Are You Fatter Than You Think?

Is your diet and exercise program really working for you?  Anna Hodgekiss says seven tests can help assess and fix your health risks.

With the festive season over, many of us are planning to turn over a new leaf and shed a few pounds this year with diet and exercise.

And new research suggests that when it comes to weight, Britain is in dire need of a reality check.

A Bupa study published last week found that four in ten obese people consider themselves a ‘healthy’ size, and too many of us are ‘blissfully unaware’ of the true impact our lifestyles are having on our health. Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,fitness,Weight Loss

Targeting Heart Health May Improve Sex Life

Erectile dysfunction in middle-aged men may be a sign of more serious health problems. Improving their cardiovascular health may improve their sex lives, too.

Middle-aged men who take steps to improve their heart health by eating better, getting more exercise, or taking cholesterol-lowering drugs may end up improving their sex lives as well, according to a new analysis of existing research.

Nearly 1 in 5 men in the U.S. has difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection, a condition known as erectile dysfunction (ED). The new study, which appears this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests that ED drugs such as Viagra aren't the only solution and aren't always enough to address the problem, says coauthor Dr. Stephen Kopecky, M.D., a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

"If you do take care of your lifestyle—eating right, exercising, losing weight—you respond much better to the Viagra, the Levitra, the Cialis," Kopecky says. By the same token, he adds, if these drugs become less effective "that should be a sign that...you need to take care of your lifestyle.'" Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,erectile dysfunction

Cutting Back on Salt Does Not Make You Healthier

Cutting back on salt does not make you healthier (despite nanny state warnings), according to new research.

Eating less salt will not prevent heart attacks, strokes or early death, according to a major study.

Its findings contradict all recommendations by the Government and medical profession urging the public to reduce the amount of salt they consume.

Research involving nearly 6,500 people concluded that there was ‘no strong evidence’ that lowering levels in the diet reduced the risk of heart disease or premature death.

In fact it found that cutting back on salt actually raises the likelihood of death in some patients with heart problems. Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,salt intake

The Cholesterol Scam

Ernest Curtis, MD, exposes the Big Government-Big Pharma cholesterol scam.

A delusion is a false belief held with conviction despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. LRC readers are certainly familiar with many delusions popularly held in the field of economics and the fact that these myths persist because they serve the interests of those who benefit from big government and ever-expanding government interventions.

The same is true in the field of medical science where one of the most widely accepted myths involves cholesterol and its purported role in causing heart attacks.

There is a closely related set of theories known as the Cholesterol Theory, the Lipid Hypothesis, and the Diet-Heart Theory. They postulate that cholesterol is the chief culprit in the causation of atherosclerosis (also called arteriosclerosis or "hardening of the arteries"). It is the complications of atherosclerosis that lead to disability and premature death from heart attacks and strokes. These theories also maintain that a diet too high in fats and cholesterol is often responsible for the premature development of atherosclerosis.

The truth is that these theories are scientifically bankrupt and cholesterol has nothing to do with the development of atherosclerosis or its subsequent complications. Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,cholesterol,cholesterol myths,heart disease

What if Bad Fat Is Actually Good for You?

For decades, Americans have been told that saturated fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease. But there's just one problem: No one's ever proved it.

... The first scientific indictment of saturated fat came in 1953. That's the year a physiologist named Ancel Keys, Ph.D., published a highly influential paper titled "Atherosclerosis, a Problem in Newer Public Health." Keys wrote that while the total death rate in the United States was declining, the number of deaths due to heart disease was steadily climbing. And to explain why, he presented a comparison of fat intake and heart disease mortality in six countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Italy, and Japan.

The Americans ate the most fat and had the greatest number of deaths from heart disease; the Japanese ate the least fat and had the fewest deaths from heart disease. The other countries fell neatly in between. The higher the fat intake, according to national diet surveys, the higher the rate of heart disease. And vice versa. Keys called this correlation a "remarkable relationship" and began to publicly hypothesize that consumption of fat- causes heart disease. This became known as the diet-heart hypothesis.

At the time, plenty of scientists were skeptical of Keys's assertions. One such critic was Jacob Yerushalmy, Ph.D., founder of the biostatistics graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley. In a 1957 paper, Yerushalmy pointed out that while data from the six countries Keys examined seemed to support the diet-heart hypothesis, statistics were actually available for 22 countries. And when all 22 were analyzed, the apparent link between fat consumption and heart disease disappeared. For example, the death rate from heart disease in Finland was 24 times that of Mexico, even though fat-consumption rates in the two nations were similar. Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,saturated fat

Smart Cardio For Strength, Mass, And Fat Loss

Cardio training should be part of everyone's fitness regimen, but that doesn't mean you need to put in hours on the treadmill, stationary bike, or on the roads. There are better ways to train.

If you're a typical guy who loves to lift big weights, but considers anything over 3 reps to be "endurance" training, you might not be interested in this article. However, if you can bench press a Buick but get winded when you bend down to tie your shoes, maybe I have an audience.

Look, we all do what we LIKE to do, but only the most successful among us find a way to also do what we NEED to do. If you think you're in the latter category, listen up. I've got a quiver full of fun, challenging, cardio workouts that help you lose fat without losing strength or muscle.

Why You Need Cardio

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that cardio will turn you into a wispy, estrogen-soaked shadow of your former self- too many guys use this mindset as an excuse to avoid what they know they should be doing. In fact, the benefits of smart cardio training are too numerous to ignore. They include: Read more

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Posted in: cardio,cardio workout,cardiovascular health,fat loss

Unclog Your Arteries

Though it may be discouraging that it's not cheese nachos that unclogs your arteries, it's encouraging that something as simple as eating broccoli may prevent heart attacks and strokes.

This probably still won't encourage children to eat it, but the many healthy properties of broccoli include preventing a heart attack or stroke, say researchers.

A chemical found in the vegetable boosts the body's defence system to keep arteries unclogged.

Cauliflower, sprouts and cabbage can also keep the blood flowing freely.

They all contain sulforaphane, along with rocket, kale and pak choi, but broccoli contains the highest levels. Read more:

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Posted in: broccoli,cardiovascular health,heart attack,stroke,sulforaphane

The Angioplasty Scam

Angioplasty is a huge business, but new heart research shows that exercise helps heart disease and increases survival rates more than angioplasty does.

At the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, new heart research was presented that shows one treatment in particular can provide remarkable help for patients with certain forms of serious heart disease. It's not a new drug or surgical procedure. Instead, it's a natural therapy -- plain old-fashioned regular exercise. Read more

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Posted in: aerobic exercise,angioplasty,cardiovascular health,heart disease

Be Good to Your Heart: Eat Peanut Butter

Peanut butter "wards off heart disease," scientists say.

Peanut butter sandwiches could be the secret to beating heart disease, says a study.

Snacking on peanuts or peanut butter at least five days a week can nearly halve the risk of a heart attack.

The nuts are thought to lower bad cholesterol, help reduce inflammation in the body and boost the health of blood vessels around the heart. Read more

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Posted in: cardiovascular health,peanut butter