Adopting heart 💓 health for our planet 🌎

At this moment 30 trillion cells throughout your body are receiving the necessary nutrition🌿 for life to take place. As your heart works at its maximum required strength for a given load, our blood vessels carry this nutrition to allow the best outcomes for our ongoing health. But how is our health linked to the health of our planet?  Well, they go hand in hand. If we looked at the lifestyle of our ancestors, their heart health was often free of coronary heart disease. 

Recently, a 1998 study carried out over 3 years in rural China found a complete absence of recorded coronary heart events among 246,000 citizens, under the age of 65.  (Campbell, T.C; et al) 

Why was this, when in the United States the study demonstrated a 16.7 times higher incidence of coronary artery disease mortality in men and a 5.6 times higher incidence of mortality in women, than the Chinese group they were compared to? Part of the answer to this question lies in the diet of the two groups. In the United States the general population consume 50% more fat 🍔, three times less fiber 🌭, and 90% more meat in their diet. As a global population our lifestyles are becoming more inactive. We have allowed the industrial revolution to serve us opportunities to have machines do things for us, and a sizeable proportion of our leisure time is spent sitting. 150,000 years ago, our ancestors were doing approximately 4-5 hours of moderate to intense activity, including walking🚶🏽, running🏃🏽, gathering food 🚣🏽and materials for nutrition 🌿and shelter, building shelter🏡, and perhaps running away from tigers🐯! Our circadian rhythms were adjusted to the sun 🌤coming up and going down, and we were more socially integrated into our communities👫👯🏇🏽⛹🏽. From a global point of view our present growing requirements for land to allow livestock breeding to provide food for our populations is unsustainable🤷🏽, and even an adverse impact issue for our health. We eat too much fat🧀, salt🍿, and sugar🍩, which also hides in the processed food and food prepared outside our homes. To make the planet Earth more sustainable and help lower the personal impact we have on climate change there are things we can do.  We can help both our heart health and the health of the only planet we live on – THE EARTH🌎.  

We could include: 

•   Advocating to our politicians for more parks🏞 and open spaces for our children to be safely active🏄🏽🏊🏽⛹🏽🚴🏽🤸🏽.

•   Understand how to incorporate less fat in our diets 🍽.

•   Advocate to our favorite restaurants for more fruit 🍓and vegetables 🌽🍆on their menus.

•   Research more into the health benefits of whole food plant-based diets that are rich in legumes, nuts and seeds and allow no more than 10% total fats in our diets. (A win-win for our health and the health of the planet).

•   Find more opportunities to remain socially integrated into our communities and understand the positive influence this has on determining our longevity 🧘‍♂️.

•   Be mindful of the national recommendations for exercise and activity and understand the impact that this has on our long-term health.

•   Understand that our heart health is vital to allow healthy locomotion throughout our life and must therefore being given a very high priority. 

These are but a few of the hundreds of examples and recommendations that you might think of. As this is only a discussion and not an article on recommendations for your personal health, it is important to get your individual health considerations managed by your general practitioner or medical specialist. But remember that your long-term heart health is very much within your hands. Diet🍱, exercise🏊🏽, smoking, alcohol🍷 intake, exposure to infection, sleep 💤quality, chronic stress, increased weight, and environmental exposure to pollution and contaminants are all key lifestyle influencers, and many are within our control. And lastly, which part of the body does the heart pump blood to first? Itself 💓!

I wish you well on your pursuit of optimum heart health!

 

Reference: Campbell, T.C.,  Parbia B., Chen J. Diet, Lifestyle and  the eitiology of Coronary heart disease: The Cornell China study. American journal of Cardiology. 1998:82(10):18t-21t