Among the highest risk factors are male sex, age over 35, cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, high levels of certain blood fats, and a family history of cardiovascular disorders.

Other researchers have added to this list another risk factor: the compulsive, hard-driving, highly anxious personality. The greater the number of severity, the greater the person’s overall risk.

These threats to the heart can be divided into two main categories: those beyond individual control, such as age, sex, and heredity, and those that can be controlled, avoided, or even eliminated. Among those in the second category are what cardiologists call “the triple threat.” These are the high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and high cholesterol levels in the blood.

If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, your risk of having a heart attack is twice that of a nonsmoker. If you smoke, have hypertension, and eat a diet high in fats without any exercise at all, your risk is five times greater than normal.

The Healthy Heart

If these risk factors endanger the heart’s health, what enhances its well-being and improves its odds of working long and well?

Obviously, quitting cigarettes and eating a low-fat diet will help. The next best thing you can do for your heart’s sake is to give it what it needs: regular exercise or a complete cardio interval training.

The heart is a muscle, or, more accurately, a group or “package” of muscles, similar in many ways to the muscles of the arms and legs. And just as exercise strengthens and improves limb muscles, it enhances the health of the heart muscles as well.

Since World War II, several large-scale statistical studies have evaluated the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular disease. One well-known survey compared 31,000 drivers and conductors of some bus companies. The more sedentary drivers had a significantly higher rate of heart disease than the conductors, who walked around the buses and climbed stairs to the upper level.

The why and how behind these statistics were bet explained by classic experiments with dogs whose coronary arteries were surgically narrowed to resemble those of humans with arteriosclerosis. Dogs who were exercised were had much better blood flow than those kept inactive.

The exercise seemed to stimulate the development of new connections between the impaired and the nearly normal blood vessels, so exercised dogs had a better blood supply to all the muscle tissue of the heart. The human heart reacts in the same way to provide blood to the portion that was damaged by the heart attack.

To enable the damaged heart muscle to heal, the heart relies on new small blood vessels for what is called collateral circulation. These new branches on the arterial tress can develop long before a heart attack — and can prevent a heart attack if the new network takes on enough of the function of the narrowed vessels.

With all these facts, it is now boiled down to a single question: What should be done in order to prevent such dilemmas?

Some studies showed that moderate exercise several times a week is more effective in building up these auxiliary pathways than extremely vigorous exercise done twice often.

The general rule is that exercise helps reduce the risk of harm to the heart. Some researches further attested the link between exercise and healthy heart based from the findings that the non-exercisers had a 49% greater risk of heart attack than the other people included in the study. The study attributed a third of that risk to sedentary lifestyle alone.

Hence, with employing the cardio interval training, you can absolutely expect positive results not only on areas that concerns your cardiovascular system but on the overall status of your health as well.

This particular activity that is definitely good for the heart is a cycle of “repeated segments” that is of intense nature. In this process, there is an interchange periods of recuperation. It can both be comprehensive activity and moderate motion.

Consequently, the benefits of merely engaging into this kind of activity can bring you more results that you have ever expected. These are:

1. The threats of heart attack are lessened, if not eliminated

2. Enhanced heart task

3. Increase metabolism, increase the chance of burning calories, therefore, assist you in losing weight

4. Improves lung capacity

5. Helps lessen or eliminate the cases of stress

Indeed, cardio interval training is the modern way of creating a healthy, happy heart and body.

Resources:

Cardio Assurance [Circulatory] blends heart-benefiting ingredients that are designed to support your heart and cardiovascular system, including hawthorn berries extract, vitamin K2 (MK7), resveratrol, folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12.

All Natural Whole Foods Supplement:
Standard Process – Cardio-Plus 330 Tablets

When I was in school, which was about 100 years ago, EVERYONE pushed me to learn my ABC’s. I did learn how to read and write, and now I’m able to learn more about the ABC’s of health, specifically, A(Retinol), B(Thiamine), and C(Absorbic Acid).

I’m not going to bore you with the scientific mumbo-jumbo, I’m going to give you the meat and potatoes about these three vitamins and how we can’t live without them.

First: A(Retinol), a fat-soluble vitamin that unfortunately is a common deficiency in most of the underdeveloped, overpopulated countries. It is estimated that 80,000 children become “blind” each year as a result of vitamin A deficiency and about half die.

In most of the food we eat half of the vitamin A is in the form of retinal and the other half is provitamin A.  The liver stores 90 to 95 percent of our vitamin A, enough to last months or years under normal conditions.

Vitamin A is present in our foods in two forms.  In meats the active vitamin is retinol, while in vegetables it is found as a provitamin, A carotenes, a precursor of vitamin A. Carotene is an orange-yellow pigment that is present in green vegetables, but is masked by the green color of the chlorophyll in leaves.

Second: B(Thiamine), a water-soluble vitamin, and it’s first description of a vitamin B deficiency, dating back to 2600 B.C.in ancient China, called “beriberi”, meaning – “I can’t, I can’t” – due to the fact that persons with the severe vitamin B deficiency were unable to move because of the total breakdown of the nervous system.

The sole consumption of refined grains in that region was ultimately found to be the cause of the vitamin B deficiency, and as soon as meat, fish, and vegetables were incorporated in more equal proportions, beriberi soon became a thing of the past.

By the early 1900’s vitamin B was discovered to be present in the outer coat of grains and beans, and was gone when refined. Science finally figured out that washing and stripping the outer coat of grains depletes vitamin B from the food source.

Foods that contain vitamin B include: Wheat germ, whole grains, dried peas, beans, raw peanuts legumes, nuts, green leafy vegetables.  Protein rich foods are generally good sources.

Third: C(Absorbic Acid), a water-soluble vitamin, that if deficient , brings back the word “scurvy”, with horrific stories of doomed sailing ships, called black-ships, with men dying an unspeakable death. Scurvy was noted to have the same outcome as leprosy or the plague. And the reason for sailors being inflicted with this condition most often, was because they couldn’t keep fresh fruits and vegetables on board their ships during long years at sea, thereby not getting the ascorbic acid needed for the body to fuction properly.

When vitamin C is totally eliminated form the diet the symptoms of scurvy begin to appear in about 90 days and consist of dryness of the skin, bleeding into the skin around the hair follicles, bleeding in the eyes, loss of hair, bleeding and swollen gums, fatigue, pains in the bones and joints, cavities in the teeth, sore mouth and gums.

The only toxicity to the system that has been noted is the formation of kidney stones due to the conversion of excess vitamin C to oxalic acid.

The highest and best sources of vitamin C are in citrus fruits such as lime, lemons, oranges, grapefruits and any other tangy fruits on the market. You can get ascorbic acid in other forms at your local health food stores, but I recommend fresh raw fruits and vegetables, unless you’re planning a very long boat trip.

Always find a good physician or practicing herbalist before embarking upon a regimen of any vitamins.

Well, that’s just a glimpse of what vitamins A(Retinol), B(Thiamine), and C(Absorbic Acid) can do for the body, and just a glimpse of “The Importance of Learning your ABC’s”

Jasmine Beaupre is an freelance author/researcher who presents working information to be used for every day experiences.

Reference and Resources:

Vitamin A information Click Here

Vitamin B information Click Here

Vitamin C information Click Here

A&D, Vitamin 10,000/400iu Softgel Capsules (100)Click Here

Balanced B Complex Tablets (120)Click Here

Vitamin C, Citrus Bioflavonoid 500mg (90 Tablets)Click Here