OH! Magazine - Australian Version June 2016 | Page 13

( Nutrition ) TOP TIPS FOR DR JOANNA CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH Dr Joanna shares her health and nutrition tips for achieving optimum cardiovascular health. he wonderful thing about health today is that we can all be much more proactive. The area of lifestyle medicine has a major focus on prevention, rather than waiting until we’re sick before we do anything. T In the area of cardiovascular health we have a wealth of information regarding the risk factors, along with the lifestyle and dietary changes we can make to lower our risk. Firstly, when was the last time you had a blood pressure check? High blood pressure, technically called ‘hypertension’, is extremely damaging to blood vessels around your body and increases your risk of heart problems and stroke. If you do have high blood pressure your doctor may prescribe medication, but there are several things that you can do yourself to lower it. For example, if you are overweight, losing even a little weight will help. You can also reduce your salt intake and up your potassium; the balance between these two minerals is essential for blood pressure control. To cut down your salt intake use herbs and spices to flavour food when cooking, rather than adding salt. Additionally, eat fewer highly processed packaged foods and fast food as these tend to be very salty. And in terms of your potassium intake, you can boost this by eating loads of plant foods (i.e. veggies and fruit). Managing your stress levels is also important for cardiovascular health. This is because chronic stress has a significant effect on your blood pressure. Meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, achieving a good work/life balance and finding joy in your day can all help you to better manage stress. Another factor if you have high blood pressure is your alcohol intake. While one or two drinks a day can benefit cardiovascular health, more than this is detrimental to blood pressure. Secondly have a blood cholesterol check. You want to know not just your total cholesterol level, but the levels of LDL (the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol), and HDL (the ‘good’ cholesterol). Essentially we want to lower LDL cholesterol if it is too high, and boost your levels of HDL cholesterol because it is protective. Dietary changes can make a big difference here as well. The key steps are to avoid all sources of trans fats. Trans fats do not occur to any great extent in nature, but are created during food processing. You’ll commonly find them in foods such as commercial pies, pastry, biscuits and cakes, many fast foods. Despite the recent controversy over saturated fats, we do know that swapping unsaturated fats for saturated fats does help to lower LDL and raise HDL cholesterol. So choose good fats such as extra virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds and oily fish, while cutting back on butter, fatty and processed meat, pastries and so on. Fibre can also help you to improve your cholesterol profile. I found a supplement drink called ‘beta-heart’ is an easy way to get the specific fibre called ‘beta-glucan’ that research