out the chest pain we hoped was  heartburn because he had the heart attack right then and there!  Blessfully resulting in no permanent damage to his heart.  I’ve told this whole story here in:  “The Beginning.”

We desperately wanted to know “CAN THIS BE FIXED?  HOW?”

Continue reading Reversing Heart Disease and An Anniversary To Celebrate →

The Promise of Pomegranate

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Pomegranate for atherosclerosis fixitplanPowerful Protection for our Arteries

The prevalence of heart disease and heart attacks has most people thinking arterial plaque, also known as atherosclerosis,  is inevitable.  But now we’re seeing proof that a lifestyle of exercise, a healthy diet, and managing stress can go a long way to prevent and reverse heart disease and can even shrink arterial plaque.

Enter the pomegranate!
A powerful fruit that helps us do just that.
pomegranate for heart health fixitplan
By Anton Croos (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Digging into the research and studies from around the globe, I was surprised and encouraged to learn how the pomegranate fruit reverses some of our body’s underlying behavior that leads to heart disease.   It seems our ruby red friend has potent abilities to Continue reading The Promise of Pomegranate →

Progress Report~Fall 2015

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Bill Peterson fixitplan

Progress Report Fall 2015A B+ you say?  What?
Well I kind of expected it.

 

Life stuff over the summer caused some stress and a wavering in focus on our exercise program and even some on our diet.  And there’s the irony! Because when motivation suffers, we all know that exercise and eating well are the best things you can do to combat the blues and stressful life stuff!

We haven’t been terrible.. we didn’t completely fall off the wagon and abandon our healthy focus.  Still plant-based, mostly whole foods, avoiding sugar and so on, but too often our dinner meals were getting skimpy on the greens for example.IMG_20150422_140836

And the gym..  well.. sometimes talking about the stress stuff, or computer time on Bill’s photography passion gobbled up the day before we knew it and we’d miss the gym.  So we didn’t always get the cardio time we know we need.   And this seemed to lead 20150914_215036to staying up too late, a little too much late-night popcorn (no butter of course), along with broken sleep and wakefulness in the night.  So things have not been going as well as they had been.  Our daily routine just plain got out of whack. Continue reading Progress Report~Fall 2015 →

Powerful, Healthy Things ~ Love and Kindness

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friend cardLast Monday,  a “heart healthy” card arrived in our mailbox!  Yes, there are such things.   The card was filled with all the warmth of a best hug, sent to us from dear friends.  It came at a good time, when we were both feeling anxiety and sadness over a recent event.  It made us think about the value in our lives and for our health of having close, loving relationships.  Suddenly the undercurrent of anxiety and sadness I felt was swept away and replaced with a warm feeling in my chest and a smile on my face.

We talk about stress and sadness and the damage it can take on our well-being in so many ways.  It raises blood pressure, exposes us to a constant and unhealthy barrage of stress hormones which stimulates inflammation, can cause irregular heartbeats, lead to depression, and so on.  But what we don’t talk about so much, Continue reading Powerful, Healthy Things ~ Love and Kindness →

Vitamin D and your Heart

Heart Health, , , ,

The Sunshine Vitamin!

Vitamin D and your heartMost of us have heeded the warnings to avoid sun exposure–covering ourselves with protective clothing and sunblock.  And this time of year it’s not easy to get much Vitamin D from the sun anyway, unless you live in the more southern climes.  But our bodies need Vitamin D so what are we to do?

Vitamin D is essential to our health for many reasons, and it’s important to know that low levels of Vitamin D are linked to an increased risk of heart disease.  According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, “a growing number of studies point to vitamin D deficiency as a risk factor for heart attacks, congestive heart failure, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), strokes, and the conditions associated with cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure and diabetes”. Continue reading Vitamin D and your Heart →