Losing my heart disease

By Herbert Vego

HEART diseases are among the biggest claimants of life anywhere in the world. The hardest hit are the rich who can splurge on the most expensive steaks and other fatty delicacies.

Well, I used to be a steak lover – even if I am not rich.

Now I don’t care if I am not mistaken for a gourmet. Having become a heart patient, I have shifted to near-vegetarianism to prevent further cardiac and arterial damages. I have repeatedly written about vegetarianism but can’t resist eating meat when eating out.

Last year, due to breathing difficulty, I had my chest x-rayed, which resulted in a finding of “cardiomegaly” or slight heart enlargement.

“No cause for alarm yet,” my cardiologist assured me after prescribing medicine to treat high blood pressure, which he thought was the culprit.

She asked me to beware of high-cholesterol diet which may clog arteries and lead to atherosclerosis, identifiable by fatty streaks along the artery walls. In time, plaques choke off blood flow, depriving the heart of sufficient blood to pump. Meanwhile, the heart enlarges.

I have also learned from Google articles and vlogs where cardiologists advise that, to keep the arteries and veins open for normal blood circulation, we must prefer low- or non-cholesterol meals.

There are “good-cholesterol’ foods (high-density lipoprotein or HDL) which help remove other forms of cholesterol from the bloodstream. Among them cited by American physician/nutritionist William Li in his podcasts are avocado, berries, nuts, apple, beans and oily fish, among others.

If you’ve been eating too much pork or beef, chances are you’re improving your chances of catching heart disease. It would help switching to fish. Unlike pork, the fat in fish – notably salmon and blue marlin, among others – is of the omega-3 type or one with high-density lipoprotein (HDL) that prevents cholesterol build-up in the arteries.

Like the Japanese, people who live around the Mediterranean Sea – specifically in Greece, Italy and France – are half as likely to die of heart disease as the Americans, although they are not as fish-crazy as the Japanese. The Mediterranean diet is rich in monounsaturated fats from olive oil. Other plant-based fats of the olive-oil type come from hazelnuts, avocados, almond and rapeseed oil.

Animal fat, on the other hand, is low-density lipoprotein, which destroys arteries by raising blood cholesterol, enhancing blood stickiness and suppressing clot-dissolving mechanisms.

But, to quote American cardiologist Dr. Ernst Schaefer, speaking in a podcast, “If I had to tell people just one thing to lower their risk of heart disease, it would be to reduce their intake of food of animal origin, specifically animal fats, and to replace those fats with complex carbohydrates – grains, fruits and vegetables.

“If right now you have chest pain or angina, it is a warning sign that oxygen and blood do not flow freely through your blocked arteries. To alleviate it, you may try vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene on top of your doctor-prescribed medications.”

In February this year, having learned from what I had read and heard, I went through a 2D echocardiography performed by Dr. Janice Joan Santiago of St. Paul’s Hospital, Iloilo City. This time, the result showed a normal-size heart.

2D echo, by the way, is a non-invasive test used to analyze and assess the functioning of the heart.

Ironically, the poor seem to know better than the rich not only in the choice of foods but in the choice of heart-care activities. Most people with healthy hearts are the manual laborers who flex their muscles daily; this enables their body to produce high-density lipoprotein which, to reiterate, combats bad cholesterol build-up.

To reiterate the most famous quotation from the Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates (460-337 BC), “Let your food be your medicine and medicine, your food.”

-oOo-

ELECTRICITY RATES HIKED

DESPITE the announced price-cut in transmission by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), distribution utilities will have to bill their customers a slight hike of P0.27 centavos because of higher prices imposed by generation utilities through the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), triggered by higher electricity demand during the summer season.

The generation charge claims the highest percentage of the bill handed to power users. The amount is immediately forwarded to the power generators, such as the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) and Palm Concepcion Power Corporation (PCPC), among others.

For the billing cycle April 18 to May 12, 2024, MORE Power will charge Iloilo City consumers P10.3062 per kilowatt-hour, which is only P0.27 higher than the previous rate.

There will be no hike in MORE Power’s Distribution, Supply, and Metering (DSM) charges.