How Your Heart Works – Understanding your Heart

When it comes to the health of your heart, it helps to have basic understanding of its structure. This is especially true if you’ve been diagnosed with a specific problem that stems from your heart’s anatomy. Let’s discuss the structure of your most important muscle in very simple terms.

Your heart is made up of four chambers. The right atrium and ventricle help to circulate blood through the lungs. The left atrium and ventricle help to circulate blood to the rest of your body.

So the blood that’s on the right side of your heart is depleted of its oxygen and the blood that flows through the left side of your heart is oxygen-rich. The atria receive blood into the heart and the ventricles pump blood out of it.

Between these four chambers there are valves. These valves help to keep blood flowing in the right direction. They also prevent it from slipping back to the wrong chamber when the heart is at rest. In a sense, they are one-way doors.

The cells of the heart are specialized and actually will beat on their own. To make sure that they all beat at the right time, the heart has a special area called a pacemaker. This is located in the right atrium of the heart and is called the SA node. It sends an electrical impulse to regulate your heartbeat.

The heart is the central organ of the circulatory system. The entire system works together to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the cells. At the same time it picks up wastes and carbon dioxide from the cells. In order to do this, blood vessels provide a transportation network for delivery.

The left ventricle empties blood out into the aorta – the strongest artery in the body. It carries the blood away from the heart and branches off into smaller arteries and eventually blood makes its way to the capillaries.

At the capillaries the blood makes its exchanges and then returns to the heart through the veins. The vena cava is the major vein that returns blood to the heart. There are also pulmonary arteries and veins that transport blood from the heart to the lungs and then back again.

The heart may seem like a simple structure, but it can actually be quite complicated because of its many structures and its essential functions. The heart is the most efficient pump on earth – no manmade structure can come close to its efficiency and longevity.

Heart Healthy Cooking Tips – Cook for the Heart

When it comes to keeping your heart healthy, your diet is critical. Incorporating new cooking techniques can help you to improve your cholesterol and blood pressure, which in turn will reduce your risk of heart disease.

And if you learn to cook healthy for the whole family, you’ll lower everyone’s risk. Using healthy oils to cook is a great first step in improving your cooking. Olive oil and canola oil are the best oils because they’re monounsaturated.

This type of fat actually helps to lower cholesterol and make your heart and blood vessels work more efficiently. Anytime you need to cook in oil, you should use this type. As often as possible, you should try methods of cooking besides frying.

There are many options such as baking, broiling, and grilling that are healthier for your body, but still give great flavor to foods. As often as possible, you should add vegetables and fruits to your recipes.

For example, if you’re going to make an omelet, add tomatoes, peppers, or other vegetables to your eggs. Try using egg beaters, for a delicious scrambled egg with zero cholesterol. Adding the vegetables, increases the fiber content and the nutrition you get from your food.

People in today’s world are on the go all the time and it’s hard to fit cooking into your schedule. But cooking at home almost always is better for you than eating out. One way that you can make sure you get as many meals at home as possible is to double your recipes.

Use one part of the recipe to eat for the current meal and freeze the other part to be used another day. When you get home from a long day and don’t feel like making a big meal, you can simply heat up the food you cooked earlier.

Using lean meats is also an important technique for lowering your saturated fat. When you need to use beef for a recipe, choose cuts that are “round” or “loin” to keep the fat low.

Whenever possible, get low fat ground beef for cooking. Drain your meet of any excess oil in the pan, and I also take a paper towel to the meet to blot any oil before adding my healthy sauces. If you can make substitutions in your recipes, lean chicken and turkey often make more sense for your heart health than red meat but be sure to check the cut and nutritional information about the fat content on the label.

Many people make the mistake of eating bland food when they’re trying to get healthier. But you need to make sure that the food you cook is still delicious and appealing or you and your family won’t be able to stick to eating healthy. So make use of your spice cabinet and find flavorful recipes that you look forward to eating.

Fast Cholesterol Facts – Facts About Your Cholesterol

Cholesterol – Too Much Can be a problem, but we all need it in order to live. There are many misconceptions about cholesterol, and sometimes it can be confusing. Read on for more tips about this substance in our bodies, and some ways you can manage your cholesterol if you have been told by your doctor that you need to work on lowering it.

Cholesterol is something that people have learned to fear. We spend a lot of time eating foods that don’t have much of it and we get our blood tested for it, but what is this strange substance that’s responsible for damaging our hearts?

Cholesterol is material that’s waxy and fatty. It’s found in the blood and in all of the cells of the body. In fact, cholesterol can be a good thing – you’re supposed to have some.

Your body actually puts it to good use when it’s making cell membranes and putting together the building blocks of hormones. So why do we worry so much about having it if we need it?

Too much cholesterol in the body results in hypercholesterolemia. This is the technical term for high cholesterol. When your body has more cholesterol than it can use for its everyday processes, the rest of it ends up floating freely in the blood. When this happens, it begins to become deposited on the blood vessel walls.

Where does all this cholesterol come from? Interestingly enough, your body actually produces about ¾ of the cholesterol in your blood. The remaining ¼ of your blood cholesterol comes from the foods you eat.

People often have high cholesterol because genetically they’re designed to produce more, regardless of what they eat. Sometimes people have high cholesterol mainly due to eating too much of it.

All cholesterol is not created equal. The bad kind of cholesterol is LDL (low density lipoprotein) and triglyceride (which comes from fatty foods). The good kind of cholesterol is HDL (high density lipoprotein).

LDL is the kind of cholesterol that gets deposited on your blood vessel walls and HDL actually goes and picks up the bad cholesterol to help keep it away from your blood vessel walls. Naturally, you want your LDL levels to be low and your HDL levels to be high.

Many people can manage high cholesterol levels by improving their diet. That consists of eating a low amount of saturated fat and a high amount of fiber. Physical activity is also one way to raise your HDL levels. However, sometimes genetics overrides your lifestyle and medication is required to lower your blood cholesterol levels.

It’s important that you get a yearly checkup and have your blood cholesterol levels measured. This will help you to determine if you need to make improvement in your lifestyle or medication routine. High cholesterol leads to hardening of the arteries called atherosclerosis. It’s a major cause of heart disease.

Easy Ways to Reduce Your Cholesterol – How to Lower Your Cholesterol Without Taking Medications

Lower Your Cholesterol Without Medicines

You’ve just received a phone call from your doctor and it’s not so great news. Turns out, you’re cholesterol is over 200. Before you head to the pharmacy to pick up a cholesterol lowering medication, you should talk with your doctor about trying to reduce your cholesterol through lifestyle changes.

One of the first things you can do is increase the fiber in your diet. Fiber comes from plants and helps to reduce the cholesterol in your blood. You can increase your fiber by eating more fruits and vegetables.

You can also improve your fiber by eating whole grain foods such as bread, pasta, and rice. It’s also possible to take a fiber supplement to improve the level of fiber in your diet. You can also add fiber to your diet by eating beans. These are a great substitute for meat in your daily diet.

Adding sterols and stanols to your diet can also help your cholesterol. These are chemicals found in plants that research has shown to improve your blood cholesterol levels. You can get them just from eating vegetables.

However, if you’re really trying to lower your cholesterol you may want to look for foods that are enriched with these chemicals. There are many margarine brands that are heart healthy and add these chemicals. You can also find them added to some brands of orange juice.

Eating nuts can also improve your cholesterol levels. Nuts have had a bad reputation for years because they contain fat. But the fat they contain is actually good for your heart. So grab a handful of almonds, walnuts, pistachios, or pecans between meals to help improve your heart health. Cooking with olive oil is also a way to improve your heart health. It contains healthy fat that helps to reduce cholesterol.

In addition to adding these healthy nutrients to your diet, you should also make sure to eat a diet that’s low in cholesterol. You can easily find the amount of cholesterol on foods by checking the nutrition label. Look for foods that are very low in cholesterol or cholesterol free.

You can also improve your cholesterol levels by adding exercise. Exercise is one of the only proven ways to raise your HDL cholesterol levels. This is the good cholesterol that helps to keep your arteries clear of plaque.

Thirty to 60 minutes of exercise every day will help to improve your cholesterol. Incorporate the type of exercise into your routine that you enjoy, so that you’ll be more likely to actually stick with it. Even walking briskly for 30 to 60 minutes a day can help get you into better shape and help lower your cholesterol as well. By making a few changes in your diet and exercise routine, you can actually reduce your cholesterol levels enough to keep you from having to take medication.

Holter Monitor Testing

What is a Holter Monitor?

A Holter Monitor is a machine that your doctor will order which will continuously record your heart rhythms for 24 hours or more. The monitor is worn continuously throughout the day and night and because it is worn for an extended time period, it can help physicians determine if there is a problem with the heart that would not normally be detected with a regular EKG which only checks the patient’s heart rhythym for less than a minute.

The white patches you see in the photo above are attached to your chest area and are hooked up to a small box (see the black box in the patient’s pocket area) that will store your heart rhythym and rate information while you are wearing the monitor. It is helpful to keep a journal while you are wearing the monitor detailing the date/time/activities you do while wearing the device along with any symptoms you have. Writing down specifically what symptoms you have and the date/time they occured will help your physician when analyzing the results of the test. It is also helpful to rate your symptoms if you have any while wearing the monitor on a level from 1-10. For example, if you are walking briskly uphill and have chest pain, you would write down in your journal something like this if you felt your chest pain was at about a level “4″ on a scale from 1-10.

Sample Journal Entry for Patient Wearing Holter Monitor:

Date:
1/1/current year

Activity: Walking uphill briskly

Symptoms: chest pain level 4 on scale from 1-10 with 1 being the least and 10 being the worst

Download A Sample Holter Monitor Log – With Data

Download Sample Holter Monitor Log – Without Data Blank Patient Symptom Form

When your monitor is attached the technician may shave your skin so that the patches will adhere better. It is also a good idea to ask for some replacement patches so that if the patches become dislodged or fall off, that you can replace the patch and re-attach the lead.

It is also a good idea to take a shower or bathe before you have the holter monitor attached. You will not be able to take a shower while you are wearing the monitor.