What Are Your Plans for World Heart Day 2011?

World Heart Day 2011 is celebrating its 11th anniversary, and it is … today!

Did you know that heart disease and stroke are the world’s leading causes of death? 17.1 million lives are claimed each year! (Source: www.world-heart-federation.org)

Scary, isn’t it? This is the reason why World Heart Day was initially introduced in 2000, to bring people’s awareness of it as well as spread the message that at least 80% of deaths from these causes are preventable.

But how to prevent it?

Though there are ‘beyond control’ risk factors such as advancing age and family history of heart disease, there are some factors that can be controlled and modified and smoking comes first, followed by obesity, being physically inactive, overly stressed and depression, eating junk food…etc.

How does USANA’s staff support the healthy Heart Day?

At USANA Australia and New Zealand, we not only strictly follow Australian Legislation regarding smoking to create a non-smoking work environment; we also hold regular health and fitness programs to keep staff physically active:

We have recently finished the first round of the Table Tennis Tournament and most employees had fun with it – at the end of the day, it’s not about winning the game, it’s about getting away from the desk a couple of minutes per day and having some exercise as well as social interaction with colleagues. Meanwhile, with the on-going USANA Fitness Club program, some active ones are trying very hard to earn as many points as possible to win the prizes. There is also a Basket-ball Tournament in the pipeline… Woo hoo!

Something that you might be interested in knowing as well, from a nutrition point of view…

People from the Mediterranean love their olives! Recent research showed that constituents found in olives can help in maintaining a healthy heart. The antioxidant activity of olives helps lower oxidised LDL cholesterol, the so called “bad” cholesterol. This further supports a rapidly growing body of evidence that suggests that it’s not so much the level of your cholesterol that is critical but lowering the amount of cholesterol that oxidised (rancid), that is really important.

With heart disease being one of our biggest killers, it’s worthwhile adding more olives and olive oil to your diet and, we’d suggest you take a quality supplement that contains olive fruit extract.

Apart from olive oil, you could try to:

• Include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated (omega-3 and omega-6) fats in your diet, including avocados, tuna, salmon, linseed/flax oil, walnuts
• Avoid trans fat
• Reduce intake of saturated fat by choosing lean, trimmed meat and reduced or low-fat dairy goods
• Supplement your diet with a good quality fish oil (with omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA)

And the good news is that there is a great new USANA Heart Health Autoship Pack available in Australia and New Zealand at the moment, that includes nutritional supplements for maintaining a healthy heart in the long run. They are USANA Essentials, BiOmega III, Proflavanol C100, CoQuinone 100 and E-Prime.

And at the end…

What’s your plan for this special day? Shall we stop for a minute and ask ourselves, “Is my heart healthy?” For a good start, this is an interesting test to help you calculate your heart age. Good luck with it!