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Heart of my heart
It’s February! This will hit the Times boxes on Valentine’s Day. We can hardly spend the month of February without thinking of love, our loved ones and about hearts. Since 2004, the topic of heart health has been on my mind, almost every day. Yep, I’m thinking about that lovely internal organ and not the “Hallmark Moment” heart. Although I do love me a bit of chocolate, but prefer the homemade treats and cards. Some of you may remember, many years ago I wrote about my father undergoing open heart surgery in 2004. For my dad, the surgery wasn’t a moment too soon. Many people of my dad’s generation grew up believing a “bum ticker” was a fact of life as you aged. My dear old Dad’s life was full of hard physical labour building a house for our large family, along with a stressful daytime job, the strain of raising a large family, all of which was fuelled by a pack-a-day, a drink or two to keep the wolf at bay, and hundreds hearty meals. Almost all of those old-fashioned homemade meals were heavy on the saturated fats and light on “heart healthy” fibre and good fats. Dad was a meat and potatoes generation guy. His kids may be Boomers, but his generation—the children in the Depression—was partially defined by having enough belly-filling food. By the time Dad hit his seventies, life with my mom was a whirlwind of travel and family and enjoying the life they’d worked so hard to build. The need for emergency bypass surgery was a shock to him and the whole family. Hadn’t he lived a good life? Hadn’t he worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over our heads? So it would seem. But the reality was lifestyle sometimes takes a toll. Just before his eightieth birthday he underwent a triple bypass, which gave him a new outlook for the rest of his life. And here we are in Heart Month 2024. The moment the last of the Christmas goodies disappeared, shop shelves were filled with cute Valentines, cellophane bags of marshmallow hearts, bouquets of flowers and chocolates. There seems to be two ways to look at Heart Month.
The statistical reality is, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, nine out of ten people live in denial about their risk factors for heart disease. There is hardly a person who isn’t aware of what needs to be done to live healthier, longer lives, but we don’t seem to be able to make the leap from “know to do”. We are disconnected from our heart health reality. If I were to ask anyone about their lifestyle, I’m almost certain most of all y’all would tell me you’re healthy, you eat right, sleep enough, keep the booze down to a dull roar and get enough exercise. Yeah, you know you would. You’d stand right there and tell me you think you’re healthy. The documented reality is ninety per cent of us have at least one risk factor for heart disease. How healthy is that, I ask? Maybe we’re overweight and please, let’s not rag on about being “healthy overweight” because I’m not talking about a couple of pounds, here or there. Personally, my number one risk factor is my weight. I should dump about thirty pounds. 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. Our heart works twentyfour- seven with no time off for good behaviour. I’m guessing many of us 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 statin 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 to smooth it out or convince ourselves we’ve earned the extra booze and maybe even sneak a cigarette here and there. What the heck, right? We’ve worked hard and deserve some kind of reward.
And, we all think we’re active. Yeah, we do. Most of us spend much more than four hours each day sitting in front of a monitor or on a couch reading or watching the telly. The act of bending over to pick up a dropped pencil or reaching across the desk for a tall, double chocolate latte isn’t a cardio workout, nor is a circuit of the grocery aisles. Nope. If we have to climb more than five steps we’re out of breath and blame it on a late winter cold or Long Covid. We play the mind games when it comes to believing we live a healthy, active lifestyle. Again, the statistics indicate about twenty-five per cent of us are obese but only eighteen per cent of us know it or believe it or acknowledge it. Approximately one half of all Canadians do not meet the healthy eating and physical activity recommendations. Fifty per cent of us! That includes children.
So, during this month of hearts, let’s all do ourselves a big favour, speak to a health care practitioner (I know this isn’t easy for everyone) to hear the truth about our weight, our cholesterol levels, perhaps our risk of developing diabetes and/or hypertension and maybe seek help to cut out smoking and reducing our alcohol intake. Let’s all write a Valentine to ourselves to show more love for our physical selves by working on embracing a healthy, active lifestyle. Ain’t no point growing old if you can’t enjoy it.
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