Reviews by Hubie Goode: Heart Attack Matters

Heart Attack Matters

It has been shown that the leading causes of death for male executives in their forties and fifties is usually cancer and degenerative diseases of the heart and liver. A 50 year old male executive who doesn’t get a lot of exercise and sits behind a desk for most of the day and then the TV at night, with perhaps a small bit of hypertension, has a 15% chance of dying in the next ten years. The causes for such an event are several: Heart attack, lung cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, highway accident, stroke, cancer of the intestines and or rectum.

How does one reduce the odds of this happening? If you smoke, you need to stop now and add 1.5 years onto your life. Exercising can add another year, no alcohol can add another 8 months, seat belts can add another 6 months, and losing weight can add another 3 months.*

*The Life Extension Institute

Heart attacks rarely just happen, they often are the results of compulsive behaviors, both physical and mental. If one makes work and financial success a top priority over personal health and personal needs, this can lead down a road to futility that cannot be returned from. Continuing to spend holidays, weekends and evenings at the office, believing that your family’s financial health is more important than their emotional needs, will leave them without a mother or father. Taking the brief case home at night when you don’t stay late at the office, and then reviewing the days problems at home each night will also cause you to have problems.

Let’s just run down a few more ideas for heart attacks:

1) Agreeing to every request, never saying no.
2) Accepting every invitation to serve on a board or committee.
3) Using lunch as a midday business conference.
4) Taking shorter vacations than you are entitled to.
5) Refusing to delegate authority.
6) Working 12 hours a day.
7) Smoking, overeating and drinking at night as a reward for putting in a hard day.
8) Associating mainly with business associates who do the same things in #7.
9) Avoiding exercise because you believe it’s a waste of time, after all, time is money!


If you already have these habits, then you are headed for trouble, my friend. In order to begin on the road out of the Coronary Club, you’ll need to get involved in a committed exercise program, three to four times a week. And stick to it.

Physical exercise and also taking a moderate amount of alcohol are connected to higher levels of blood protein. This combination can guard against heart ailments. But you need the combination, not just one or the other. This blood protein is called high-density lipoprotein (HDL). It binds to cholesterol in the blood and carries the cholesterol through the arteries. Cleansing the cholesterol from the blood prevents forming blockages that cause heart disease.

Heart attacks and strokes can be prevented. Here are some ideas.

1) Check blood pressure regularly. Early detection and treatment has played an important part in the declining number of strokes in the US, About 2/3 of stoke victims have either high blood pressure or diabetes.

2) Eliminate excess body fat. Shifting to a low fat, low cholesterol diet is the best thing. Avoiding obesity is important in lowering blood pressure in order to reduce levels of harmful low-density lipoproteins (LDL). This helps the blood to flow more smoothly and resist clotting by reducing the deposits of cholesterol on blood-vessel walls.

3) Avoid birth control pills if you smoke or have high blood pressure. The pill increases the chance of stroke 6 times more than the ordinary woman with only high blood pressure.

4) Reducing stress with regular physical contact can greatly decrease the chances of health problems. This applies even if you live alone and only have a cat or dog as a companion. The regular ability to feel external stimulus is both important not only physically, but also psychologically.

5) And of course, the regular use of fish oil is an old and useful stand by. Eat more fish with oil in it, like sardines, salmon and flounder.

Would you be able to tell if someone was having a stroke? What if YOU were having one?

Look for these things:

1) Sudden temporary weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg.
2) Sudden loss of speech or the inability to understand speech.
3) Sudden loss of vision in one eye.
4) Double vision. (Not the Foreigner kind.)
5) Unexplained headaches or a change in pattern of headaches.
6) Dizziness.
7) Changes in personality or mental ability.

Would you be able to tell if someone was having a Heart Attack? What if YOU were having one?

Look for these things:

1) A crushing, searing pain the in the middle of the chest, moving quickly into the arms, shoulders or neck.
2) Sharp pains in the pit of the stomach.
3) Fainting spells, nausea, sweating and breathing problems.
4) Heartburn or indigestion that just won’t go away.
5) If indigestion or heartburn doesn’t respond to the usual treatments within 2 minuets, get to the hospital. The majority of heart attacks happen within three hours of the first signs.
6) If you are having recurrent problems, it is best to have someone around that knows how to react in case of a problem. Someone trained in cardio pulmonary resuscitation would be the best person to have around. Having one of those little heart stimulator machines in the house would be a wise, wise idea.
7) Remember CPR is for people trained to administer it, Hollywood movies would have you believe otherwise. They are lying to you.

So okay, you’ve had a heart attack and survived it. What do you do to prevent the little bugger from happening again?

The recurrent rate is now about 45% in the United States. In order to control things now, you’ll need to eat more fish and fowl, No red meat. (I mean it!) No heavy meals at night and no exercise within two hours of a meal. Always low fat meals, as much as humanly possible. No smoking and moderate exercise one hour a day every day no matter what. Buy a treadmill and watch TV while walking at night. Use your imagination.

No high altitudes or running or jogging. Too much of anything can be a bad thing, even if you are working out for health and you push too much. No heavy drinking, remember a little wine can be good but a lot of wine can be death.

Rehearse for emergencies. Feeling a pain in the chest in the middle of the night has to be planned for, after all, it is YOUR life we’re talking about here.

Are you a Type A person? This is the kind of person who drives themselves to breakdowns. Don’t be a control freak, you can’t be the boss of everything. Even if you believe that in order to get a job done right you have to do it yourself, you have to come to terms with the fact that not every job WILL be done right.

Time sickness is what Type A personalities have. They are obsessed by the idea of getting more and more done in less and less time. They are constantly upset by traffic jams, people who talk too slow or anything that gets in their way. When Five o’clock, or the end of the work day comes, GO HOME.

Think about this: Did you ever get a promotion because you were impatient? Because you operated at a faster rate? Does it help to be hostile or aggressive?

Twenty to thirty percent of all heart attacks happen just before or just after travel. When having that business trip, relax before and after the meeting. Plan for the trip and the work you need to do for the week before, have it finished over the course of the week, not immediately. Hotel, meeting, hotel. Follow this pattern. Use the KISS method. Keep It Simple (Stupid).

Ideas for caring for your heart.

1) Eat two to three meatless meals a week.
2) Eat fish and chicken rather than beef. (Remember that grain fed beef is fattened up for higher bottom lines for the meat industry and when the cattle has been bloated and you eat the cattle products, YOU get bloated.)
3) High roughage, low cholesterol breakfasts.
4) Skip dinner when you begin to gain weight. Lots of weight can be lost by refusing to eat after 6pm.
5) Avoid dairy products. (If a cow has been given hormones for bigger meat payoffs, then its milk will have hormones and your 11 year old daughter will develop breasts way before she’s ready for them.)
6) Swimming two or three times a week helps, but personally, I prefer something more aerobic since swimming tends to be anaerobic. However, the lower stress levels caused by working out in water can be very, very beneficial.
7) Exercise rather than attend meetings or sitting around watching TV all night.
8) Give love to the atmosphere at home and also at work, if you can. Maybe you don’t love what you do, but you can give love to it.
9) Keep an eye on the blood pressure.
10) Bicycle and use the stairs more often.
11) Eat more raw veggies and a few more raw fruits in the diet. Fruit juice is a miracle brew. Less animal products, less sugar.
12) Practice muscle relaxation.

It’s sad to say, but the majority of our lives have been brainwashed into us. We’re constantly bombarded with the ideas of others who just want to legally take the money out of our pockets and put it into theirs. The only difference between a man on the corner with a gun who is demanding your wallet and a salesman, is that the salesman has to convince you to turn over your valuable money for his product that will lose value almost immediately. Less TV and movies in your life will help immensely. There is just too much sales crap out there constantly being fed into our brains. Keep your money. Keep your health. The two will go hand in hand to help you to live on terms that are YOURS and not some salesman’s.

You only have one heart.

Only ONE.