Added: 09/30/2006 |
A Healthy Weight Suggests a Healthy HeartThe medical community has recently emphasized the importance of a healthy weight. A number of restaurants have changed their menus, so as to offer foods with fewer calories. Still, the offering of such foods does not come with any sort of guarantee for a healthy weight among the diners. The patrons in those restaurants could choose not to eat the more healthful foods.
Aging creates changes in the body. Aging occurs because the body shows signs of wear. The wear and tear on the body produced by aging affects all body organs, including the heart. That is why an older individual must be careful to eat a heart healthy diet.
Aging often leads to a redistribution of the body fat. Sometimes aging is associated with a declining concern over the maintenance of a healthy weight. Sometimes aging produces weight concerns that do not focus on the heart. In those cases, a person might judge himself or herself in possession of a healthy weight without checking to see if that weight has put a strain on the heart.
On occasion, an elderly person who appears to have a healthy weight can have heart trouble. That fact became clear in the summer of 2006, when an 88 year old woman in Pennsylvania suddenly had heart problems. The doctors discovered that she had bruised her heart. Her salty diet had caused her to have a mild heart attack.
The doctors told her to cut-out from her diet all of the bacon and other pork products. They temporarily put her on medication that would reduce the excess fluid in her system. They encouraged her to work on maintaining her healthy weight.
The doctors could not, of course, monitor that woman’s every meal. They did, however, communicate their suggestions to the woman’s younger daughter. That daughter noted that her mother did reduce her intake of pork. The daughter was pleased to see that her mother did work to maintain her healthy weight.
Still the daughter soon became aware of a time when a healthy weight might not be a sign of heart health. One evening that daughter paid her mother a visit. The mother’s friend took the two of them out to dinner. To the horror of the daughter, they went to a KFC restaurant and ate fried chicken. The daughter knew that such chicken had a high salt content.
The daughter then spoke with her mother about limiting the amount of salt in her diet. The daughter found that aging could sometimes lead to a decline in one’s desire to stay with a healthy diet. It seemed to the daughter that aging could increase one’s desire to enjoy more of life’s most dangerous pleasures.
Aging can sometimes lead to the loss of recent memories. Only rarely, however, does it manage to obliterate more distant memories. The woman in York might still remember her good and thin friend. That friend had always maintained a healthy weight, even though her father had owned an ice cream parlor.
Unbeknownst to her doctors, however, that woman apparently did not have a truly healthy heart. That fact had become revealed by an unfortunate tragedy. More than thirty years earlier, the good friend of that York woman had died of a heart attack. She never had to deal with the problems bought on by aging.
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