Stroke Risk!

Today a cardiologist told me not to exercise because it could be me at risk for a stroke! Imagine that no exercise for me, but health comes first. My blood pressure has been very high, the reason for my visit. Today it was 190/110. So I got more medication and had an ultrasound on my heart. Will know more in 2 weeks.

50 days unitl I'm 50!

Well now the biggest challege starts, losing weight by my 50th birthday. Besides the goal to lose by a certain date it will fix a lot of my health problems, especially the blood pressure.

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE OVERVIEW

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a common condition that can lead to serious complications if untreated. Making dietary changes and losing weight are effective treatments for reducing blood pressure.
Other lifestyle changes that can help to reduce blood pressure include stopping smoking, reducing stress, reducing alcohol consumption, and exercising regularly. These changes are effective when used alone, but often have the greatest benefit when used together.

November Numbers

How to Maintain Fitness Over 40 With Less Weight and More Energy

Maintaining fitness over 40 is easier than you might think. Whether your fortieth birthday is rapidly approaching, or even if you are older than forty, you may be wondering whether you'll ever recapture those youthful, vital feelings that come with being completely healthy and in great shape. Sometimes it feels as though society gives us permission to let ourselves go after we hit the "Big Four-Oh" but we don't have to give in. The fact is, most of us will live to be octogenarians or nonagenarians, and some of us will live to be over one hundred years old. Can you imagine living a sedentary, unhappy life for nearly half a century or longer? Luckily, fitness over 40 years of age doesn't have to be difficult; all it takes is a small amount of effort.

Fitness Over 40: Recapture Lost Energy, Regain Your Youthful, Trim Appearance, and More
Have you ever wondered what happened to the energy you used to have? Do you wake up feeling fatigued rather than refreshed, or discovering mysterious new aches and pains that make you worry that life will never be fun again? Are old problems getting worse instead of going away? If so, imagine yourself finding your way back to a younger, more energetic, healthier feeling you. It really is possible.
If you are over forty and suffering from an ever-expanding waistline and other bulges, then you might be feeling as though your social life is over. If the only clothes that seem to fit lately have elastic waistbands, comfort panels, and other features designed to make living with a high percentage of body fat more tolerable, then you might think your fashion choices are diminishing as you get older. Don't worry - it's not too late to retain your youthful appearance and maintain fitness over 40.

The fact is, there is a simple and effective way to get your life back on track and enjoy all the things you have worked so hard to gain over the years. It does require some effort on your part - after all, no one has developed a magic pill yet!

• You will need to keep an open mind, and be willing to learn about how your choices affect your energy level, your waistline, and your health in general.
• You will need to be willing to try new foods
• You may need to change your attitude about exercise - many of us think we've got to work up a real sweat in order for benefits to occur, and that simply isn't true.

All it Takes is a Personal Commitment to Fitness Over 40
By making a personal commitment to yourself to give your body the tools it needs to rebuild cellular structures properly, get rid of accumulated toxins, and replace old habits with a new and empowering mindset, you really can regain a youthful appearance, improve your energy, enjoy life more and keep your fitness over 40. Best of all, you don't have to do it on your own. A new program, Happy and Fit Over 40, provides you with all the tools you need to make positive, lasting changes. By this time next year, you could be looking at a whole new you...all it takes is a commitment to yourself.

November wasn't a good month!

Between getting new medication on the 1st that had a great side effect( Weight Gain) to holiday eating it hasn't been a great month for me. Of course I'm not going to give up, I going to go hard on one of the worse months to ever diet! Office snacks, holidays parties and family get-together don't help at all. I'm at my best with challenges like these. Getting back on track.

Thanksgiving video by Leonard Dozier.

Healthy Heart Habits May Also Guard Against Cancer

Good cholesterol, blood pressure levels and more appear to reduce tumor risk, study finds.

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 16, 2011 (HealthDay News) — People who are diligent about keeping their heart healthy have a good chance of staving off cancer as well, researchers report.

Individuals who don't smoke and who maintain a healthy body-mass index (BMI), normal blood pressure and two to four other "ideal" measures of heart health have a 38 percent lower risk of developing cancer, according to research scheduled for presentation Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Fla.

The study authors hope the score they've developed will help doctors drive home the message that prevention is key to bothcancer and heart disease.

"Physicians need motivation to really push the issue of prevention with patients," said lead author Laura J. Rasmussen-Torvik, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Other experts agreed.

"If we give patients a double whammy [message], in the ideal world, we might be preventing two of these biggest killers. It might be a stronger message," said Dr. Tara Narula, a cardiologist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

"People generally know that healthy behaviors prevent heart disease and cancer, but to [relate risk factors such as cholesterol] to cancer is novel," added Dr. Harmony Reynolds, associate director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City. "It's very nice to have that crossover in practice. Sometimes I talk to patients about lowering their cholesterol and exercising, and they get very fatalistic saying that, in my family, cancer is the problem. It's very convenient to be able to say these things."

"Ideal" cardiovascular health is one of the American Heart Association's Strategic 2020 Goals, which aim to improve Americans' heart health by 20 percent and reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke by 20 percent.

For this study, researchers followed more than 13,000 healthy individuals for 13 years, measuring seven "metrics" of heart health at the start and tracking any cancer that developed. Those seven factors are: not smoking, normal BMI (a calculation based on weight and height), physical activity, healthy diet, and safe cholesterol, blood pressure and fasting blood glucose levels.

Between 1987 and 2006, the participants developed more than 1,800 new cancers, namely prostate, breast, lung and colon. But, the more "ideal" factors people had, the less likely they were to develop cancer.

Compared to people who had none of the seven factors, having just one reduced the risk of cancer by 20 percent. Three factors lowered the risk of cancer by 22 percent, and five to seven pushed the risk down 38 percent.

"If you lower yourself by one point [risk factor], that's a significant decrease in cancer risk and a lower risk of heart disease," said Dr. Christopher Cove, assistant director of the cardiac catheterization lab at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "That's exciting."

When the researchers looked at the same participants but removed smoking from the measure, the association was no longer significant but the trend was still in the right direction.

"This says that, yes, smoking is really important but we still see the trend when smoking is taken out, so adhering to a healthy diet and having a low BMI are still important for cancer risk," said Rasmussen-Torvik.

The association might have been even clearer had the study had more participants and more cases of cancer, said Reynolds.

It's not clear why these associations exist, but Narula hypothesized they could relate to overall inflammation, which drives both heart disease and cancer.

The study authors said they hope to see more collaboration between the American Heart Association and cancer advocacy groups.

"I think the American public is very confused about conflicting health messages," said Rasmussen-Torvik. "If organizations like the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association could work together to emphasize some core prevention goals, that could be beneficial to all groups."

Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.