Cardiovascular disease & Risk Factors

Are you at risk for heart disease or stroke?

Preventative medicine is the key to a long and healthy life. Find out what your risk factors are to see what you can do today to stay healthy and active throughout your life.

Take the heart and stroke risk assessment quiz here.

A few general tips, what can you do to stay healthy?

  • Get your minimum physical activity requirements; 60 min of moderate exercise every day, or 10,000 steps.
  • Eat a diet low in saturated fat and sodium to maintain healthy blood vessels.
  • Get enough sleep; to regenerate your body.
  • Reduce your stress levels; increased cortisol levels as a harmful effect on your cardiovascular system.

 

Catch the olympic spirit!

To day is day 98 of the olympic torch rely and it’s coming to Squamish! Come participate in the festivities at Brennan Park.

To see the route click here.

 

Update on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 9:11PM by Registered Commentervioletquartzwellness

WOW! Was that ever cool. I attended the Lions Bay torch celebration, and it was amazing. Catch a glimpse….

 

Say hello to your heart.

Before we delve into specifics about heart health; physical, emotional, energetic, and so on; it is important to understand its structure. Structure defines function.

From an anatomical stand point the heart is comprise of muscle, about the size of your closed fist on the left hand side of your body. For a fantastic diagram of the heart, its chambers, arteries and veins click here.

From an emotional perspective the heart is the seat of emotion; it is where we feel our feelings. Click here for more information.

Energetically the heart chakra is the bridge between the lower physical chakras and the higher spiritual ones. For more information click here.

We will look at all of these and more in greater detail the days to come.

Happy healthy heart!

 

February is heart month!

Many causes have designated months to raise awareness about their plights. For example February is black history month, as well as heart month (as per the heart and stroke foundation). This is the one with more relevance to our purposes and a cause close to my heart since heart disease is prevalent in my family.

Check out the Heart and Strokes website, be ready for lots of fun and interesting heart facts this month.

Happy heart month!

 

What inspired me….

Keeping up with a lifestyle change can be very challenging, often we feel like the payoff is not worth the effort, especially when the results can be slow coming. I have my own personal experience to share; after a long period of being ill, not working out, eating poorly in my late adolescence I decided to get my life in check, I was not happy with my body and I felt crummy. At the time I had not idea how much work it took to get the results I wanted. I had a dance background so for most of my life up until then, it was not something I though mush about. When I first started going to the gym I thought going twice a week was a lot of time, especially because it felt wasted. I was intimidated by other more fit women in the gym. I found a cartoon in a magazine that captured what I felt, it was accompanied by this editorial story; this woman had gone through the same thing I was going through. I was INSPIRED! I loved the cartoon, so I kept it. I taped it to my bathroom mirror, to remind me every day why I was doing what I was doing and to not give up. As I became stronger I enjoyed going to the gym more, I went more often, saw more results. It took me a full five years to really see all the changes I wanted, it had to build over time. That cartoon, stayed on my mirror all of that time. When I moved I kept it and took it with me. Now I can generate my own motivation, but I sometimes remember what it felt like to not have any, and that cartoon’s role in keeping me one track. Do not underestimate the power of the small things.

Do not give up, keep at it, it will come.

 

Notes from the universe

Recently a friend introduced me to notes from the universe from tut.com; they are daily e-mails which remind you of the big picture. I highly recommend it, check it out. Always an inspiring message.

Tricking yourself into staying; when motivation is nowhere to be found

The follow excerpt is from another blog that I follow. I wanted to share it with you because I could not have said it better myself.

Does your training ever leave you feeling like you’re participating in a science experiment with a sample size of N=1? There are training routines to plan and track, data points to be harvested and analyzed, and a constant quest for innovation to reach your personal limits. Sometimes these factors make training exciting. And sometimes they make training seem incredibly boring and like a chore.

When you find yourself fishing for the snooze button on your alarm instead of springing out of bed to assault the day and the training you have so carefully carved out time to execute, you could keep doing the same old thing. But the same old thing is why you’re lying in bed listening to your alarm squawking and cringing instead of rushing full force into an awesome day that you can’t wait to start and a training session that will invigorate you and help advance every area of your life.

Don’t let your training routine be something you dread. When it is, turn it into a game and trick yourself into staying fit even when you’d normally want to bail. There are many ways to achieve this goal, but here are a few of the quickest, easiest ways to keep it fresh and playful.

Unless you’re a professional athlete, remember that this isn’t your job. It’s something you do electively because you enjoy it. Keep that thought in the front of your mind and visualize the moments you’ve most enjoyed in training, the times you’ve overcome your inertia or personal limits and gone to a higher level. That’s fun. That’s the attitude you want to have every day. Cultivate it, visualize it, experience what it feels like and carry it with you so it’s accessible every time you want to just say no to training.

When all else fails, promise yourself a reward. Been dying to eat a bowl of ice cream? Need a new pair of shoes? Want to watch your favorite television show later in the day but feel guilty about making the time to do it? Take anything you’d really like to do and promise it to yourself if you complete every workout seven days in a row or for two weeks or a month or whatever. Write down the reward, what you have to do to achieve it, and make it happen.

 

Moderation, rest and it place in creating sustainable change.

mod⋅er⋅a⋅tion  /ˌmɒdəˈreɪʃən/

–noun

1. the quality of being moderate; restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses; temperance.
2. the act of moderating.
3. moderations, British. the first public examinations at Oxford University for the B.A. degree in mathematics or in classics.
—Idiom

4. in moderation, without excess; moderately; temperately: to drink in moderation.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, even the healthiest foods, exercises can become dangerous and harmful when we abuse them, not only can it become an obsession, but it can also have detrimental effects in the body, thus in the energetic system and so on. Often when trying to maintain healthy habits we begrudge ourselves small slip ups, we feel we must be on the ball one hundred percent of the time, when in fact our changes would be more sustainable if we accept that we will falter, thus we should take it easy, be kind to ourselves and start with small steps. Taking breaks and taking stock are an important part of the process. It is comparable to what happens in the body when exercise training. There is a prescribed rest interval for different types to training which yield different adaptations. When training for increased strength and size, you would not use a rest time appropriate for endurance training. Furthermore you would not for go the rest period all together since it would limit the change in the muscle over time.
If we apply this principle to life and making changes in our lifestyle or perception then it stands to reason that depending on our goals and aspirations, different paths will be appropriate for different types of people. Do not compare your journey to that of another, we are all unique. take your time, as a wise person once said it is not the destination that matters but the journey there.

 

Olympic spirit

The olympics are fast approaching, and the flame will be in Squamish in nine days. It is very exciting to be on the world’s stage; show off our beautiful town and get wrapped up in the energy of the Olympics.

I am very proud to say that Rob will be the RCMP representative greeting the torch when it lands in Lion’s Bay on the 4th.

I encourage you to step out and participate, not only for this event, but also throughout February; it is a once in a life time opportunity to be shared with people from all over the world.

For more information on the torch relay click here.

 

Heart Quiz

I took this heart quiz here are my results:

 

Will beat 108,056 times, pump 1,585 gallons of blood, and push that blood nearly 8,178 miles throughout my body!

Created by MyFitnessPal.com