Heart of my heart

It could hardly be the month of February without thinking of love, loved ones and hearts.

Since 2004, hearts have been on my mind, almost every day of my life. Big old internal organ hearts, not the Hallmark Moment hearts on the shelves of the local drug store. As you may remember, I wrote about my father undergoing open heart surgery in January of 2004. For my Dad, the surgery didn’t come a moment too soon. For many people of my Dad’s generation, having blocked arteries is a fact of life. Doctors may not articulate it as such but it’s true nevertheless.

My Dad’s life was full of hard physical labour building a house for a large family, a stressful daytime desk job, the strain of raising a large family, all fuelled by a pack-a-day, a drink or two to keep the wolf at bay and hearty meals. Almost all of those homemade meals were heavy on saturated fats and light on “heart healthy.” Dad was a meatand- potatoes generation guy. His kids may be Boomers but his generation, children in the Depression, was partially defined by having enough belly filling food. By the time my Dad hit his eighties, life was a whirlwind of travel and family: generally, enjoying the life he’d worked so hard to build. The need for emergency bypass surgery was a shock to him and the family. Hadn’t he lived a good life? Hadn’t he worked hard to put food and the table and a roof over our heads? So it would seem. But, the reality was quite the contrary. A triple bypass gave him a new outlook for the rest of his life.

So, here we are in Heart Month. Mushy store-bought Valentines. Cellophane bags of marshmallow hearts. Flowers. Great County wine and chocolate. Delicious food. Hugs and kisses. Heaps of snow. I mention snow because most of us think of snow shovelling as an ordinary household chore. But, in fact, snow shovelling is a very strenuous activity. On one January day in 2009, CBC reported four men in Ottawa suffered heart attacks while doing what we consider “an ordinary household chore.” It didn’t have to be so. I didn’t know those men. They became newsworthy statistics. The statistical reality, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, is that nine out of 10 people live in denial about their risk factors for heart disease. Risk factors they could control. Apparently we know what we have to do to live healthier, longer lives, but we don’t seem to be able to make a practical application. We are disconnected from our heart health reality.

If I were to do a “streeter” most of you would tell me you’re healthy. Ya, you would. You’d stand right there and tell me you think you’re healthy. The documented reality is 90 per cent of us have at least one risk factor for heart disease. How healthy is that, I ask? Maybe we’re overweight. I’m not talking about a couple of pounds, either. Many of us have no idea how much we should weigh and have long ago lost the sense of what is too much. The more pudge we carry around, the harder our hearts have to work, 24/7 with no time off for good beating behaviour. Perhaps we have elevated cholesterol levels and because we haven’t been tested we don’t know “what lies beneath.” If we have been diagnosed with high cholesterol, many of us don’t take it seriously enough to make any changes until our only “next step” is medication. For some of us, our jobs are fraught with stress and we choose to deal with it by throwing a couple of chocolate bars or pizzas at it or smooth it out with a bit too much booze or maybe even sneaking a cigarette here and there.

And, we all think we’re active. We do. Most of us spend more than four hours each day sitting in front of a monitor. Bending over to pick up a dropped pencil or reaching across the desk for a tall, double chocolate latte isn’t a cardio workout. Nope. If we have to climb more than five steps we’re out of breath and blame it on a late-winter cold. We play the mind games when it comes to having a healthy, active lifestyle. Again with the statistics, 25 per cent of us are obese but only 18 per cent of us know it or believe it or acknowledge it. About one half of Canadians do not meet the healthy eating and physical activity recommendations. One half of us. We understate the obvious.

So, during this month of hearts, let’s all do ourselves a big favour and ask our healthcare practitioner to give us the chat about our weight, our cholesterol levels, perhaps our diabetes and maybe about our smoking. Let’s all promise ourselves to work on embracing a healthy, active lifestyle. Ain’t no point growing old if you can’t enjoy it.

P.S. A Russell Stover Dark Chocolate Marshmallow Heart has 110 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 20 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of protein. That’s more than a couple of minutes on the elliptical trainer!