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Culturally Speaking: The South Florida Sunday Podcast
Small Steps to Healthy Habits: Simple Ideas to Boost your Health with American Heart Association
00:13:58
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to South Florida. Sunday at the beginning of every year, we hear all the same messages. It's time to get in shape, overhaul what we eat, run a marathon. But here with us today is a volunteer expert for the American Heart association who is going to share about small habits that can make a big impact on your health. Welcome to Dr. Louis Snyder, Regional Medical Director, Florida for NYU Langone Health.
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B
Thank you.
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A
Dr. Snyder, to start out, tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got involved with the American Heart Association.
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B
Well, I've been in practice here in West Palm and Delray beach for the last 38 years. It was my second job after I finished training at Harvard. And although I don't, I trained as an interventional cardiologist fixing the arteries and realized that that was spot welding and stopped doing that about six years ago. And since that time, I've been in practice, both consulting, teaching and as an administrator for nyu, expanding our deep bench of talent here in Florida. All right.
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A
Well, when people think about ideal heart health, they might imagine someone running a marathon or being an elite athlete. But tell us, what are the basic characteristics of a heart healthy lifestyle that our listeners should keep in mind?
- [01:19]
B
Well, I think there are some things that they can do for themselves and some things that they really might need to push their doctors to do for them. The things they can do for themselves. Running a marathon is not necessarily the healthiest activity, but regular daily exercise is at least 20 minutes a day. If you can do more, that would be great. I have Nick, my cardiac surgeon, who retired at age 75. He's now 89 and he is out walking six miles each and every day. He puts headphones in. He listens to podcasts. He's up on everything. But if you want to be 89 and still look 75, you've got to start as early as possible and keep that exercise up. The things that people might need to push their doctors for, however, are to keep their LDL as low as possible. You know, most of us measure, most physicians will measure a number of different factors. When we're talking about cholesterol, they'll measure the hdl, the ldl, and the triglycerides and the total. And we're used to telling patients that some of these are good cholesterol. There's actually none of them that are good cholesterols, but the bad one is the ldl. And we used to tell patients that we wanted their LDL under 130 if they were otherwise healthy. But if they had a couple of risk factors. We wanted it under 100 and if they had coronary disease, we wanted it under 70. But at that time that those guidelines were written, we knew that plaque would continue to form even at an LDL of 70. And if you really wanted to stop plaque, plaque from forming in the arteries, you had to drop that LDL down to around 50. But we didn't have the drugs then to do it. But now we do. We have some wonderful medications that can get it down to 50. Not everyone needs to be 50, but some do. And they should ask their doctor what the goal is and how close they are to that goal, especially at their yearly physical. Other things that they should be doing for themselves is controlling their weight and avoiding in general, animal fats. The healthiest societies in the world use meat more as a. Or animal meat, at any rate more as a. Almost as a seasoning, making most of the meal plants and fiber and grains. We call that the Mediterranean diet locally, but it's called different things around the world and people should take that seriously. These giant portions of meat are probably not good for you. Of course, nobody should be smoking nowadays. It damages the lungs, causes cancer, and that's well proven. And finally, control of blood pressure. Controlling that blood pressure is very important. High blood pressure is something that unless it's measured, you wouldn't know you have it until you come in with a stroke or a heart attack.
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A
Yeah. Did you want to discuss life's essential eight, what that means?
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B
Sure. So, you know, the American Heart association has a marvelous website called heart.org and on that there's just tons of information written in a very digestible way, wonderful recipes and even exercise tips. But the key features are the ones that I've been talking about, which is keeping the LDL low and working with your doctor to do that, measuring your blood pressure and keeping that down 120 over 80 or less, maintaining a healthy weight. You might need your doctor's assistance with that as well, but we have some marvelous new drugs for that. The healthy diet, especially calorie sparing. There's no reason to eat these gigantic meals any longer. Not smoking, sleeping, and limiting your alcohol intake to one to two drinks as needed. So that would form my healthy eight for patients. And I would really encourage your listeners to go to heart.org It's a wonderful resource. All right.
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A
Now, can you tell us a little bit more about why high blood pressure impacts our hearts?
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B
Sure. So, you know, there's a. The manufacturer's specification for our blood vessels is 120 over 80 or less. Anything that's higher runs the risk of rupturing small blood vessels, especially in the brain, back of the eyes, and the kidneys. And even if it doesn't rupture the vessel, it damages the interior wall. The interior wall, called the endothelium, or the intima, is a protective membrane, essentially, that should be impermeable to the bad stuff going through the blood, like ldl. But high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes punches holes in that, which allows the LDL to get into the wall of the blood vessel and set up the formation of plaque. Remember that our blood vessels are living things. They're not PVC pipes, and they can be damaged as well. So high blood pressure is one of those things that can either damage the endothelium or the blood vessel itself, especially the smaller vessels that are very important all over the body. Now, by the way, I want to tell you, Nick, that there are ways in which people can get their blood pressure checked viable fashion. You can, of course, at many of the chain drugstores, get your blood pressure checked by a reliable machine right there in the store. And if it's abnormal, go in and see your doctor. There is a program in which many libraries have blood pressure monitors that can be used or checked out locally here. The Riviera Beach Public Library has those. The Mandel Library in West Palm has it. And I'm given to understand every library in St. Lucie county has blood pressure monitors that can be checked out. Indian River State College Library also has them. And local clinics also will have blood pressure monitors. Very important to be a partner with your physician in taking care of yourself. There are the eight things that we've talked about here that you can work with your doctor and also checking and monitoring your own blood pressure. Very important.
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A
So the American Heart association has National Walking Day coming up on Wednesday, April 1st. Tell us about that, Doctor.
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B
Fantastic. I mean, it's. There's nothing better than Florida in April. It's not too hot, it's not cold. We don't have any snow. And going out and walking is very important.
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A
Amen.
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B
I have to tell you, there are. Yeah, there are some facts about walking and exercise in general that you may not be aware of. It is probably the best longevity medicine we've got, and multiple studies have been performed. So here's one. We have noticed years ago that patients who exercised regularly, walked regularly, and had a lower risk of dementia, lower development of dementia than the general population. But we really didn't know why that is. But very recently, we found that Exercise releases a hormone that repairs blood vessel leakage, particularly the small blood vessels in the brain. And that leakage may result in proteinaceous material getting out and short circuiting some of our neurons. So exercising helps produce that enzyme and protects those blood vessels. There's another study having to do from the field of oncology, where blood was drawn in patients with breast cancer before and after they exercised, and then that blood was applied to breast cancer cells in petri dishes. The blood drawn before exercise did nothing to the growth of breast cancer cells in the laboratory, but blood drawn from these same women after they had vigorously exercised on a treadmill actually caused many of those cells to die. That's very important. And clinically, we do see patients who exercise having a lower risk of breast cancer and those who do have fewer recurrences or more minor recurrences of the breast cancer. So from multiple fields, we know this walking is. Walking and exercise are incredibly important, and this is a great opportunity. You know, call your friends April 1st, go out and walk and invite them to go along with you. We have so many wonderful places to walk here, both along the beach and in town.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So I hope it becomes part of everybody's habit.
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A
Yeah, yeah. I like to get out and walk myself. And especially this time of year. Like you mentioned, it gets a little rough in the heat of summer, but you can go walk inside at a mall in that case, you know.
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B
Absolutely. Most of our walking. I'm sorry. Of our working population, do jobs that require sitting. One or two out of every four workers are just sitting at a desk. This is probably the least healthy way of working. We all have to work, but these people should make a special effort to go home, get their spouse, their significant other, their kids, go out and get the dog, go out and walk. It's the best exercise.
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A
All right, well, before we wrap up, if there's one or two things that you could ask every listener to do today for their heart health, what would those be?
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B
Well, I think that it would be that they should do daily exercise. Plan on it, make it part of your lifestyle so it's not a special event that you only do on a weekend. That's the way to get hurt. Do it every day, do it at least five days a week and at least for 20 minutes at a time. Well, that's your own blood pressure.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Make sure you're not smoking, and work with your doctor to check and know what your LDL is and how to get it under control. I think those are the most important things.
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A
Mick thank you for all this, like, really important information. And, you know, representing the American Heart Association. Where can people go to learn more about what we talked about today?
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B
Well, I think the best resource, really, is heart. And many of the, many of the great institutions of our country have also friendly areas, patient friendly areas where they can learn more. But heart.org is a wonderful place to start, both the recipes, the exercise tips, the information.
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A
All right. Dr. Louis Snyder, thank you so much for being here on South Florida Sunday. And get out there and have a wonderful weekend yourself.
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B
My pleasure. Take care, Mick. And thank you very much for the opportunity to be here.