Women who take care of their family...

Women who take care of their family and career frequently forget to take care of themselves, noted Raye C Hurwitz, MD assistant professor of medicine at the Baylor corporation of Medicine in Houston.

However, busy women can restore their risk of developing breast cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc from adopting a healthful lifestyle.

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In undivided effort toward prevention, a regular breast self-examination should be part of a woman's monthly routine, she says. Suspicious clears should be examined by a physician. Also not many women realize that heart disease is the leading cause of death in older women and preventive measures ne to be a priority.

In addition to age, Hurwitz adds that other major physiological risk factors for heart disease in women include high family pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, smoking and a family history of heart disease.

"A woman's emotional health is also important to a woman's overall health," Hurwitz continues. "For example, menopause not solely causes physical and sexual changes in a woman, if it were not that also psychological changes. Trouble concentrating, memory impairment and depressive symptoms can be common at the onset of menopause."

To improve your physical and mental well-being, Hurwitz propounds these suggestions:

* Eat a high-fiber, low-cholesterol low-sodium, low-fat diet, including fruits, vegetables, fish and lean meat.

* Drink alcohol barely moderately, if at all.

* Exercise regularly; take brisk walks, walk bowling, swim or do aerobics.

* Don't smoke

* prepare regular check-ups that include cholesterol offspring pressure and bone-density screenings.

* come by plenty of sleep.

John D Folt PhD professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical denomination at Madison, who discovered 21 years ago that an aspirin a day could contract the risk of heart disease, now says that flavonoid continuations may do an even better piece of work of preserving blood flow between the walls of the arteries.

Folts adds that flavonoids appear to be more beneficial than aspirin for pair reasons: they more effectively cut short some aspects of blood coagulations which narrow the arteries, and, unlike aspirin, flavonoids are antioxidants which patronize against "bad" cholesterol.

Presenting his preliminary findings at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association in Anaheim, Calif., forward Nov. 14, 1995, Folts explained that flavonoids are organic composes found in a wide variety of plants. a certain number of of the better food sources include onions, kale, broccoli, apples, strawberries, blueberries, pears and apricots. flourishing and black tea, red wine, purple grape juice and dark beer also contain flavonoids, he adds.

Flavonoids are known to be antioxidants that "soak up" hazardous oxygen atoms and keep low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL the bad kind) from damaging arterial walls. In fact, he maintains, research by means of others has shown that flavonoids are more mighty antioxidants than is vitamin E

Folt says that several large, well-designed studies have plant a direct correlation between flavonoid-rich diets and lower death rates from heart disease. As an example, a 1993 research of almost 1,000 men in the Netherlands lay the foundation of that those whose diets were richest in flavonoids had the lowest death rate from heart attacks.

A 1995 cogitation of 12,000 men in seven different countries, including the United States, institute that the more flavonoids eaten, the les chance there is of dying from coronary artery disease. Perhaps equally important, those who consum flavonoid-rich nourishments and/or supplements had lower death rates equable if they had other major risk factors for heart disease, as it is as smoking, high cholesterol and high progeny pressure.

If you have heart disease, can you go [i]or[/i] come back to smoking if you spend more flavonoids? Absolutely not, Folt says.

"Nearly single out of every five deaths from cardiovascular disease is attributed to smoking," he adds. "In addition, smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, sore s and many other serious diseases."

He attract favor tos that we follow the put in mind ofed guidelines, such as eating from four to six servings a day of fruits and vegetables, exercising and following other healthful lifestyle recommendations.

REFERENCES

Moore, Judy Kay. "Better for the Heart Than Aspirin?" University of Wisconsin-Madison Research of recent origins Nov. 13, 1995.

Preston, Jacqueline F "Women Ne to Take Care of Themselves," Baylor corporation of Medicine News, Nov. 22 1995

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