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A Good Night’s Sleep Is Good for Your Heart: Here Are Some Tips for Better Sleep and a Healthier Heart

AHA Publisher — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:00:06 +0000

Lorie Johnson via CBN News – There’s no question that sleep is important to our health and well-being. Now the American Heart Association is emphasizing that it’s also one of the most important paths to heart health. That’s worth our attention because heart disease kills more Americans than any other cause of death. To show the powerful connection of sleep to a healthy heart, the AHA is adding sleep to its overall key measurements. It joins diet, exercise, nicotine exposure, body mass index, blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure. Most health experts and institutions recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep each night, preferably with few to no interruptions. Bodies need that time to repair and reset, and doctors say without it, our heart pays the price. Research shows people who regularly sleep less than six hours a night my triple their risk of heart disease. The concern is that’s not enough time spent in the deepest stage of sleep, when blood pressure and heart rate drop as much as 20 percent, reducing stress on the heart. Also during this sleep stage, the brain releases growth hormones that help the heart recover from demands placed on it during the day. Deepak R. Talreja, M.D., a cardiologist with Sentara Healthcare told CBN News sleep is very important to heart health, but unfortunately, today more than half of all U.S. adults don’t get enough, and sleep deprivation is more common now than it was in past generations. “As our society has gotten busier and busier and we’re all available 24/7 with devices that connect us all the time,” he said, “most Americans don’t get enough sleep.” He sees firsthand how that’s taking a toll. “When someone is sleep deprived, it affects their overall functional status, their mental state, they tend to have more problems with depression, pessimism, anxiety,” he explained. “Then there are direct effects on inflammation, on heart rhythm issues, and on the presence of heart disease.” Dr. Talreja tells his patients that the path to better sleep begins with the right environment. The bedroom should be dark, cool (but not too cold), and quiet, which can include a white noise machine to cover up environmental or outside noises. Then establish your best bedtime and stick to it. “Set an alarm to remind you, just like you have a wake-up alarm, a go-to-sleep alarm can be very helpful,” he said. Stay away from electronics well before bedtime and silence them to avoid interruptions during the night. If you do wake up, stay away from the smartphone. “We’re tempted to pull our device quickly if we’re having a little bit hard time sleeping and look at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or do things that one, introduce light to our environment, and two rev us up instead of letting us calm down,” said Dr. Talreja. Exercise is also very important to getting a good night’s sleep. “That way when it comes time for sleep, your body’s ready for it. Someone who doesn’t do anything (physical) during the day, they haven’t really worn out their body so they’re not ready to sleep,” Dr. Talreja explained. Dr. Talreja points to a star patient who changed his ways. Severino Tiaba now works out daily and goes to bed at nine o’clock. “Now that I’m getting older, it’s routine,” Severino told CBN News. “The kids are out of the house. It’s just me and my wife.” Severino made a lot of other changes after suffering a heart attack six years ago. “My chest was burning real bad,” he recalled. “I had my wife take me to the emergency room because I felt like I needed to get checked out and it just got worse.” That near-death experience convinced the beer-drinking, cigar-loving, junk food junkie to do a 180. “I want to be around to see my grandkids,” he said. Severino started by following Dr. Talreja’s advice to switch to a more heart-healthy diet. Dr. Talreja recommends a plant-based eating plan that minimizes saturated fat, sugar, and processed foods. Severino enjoys the Mediterranean diet. “I eat a lot of fruits, a lot of vegetables, a lot of grains,” he said. “No more red meat, no more pork. So I eat a lot of cold water fish, salmon, mackerel, and poultry.” He gave up alcohol except an occasional glass of red wine, and ditched the cigars. “The biggest risk factor for heart disease in this era is still smoking,” said Dr. Talreja. “Quitting smoking is far and away the single most important thing a person can do.” Dr. Talreja says some people are better able to improve their heart health by making changes gradually and with the help of others. “First, introduce more fruits and vegetables into your diet. Cut down fried food and fast food, cut down soda,” he advised. “Pick specific goals you can achieve, and then pull other people in your life into it. If a whole family decides together they’re going to eat more healthful, they’re more likely to succeed.” So while heart disease is currently America’s number one killer, that could change. “If we could get the average American to eat better, exercise, pay attention to their other risk factors, and sleep better,” Dr. Talreja said, it would make a world of difference. To read the original article click here.

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How to Optimize Mental Clarity, Focus, Memory & Mood by Monitoring Your Glucose

AHA Publisher — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 08:00:57 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #250) and blog, I speak with Josh Clemente, one of the founders of Levels, an amazing company that developed a smart tracker that monitors your blood glucose in real time, so you can maximize your diet, exercise, mental health and overall wellbeing. Josh and I discuss the importance of tracking your glucose levels, how to know what changes to make based on the data, techniques to balance glucose levels and increase metabolic flexibility, how sleep affects glucose levels, how to use a glucose monitor to improve mental health and decrease the risk for neurodegenerative diseases, and so much more! Plus, I share how I used a Neurocycle to lower a stress-induced glucose spike! Over the past several weeks, I have used the Levels monitor daily, and I can honestly say it has changed the way I see my health and live my life on a day-to-day basis. It has made it more fun to experiment and see, in real time, how my lifestyle choices impact my biology and mental state, including how my 5-step mind management technique (the Neurocycle, which I discuss in detail in my upcoming book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess) impacts my physical health. For example, I noticed that when I didn’t manage my stress, my blood glucose levels went crazy, and I experienced a type of “fogginess” in my mind and body! However, when I got my mind back under control using the Neurocycle, I was able to manage my stress, and my blood glucose levels went back to a healthy level. I felt “human” again! But why exactly are our blood glucose levels so important? As Josh notes, our metabolism regulates our sleep, our appetite, our weight, our energy levels AND our brain and mental health, so it is incredibly important. Levels essentially helps you maximize your unique metabolic health so you can live a longer, fuller, healthier life, mentally and physically! It teaches you how to get the most out of your body by knowing how to fuel it, showing you what impacts your energy levels and ability to function mentally and physically. When it comes our mental health, research has actually shown that when we monitor our glucose levels on a regular basis and make better lifestyle choices based on our unique data, we can improve our clarity, mood, and ability to focus and make new, healthy memories. This is not surprising, as erratic glucose levels can cause havoc in the brain, potentially setting us up for cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s! Just as putting bad fuel in a car can damage it, not fueling the brain correctly can cause all sorts of issues, including insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. Levels essentially provides a series of objective data points over time to help you track how your body is functioning and what you can do to improve your overall health. With Levels, you don’t just have to make a healthy choice and hope for the best—you can see, based on the data, how that choice is affecting you individually within the context of what Josh calls the “system” of your life. Of course, this kind of data is very important for people that need constant glucose monitoring, like someone diagnosed with diabetes. However, it is also helpful for people who just want to make better health decisions based on how their body is functioning moment-by-moment to help prevent the onset of chronic health issues. As they say, prevention is the best medicine, and glucose monitoring is one important way to see what we can do to prevent disease and improve our overall health! To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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‘Sugar Is a Tricky, Tricky, Tricky Little Abuser’: The Light Bulb Moment That Helped This Sugar Addict Break Free

AHA Publisher — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 08:00:29 +0000

Lorie Johnson via CBN News – America’s weight problem is so bad a recently published report in the New England Journal of Medicine predicts over half of the nation will be obese in just ten years from now. To make matters worse, one-fourth of the country will be more than 100 pounds overweight. Health experts increasingly point to sugar addiction as the root problem, brought on by the consumption of highly processed foods. In fact, research shows food manufacturers spare no expense making sure their products reach the “bliss point,” massive quantities of sugar, salt, and fat that make their foods utterly irresistible. Molly’s Story Food addiction specialist Molly Carmel recognized her own sugar addiction ten years ago. As a result, she gave up sugar and flour at that time, lost the weight, and has kept it off ever since. In the meantime, she founded The Beacon Program a Manhattan food addiction clinic and wrote, Breaking Up With Sugar: Divorce the Diets, Drop the Pounds and Live Your Best Life. Like millions of Americans, Molly spent years trying different diets without ever seeing true success. At one point she tipped the scale at 325 pounds. “I had to get into the shower sideways,” she told CBN News. “I stopped wearing underwear completely because back in those days I didn’t know where to buy underwear that fit me. I stopped wearing shoes that tied because I couldn’t tie my shoes. It was dark. And I couldn’t stop eating. I couldn’t stop eating.” “The only thing worse than being morbidly obese is gaining weight back after being morbidly obese,” she said, admitting she was nearly suicidal about her inability to control her weight. Molly’s Light Bulb Moment At her lowest point, Molly’s life completely turned around. She encountered people who had given up sugar and flour who felt and looked great. Thinking it was a bit crazy, she nevertheless researched studies on mice addicted to sugar. She learned consuming it releases the neurotransmitter dopamine into the brain and how that feel-good chemical triggers memory, desire, and behavior. The research really clicked for Molly when she saw how giving into craving meant it would take even more sugar to achieve the same level of pleasure. “Reading research,” she said, “that really described me. I was like, ‘Oh!'” Molly learned flour affects the body just like sugar. She said she finally understood the reason her past diets failed is that they allowed some sugar and flour consumption, a stumbling block for sugar addicts. “They are big into moderation, which, I think it’s impossible for so many of us,” she said, “Let me tell you something, if I could moderate, that’s what I would do.” Going Cold Turkey After realizing an addict needs to avoid their substance altogether, for the first time in her life Molly gave up sugar and flour for three days. It wasn’t easy. “When I started to have the detox I was like, ‘uh-oh.'” But she pushed through. “I decided to continue on for like three more days,” she recalled. “About day 57 I thought, ‘I can do this.'” She lost the weight and kept it off. “I haven’t had sugar and flour in ten years,” she said. Sugar’s Abusive Hold Now Molly helps thousands of other sugar addicts find freedom at The Beacon, her New York City eating disorders clinic and in her book Breaking Up with Sugar. She says being addicted to sugar is like being in a relationship with an abusive person. “Think about an abuser,” she said, “It’s like, ‘Oh you think you can get on without me, huh? You’re a nothing. You’re a nobody.'” she said. “And if you’re an outsider, if you’re watching that movie you’re like, ‘Get out of there girl! You’re fine! You’re amazing!'” Molly says ditching sugar and flour involves the obvious targets like cake and cookies. However, lots of processed foods that seem okay also contain sugar – lots of it, in some cases. “Sugar is a tricky, tricky, tricky little abuser because it really is everywhere,” she said, “I gave up ketchup, I gave up Teriyaki sauce, I gave up a lot of salad dressings. I had to start to read ingredients.” If sugar or one of its many aliases is one of the first four ingredients, don’t eat it, Molly advises. That often includes things like processed pasta sauce, flavored yogurt, and protein bars. The Hardest Part Although giving up flour and sugar can be a frightening prospect to an addict, it’s worth the effort, Molly says, pointing out that living free from these substances gets much easier and more enjoyable the longer you stick with it. “I travel and I go out to dinner,” she said, “I order in and I live a big, abundant life.” The hardest part is enduring the headaches, depression, and other withdrawal effects that can last for days or weeks. “It’s a real thing,” she said, “and it passes. You want to know the way it passes, though? If we don’t go back to the sugar. Because it ends. I promise.” So while not everyone feels controlled by sugar, Molly Carmel believes a great many do. “I think there’s a part of our country that is so deeply giving up on themselves and so deeply hopeless,” she said. She says if she can kick the habit, anyone can. Are You a Sugar Addict? The Yale Food Addiction Scale is a survey to help you understand your relationship with sugar. When you eat specific foods, do you eat more than planned and past the point of hunger? Do you worry that you need to cut down on your eating, or have you tried to cut down on your eating, but found yourself unable to do it? Do you spend a lot of time going out of your way to get food, eat food, or recover from eating food (causing you to feel sluggish or tired)? Have you cut down or given up on doing important things in your life, as a result of your eating behaviors? Have you kept eating despite emotional and physical consequences? Do you feel the need to eat more than you once did to feel satisfied or relieved? Do you notice that you don’t get as much enjoyment from the same amount of food as you used to? When cutting down on eating problem foods, do you feel bad emotionally or physically, or have strong cravings for food? Have you had problems with family or friends because of your eating behaviors? Have your eating behaviors gotten in the way of taking care of your family, fulfilling your responsibilities, or succeeding in school or work? Have you been so preoccupied by eating or thoughts of eating that it’s put you in a physically dangerous situation? Have your cravings and desire for food been so strong that you couldn’t think of anything else or you had to eat the foods right away? Do your eating behaviors cause problems in your life or make you feel distressed? Molly says if you identify with six or more of the above statements you likely have a full-blown sugar addiction. Less than six also poses problems because addiction is a progressive condition, meaning it worsens over time. Therefore, she says it’s wise to address the addiction in its early stages before it gets too out of control. READ Kill the Sugar Before It Kills You: ‘Sugar Is the Source of All Chronic Disease’ *Originally published July 31, 2020 To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

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54 Grams of Sugar in Your Favorite Holiday Drink? Try This Keto Recipe Instead

AHA Publisher — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:00:04 +0000

Dr. Don Colbert – Back away from the drive-through. Turn your car around and head home. The Peppermint Mocha on the other side of that drive-up window may cost you much more than the $7 price tag. It may cost you over 1/4 cup of straight, liquid, killer sugar. Instead, break out your blender and try our delicious keto recipe instead! Most consumers have little idea of the amount of sugar packed into lattes and gourmet coffee drinks. Unfortunately, the mixture of quick, liquid sugar and caffeine can have destructive consequences on health. Here’s a much better option, and why you should avoid the sugar-caffeine trap. Delish Keto Peppermint Mocha Ingredients 1 tablespoon organic/free-range butter 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar-free (stevia-based) chocolate chips 1 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (very warm but not boiling) 1/3 cup espresso or strongly brewed coffee (or ~2 shots of espresso) 1 tablespoon Keto Zone Chocolate Collagen 1 teaspoon Keto Zone Vanilla MCT Oil Powder 1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract (approximately 4-5 drops) dash salt Optional: keto-friendly sweetener, to taste Optional: whipped cream or coconut cream Optional: shaved sugar-free chocolate or sugar-free candy cane pieces Instructions Place butter and chocolate chips in a blender. Add hot coffee and milk. Add collagen, MCT Oil Powder, extract, and salt. Carefully blend on medium speed until fully combined and frothy. Take care to hold the lid in place and allow steam to escape as needed. Pour into a mug. Add sweetener if desired. Top with whipped cream and shaved sugar-free chocolate or sugar-free candy if desired. Enjoy! Nutrition Info: 214 calories, 20 grams fat, 3 grams net carbs (7 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams fiber), 0 grams sugar, 2 grams protein Keto Peppermint Mocha vs. Starbucks Why go through the trouble of making your own Keto Peppermint Mocha instead of just grabbing Starbucks? First, there’s the sugar. One 16-ounce serving of Starbucks Peppermint Mocha packs in an astonishing 54 grams of sugar. What are the sources of these sugar grams? A look at the ingredients list tells us it’s sugar, peppermint syrup with sugar in it, vanilla syrup with sugar in it, and dark chocolate curls with sugar. Pretty much, it’s sugar. Then, there are flavorings and preservatives, and a lot of chemical ingredients you simply don’t need. In fact, Starbucks Peppermint Mocha is made of: Milk, Mocha Sauce [Water, Sugar, Cocoa Processed With Alkali, Natural Flavor], Brewed Espresso, Peppermint Syrup [Sugar, Water, Natural Flavor, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid], Whipped Cream [Cream (Cream, Mono And Diglycerides, Carageenan), Vanilla Syrup (Sugar, Water, Natural Flavors, Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid)], Dark Chocolate Curls [Sugar, Chocolate Mass (Processed With Alkali), Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Vanilla Extract] And, it has this nutrition info per 16 ounces: 440 calories, 15 grams fat, 63 grams carbs, 54 grams sugars, 4 grams fiber, 13 grams protein The Danger of Sugar and Caffeine What’s the harm? Of course, this much sugar is simply harmful to your body. It can spike blood glucose, increase resistance to insulin, promote fat storage and inflammation, and more. Specifically, the mixture of caffeine and sugar can be even worse. When you consume sugar, your body digests and absorbs it quickly. In the case of liquid sugar, this process is even faster. Once absorbed in the digestive tract, sugar makes its way to your liver, and then into your bloodstream. At this point, it’s crucial that your body sends out a bolus of insulin to deal with the sugar and store it. This is not a healthy process, but it is the lesser of 2 evils. Without insulin opening up the cells for glucose storage, the glucose would stay in your bloodstream, harden arteries, and deteriorate health. When insulin is sent out, it’s also vital that your cells respond by opening up. If they are not as sensitive to the insulin as they should be, and ignore it rather than opening and allowing the glucose to enter for storage, there will be problems. Caffeine, when mixed with sugar, can exacerbate these problems. The Lethal Caffeine and Sugar Combo Just how bad is the caffeine and sugar combo? Caffeine can disrupt the sensitivity of insulin in cells, even in otherwise healthy people, when consumed with sugar. This means the glucose has nowhere to go, and blood sugars may begin rising. In fact, studies have found that when caffeine and liquid sugar are consumed, the caffeine impairs sensitivity to insulin, which impairs the body’s ability to deal with the sugar (1). Meta-analysis has shown this is consistently an issue, for both healthy subjects and those with impaired blood sugars to start (2). Bottom Line If you’re fond of delicious holiday peppermint mochas, it’s time to get choosey. Don’t impair your sensitivity to insulin. Instead, choose a delicious homemade keto peppermint mocha! Skip the 54 grams of sugar and choose health this Holiday Season. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Colbert click here.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Detect Low-Glucose Levels Via ECG Without Fingerpick Test

AHA Publisher — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 06:48:58 +0000

University of Warwick via Newswise – Tracking sugar in the blood is crucial for both healthy individuals and diabetic patients. Current methods to measure glucose requires needles and repeated fingerpicks over the day. Fingerpicks can often be painful, deterring patient compliance. Newswise — A new technology for detecting low glucose levels via ECG using a non-invasive wearable sensor, which with the latest Artificial Intelligence can detect hypoglycaemic events from raw ECG signals has been made by researchers from the University of Warwick. Currently Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) are available by the NHS for hypoglycaemia detection (sugar levels into blood or derma). They measure glucose in interstitial fluid using an invasive sensor with a little needle, which sends alarms and data to a display device. In many cases, they require calibration twice a day with invasive finger-prick blood glucose level tests. However, Dr Leandro Pecchia’s team at the University of Warwick have today, the 13th January 2020 published results in a paper titled ‘Precision Medicine and Artificial Intelligence: A Pilot Study on Deep Learning for Hypoglycemic Events Detection based on ECG’ in the Nature Springer journal Scientific Reports proving that using the latest findings of Artificial Intelligence (i.e., deep learning), they can detect hypoglycaemic events from raw ECG signals acquired with off-the-shelf non-invasive wearable sensors. Two pilot studies with healthy volunteers found the average sensitivity and specificity approximately 82% for hypoglycaemia detection, which is comparable with the current CGM performance, although non-invasive Dr Leandro Pecchia from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick comments: “Fingerpicks are never pleasant and in some circumstances are particularly cumbersome. Taking fingerpick during the night certainly is unpleasant, especially for patients in paediatric age. “Our innovation consisted in using artificial intelligence for automatic detecting hypoglycaemia via few ECG beats. This is relevant because ECG can be detected in any circumstance, including sleeping.” The figure shows the output of the algorithms over the time: the green line represents normal glucose levels, while the red line represents the low glucose levels. The horizontal line represents the 4mmol/L glucose value, which is considered the significant threshold for hypoglycaemic events. The grey area surrounding the continuous line reflects the measurement error bar. The Warwick model highlights how the ECG changes in each subject during a hypoglycaemic event. The figure below is an exemplar. The solid lines represent the average heartbeats for two different subjects when the glucose level is normal (green line) or low (red line). The red and green shadows represent the standard deviation of the heartbeats around the mean. A comparison highlights that these two subjects have different ECG waveform changes during hypo events. In particular, Subject 1 presents a visibly longer QT interval during hypo, while the subject 2 does not. The vertical bars represent the relative importance of each ECG wave in determining if a heartbeat is classified as hypo or normal. From these bars, a trained clinician sees that for Subject 1, the T-wave displacement influences classification, reflecting that when the subject is in hypo, the repolarisation of the ventricles is slower. In Subject 2, the most important components of the ECG are the P-wave and the rising of the T-wave, suggesting that when this subject is in hypo, the depolarisation of the atria and the threshold for ventricular activation are particularly affected. This could influence subsequent clinical interventions. This result is possible because the Warwick AI model is trained with each subject’s own data. Intersubjective differences are so significant, that training the system using cohort data would not give the same results. Likewise, personalised therapy based on our system could be more effective than current approaches. Dr Leandro Pecchia comments: “The differences highlighted above could explain why previous studies using ECG to detect hypoglycaemic events failed. The performance of AI algorithms trained over cohort ECG-data would be hindered by these inter-subject differences. “Our approach enable personalised tuning of detection algorithms and emphasize how hypoglycaemic events affect ECG in individuals. Basing on this information, clinicians can adapt the therapy to each individual. Clearly more clinical research is required to confirm these results in wider populations. This is why we are looking for partners.” To read the original article click here.

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