Baseline Health
1) Protect Your Heart, Baseline Health Part I
1) Protect Your Heart, Baseline Health Part I
Timing: Just a little time to take some baseline tests
Level of Difficulty: Easy way to make sure your heart is in a healthy place
Serving Size: Get the baseline data, and then live a heart happy lifestyle
Spiciness: Mild
INGREDIENTS
Just yourself, a chat with your doctor, some tests, and a heart happy lifestyle
REASONING AND BENEFITS
This recipe is all about heart health, and the information comes from Peter Attia’s book “Outlive.” Modern medicine often uses reactive strategies to tackle the health challenges that we face, we want you to start utilizing preventative strategies. Preventative strategies are often not thought of until later in life, but we should really get started in our 30’s and 40’s. This will create trackable data to see if your heart is staying the same, getting better, or deteriorating. The earlier you discover issues, the more time you have to deal with and reverse them. “Many of the conditions that could possibly lead to heart disease can be modulated or nearly eliminated…via lifestyle changes and medications.” (Attia, p. 127) One of the most important things to check and track as said by Attia are your apoB levels. You want to get these apoB levels as low as possible because they are one of the greatest predictors of cardiovascular disease. While you are already getting tests, test your Lp(a) levels in your blood as well. This test is especially important if cardiovascular disease runs in your family because the way these elevated levels usually present themselves is with a sudden premature heart attack. You would much rather discover these levels with a blood test, than with a heart attack. Lp(a) only needs to be checked once, you either have elevated levels, or you don’t. Whereas apoB levels should be tracked throughout your life in order to make sure you are keeping those numbers as low as possible. Going one step further, you can even get a calcium scan to get a better sense of the state of your arteries. If you discover you have any elevated numbers, the time is now to create an aggressive plan to reduce the levels. Pair these tests with a heart healthy lifestyle focusing on exercise, nutrition, and reducing blood pressure. The earlier in your life you can lower your risks, the better off you will be, and the healthier you will be.
INSTRUCTIONS
Make an appointment with your doctor and ask for a blood test to check your apoB and Lp(a) levels. You can even get a calcium scan of your arteries.
Some other markers of risk are insulin, visceral fat, and homocysteine numbers.
If you smoke, quit smoking, and if you have high blood pressure, reduce your blood pressure. These are massively important steps to improving heart health. (Attia, p. 133)
Exercise: Combining endurance and strength training are great ways to maintain a heart healthy lifestyle.
Nutrition: Fats. You do not need to limit fat overall, we all need to consume fat, but focus on monounsaturated fats such as olive oil, avocados, fish, walnuts, etc. (Attia, p. 133)
ApoB levels often cannot be lowered by nutrition and exercise alone, you may need to incorporate drugs such as statins. But we aren’t going to tell you what to do here, talk to your doctor and create a plan to lower your apoB levels if they are elevated.
PRO TIP: “Looking at a 30 year time frame rather than the standard 10 years and taking aggressive precautionary measures early—like beginning statin treatment earlier in certain patients—could prevent hundreds of thousands more cardiac events, and by implication could save many lives.” (Attia, p. 135)
* “The sooner we lower apoB exposure, thus lowering risk, the more benefits compound over time—and the greater our overall risk reduction.” (Attia, p. 135)
** “Once you understand that apoB particles—LDL, VLDL, Lp(a)—are causally linked to ASCVD, the game completely changes. The only way to stop the disease is to remove the cause, and the best time to do that is now.” (Attia, p. 137)
*** We think everyone should read the book “Outlive,” by Peter Attia. Protect yourself, advocate for yourself, preventive medicine is always better than reactive medicine.
SOURCES:
Learn more about how to improve your health, lifespan, and healthspan:
Attia, P., MD. (2023). Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity. Harmony.
