More on Food Health and Exercise #40

Determining which fats are healthy or unhealthy can be confusing and demands much reading to make a decision for yourself.  I hope you have been researching the new USDA healthy food guidelines.   Fats, saturated and unsaturated, health factors, seem to be a matter of disagreement among some nutritionists.  Saturated fats, being mostly those derived from animal products, meat, dairy, and eggs as example.  Coconut and palm oil is also a saturated fat. Most saturated fats are thought to raise your total and LDL cholesterol levels.   Unsaturated fats are from plant, vegetable, and fish products. Most reduce total and LDL cholesterol and lower the risk of coronary heart disease.  Okay this is in general categories, specific fats in specific foods can do more or less than others.  An unsaturated fat example would be omega 3 fatty acids which come from walnuts, cold water fish, and soy.  This essential fatty acid is critical for your health and cannot be produced by your body.  The point, that should relate to you and me as far as federal guidelines interpreting health for us, is that there are good fats and bad fats.  According to the program of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Harvard "total fat content of a given food or diet is a useless metric" "because there are healthy and unhealthy fats".  So as a heart patient desiring to not eat foods bad for my cardiovascular system, I need to avoid unsaturated fats, and not be as concerned about total fat content if it is fat from good natural plant, vegetable, or fish.  Dr. Mozaffarian of Harvard also says concerning fatty acids, "eat more whole foods, and avoid processed ones."  Dr. Mozaffarian is among those who do not entirely support the new health guidelines, thinking they are overly fussy and based on outdated science.  So I think these new federal standards speak for themselves, and from this point on I will go back to focusing on what we determine works best for us.  As heart patients, the best gauge of success of our efforts to become healthy, will be measured by our cardiologist examinations and test results.

Some things I want to reference from Experience Life Magazine for the benefit of those who have not been following us from the beginning, or in the early stages of heart patient rehab and  recovery. "Avoid trans fats, and excess sugars."  "Avoid over salted processed snacks and fast foods. Don't assume low-sodium foods are healthy".

Some of you realize I am spending  time covering some issues we discussed quite a while back.  The reason I am doing this is we have some readers who have not been with us since the beginning.  Exercising is a critical part of a successful recovery.  Being in a formal exercise program, or routine, is very beneficial, in my opinion.  Another benefit,  is exposure to people like yourself.  Maybe not heart patients, but most all are exercising for health reasons, young and old.  Now, if your are recovering from heart attack and heart surgery, you are probably not around a lot of people.  Being with people when exercising helped my morale when I began going to a fitness center.  You know in the first few weeks home from the hospital, it can be discouraging or depressing.  It's was good for me being around other people when I started working out.

Remember exercise, eating healthy, and weight control, are all critical in successful recovery from heart attack, and heart surgery.

I will attempt to spend more time talking about exercising in the next post.