Hot Weather and Cardiovascular Disease

It's summer and that means it's hot outside. I live in sunny Southern California. I am fair-skinned and have a history of heat stroke, so I'm always on the lookout for good articles about taking care of myself. I came across this article from the American Heart Association that I'd like to share with you. One item they mention that piqued my interest was weighing yourself each morning to see if you are dehydrated. I always wondered why my weight fluctuated so much, now I have a clue. Drink lots of water!

Enjoy the article.
Sandy

Hot Weather and Cardiovascular Disease

How does hot weather affect the heart?
Extremely hot weather causes dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke. These risks increase when the humidity is above 70 percent and the temperature is above 70 degrees F. Heat and humidity interfere with the body's natural cooling process.

Exercising outside in hot and humid conditions can be hard on your heart. This is true even for athletes who haven't yet adapted to the heat. The problem is made worse because the heart is trying to deliver blood and oxygen to your working muscles while your body is trying to cool off by sweating. If you sweat too much, you lose fluid. This decreases your total blood volume. That means your heart has to pump even harder to get the smaller volume of blood to your working muscles, skin and the other body parts. When you lose too much fluid, your body temperature rises and your nervous system doesn't work properly. Extreme fluid loss can lead to brain and heart damage.

A good way to monitor your body fluid level is to weigh every morning after using the bathroom. If you weigh two pounds less than normal in the morning, you're probably dehydrated and need to drink more water before doing any vigorous physical activity. (You may have lost weight as water but not as fat.)

If you plan to exercise outside in hot and humid weather, wear very light, comfortable clothing and work out in the early morning or late evening, if possible. Know the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. If any symptoms appear, stop exercising and cool down immediately by dousing yourself with cold water. You may need to get medical attention. Heat exhaustion can progress quickly to heat stroke, which can kill you.

What are the symptoms of heat exhaustion?

heavy sweating
cold, clammy skin
dizziness or fainting (syncope)
a weak and rapid pulse
muscle cramps
fast, shallow breathing
nausea, vomiting or both

What are the symptoms of heat stroke?

warm, dry skin with no sweating
strong and rapid pulse
confusion and/or unconsciousness
high fever
throbbing headaches
nausea, vomiting or both

Teachers Along the Path of Life

If you look back on your life, you will soon come to realize that you are not alone in this world. Teachers, in one form or another, are there to guide you. When you were first born, your parents were your teachers. As you reached the age of five, you were sent to school and were assigned teachers who taught you how to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide. You learned geography, history, and art. Most of you managed to graduate from high school. Some have gone off to college and graduate school and expanded your education in other subjects.

But education isn’t always formal schooling. Throughout our lives, no matter what our age, we continue to learn to live in this world and we continue to meet teachers along the way. This is especially true when we’ve faced heart disease or some other major illness. In order to survive, we must learn new skills, eliminate bad habits, and move forward. Sometimes our teachers are not even aware that they are teaching us new skills.

Yesterday was my the year anniversary of my heart attack. This wasn’t a special day of celebration for me. It was filled with lots of daily routine stuff. I practiced yoga, took my mother’s cat to the vet, picked up cat supplies from the store, removed nail polish from my mother’s fingernails, delivered medications to the nurse, visited with a friend, and attended a pot luck dinner. But with each of these activities, I learned something along the way.

Before my yoga practice, I was reminded about how easily I could fall back into a stressful lifestyle simply by thinking about something. The topic of my thoughts ran along the lines of: How would I be able to tell my mother she couldn’t keep her cat anymore.

Over the past several months, I’ve learned that she was feeding her cat chocolate chip cookies. That may sound harmless, but she was making the cat sick. The cat has an allergic reaction to cookies and breaks out in sores all around his face. Since my mother has Alzheimer’s she either denies or can’t remember ever feeding the cat cookies. I know she loves her cat and it would be traumatic for her to give up the cat, so I started worrying about “What if” before I even met with the vet to discuss the situation.

My husband reminded me to do my yoga practice. During my practice, I reminded myself that stress doesn’t need to be a major player in my life. I can control it by breathing slowly and evenly, and focusing on the present moment instead of worrying about what might happen in the future.

At the vet, I learned that the allergic reaction might be caused from something else in the cat’s environment. The cat was given a shot and medication. The vet, a dear friend of mine, said that if or when the time came for my mother to give up her cat, he would help me find a good home for her beloved pet, but he didn’t think we needed to remove the cat at this time. Ahh.

Visiting my mother, I learned patience. Explaining the health issues of her cat was a delicate balance between laying out the facts, reminding her not to feed the cat human food of any kind, and keeping my tone of voice kind and caring so as not to agitate her.

My dear friend taught me the importance of taking time to share your life with others. Taking time to relax, put your feet up, drink a cup of tea, and smile.

My Scripps friends at the pot luck dinner were teachers, too. We share a special bond. These are the men and women who attended the lifestyle change program with me. We’ve become very close, sharing our most heart wrenching secrets through group support during the program and now keeping one another informed about or lives during our monthly pot lucks. They helped me celebrate my one year anniversary and reminded me of the courage and determination it takes to pull yourself out of the depths of despair and to learn to be healthy, happy and peaceful.

With heartfelt gratitude to all my teachers, family and friends. Thank you.

Healthy Heart Numbers Chart

I forgot to add my Healthy Heart Numbers Chart to my list of medical forms that I talked about in my blog entry "Partnering With Your Doctor". I've since updated my webpage.

I created the Heart Healthy Numbers Chart when I was going through my rehab program to see how I've progressed over the 12 week period, but you can keep track of these numbers over any time frame. The information is similar to what the "Go Red for Women Campaign" has on their website but with a few additions.

So, If you want a form that keeps track of blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, BMI, and more, here's the link to my Medical Forms webpage.

Establishing a Daily Practice

After surgery or finding out you have heart disease, you may wake up one morning and say to yourself, “Enough already. I can’t take this anymore.” At this point, you may finally decide that it’s time to take matters into your own hands and DO SOMETHING to improve your life.

That SOMETHING may take various forms. You might decide to walk every day; ride your bicycle; eat differently; meditate; or engage in other stress reducing activities such as Qi-gong, Tai-Chi, or yoga. Whatever that SOMETHING is, you have to establish a daily practice if you really want the change to be permanent.

You can’t say to yourself, “Okay, I’m going on a diet until I reach 140 pounds.” If your eating habits have including high fat, high sugar or salt, and low fiber foods, you can hope that dieting until you reach a certain weight will solve all your problems - and they may in the short run when you’re eating more fruits and vegetables, and less french fries and burgers. But in the long run, you’ll need to change your thinking about what you’re putting into your mouth. You need to relearn healthy eating habits.

The same hold true for stress reduction. You can’t say, “Okay, I’m going to attend yoga class twice a week.” Again, twice a week is better than nothing, but when you get out of your yoga class, stop for a minute and really feel your body. Is it relaxed, less stressed? How soon after your class does it take for you to get angry and tense? Do you feel the cortisol and adrenaline coursing through your veins the moment you walk into the front door of your home and your children are fighting and the television is blaring?

I attended yoga classes twice a week six months before I had a heart attack - six months before I even had a clue that I had heart disease. Yes, I felt relaxed and less stressed after my classes, but I couldn’t sustain that peace and calm for long. Maybe I’d get a good night’s sleep after an evening yoga class, but the next morning, all the external pressures of my life seemed to close in on me and I’d be drowning in an overwhelming sensation of fear and anxiety.

Once I began my Lifestyle Change Program, I felt better, but the twelve-week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 3 hour ritual still wasn’t enough for me to sustain a peaceful existence. During my rehab, I supplemented my program by changing what I did outside of rehab. Here are just a few of the additional things I did: read spiritual books; attended 2-3 additional yoga classes a week; stopped eating beef and pork; ate more fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish; walked around the neighborhood; journaled my thoughts; practiced calming visualizations; meditated every night before bed; and listened to calming music. I supplemented my rehab by doing several of these activities each and every day.

I’ve read that it takes time to establish a change in your life, and I’ll be the first to admit I was changing several aspects of my life at the same time. After the twelve week rehab program, there was a short period of time that I felt a void in my life. For three months I’d been spending about twelve hours a week, including travel time, with a group of other like-minded individuals. Now, I was on my own. This was the test to see if I could sustain the changes I’d worked so hard to establish.

I did manage to stay on my new path, but I had to make a few more minor adjustments in my daily schedule. I began attending Women Heart support group meetings. This allowed me the opportunity to stay connected with women who were managing their life without the support of a rehab program. I arranged to meet with some of the new friends I’d met during my rehab program. A group of us now meets for a potluck dinner once a month. It’s the perfect way to exchange new healthy recipes and catch up with everyone. In addition to surrounding myself with others who have heart disease, my life also started taking other directions. I renewed my interest in creating stained glass, and I intensified my yoga by developing a daily home practice.

What does a daily home practice look like? It can be simple or complex, depending on the amount of time you have. I started my home practice by setting aside thirty minutes each morning, as soon as I wake up – before my shower, before my husband wakes up. This is a very quiet time in the house. I spend about fifteen minutes repeating a mantra and saying a prayer of gratitude for all that I have in my life. I found that focusing on the positive rather than negative aspects of my life made me happier. Then I spend about fifteen minutes in both static and flowing yoga poses. This helps stretch, lengthen and twist my spine so that I can move about my day without back pain. I keep it simple. If I set a goal to do much more than that, I’d get discouraged as soon as I’d miss a day of practice.

So if you are looking to make a permanent change in your lifestyle, whatever that change might be, consider developing a daily practice. Embrace the change with your heart. Stick with it. Don’t give up. It may not happen as quickly as you’d like, but with perseverance, fortitude and faith in yourself, it will happen.

What would you like to change in your life? Write it down and start today.