Chapter 13 7

--------------- heart valve --------------- The valves' role in the heart's never-ending blood circulation is as mundane as it is crucial: They are gatekeepers, preventing backflow of blood into the ventricle that has just left.There are valves between the atria and ventricles, and between the ventricles and the blood vessels that leave them.After the blood flows through, the valve closes, making the heartbeat sound we hear on TV. (The doctor uses a stethoscope to hear the working condition of the heart valve—— The crispness of the heartbeat sound indicates whether the valve is closed well; while the fuzzy sound indicates the size of the opening of the valve, or whether there is a leak in the valve. ) The most common valve problem is mitral valve prolapse.To add, the word "mitral" is derived from "miter," which is the hat worn by bishops and has two points.As shown in Figure 2.3, the valve between the left atrium and the left ventricle does not close properly.Think of the valve as the sail of a boat: under normal conditions, the sail will be fully inflated and bulged just right; Shattering in the wind, the shape is loose, and some of the wind (ie blood) will pass through the sail.This abnormality disturbs the nerves in the atria, causing palpitations and sweating. Fifteen percent of women are diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse.Palpitations, sweating, and panic syndrome associated with soft valves are more common in young women, although men can also have abnormal problems with the valves.This valve problem should be treated with beta blockers, but most people let the condition develop further. 

--------------- Heart Healthy Young Action Plan (1) --------------- Your family heritage may have influenced you a lot: your looks, your political opinions, or your favorite recipes.Maybe add heart problems too.If one parent or other immediate family members suffer from coronary artery disease before the age of 60, your chances of getting the disease are much higher than the average person.Abnormal lipid production in the body also appears to be inherited—that is, higher levels of LDL, lower levels of HDL, or other risk factors, such as high blood pressure.But habits can also be hereditary.Your father smoked, so you probably smoked; your family ate high-salt foods (which can trigger high blood pressure), and you probably did too; your mother worked a stressful job, and maybe you did too.Regardless of the mechanism, anyone with a family history of heart disease should be extra vigilant for factors that threaten their heart health.Having said that, a grandfather with a heart attack shouldn't bear all the blame - lifestyle choices are even more dangerous.Just look at the cardiovascular poisons in your life - cigarettes, bacon, sofas.Only by knowing our enemy can we defeat it.

Action 1: Exercise heart pump Just your daily routine can cause your body to burn more fat than a fast food restaurant cook.In fact, the human body is a natural fat burning machine.Whether we're working in the garden, reading a book, or going to the bathroom, we burn fat all the time.For optimal health, you need to do enough physical activity (or exercise) to burn 3,500 to 6,500 calories per week (an average of 500 to 950 calories per day).Even if you don't try to do it, the body burns most of its calories through daily activities.However, research data shows that in addition to consuming calories through general exercise, we also need to do 60 minutes of endurance training every week, that is, to increase the heart rate to 80% of the maximum value corresponding to age (220 minus your age) or more exercise for a period of time.The essential endurance training for optimal health requires only three 20-minute workouts per week at this heart rate.This level of activity should make you sweat in a cool room (more endurance training is needed to get in shape, but it's not necessary for health).The strange thing is that once more than 60 minutes, from the perspective of longevity, it is not beneficial to the body.By consuming more than 6,500 calories per week, you're actually lowering your chances of longevity because of the wear and tear on your body from the excess exercise (a 55-year-old man who consumes 6,500 calories per week will have the body of a 47-year-old , while a 55-year-old man who consumes more than 6,500 calories per week will only look like a 52-year-old (see Chapter 4 for more details).Just doing 20 minutes of fitness three times a week may not satisfy those who need to lose 40 kg or want to win a marathon, but this approach can lead to a healthier and younger life.Exercise is very important.Regardless of the amount of exercise, it lowers both systolic blood pressure (the pressure on the heart when it contracts) and diastolic blood pressure (the pressure in the arteries when the heart relaxes).Both are the most important indicators of arterial aging, especially diastolic blood pressure.Even a few minutes of daily walking can lower bad cholesterol (LDL) in the body

levels, boost healthy cholesterol (HDL) levels, reduce inflammation, and other benefits.Any muscle training builds muscle strength, so it should come as no surprise that your heart muscle will be stronger.Exercise can also promote blood vessel expansion, making blood vessels more elastic, thereby strengthening blood vessel strength.If you've been inactive for a while, start with walking until you're able to lift weights, and then add other forms of exercise such as cycling, swimming, and light exercise equipment to get your heart rate up (long-term running tends to put stress on your joints). excessive stress).By adding strength training (which we discuss in Chapter 4), followed by endurance training, the average biological age of a 55-year-old man can be reduced by 8 years, and that of a 55-year-old woman by 9.1 years.Perhaps the most important reason for exercising is to prevent our bodies from growing infinitely larger.If you are overweight, for example, if you are 172 centimeters tall and weigh 100 kilograms, or your waist circumference is over 100 centimeters for men and over 90 centimeters for women (measured around the navel), you will double your risk of heart disease.Of course, many people just measure their own belt length, confusing the real value of the waist measurement, and some people pretend to hide their beer belly for years.Excess weight brings two major health threats.First, being overweight can easily trigger other risk factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, lipid disorders such as high LDL levels, sleep apnea syndrome, or arthritis (which further inhibits your desire to exercise).Secondly, if there is fat on the waist, it will be more dangerous, because the fat cells in the abdominal fat will secrete a hormone, which directly increases the chance of vascular inflammation.Even if you only lose 5% of your body weight, it can significantly improve your overall health and improve your cardiovascular health.Another function of exercise is to relieve tension, and tension is one of the major causes of human aging.

Action Two: Know the Numbers For many people, the college entrance examination is probably the last exposure to mathematics.But it would be a huge mistake to ignore numbers simply because you're terrified of math.The more you understand the important indicators of your health, the more confident you will be in assessing health risks and preventing diseases in advance.Let's think of the following tests and numbers as an important part of heart health, like a ticking machine that keeps track of how the body is doing.Blood Pressure Measurement Blood pressure refers to the pressure that blood exerts on the walls of arteries as it flows through them.If your blood pressure is high (optimum 115/76; US national median 129/86), figuratively speaking, the pressure from the blood flow creates potholes in the arteries, causing what we said above ruptured blood vessels.But high blood pressure has few symptoms, and it's less noticeable than a failing air filter in your home.However, high blood pressure can be easily resolved with medication or lifestyle changes (diet and exercise).This shows that everyone should measure blood pressure regularly.Once the blood pressure is too high, it is necessary to take immediate measures to control it.Blood pressure readings can be more variable than trouser sizes at a train station, but people always want their blood pressure to be low.Take your blood pressure three times a day in the morning, at noon, and at night, when you are engaged in normal activities (except sex).If the blood pressure measured during the period is high, then you should lower it to make your body younger.If you are 55 years old, every 5 mm Hg increase in high pressure, or every 7 mm Hg increase in low pressure, will increase your biological age by one year; but if you lower your blood pressure of 160/90 to the ideal value, you can be 9 years younger . (You can also ask your doctor about a double blood pressure test—the ankle-brachial index test.)

--------------- Heart Healthy Young Action Plan (2) --------------- blood test Of course, you'd probably rather have a runny nose than have someone prick you for blood.But an annual blood test can give you insight into your heart's overall health.Here's what to look for in a blood test: cholesterol LDL cholesterol is transported in the body by low-density lipoproteins. It is a "harmful" type of cholesterol—— It is easily decomposed and adsorbed on the potholes on the arterial wall.In recent years, we have realized that the total amount of cholesterol is not so important, and we should care more about the LDL and HDL levels, because the two kinds of cholesterol have fundamentally different functions.We distinguish them by their initials—L means "lousy" and H means "healthy." High LDL levels can be due to eating a lot of cholesterol-rich foods, such as simple carbohydrates, trans fats, and saturated fats.Genetic factors are also partly responsible for this phenomenon, and some people may have a tendency to have high LDL levels in all family members.You should do more exercise, even if you only lose 5 kg of weight.Try to eat less simple carbohydrates (do not eat most white foods, such as white bread, white sugar and white noodles, etc.), and limit the daily intake of trans fat and saturated fat to less than 20 grams, which can reduce the LDL content in the body .For the sake of health, you don't have to worry about the calories you eat, just look at the food calorie comparison table and understand some common sense.For example, there are 4 grams of saturated fat per serving of roast tender pork, which is much less than a serving of fried onions. (More than 90 grams of saturated fat and trans fat is equivalent to 4 days, and it takes 12 days to consume in the body.) Because the saturated fat content of pork tenderloin is low, you can eat as many as 5 servings according to this calculation (daily intake less than 20 grams), but we suggest that it is best to eat as little as possible.Knowing this common sense pays off richly: A 55-year-old man who drops his LDL levels from 180 mg/dl to 100 mg/dl looks 3 years younger.The daily intake of saturated fat and trans fat does not exceed 20 grams, and there is another benefit——

Promote the dilation of arteries and provide more energy to the human body. (It's really easy to do, and my family does it every day.) Meals high in saturated and trans fats can lead to a bloodstream full of saturated and trans fats, which can paralyze the middle layer of muscle in your arteries.You want the arterial muscles to work, of course, so that when the leg muscles are about to move, the arteries are able to provide sufficient energy.Therefore, in order to be full of vitality, we must reduce our daily intake of saturated fat and trans fat to less than 20 grams.At the same time, we have to improve some important indicators of the body.The content of good cholesterol HDL in our body should be increased as much as possible, at least more than 40 mg.You can increase your HDL levels by: ★Intake of healthy fats, which are commonly found in olive oil, fish, and walnuts (1 tablespoon of oil per day, 110 grams of fish, or 12 walnuts) ★Walking or doing other activities Physical activity, 30 minutes a day ★Intake of niacin (vitamin B3) ★One glass of wine every night (you can drink more on Saturday night, but if you have a habit of drinking and drinking, then skip it) By the way, Alcohol is a double-edged sword.On the bright side, alcohol reduces inflammation, for reasons that are not well understood.However, excess alcohol can age the immune system, perhaps because alcohol reduces the activity of immune cells.Drinking more than two and a half glasses of alcohol a day for men and more than one and a half glasses of alcohol for women constitutes a direct health threat. 0 Homocysteine ​​This is a by-product of the body's digestion of protein, which can cause rupture or inflammation of the arterial wall.The reason may be a simple physical phenomenon: Homocysteine ​​is made of tiny crystals that hit the walls of blood vessels directly, leaving holes in them.As long as the vitamin folic acid is supplemented (we recommend a daily intake of 700 micrograms), the excessively high homocysteine ​​content can be reduced to a normal value. (The standard content of homocysteine ​​should be 9mg/dl or less.)

C-reactive protein High-sensitivity C-reactive protein measures the level of inflammation in the body, including conditions ranging from chronic fistula to urinary tract infections or inflamed gums.The higher the protein content, the higher the risk of heart disease.Because the obvious inflammation that occurs in the body will increase the possibility of blood vessel inflammation. "Women's Health Guide" (a website founded by the American Health Association) has conducted a survey of more than 28,000 women. The results show that women with higher levels of C-reactive protein in their bodies are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. 3.1 times that of the low population.There are ways to reduce C-reactive protein levels (which can make the biological age 4 to 7 years younger), such as supplementing some antibiotics, exercising, taking aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen (do not take them at the same time in a day) Supplementary aspirin and ibuprofen, as long as you insist on taking one drug, see Chapter 9 for details), as well as statins and blood lipid-lowering drugs.

blood sugar The blood sugar content in the body should be less than 100mg/dl.Diabetics have too much sugar in their blood, which reduces the activity of a special phosphokinase that can damage arteries.Phosphokinase allows arteries to expand and contract freely.Without this enzyme, the likelihood of cracks and potholes at the junctions between different parts of the arterial wall is greatly increased.So all of us, not just diabetics, should try to avoid foods that are high in simple sugars and saturated trans fats, such as jelly donuts. Physical fitness test There are two simple fitness tests that can give you many indicators of your body's health.Both methods measure how the human heart responds to strenuous exercise --