Inflammation. Things that become inflamed: You, when you are angry; a facial blemish picked and poked; your stomach when you get upset, forget to eat or eat spicy foods; your knee if you fall and hurt it. These things that we can see remind us of the need to pay attention to them. They are warning signals that give us a clue to a problem.
Here’s the issue. We know what warning signs look and feel like. We are professional women who have reached the place we are by understanding and analyzing clues, situations and circumstances. However, not everything that happens in the body is visible, tangible or completely clear to the naked eye.
When you are stressed, overworked, run-down, smoking, eating the wrong foods, choosing fast foods instead of healthy ones, not sleeping and not exercising, the body engages its natural response. It becomes inflamed, and this inflammation can be seen inside the arteries of the heart. This can cause plaque and heart disease.
Your body gets the big picture. It understands that things sometimes go awry, and something needs to be done to fix it. It just hasn’t figured out that sometimes inflammation can make you feel sicker. This inflammatory response can increase the levels of hormones, like cortisol, which can actually be partially responsible for weight gain.
When looking at your risk for heart disease, inflammation is part of what becomes important to understand, as it does increase your risk in and of itself. Just like your skinned knee, inflammatory cells know where the action is, and if plaque forms, they run to the plaque. In a simple blood test, we can then see if there is an increase in inflammation, and subsequently, if, in fact, you are at increased risk. It is called C-reactive protein.
So, what do we do? We know that we should eat regularly, not pick at facial blemishes and try not to fall and skin our knees. But, really to decrease inflammation in the heart, it all goes back to the basics. Diet, exercise, stress management and sleep. The warning signals are less clear, so we just have to make up our own alert system. Pay attention to your body, and inevitably, that will help your heart.
Written originally for w2wlink.com by Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum.
Suzanne Steinbaum,
is director, Women and Heart Disease, Heart and Vascular Institute, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She is often cited in magazines and newspapers and has done network news health segments for ABC, NBC and CBS as a leading consultant in the field of women and heart disease, preventive cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation. She has been featured on the Discovery Health Channel's "Health Cops," a show dedicated to risk factor modification in young people at risk for developing heart disease. Suzanne has been the resident physician on "The Apprentice." She has written on topics of cardiac prevention and nutrition has been quoted in many publications. She is, as of January 2008, the Kellogg’s Healthy Start Program on Heart disease Awareness spokeswoman. For more information see: www.forwomenshearts.com.
