Welcome to Heart Healthy Living with Dr. Jackie, a big blend radio podcast that features Dr. Jacqueline Obani, a board certified cardiologist and electrophysiologist and author of the best selling book, Women and Heart Disease, The Real Story. Welcome everybody, you know, July is here and it is sunny, hot, warm, hot, and hot again. It is summer and it is also national picnic month. It is national parks and rec month. Don't tell Dr. Jackie, but it is also national ice cream month, but anyway, I don't think she wants us to talk about ice cream too much, but we are going to talk about Heart Healthy Summer and Dr. Jackie, welcome back, how are you? I am good, thanks for having me. Summer is kind of a cool thing other than it is hot, but I think we have got to remember to have fun, especially parents that suddenly their kids are home 24/7, but it is a good time to get together with families and have barbecues together and have those kinds of movie nights under the stars, you know, these are all that good stuff good for your heart when you have time out. Yes, taking time out, spending time with your friends and family is always good. I mean, of course, if it is not so stressful, but yeah, I think summer times are usually times that you create memories with families that are long lasting, so I definitely encourage that. And the activity, because you know, depending on where you live, right? And if you're in the Midwest, you're off in the lakes, you're off hiking, you know, if you're in the desert, you're probably hiking early in the morning, but I think the other part is activity. That's a good thing, right, for our heart. Oh, absolutely, activity is always good for your heart. Like I always mentioned, the American Heart Association recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, and that can be accomplished really in a day of, you know, playing outdoors with, you know, family and friends. Yeah, going hiking, playing frisbee in the park, you know, or just even walking, right? Just walking. Yeah, kayaking. Oh, yeah, I love kayaking. That's a good summer activity. It's really water. Yes. You're moving good for your upper body, right? Is that good for cardiovascular though? Yes, it is. Yeah, when you move your upper body, you tend to work your heart out a little bit more. So that's a good moderate physical activity. So anything that can really raise your heart rate above what it is a baseline. It's a good thing. And so, like swimming would be like a nice journey. Excellent. Yeah, swimming is excellent. I always say swimming for those who, you know, have bad knees, can't do, can't run and do those kinds of exertion when they have knee hip problems. Swimming is a great option. And it feels good, you know, especially when it's hot, you know? Yes. Get out of the pool, get out in the ocean. Now, what about heat? Can, you know, hot weather affect someone who has dealing with heart disease or can it affect, you know, just even your, I mean, can it affect you, even if you're teetering on heart disease, can being an extreme heat get to you? Yes, absolutely. You know, when it's really hot, warm or hot outside, as it's going to get in certain parts of the country, you know, you can develop heat stroke, which is bad. It can, and it can result in you ending up in the hospital with all sorts of problems. So when it's really hot outside, it's probably not a good idea to, you know, try to do heavy exertion or moderate exertion, because that can definitely lead to heat strokes. So I know we always encourage people to go out and do physical activity, but I would say if it's really hot outside, maybe, you know, you can try to do the, do some physical activity in the morning or in the evenings when it's cool, but when it's somebody at the peak heat times, I would recommend that you stay home in air conditioning. Now, you know, we talk about heat stroke, right? I know your medical term today, because you're always going to teach us a term is stroke. So is heat stroke related to like a stroke stroke? No, it's actually not. So a stroke is a completely different, different thing. So when we talk about stroke, we're talking about not getting enough oxygen to your brain. So your brain tissue, if it doesn't receive enough oxygen for a certain amount of time, which we say like six minutes, you can develop, you can develop permanent brain damage, which is what a stroke is. Okay, so and the stroke is connected to heart health too, right? So we, when we say heart disease, we say the whole cardiovascular system, which includes the blood vessels going to the brain, as well as the heart. So cardiovascular disease typically includes stroke because of the blood vessels. Yes. Okay, so now everything we're talking about for a heart healthy and fun summer can help your heart, like everything activity, we're going to get to diet because we always talk about food. You know, you may have your ice cream a little bit, but you don't want the whole, you know, ice cream store. That's it. But all of that can actually help. So in regards to prevention of heart disease, prevent that is prevention of stroke too, right? So when we talk about this, these high healthy lifestyle habits, yes. Okay, good. Now let's talk about food. Because I think, I think, you know, we always like the fun factor, but I feel like a picnic, you know, a picnic in a park with your friends and family loved ones, even, you know, companies, corporate corporate America, you know, do some fun stuff with your employees. I think more companies are getting better about having a healthy, like a healthy office, you know, a healthy work life. And looking at, okay, we're going to do things as a company that, you know, they're putting in gyms and things like that, which I think is really cool for the employees. So because you don't want to stress your employees out so much that they do, you know. So I like that part of it. So the fun though, you know, obviously summer is fun, whether you're at the pool, if you're at the beach with your friends. But a picnic, let's talk about the food part. So what would you say we need to be careful? Because the barbecue thing starts happening. This is where the naughty stuff happens. I think it's the barbecue because here comes the meat, here comes the desserts, the ice creams, and in between, I think the person getting started at the barbecue cooking often starts with the beer nice and early in the morning. And by the evening, they're probably, you know, gone through way more than they expected, and the temperatures are rising, and they think, well, I've got liquid beers, mostly water. I think I've told Nancy that before. I'm just saying, and she looks at me and she goes, no. So can we get fooled a little bit on these days and just kind of get swept away too much? Yeah, I mean, there are lots of healthy choices for, you know, outdoor picnics. We always talk about the Mediterranean diet. But some of the things that you can eat would be, you know, vegetables, grilled vegetables are always a great idea putting grilled vegetables on skewers. Instead of, you know, the proteins that come from from meat or animal protein, it's, you know, we say that plant proteins tend to be healthier for you than animal protein. So you can look at things like, you know, grilled vegetables on the skewers. In terms of whole grains, you always want to get the, you want to eat more whole grains and avoid the carbohydrates that are refined. We talk about the white breads. You want to pick the brown breads or you want to pick quinoa, brown rice, and those brown pasta, wheat pasta. So the whole grain tends to be healthier for you. So I would say you can grill vegetables. You can have sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes actually have the source of vitamins and micronutrients, which are excellent for the heart. So you can pick things like that and try to avoid the animal, the proteins that come from an animal source and eat more of the proteins that come from the plant source because that's healthier for your heart. Now, what about is, is chicken and pork better than red meat or I would say fish is probably the healthiest, you know, fish, especially the oily fish have the omega 3 fatty acids, which are oils that are great for the heart. So fish is definitely healthier than animal fat or animal proteins because animal protein tends to have the denser fat, saturated fats is what we call it. And that's what causes the clogging, the clogging of the arteries of your heart and the heart attacks, whereas the oily fish has your omega 3 fatty acids, which is actually good for you, they're the healthier fats for you. I heard that beets are really good for your heart as an antioxidant. Yes, that's yeah. Yeah, so we always say that the fruits and vegetables that have the deep colors, like the beets, the reds of the beets, the deep orange and the yellow, they tend to have a lot more micronutrients. So things like spinach, peaches, carrots, beets, so those were the deep, deep colors are rich with micronutrients, which are good for the heart. So yeah, I would say that beets are a good idea in your salad. Have you ever had a beet salad before? Yeah, yeah. I am pickled now then we're going to get naughty because of the salt, right? So just actually, okay, okay. Yes, you want to play up soft. If you do have, you know, heart disease, or if you have hypertension, you want to lay off the salt, where we say you should have less than 2300 milligrams, which is about one teaspoon of salt a day. And if you do have heart disease, like heart failure, you want to decrease that to about 1500 milligrams, which is three quarters of a teaspoon of salt because salt then leads to retention of water. And if you have heart failure, it causes you to retain more water. And you just are not able to get rid of the fluid, which then leads to issues with breathing and accumulation of fluid in your lung and what we call heart failure, exacerbation, and plural effusions. But yeah, so salt tends to be, well, salt is bad in cardiovascular disease. Wow, okay. So I love this because, you know, when we think about picnics, we're often doing sandwiches. There's often some kind of salad kind of thing going at a barbecue. But there are so many things like you're saying, and you use spinach as a salad, you know, your greens or kale and things like that. And watch the salad dressing, try and do it yourself. Yes, yes. And yeah, absolutely. You don't have to always use salt to increase the flavor of food. There's so many other spices that you can add to your meals that can make it more tasty and doesn't have so much salt in it. So we can do you can do a salad dressing, you can put whatever spices you want with with the olive oil, which tends to have which is one of the better fats to have is polyunsaturated fatty acids. And yeah, and spice it up. There's so many spices out there that you can put in your food to enhance the taste that's not salt, which is bad for you. And one of these fruit is okay, like you're saying peaches and things like that. That's okay. Yeah, fruits and vegetables are okay to do. And yeah, substituting more the protein, the animal proteins are something more fruits and vegetables for that. It will be a healthier choice. Exactly. And you can do so much with that. It makes the the picnino, it's kind of, I think if it's a family and stuff or even friends, you can all communicate about who's making what, right? And try to go like, hey, I'm on this heart healthy diet, you know, can we all kind of work towards that, you know? And even when it comes to desserts, I mean, you can freeze fruit. And you know, a little ice cream is okay though, just a little, right? Yeah, absolutely. Everything in moderation is good. You just don't want to overindulge. That's always the problem is once you start eating, it gets so difficult to stop. But yeah, if you can just make sure you cut out small portions so that you're not overly indulging, that's, yeah, that's perfectly fine. That's cool. What is your ultimate fun summer day for you, Dr. Jackie, taking a break because I know you're really busy doing all kinds of cardiovascular procedures. And you know, she's a cardiologist and she zaps people because she's the electrophysiologist. You know, she brings us back to life. And all she really wants is for us to, you know, get her to be preventative. So change our lifestyle, because as she always says, you know, 80%, it's 80% of how our bodies are handling things, we can turn it around by 80% and really reduce the risk by 80% of getting heart disease. And that's for men and women, it is the most deadliest disease we can have is heart disease. So over summer, it's kind of a nice way. It's a nice time to get your body back into shape and, you know, enjoy it and make positive habits that are fun that you're going to stick to, you know, I think. But what's your favorite day, summer? My favorite day. Enjoy. Yeah, so I don't live too far from the beach. I'm walking distance from the beach. So I, a wonderful summer day for me would be, you know, if I have some time, we go to the beach in the morning, we're in school, and it's quiet. And I just walk on the beach and I listen to, you know, some of my meditation tapes or, or something spiritual and listen to the waves crashing along the, on the ocean. And drinking a cup of coffee, that to me is like the perfect thing to do in the summertime, although I don't have a lot of time to do that. But when I do have time, and it's just a very relaxing way for me to just come down to earth and just be at one with myself and my spirit and I thought, I'm coffee. So now, wait a minute, do you do ice coffee? I mean, there's a limit on coffee, isn't there too? Well, black coffee, I mean, depends on what kind of, you know, hard condition you have. If you have what we call, it brings me is where your heart beats really fast. Maybe caffeine is not, not good for you. But other than that, I mean, it's okay to have at least, you know, a cup of coffee a day. And a lot of the studies are not showing really any detrimental effects of the heart drinking one cup of coffee. Now, if you start adding all this extra cream and sugar, then we're talking about something completely different. But, you know, a cup of coffee a day is, it's okay. And I usually like it warm because in the mornings, you know, it's cooler on the beach. And so, it's, you know, a nice, it's nice for me to just drink a cup of warm black coffee and just take a walk on the beach. Yeah, I'm with you on that, man. That sounds good. It really does. And, and listen, here's the thing, if I don't have my cup of coffee in the morning, it's, it's not good to society, you know, the world. If you want me to be nice, that's all I need, you know, then I just have to, you know, but there is something about having a calm start to your day where you gather your thoughts and have those internal moments that kind of sets the tone of the day. If you start it off hectic, it's not going to be happy. And that's when stress starts. But if you take those moments, I always believe, you know, even if you have to get up at four or five, you get up and have those little moments yourself busy parents. Oh my gosh, you need it. You need your meantime. Yes, I would agree with that. Yes, I would agree with that. So if anyway, if you can find something that, you know, relaxes you, keeps you calm, grounded, then I would say by all means, do that and make time to do it because that's always a difficult time making time to do those things are important for your well-being that you make time to do those things. And take time to do something new. That's fun. A new hobby. Go surfing. I mean, if you have fun surfing, try that, you know, that kind of things, you know, pickle ball. Yeah, pickle. What is this about pick? Have you tried pickle ball? I haven't, but I keep getting these invitations to do this. And I just haven't done it yet, but it seems like that's what everybody's doing these days. It's all over. Well, I know a lot of retired folks do it and, you know, but that's, if you're out there and being active that way and have to see that's the thing you're having fun, but your body is working and doing movement. Exactly. And it doesn't feel like work. It's not something on the, you know, the treadmill going, go faster, go faster. Dr. Jack is coming running after you. That's not fun. You know, this, that's, some people love it. So, you know, everybody's different, but like, yeah, I mean, if you're, I'll play pickle ball and not know that, hey, you did exercise, you know, I need it. Yeah, I need it to be, you know, camouflaged exercises, be camouflaged. You go for a hike and I'm enjoying it all. Then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, wow, I really moved the body. And hiking is fantastic. And there's trails everywhere that are flat and easy, accessible. So you don't have to overexert. So there's so much summer is fun. Let's do something new. Hey, one summer, I learned how to play cornhole. And you wouldn't think you do move your body for a little bit, you know, I don't know what that is. It is like a plank with a hole in it and you throw a bag of corn into the hole. It's kind of, it's kind of like a raised thing. They do it at wineries and there's, it's like a whole American thing. I mean, I didn't, I always thought it was funny. I didn't know, you know, we had a friend from Kentucky. She would come on shows and she'd say we're in with a really big X and she was like, we're playing cornhole tournaments and we'd get the giggles. We're like, what do you mean? You said cornhole. I can't believe you said that, you know, and then somebody went and asked her, why do Nancy and I get the giggles about cornhole? And she says, Oh, they're from California. So, but then finally when we were in Michigan with some friends and I learned how to play cornhole and then I got all into it and got a little competitive about it. But as much as I was competitive, competitive, I wasn't good at it. If they left that out there all like, if once everybody went home and left that set up there, you know, I would have continued doing this all night to perfect it. I was getting a little weird, you know, but anyway, it's healthy. It's fun. And it's good. One of my friends, she does yoga on the beach every day in the mornings. That's nice. Now that's nice. I'm like, that has got to be like one of the coolest gifts you can give to your body is just relaxing with the waves moving doing nice, slow yoga meditations. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm feeling better. Just me too. I'm going to go out and stretch. Yes. Life can get so stressful sometimes. I tell you, God, we get stressful. We just have to make the time to do all these things. Well, I'm glad we talk about heart healthy summer and having fun because some people get hot and bothered, right? Yeah. And so as temperature raises up, it's important to step aside. If you're like working, if you, you know, your career, we're going to be covering this on a show this month too about, you know, if you're working in a hot kitchen for your living and if your career is out in the fields, if you're, you know, in construction, make sure you take those breaks. Don't mess with it, man, because the heat will get you and that's not fun. And I would also recommend staying very well hydrated, you know, drinking lots of water, especially if you're working outside so that you can avoid the heat stroke, which is when your body really overheats and it can cause problems to your organ system. So stay well hydrated. If it's really, really hot, I would say stay indoors, you know, in air conditioning. You don't have, if you don't have to go out, don't go out. Yeah, agreed, agreed. Well, thank you, Dr. Jackie, always fun to chat with you. Happy summer to you. Yes. We'll talk next time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Have a wonderful summer. You too. All right. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us on Big Blend Radio's heart healthy living show with Dr. Jackie. New episodes air every second Wednesday at 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. You can keep up with Dr. Jackie at womenandheartdiseasebook.com. Listen to the shows at bigblendradio.com.
