Healthy Education
Americans could slash the incidence of heart disease by an astounding 80% if they followed seven basic steps, advises Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., medical director of the Women’s Health Program and the Preventative & Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Instead of thinking of good nutrition as a process of cutting out certain foods from your diet, Dr. Merz suggests, “pay more attention to what you should be eating.” And, she says, don’t look for shortcuts from supplements: “There have now been a number of nutrition-supplement trials of vitamins and anti-oxidants, and precisely zero of them has been shown to be even a little bit effective in helping to protect against heart disease or stroke.”
1. Eat 5 to 9 servings of fruits & vegetables a day.
2. Eat at least one serving of beans or nuts every day (Half a cup of cooked beans; a third of a cup of nuts).
3. Consume at least 3 servings of whole grains (Half a cup of cooked grain; one slice of bread).
4. Eat fish twice week.
5. Use olive and canola oil for the day’s serving of fat.
6. Stop smoking, if you do smoke.
7. Exercise moderately and consistently. Aim for at least 30 minutes most days of the week.
