Dr. Berry’s findings, presented last week in San Francisco at the American Heart Association’s Annual Epidemiology and Prevention Conference, are based on an analysis of 1,765 men and women who had physical examinations performed during the 1970’s and 1980’s at the Cooper Institute, the Dallas-based birthplace of the aerobics movement. Put another way: If you’re not fit in your 50’s, your projected life span “is eight years shorter than if you are fit,” Dr. Berry says.

So regular exercise is the most cogent weapon we have to ward off illness and fight disease- as it results in lower blood pressure, healthier cholesterol, and lower blood sugar.

Rest assured… there is a silver lining to all this before you start jogging, digging ditches, or playing singles tennis:  Studies also indicate that exercise’s greatest impact occurs when individuals move from a sedentary lifestyle to embarking on regular moderate exercise regimens.

That’s encouraging. You go, Girl!

So what do we do to slow down? Here are some ways to manage your stress.

• Be realistic about your goals and keep things simple. If you offer to host the annual family Holiday party, don’t go over the top and self cater the entire thing. Take-out side dishes and salads are great fill-ins.

• Express your thoughts in writing. Keeping a journal, blog or diary can be very therapeutic. And if you are not keen of the pen, try recording yourself via a digital voice or video recorder.

• Incorporate some form of exercise into your day and be consistent about it. You don’t have to run the marathon; take a walk with a friend, join the pool at the local Y or shoot some hoops with your kids.

• Massages are the ultimate relaxant. If you don’t believe me, try one for yourself. An aside, did you know that despite the gloomy economy – massage therapy has remained quite popular according to a recent survey from the American Massage Therapy Association?

• Find out if your workplace has any stress-fighting resources in place. Many Employee-Assistance Programs (EAP), wellness programs or health plans provide confidential personal stress-relief plans.

In a prospective study of Swedish workers, those who used “covert coping” techniques when they felt they had been unfairly treated were more likely to have an MI or die of ischemic heart disease. Constanze Leineweber, PhD, of Stockholm University in Sweden, and colleagues in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, expanded on research indicating that covert coping – or walking away from a conflict and dealing with the anger “indirectly and introvertly” – increases cardiovascular risk factors. They cautioned that the study didn’t pin down a causal relationship between covert coping and cardiovascular disease. Instead, they said, it raises “an interesting hypothesis, which needs to be confirmed or refuted by future studies.” The researchers analyzed data from a long-running prospective cohort study in Stockholm, the Work, Lipids, and Fibrinogen study, dubbed WOLF for short.

Covert coping was measured by questionnaire, in which the participant was asked about how he or she dealt with unfair treatment from either a boss or a fellow worker. The questionnaire did not measure whether or not the participant experienced unfair treatment at work nor how often covert coping mechanisms were used.

The participants were asked whether they sometimes, often, seldom, or never:

Let things pass without saying anything
Walk away
Feel bad — developing a headache, for instance
Get into a bad temper at home

The results yielded a covert coping score that could range from 8 to 32; the researchers stratified covert coping as low if the score was 8 through 14, medium if it was 15 through 18, and high if it was 19 or more.

They also categorized immediate responses – to the first two options – as low, medium, or high.

Compared with those who had low covert coping scores, the researchers found:

When the unfair treatment came from a boss, those who sometimes or often walked away were three times as likely to have an MI or ischemic death. (The hazard ratio was 3.05, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.23 to 7.58.).

Letting things pass showed a nonsignificant trend to more cardiovascular outcomes for those who did so more often. When the unfair treatment came from a co-worker, the pattern was similar, except that those who said they seldom walked away also had a significant risk for cardiovascular outcomes. The hazard ratio for those who seldom walked away was 4.08, compared with 4.45 for those who said they did so sometimes or often. Both ratios were statistically significant. Neither of the delayed reactions had any association with cardiovascular outcomes – feeling bad or becoming ill-tempered at home – either for unfair treatment from a boss or a co-worker.

Future research, Leineweber and colleagues said, should look at “whether interventions designed to reduce covert coping would alter risk of myocardial infarction and cardiac death.”

Excess weight is bad for your heart. You know that – but do you know why?
Fat changes the way your body metabolizes your food. Sugar that might be available as energy is packed away as fat, and fat is harder to break down for energy. Your entire metabolic system is out of whack. This, in turn, affects the entire body, including the blood vessels. Without the right sort of energy arriving at the right speed, the system begins to experience strain. And strain is what causes poor health. The vascular issues that can arise affect the heart and blood vessels, leading to weakness, poor circulation, and failure.
Often, obese people are placed on many medications – for diabetes, for heart conditions, for atherosclerosis, for hypertension… Many – if not all – of these conditions exist because of the excess weight causing system strain. It can be reversed. But, just as it takes time to reach an unhealthy state, it takes time to reverse it. A strictly adhered-to diet can, in a few years time, reduce or eliminate the necessity of a good portion of the drug cocktail.

By Lydia Yolen

There’s finally good news in the health industry – heart disease and stroke death rates are down down down.

Death rates from coronary heart disease are down 30.7% since 1999, and stroke mortality has dropped 29.2%.

The American Heart Association set a goal to reduce coronary heart disease and stroke death by 25% by 2010, and it seems that they’ve succeeded. But they’re not resting on their laurels. Though death rates themselves are down, the risk factors that lead to death are perilously high, risking a reverse of the downward trend with time.

Age, being male, and genes are not risk factors that anyone can change, but you can try to reduce your risk factors by eliminating the following:

• Smoking
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Physical inactivity
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Stress
• Birth control pills
• Excessive intake of alcohol