Pinnock - Heart: Eat Your Way To Better Health

STRESS

Modern life is pretty insane. I think thats a reasonably fair assessment of things. The pressures imposed upon us by this life we have created for ourselves here on 21st century planet Earth are overwhelming. The worries that accompany our financial ebbs and flows are ever growing and, lets face it, listening to the news doesnt help. Juggling home and career is like an insane science. Raising a family. Moving home. Modern life is filled with things that can take their toll on us and cause us to become so far detached from how we are supposed to live.

Now, Im a realist and I happen to enjoy modern life, so Im not suggesting you should sell your house, buy a yurt and set up a commune in Glastonbury. But learning to manage stress can have a huge impact on many aspects of our health, especially the health of the circulatory system.

Stress can seriously send up our blood pressure, increase inflammation and play havoc with blood sugar balance. As you will see later in the book, these are important factors in heart health and disease.

DIET

This is where things have taken a massive nose dive. The modern diet in the West doesnt remotely resemble what we are meant to eat. The utter rubbish that has somehow become staple food makes the mind boggle. The consumption of processed food, refined food, fast food and frankly non-food is off the scale. There are people out there I speak to a lot of them who dont eat any fruit and veg, unless you count cider and chips. This is a serious issue and it affects a big proportion of the population.

There are a lot of others who are trying to be health-conscious and make changes based on outdated and falsified information and guidelines (see page ). Their good intentions are actually putting them at greater risk of disease.

These factors can be addressed. With a little clarity, focus and effort, you dont have to become another statistic. We can all move away from this epidemic it is not an inevitability.

I will keep the information you need clear and to the point, but I wont skimp on detail. I want you to read this book without getting bored senseless, but also to learn enough from it to understand what is happening in your body, and how the food you eat can directly impact that for good and for bad. Then, best of all, Ill give you inspiration and ideas about how to put this picture all together rather deliciously.

If you eat the standard Western diet that most people eat in the modern world, it is likely you will develop heart disease.

DR JOEL FUHRMAN

Having a basic understanding of the cardiovascular system will enable you to start to build a clear picture of what is going on in your body, how small changes in your diet and lifestyle will have a great impact upon it, and especially how your current diet and changes you make to it may affect your specific issues. The cardiovascular system refers to the heart, the blood vessels and their contents.

The most obvious place to start. This tissue is the whole reason the circulatory system exists and finding out what it is, the components in there and which plays what roles will be useful later.

One of the primary functions of the blood is as a transport system. It brings oxygen and nutrients to the cells and tissues of the body. The nutrients we take in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, glucose, or their by-products play vital roles in the daily operations of every cell in every tissue in every system. These nutrients and their by-products get where they need to go via the blood. The blood also carries away waste. Our cells are very good at housekeeping; they process waste and throw it out as rubbish to be carried away in the circulatory system.

The blood is made up of several components:

This is the liquid portion of the blood, and makes up around 55 per cent of blood volume. It has very little colour just a subtle pale yellow tinge and is mostly water with a bundle of proteins, clotting factors and nutrients suspended in it. It also carries antibodies and other important elements for our immune function.

Otherwise known as red blood cells. These are the familiar disc-like cells that we often see in images and animations of the blood. Their main job is to transport oxygen to our tissues. Red blood cells contain a protein-based structure called haemoglobin. This is known as a metalloprotein (a protein that binds to metal), as iron makes up an important part of its structure. The iron in haemoglobin actually binds to oxygen to carry it around the bloodstream, where it can be deposited to cells and tissues. This is why people who have serious anaemia or iron deficiency become very tired and fatigued, as their capacity to deliver vital life-giving oxygen to cells is diminished. If cells dont get enough oxygen, their ability to create energy and perform many important functions is greatly impaired and severe fatigue and malaise soon set in.