Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in America. Approximately 500,000-700,000 deaths a year are related to the coronary artery. Wouldn’t you like to reduce your risk of becoming part of this statistic?
To reduce your risk, start with the basics – clean up your diet, removing trans fats and reducing saturated fats, simple carbohydrates and caffeine, and increasing vegetables, whole grains, health fats and wild caught fish. Incorporating anti-inflammatory herbs and spices, like ginger and turmeric, in your cooking can help to decrease general and cardiovascular-related inflammation. Increasing fiber content, either by adding more servings of fresh vegetables and whole grains, or by adding flax seed or psyllium husk to your supplementation routine, helps to bind and decrease cholesterol more efficiently, decrease total cholesterol levels. Exercise keeps your heart muscle strong and healthy and keeps off excess body weight. Stress reduction is also an important consideration. Make stress-relieving activities, like exercise, meditation and intentional deep breathing a part of your daily routine.
You can further reduce your risk with a thorough laboratory investigation of your current cardiovascular health. This includes the standard total cholesterol, LDL and HDL levels, a breakdown of LDL and HDL subtypes and other risk factors such as homocysteine levels and high sensitivity CRP. Knowing if these values are elevated will help us determine if further gentle interventions will help improve your cardiovascular health even more. These interventions may include niacin, fish oil, red yeast rice and CoQ10 – all can be beneficial, but need to be used appropriately to effectively lower your risk.
