An essential step in preventing and managing cardiovascular disease is being open with your doctor about your questions and concerns. You are not the only individual who has difficulties communicating their issues to the health care provider who conducts your check-ups. But in terms of heart health and wellness no question should be left unanswered.

Sometimes people hope that the answers to their questions will come out while being examined rather than asking them straight out. HMOs and the busy schedules of medical professionals with waiting rooms loaded with patients sometimes do not permit the physician to spend as much time with each patient as they would like. In particular, women have to voice their issues, since heart wellness in women isn’t as much of an issue, even though they’re equally at risk.

Questions that you need to ask your doctor include things like what your blood pressure reading is and what is usual for you. Glucose and cholesterol levels must be checked to see if they are in an appropriate range. Find out from your health care provider what tests are suggested for your age group right now and in the future.

If drugs have been prescribed, do not hesitate to ask if there are possible side effects, what the drug is supposed to do, and whether you can take other medication, even non-prescription, with your prescribed medication. Also discover if this is a long term medication or temporary. If suggested by your health care provider, you’ll need to take further tests to monitor the effects of your medication. The liver is one organ that most medical professionals consider testing when a patient is on specific medications.

If you always seem to get home from your check-up and remember something that you failed to ask the physician, make a “need to know” list and take it with you on your next trip. Do not forget to bring with you the medicines that you are presently on as well. This is critical if you are under the care of more than one health care practitioner. Include your recent history of illness and surgery. This should be recorded in your file so your health care provider is up to speed on any potential problems.

In conclusion, if you believe that you may forget what you physician has told you, you can always write it down or record the appointment for later referral. Do not hesitate to get a second opinion if you are not comfortable with the advice and treatment plan of your doctor.

Preventing heart disease involves making long-term changes that will improve your heart health and decrease your risk of heart attack and stroke. Learn how to get started on the path to Heart Wellness.

Tags: kidney and heart disease, heart valve disease, heart disease risk factor

Hypertension is a prevalent medical condition in the United States, but it’s likewise a serious one. Hypertension is a risk factor for problems like stroke, heart attack and cardiovascular disease. As soon as a person is diagnosed with high blood pressure, a doctor’s number one goal is to bring down the blood pressure to the safe range so additional stress on the cardiovascular system doesn’t occur.

In some cases, the individual is put on a special diet and fitness routine for high blood pressure control. But many individuals also have need of medication to hold their blood pressure under control. Here are a few of the most typically administered high blood pressure drugs utilized for this objective.

Diuretics: Among the most typical hypertension medicines first prescribed is often a diuretic or water pill. These medications come in commercial names like Esidrix or Zaroxolyn and work by removing excess fluid and sodium from the blood. The surplus is removed from your system by way of urination, which is why folks on this medication frequently need to urinate more often. By eliminating the surplus from the bloodstream, the heart can push it throughout the anatomy more competently without unwarranted wear on this vital organ.

ACE Inhibitors and Beta Blockers: These high blood pressure drugs might be given if diuretics aren’t effective or they might be used in combination with a diuretic for optimal results. In many cases, these medicines might also be the first line of protection against high blood pressure. These medicines work by increasing circulation through the blood vessels, consequently lowering strain on the heart.

Other Options: If these hypertension drugs do not work, there are other options available. Angiotensin II receptor blockers, calcium channel blockers and other medicine can be utilized when the more common hypertension drugs are not effective on their own or lead to unwanted negative reactions. It is extremely important that a patient and physician work together when going through the long list of high blood pressure medicines to discover the ones that perform the best in each particular situation. In some cases, a person will be lucky enough to discover the ideal drug right at the start. In other instances, it may take countless attempts to hit upon the ideal therapy.

Hypertension is a dangerous health concern that can have potentially life-threatening results if it goes untreated. Fortunately, there are many choices in hypertension medicine to get the situation in check and diminish the danger of more critical complications.

Hypertension and high blood pressure are two names for the same condition. By either name, though, it’s a serious concern. Due to our sedentary lives and easy access to junk food, the problem is escalating. And if left unchecked, it can lead to heart disease. Learn more about the condition and how to manage it at High Blood Pressure Control.

Tags: reversing heart disease, kidney and heart disease, heart valve disease

You may be well aware of the health benefits of what are known as Omega 3 essential fatty acids. It’s been in the news lately and more and more people are understanding the importance of maintaining an adequate intake of the important essential fatty acids known as Omega 3, and most of us are deficient in these. But you may not have heard of Omega 6 fats and may not be aware of the importance of these to your health, and you may not have heard of the Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio.

Essential fatty acids are good fats that we need for good health every day but which we cannot manufacture in our body and so need to obtain from our diet each day. Omega 3 fats are found primarily in fish, and over 90 percent of the US population is deficient in Omega 3 essential fatty acids.

Omega 6 essential fatty acids, on the other hand, are found in other food sources, and we are not generally deficient in these. For example you find Omega6 fats in many of the oils that we eat from day to day such as corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil and peanut oil, and soy oil is almost completely comprised of omega6 fats.

Generally these vegetable oils are extremely cheap. Because they are cheap they are used in almost all processed foods requiring oil, including margarine. Most of us eat a diet high in processed foods and cook with vegetable oils and as a result our diets are too high in Omega 6.

In the past, according to research, we ate roughly as much Omega 3 as Omega 6 fats. This produced an Omega 3 Omega 6 ratio around 1 to 1. But because of our dietary reliance on food sources such as vegetable oils and processed foods there are estimates suggesting that our Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio has changed to around 10 to 1, and some estimates are that it is now as high as 30 to 1. Most of us are eating way too much Omega 6 fatty acids.

It is true that Omega 6 fats are important to our health however it is also true that the Omega3 Omega 6 ratio, or the ratio between how much of each of the 2 types of fats that we eat, is also very important, and that by eating too much Omega 6, whilst at the same time eating too little Omega 3, we are running the risk of a range of health problems including the possibility of a range of cancers as well as coronary artery disease and inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

And there is also an issue with our meat. Traditionally our farm animals have been raised on grass and this produces meat higher in Omega3. However farming practices have changed over the last hundred years and most of our meat now comes from grain fed animals which produces meat lower in Omega 3 and higher in Omega 6.

For all these reasons we need to reduce our reliance on foods high in Omega 6. We can do this by changing our diet to a lower intake of processed foods and by changing our cooking oils from vegetable oils to healthy oils such as olive oil. And equally important is to increase our intake of Omega 3 and the single best way to do this is to take daily fish oil supplements.

However, although all of us should be taking daily fish oil supplements, you need to be aware that there are wide variations in the amount of the Omega 3 fatty acids found in the different brands of fish oil supplements, and you need to know how to make an informed choice when choosing your fish oil supplements.

Find out how to make this comparison between the different fish oil supplement brands on my website.

Want to know more about the best Fish Oil Supplements? Or more about the Omega 3 Omega 6 Ratio? Visit Peter’s Website Healthy Omega 3 Fish Oil.

Tags: information on heart disease, coronary heart disease, rheumatic heart disease

Fish oil tablets contain DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) which are the 2 most important essential fatty acids known as omega 3 fatty acids. Over the last 40 years many studies have demonstrated the health benefits of increasing our intake of essential fatty acids and these health benefits include benefits to our heart health and have also demonstrated a link between increasing the intake of fish oil and breast cancer prevention and increasing our intake of fish oil and prostate cancer prevention. Studies are also showing that by increasing our intake of Omega3 fats we can help prevent bowel cancer.

A Scottish study examines the benefits of increasing the intake of omega 3 fatty acids. The results of the study found that by increasing your intake of DHA and EPA you can reduce your risk of colorectal cancer by anything up to around 40 percent. And the study also noted that this result will not be achieved if you increase your intake of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), a plant-based omega 3 fatty acid.

Clear evidence was that those who ate more fish had a lower risk of colon cancer and that those who ate less fish had a higher risk of colon cancer.

Another study in the Netherlands combined the results of– studies on omega 3 and bowel cancer and found that the overall results showed that there was a lower risk of bowel cancer for those with the highest intake of fish and that it was possible to estimate the risk reduction according to the number of fish meals eaten, including that one meal of fish per week produced an estimated 4 percent reduction in the risk of colon cancer, meaning that 2 fish meals per week produced an estimated reduction in the risk of bowel cancer of around 8 percent.

We eat too little fish in the US, and in particular we eat too little fish to achieve these results in helping to prevent colon cancer.

Of course it’s not true to say that eating more fish will prevent colorectal cancer, but it is probably fair to state that increasing your intake of omega 3 essential fatty acids found in fish oil can be an important part of an overall diet to prevent cancer, and can attract a range of other health benefits, including reducing the risk of death from heart related problems, substantially.

The next question is how to achieve these benefits. In the US we don’t generally eat a lot of fish. Fish is extremely expensive and it is only certain types of fish that have high levels of DHA and EPA. Combine that with the fact that most of the fish we eat is contaminated to a degree with mercury and other nasty toxins, and that the FDA advise discretion when eating fish for this reason, and it is fair to say that increasing our intake of fish substantially and weekly will be too expensive and can have other problems.

However there are excellent fishoil tablets available which overcome these problems. Fish oil tablets are small capsules containing omega 3 fatty acids and the best fish oil tablets are completely contamination free and are much more cost-effective to be taken daily than increasing your intake of fish.

But the quality of fish oil tablets varies widely and in particular the amount of the active ingredients DHA and EPA can vary by a factor of 2 or 3 and for this reason it is very difficult to directly compare the prices of the different brands available.

So it would seem that the evidence is getting stronger of the health benefits of increasing your intake of Omega3 fats, including in helping to prevent bowel cancer. Clearly all of us should be eating more fish or, more conveniently and more cheaply, taking daily omega 3 supplements by way of fish oil tablets.

For this reason sales of fish oil tablets are increasing faster than any other supplement in history, and I have taken daily fish oil tablets for a long time. To find out which Omega 3 supplements are my choice visit my website.

Want to know more about the health benefits of Fish Oil? Or how to find the best Fish Oil Tablets? Visit Peter’s Website Healthy Omega 3 Fish Oil.

Tags: prevent heart disease, heart disease risk factor, cure for heart disease