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What is the latest on beer, wine and your heart?

The bottom line regarding alcohol is that it may have heart and other health benefits when consumed in moderation.

How does the medical community define moderation? According to the Mayo Clinic website, moderate drinking is defined as two drinks a day if you’re a male 65 and younger, or one drink a day if you’re a female or a male 66 and older. A drink is defined as 12 ounces (355 milliliters) of beer, 5 ounces (148 milliliters) of wine or 1.5 ounces (44 milliliters) of 80-proof distilled spirits. While most of the experts agree that moderate consumption may have benefits they clearly to not recommend anyone begins drinking alcohol to treat or prevent diseases.

Benefits often associated with moderate alcohol include:

• Reduce your risk of developing heart disease, peripheral vascular disease and intermittent claudication
• Reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack
• Possibly reduce your risk of strokes, particularly ischemic strokes
• Lower your risk of gallstones
• Possibly reduce your risk of diabetes

Red wine may not be alone in its benefits. According to UC Davis beer is beneficial.

The ancient Egyptians found a number of uses for beer as a mouthwash, an enema and a wound healer. While not necessarily endorsing these medicinal applications, UC Davis brewing scientist Charles Bamforth suggests that beer may possess many nutritional qualities that make the beverage part of an overall healthy and balanced diet.

“It appears that beer is at least on par with wine in terms of potential health benefits,” says Bamforth, who published a review article on the nutritional qualities of beer in the January-February issue of the online scientific journal Nutrition Research

So, you can enjoy that beer or glass of wine guilt free.

Signs of a Heart Attack

• Pain, pressure or a squeezing sensation in the chest
• Pain in one or both arms, jaw or between the shoulder blades
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Nausea
• Sweating
• Pain in the stomach
• Lightheaded or dizziness

Signs of a Stroke

• Severe Headache
• Numbness and/or weakness on one side of the body
• Difficulty moving one side of the body
• Facial droop or weakness on one side of the face
• Slurred speech, difficulty speaking or understanding
• Difficulty seeing in one or both eyes
• Confusion
• Dizziness or loss of balance
• Nausea or vomiting

Research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that women often experience new or different physical symptoms as long as a month or more before experiencing heart attacks.

Among the 515 women studied, 95-percent said they knew their symptoms were new or different a month or more before experiencing their heart attack, or Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI). The symptoms most commonly reported were unusual fatigue (70.6-percent), sleep disturbance (47.8-percent), and shortness of breath (42.1-percent).

Many women never had chest pains Surprisingly, fewer than 30% reported having chest pain or discomfort prior to their heart attacks, and 43% reported have no chest pain during any phase of the attack. Most doctors, however, continue to consider chest pain as the most important heart attack symptom in both women and men.

Prompt treatment for these conditions in the emergency room may reduce the severity of damage to the brain or heart. Do not delay seeking help. It is not uncommon for people to deny they may be having a Heart Attack or Stroke and delay treatment.

It is important to understand the signs and symptoms of both a Heart Attack and a Stroke. Victims that are awake and responsive with the above symptoms should sit or lie down in a comfortable position. 911 or EMS should be called immediately and retrieve the AED and first aid kit. Both of these conditions are extremely serious and must be treated in an emergency room.

If a victim becomes unresponsive you must begin the steps of CPR and use an AED if one is available.

Although Heart Attacks and Strokes are more common in people over forty, they may occur in all age groups. Do not ignore these symptoms.

Do you know a woman with heart disease or are interested in taking better care of your heart?

The website www.WomenHeart.org is an invaluable source of information. Join their mailing list, the newsletter is full of useful articles and recipes.

WomenHeart was founded by three women who had heart attacks while in their 40s.  In addition to being faced with many obstacles, including misdiagnosis and social isolation, they were each amazed how little information about or services for women with heart disease were available and how the issue seemed invisible within the women’s health community. But in March 1999 everything changed.

Photo courtesy of WomenHeart.

I ran across a great website for Heart Healthy Recipes.  It is the Mayo Clinic website.  I haven’t tried any yet, plan to make quite a few in the near future.  If you cook any of them, please rate them by commenting on this post.  Use a scale of 1 -5, 1 being bad, 3 average and 5 excellent.  Bon Appetite!

Plan to wear red on Friday to show your support for Go Red for Women campaign sponsored by the American Heart Association.

“Go Red For Women celebrates the energy, passion and power we have as women to band together to wipe out heart disease and stroke.”

View their website:

http://www.goredforwomen.org/about_the_movement.aspx

We are kicking off Heart Month 2010 with daily updates on heart related news, facts and more.  Subscribe and you will receive all the information quick and easy.  We will be offering freebies and more throughout the month. The following information is from the Arizona Heart Website.

http://www.azhearthospital.com

Your Heart By the Numbers

• Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 800 million pints of blood or about 1 million barrels —that’s enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.
• Blood takes about 20 seconds to circulate throughout the entire vascular system.
• The adult heart pumps about 5 quarts of blood each minute - approximately 2,000 gallons of blood each day - throughout the body.
• A typical athlete’s heart churns out up to 8 gallons of blood per minute.
• Hold out your hand and make a fist. If you’re a kid, your heart is about the same size as your fist, and if you’re an adult, it’s about the same size as two fists.
• Your body has about 5.6 liters (6 quarts) of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 12,000 miles —which is roughly four times the distance across the US from coast to coast.
• Your system of blood vessels - arteries, veins and capillaries - is over 60,000 miles long. That’s long enough to go around the world more than twice!
• An adult woman’s heart weighs about 8 ounces, a man’s about 10 ounces

How Your Heart Measures Up

• Put your hand on your heart. Did you place your hand on the left side of your chest? Many people do, but the heart is actually located almost in the center of the chest, between the lungs. It’s tipped slightly so that a part of it sticks out and taps against the left side of the chest, which is what makes it seem as though it is located there.
• Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. You’re using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to the body. Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard—twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting.
• Feel your pulse by placing two fingers at pulse points on your neck or wrists. The pulse you feel is blood stopping and starting as it moves through your arteries. As a kid, your resting pulse might range from 90 to 120 beats per minute. As an adult, your pulse rate slows to an average of 72 beats per minute.
• The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose. Capillaries, on the other hand, are so small that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.
• The structure of the heart was first described in 1706, by Raymond de Viessens, a French anatomy professor.
• The electrocardiograph (ECG) was invented in 1902 by Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven. This test is still used to evaluate the heart’s rate and rhythm.
• The first heart specialists emerged after World War I.

Compression Only CPR

Key Points:

• Recommended for adult cardiac arrest victims when you witness them collapse.
• Appropriate to be used when mouth-to-mouth protective equipment such as a CPR shield or mask is not available.
• Bystanders may be more likely to provide care.

Steps for providing care:

1. Check for Responsiveness
2. Call EMS/911 or have a bystander call EMS/911
3. Check for normal breathing (if the victim is gasping this is not normal)
4. Begin compressions at a rate of 100 per minute, push hard and fast in the middle of the chest.

The song Stayin” Alive by the Bee Gees has a beat of approximately 100 beats per minute.  Singing this song as you perform CPR may help you remember the correct rate to perform compressions. Here is a YouTube video of the song.

First aid steps for a person that is choking.  Covers adult, child and infant victims.  Podcast produced by Action Safety Education, visit our website at www.actionedu.com.

Music from Vividity song title: Hearts are in rhythm. Podsafe music from http://music.PodShow.com.

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Celebrate Heart Month by loading your MP3 player or iPod with CPR reviews, fitness podcasts, heart health podcasts and diet/cooking information. Check out our Celebrate Heart Month Page for a list of podcasts and other resources. Go to Heart Month page. 10% Discount on our Online CPR & First Aid Courses. Online course price does not include the hands-on skills class, please view policies for more information. CLICK Here for more information.