Part 21 - Heart of the Matter
For the average backpacker, health concerns tend to amount to how to recover from last night's Jaegermister marathon or whether or not you can get rid of your smelly feet. However, it is becoming increasingly important for people of all ages to worry about their health and it's never too soon to pay attention to your heart. Most young people take for granted the heath and fitness of our heart. Besides with thoughts of cancer, skin care, how we look in a bathing suit and other worries rolling around inside our heads - we never expect to worry about our heart until we get much older.
Story Highlights
- Know Your Roots
- Get Out, Get Moving, Don't Stop and Have Fun
- Eat right for you
- Relax
- Cholesterol
- Butt Out
The Risks
However a little bit of hearty worry in today's unhealthy age is well worth it in the long run. In the UK alone there are 110,000 deaths due to heart disease every year and in the United States this number is ten times higher. Shockingly many of these people are in their twenties and thirties.
While the majority of people in their twenties and thirties with heart disease (heart disease is a general term that refers to a variety of acute and chronic medical conditions that affect one or more of the components of the heart) tend to have strong family histories, many victims have little or no risk factors.
The risk factors for heart disease are typically labelled Uncontrollable or Controllable. The main Uncontrollable risk factors are age (older people are more likely to be affected), gender (men sadly are more prone to this) and a family history of heart disease, especially at an early age. Even if you have Uncontrollable risk factors, it doesn't mean that you can't take steps to limit this risk.
The Controllable risk factors include physical inactivity (so get out and do something or else), smoking (another reason to quit), being overweight or obese (this puts more stress on your body in general), high blood pressure (this is related to stress and lifestyle so try to chill out), high blood cholesterol (this is generally connected to diet and lifestyle so maybe travel and relax) and diabetes (either diet induced or genetic). To combat all this the helpful folks here at Backpacker's Bites have put together a battle plan to make you a little more proactive when it comes to the health and welfare of your heart.
Know Your Roots
With many people travelling and meeting their extended families it's worth listening to those long lost stories of Mum and Dad as a kid or the illnesses that helped make your crazy Uncle crazy. Learning about your family's medical background can shed light on diseases and disorders that have genetic roots - because a surprising amount of them do. Being prepared and understanding the potential risk factors can only help us stay healthy.
Get Out, Get Moving, Don't Stop and Have Fun
Exercise improves heart function, lowers your blood pressure, reduces the cholesterol in your blood and boosts your energy levels. Being overweight forces the heart to work harder so exercise is essential. To lose one pound of fat (0.5KG) you need a deficit of 3,500 calories a week (500 a day) - between what you eat and what you burn off from living and exercising. This could come from seven days of walking half an hour at approximately 4 mph (a hurried but not really fast walking speed) and eating the equivalent of one less bag of regular fat crisps, every day.
Eat Right For You
You may groan if your usual lunch consists of cheeseburgers, chips or kebabs covered in Garlic sauce, but the good news is that diet isn't an all or nothing affair. Try looking at our previous articles for a little bit of inspiration and for some good tactics. The best advice is to find things you know are healthy - things you already like eating and just eat them a lot. If you find it difficult to imagine what you eat coming from nature, then maybe you shouldn't eat it. After all, there are no sausage roll trees or fields full of pork scratchings.
Relax
Control your blood pressure. When reading a blood pressure result, the top number of a blood pressure reading, (the systolic pressure), represents the force of blood in the arteries as the heart beats. The bottom number, (diastolic pressure), is the force of blood in the arteries as the heart relaxes between beats. High blood pressure makes the heart work extra hard and hardens artery walls. This increases the risk of heart disease and strokes. A good range for young people is approximately 120 over 80.
Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a fat-like substance in the blood. High levels of triglycerides, (another form of fat in the blood), can also indicate a risk of heart disease. As with blood pressure, eating a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet and engaging in physical activity can lower cholesterol levels. Get your cholesterol checked by a doctor and see where you stand.
Butt Out
Celebrate the smoking ban in the United Kingdom by choosing not to stand outside in the winter cold, wasting large sums of money as you slowly poison yourself. Ditch the cigarettes and you'll dramatically lower the risk of having a heart attack. Also if you don't smoke, don't start. In addition to increasing the risk of lung cancer and other diseases, the mixture of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke increases the risk that your arteries will harden, which restricts blood flow to the heart. Smokers have more than twice the risk of having a heart attack as non-smokers. Smoking is the biggest risk factor for sudden cardiac death and smokers who have a heart attack are more likely to die than non-smokers who have a heart attack. The good news is that if you are a smoker then all is not lost. In the first year that you stop smoking, your risk of coronary heart disease drops sharply and over time, your risk will gradually return to that of someone who has never smoked.
So try to do a little more and be aware of your heart so it can keep on ticking for as long as possible.
If there are any topics on health, nutrition and fitness that you would like to see addressed or you have any questions, please contact me at healthy.living@st-christophers.co.uk or go to www.fireinsidefitness.com
- James
James McDonald is a St Christopher's Manager and fully certified personal trainer, working in Edinburgh.
