You: Staying Young: Make Your RealAge Younger and Live Up to 35% Longer. Michael Roizen F.

shuttling blood into and out of their hearts for all those years. When valves experience a little bit of turbulence over time, they get scarred with calcium and can get stuck like a door with a rusted hinge, disrupting blood flow. You can hear the difference between a good valve and a malfunctioning one through a stethoscope: instead of a rub-dub beat, it’s more of a rub-woooosh sound as blood passes through the diseased valve. (Diagnosis, though, comes after an echocardiogram.) Statins delay the process, and surgery can repair or replace valves. Even better, researchers are developing ways to make those repairs without opening your chest, which cuts back on suture costs, not to mention the ICU stay.

      Inflammation plays a role in lots of kinds of heart disease. For example, in atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm), the heart’s small upper chambers, which are supposed to receive blood and gently propel it downstream, start looking like bags of worms (see Figure 2.3). Because blood isn’t pushed completely out of the atria, it may pool and clot. Atrial fibrillation is frequently caused by inflammation of the heart wall, and the damage is done by those oxygen free radicals produced by inefficient mitochondria. Arrhythmias can also be caused by a number of other things, including pressure on the walls of the atria or hormonal abnormalities, and can be linked to general inflammation of the heart. No matter the cause, the delicate cables that conduct electricity throughout your heart become swollen and start short-circuiting. You can actually feel arrhythmias as a fluttering of the heart (unassociated with love pangs, of course). Steer clear of bad trans-fat- and saturated-fat-laden fries, burgers and textbook-thick pieces of pie.

Figure 2.3 Bad Beat Irritation caused by inflammatory cells in the right and left atrial chambers of the heart makes the wall swell and electrical circuits short-circuit. The abnormal heart rhythms then cause blood to pool, so clots form, which can lead to strokes.

      The Chelation Sensation?

      You may have read about a development called chelation therapy – basically an arterial drain cleaner. In the process, a solution is injected into your veins, and it is supposed to bind with the calcium that hardens arterial plaque and subsequently clear it through your urine. The theory that chelation therapy works to diminish the calcium in your plaque has never been proven, but there’s anecdotal evidence that it can help clear arteries in some people. It’s very enticing but still experimental. An even better drain cleaner promises to be a new drug that is a super HDL called alpha-1-Milano. Look for it in the next few years if it passes the scientifically rigorous clinical trials.

      Your goal to protect your heart is not only to cut down on the things that chip away at and clog up your arteries, but also to take action to strengthen your heart muscle and decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease. You have firefighters standing by, in the form of antioxidants, which your body produces to keep the Major Ager of oxidation from wounded mitochondria in check. And medicine can help too. Statins work by decreasing the inflammation in the plaque, which slows the progression of the clogging process and reduces sudden ruptures that can lead to clot formation and sudden closure of arteries.

       FACTOID

      When you’re over sixty-five, HDL is more important than LDL. Although statin drugs can be life saving, the net effect is that some choices may reduce healthy HDL cholesterol too. So you may want to try an alternative, like taking niacin, vitamin B₅ and omega-3 fatty acids, and exercise for lowering your LDL while keeping your HDL high.

      Ultimately, though, many of our recommendations are aimed at adding to your firefighting unit so it stays fresh and is able to quench the small fires and occasional meltdowns that occur within your arteries.

      YOU TIPS!

      It’d be easy for us to sit here and scold you: no more fried chicken, no more smoking, no more popping scoops of M&M’s every time you walk by the cupboard. We believe that you’re fully aware that sweets, fried anything and cancer sticks aren’t exactly cardiac elixirs. So without taking away all your joys, here are the steps that you should do to let your heart perform its main job: moving blood through your body – with no obstructions.

      YOU Tip: Feed Your Heart. These days, you don’t have to be a dietitian to know that certain foods will create some serious roadblocks on your arterial highways. Saturated fats and trans fats are two of the things that accelerate and magnify the inflammatory process. That chili-drenched hot dog doesn’t just add to your lousy LDL cholesterol; it also stimulates your genes to produce more inflammatory proteins to make the tissue irritation a whole lot worse. Thankfully, the following foods are good not only because of the heart-healthy nutrients they deliver but because they have strong anti-inflammatory effects.

      

Fruits and vegetables. Many fruits and vegetables – specifically red grapes, cranberries, tomatoes, onions and tomato juice – contain powerful antioxidants called flavonoids and carotenoids. Found in colourful foods, flavonoids and carotenoids are vitamin-like nonessential substances that seem to decrease inflammation by handcuffing those damaging oxygen free radicals and stimulating your body to take them out of your system through urine.

      

Garlic. While it is still being debated, we believe a clove a day can help thin your blood and lower your blood pressure. (Plus, it helps keep people away, to lower your stress level.) If you don’t like the taste or the fact that colleagues shrink away when they pass you in the hall, you can also take garlic in pill form (called allicin) at 400 milligrams a day (though the odour may still emerge through your sweat glands).

      

Olive oil. The “extra virgin” kind contains lots of healthy phytonutrients as well as monounsaturated fats, which help raise your good HDL cholesterol. Aim for 25 percent of your diet to come from healthy fats like those found in olive oil. That will reduce your RealAge by more than six years.

      

Omega-3 fatty acids. These fatty acids (found in fish or the plants fish eat, like certain algae) are the handymen of your arterial system, because they can do a whole lot of fixing up. They reduce triglyceride levels in your blood (high triglycerides are a big cause of plaque buildup), and they help reduce the risk of arrhythmia after a heart attack. In addition, they decrease blood pressure and also make platelets less sticky, to reduce clotting. Aim for three portions of fish per week. Best choices: wild, line-caught salmon; trout; sardines; mackerel; fresh tuna.

      

Alcohol. If you don’t have a problem with alcohol, having one alcoholic drink a night (4 fl oz of wine, 12 fl oz of beer, or 1.5 fl oz of spirits) for women – up to two for men – seems to have a beneficial effect on your heart by raising levels of that healthy HDL cholesterol. It also helps you to wind down, so your blood pressure can do the same. Our preference: red wine, because it also contains antioxidants.

      

Foods with magnesium. Foods like 100 percent whole-grain breads and cereals, soya beans, lima beans, avocado, beets and raisins help lower blood pressure and reduce arrhythmias by dilating (expanding) the arteries. Get 400 milligrams a day. A serving of lima beans contains about 100 milligrams, 100 grams of spinach contains 80 milligrams, twelve cashews contain 50 milligrams, thirty peanuts contain 50 milligrams.

      

Foods with soya protein. Getting 25 grams a day of soya protein in foods like tofu and other soya bean products decreases your bad LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels.