Participants: Agatha Thrash (Host), Don Miller, Justina Thomas
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000214
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00:01 In Jamaica they have a way of letting you know when fruit
00:04 is ripe and ready to eat by saying that it is fit, 00:09 if a fruit is fit, then it is ready to eat. 00:12 In this country when we speak of something being fit, 00:16 if a person is fit they are physically fit, their heart 00:19 is good, they are in good shape, what they are doing, 00:23 their lifestyle is sufficient to keep them healthy. 00:25 We have a number of things that can help you to have good 00:30 cardiac health, we'll be talking about a few of these numerous 00:33 things in this program, and we hope that you will join us 00:37 so that you can be fit. 00:58 Welcome to Help Yourself To Health 01:00 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute 01:03 and now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 01:06 In this country we have become sort of couch potatoes, 01:12 many people are couch potatoes, one of the reasons for that 01:15 is that they don't especially like what goes on outside, 01:19 they do like what goes on inside, especially TV, 01:22 and the things that they read and people they talk with 01:26 on the telephone and the computer, all of these things 01:29 have joined together to sort make us in America be certainly 01:33 what we could call couch potatoes. 01:35 How do you know whether you are one of those who should be 01:38 a couch potato and should stay inside the house and carefully 01:42 watch over your heart and make certain that nothing happens 01:45 to it, or that you are physically fit and that you 01:49 can enter into all kinds of activities outdoors, in fact 01:53 you should to keep your heart in good shape, so that you can 01:56 live a long time. 01:57 Well I have asked Justina Thomas and Dr. Don Miller 02:01 to help me to show you one of the tests that can enable you 02:06 to know whether you are fit, physically fit. 02:11 This one that I will talk about first is the chair stand, 02:15 and I have Justina, this is Justina Thomas and she is 02:20 officiating in the chair, she will do the stands and then 02:24 Dr. Don Miller will count off one 30 second increment 02:28 and during this 30 seconds Justina will stand as many times 02:33 as she can, so Dr. Miller are you ready? 02:37 - I'm ready are you ready Justina? 02:38 - I'm ready! - All right here we go, 02:40 Ready, Go! 02:44 - Ok, so now he is timing her so that we can see how many, 02:48 he is also counting how many times she has been able to 02:52 get up and down, and you will see here on the board just 02:56 how she ought to be able how to do. 03:00 A 50 year old person should be able to do: 03:25 Well the 30 seconds has gone by what did you find? 03:29 - I think she needs a cane, she did 20. 03:33 - Ok! That's something that we need to work on then! 03:38 In 30 seconds a 50 year old should be able to do 30, 03:43 now if you are 50, you get up from a chair that Justina was 03:50 sitting in is not the very best one, it should be one that 03:53 has a flat bottom and is just about the height that one 03:59 usually sits in, so the chair that she was sitting in was 04:02 a little low and also slanted backward which many chairs do 04:06 have, so that's an important thing to letting us know how 04:11 physically fit we are. 04:13 I happen to know that Justina is more physically fit than it 04:17 would be indicated by 20 chair stands in 30 seconds because 04:24 I see her walking vigorously a lot of the time on campus 04:29 so I know she is quite physically fit. 04:32 Throughout one's years of life one should from time to time 04:38 do certain tests of this nature so that one can find just how 04:45 physically fit one is, and if not physically fit, 04:49 then some measures should be taken so that the person 04:52 can get into physical fitness promptly. 04:56 Now Dr. Miller is going to talk with you about another 05:00 aspect of what you can do at home to help yourself know 05:05 whether you are in good shape or not, Dr. Miller what 05:11 would you like to tell us about that. 05:13 - We did a little thing on Justina last night, 05:15 it is called the waist- hip ratio, 05:19 and what you do is a very simple test, you get yourself a 05:22 seamstress tape, a cloth tape, sort of like what Dr. Thrash 05:27 has here, and what we do... Go ahead and stand up there 05:30 Justina, you run it abound the waist about the level of the 05:34 navel, so we are just going to wrap this around you Justina 05:37 and we look at the numbers, of course you wouldn't want to 05:40 do this around a sweater and everything else, you want to get 05:43 as much just skin and a little bit of clothing around there, 05:47 you make that measurement, and then you make the next 05:50 measurement around the largest part of the hips, right about 05:53 midway through the buttocks, that's where you are going to 05:56 get your measurement at. 05:58 Now the reason why we take these two measurements 06:01 is there is a healthy type of overweight and an unhealthy 06:05 type of overweight, they are both unhealthy, 06:06 but those who carry their weight in their hips 06:10 it's healthier, basically we call this the pear shape 06:16 and then there is also those who have their weight up on 06:20 top, the trunkal obesity, which is sort of the beach ball shape. 06:24 So what we do is we take those two numbers and we divide 06:27 the hips into the waist to get a ratio, now you can understand 06:32 that if the hips are larger and you are dividing into the waist 06:35 you are going to get a fraction, if the waist is larger and you 06:40 are dividing into that you are going to get a whole number 06:42 or a whole and a fraction. 06:44 We did this to Justina last night, her waist hip ratio 06:48 is.79, the good average for a woman a good healthy average is 06:54 .8, so she is very healthy because she is even below that. 06:59 For a man it can be one, anything over this for a woman 07:05 or a man shows that they are starting to get to much trunkal 07:09 obesity, carrying to much weight above the waist which we have 07:13 found to be less healthful than those who carry more down 07:18 below the waist, so it's a simple test Dr. Thrash 07:20 and I suggest that it is some- thing that we can be doing. 07:22 - Yes! It is a very simple test. 07:24 Now Justina if you will just stand over here, I would like 07:28 to show another thing, these are just calipers, you can get 07:32 these sometimes from a department store or you can 07:35 simply measure it just with a nice ruler that gives you 07:40 centimeter increments, so I would like to show you if you 07:44 are only going to do one, you do it over the biceps, 07:47 but we ideally do it not only over the biceps but also 07:52 over this fold right here, and this fold right here, 07:57 and a fold that is right beside the abdomen, I can't really 08:02 pinch up much on Justina, I don't think that you will be 08:06 the champion women's wrestler any time soon, but let's just 08:13 say we are going to do one measurement which is the biceps. 08:18 Here we go with this very simple device and just pinch up 08:26 just the skin and subcutaneous tissue and with this kind of 08:29 device you just measure, let it just measure the amount and 08:36 she measures between.6 and .7, now for a woman the ideal is 08:46 less than one, for a man the it's about 1/2 centimeter 08:50 not very much. 08:51 He needs to be thinner than she is, women tend to store 08:57 a little bit more fat than men do and that's normal and 09:01 natural, it has to do with the reproductive process and she 09:05 just naturally, hormonally carries a little more 09:08 subcutaneous fat than a man does. 09:11 Thank you Justina! 09:13 Now these are some tests that you can do at home that will 09:17 help you to know whether you are physically fit, 09:19 but there are some laboratory tests, that I would like to see 09:22 people getting more than they do, and one of those is called 09:26 the CRP or C-Reactive Protein, this is an inflammatory 09:31 substance that if it is high in the blood it usually means 09:35 that the person has some inflammatory process going on 09:38 somewhere in the body. 09:39 I would like to talk with you just a bit about where these 09:43 inflammatory processes begin and what their target organ is. 09:48 These inflammatory processes often have their origins in some 09:52 need that the body has, such as to fight a tumor or to 09:57 heal some kind of infection or injury that you have had 10:04 but sometimes they don't have any known origin, it's just the 10:09 general lifestyle of the person but as we have studied this 10:13 it is beginning to develop that a certain type of lifestyle 10:17 does lead to a development of these inflammatory substances. 10:21 just one of which is tested for, or just a group of them 10:26 are tested for in the C-Reactive Protein, but enough to give us a 10:30 good idea as a general screening test for these 10:34 inflammatory substances. 10:36 What happens to the person, or what is the condition of the 10:43 person when we find these inflammatory substances high? 10:47 Well they may have such things as diabetes, hypertension, 10:51 cancer, there is a whole list of them, high blood cholesterol, 10:55 especially the kind that will lead to heart attacks and 11:01 strokes, that means a high LDL and a low HDL. 11:06 Then they have diabetes and Alzheimer's disease is now being 11:10 found to be associated with high C-Reactive Protein 11:13 and other inflammatory substances, there are certain 11:17 cytokine's, also inflammatory substances which tend to stiffen 11:23 the lining cells of our various blood vessels, these cytokines 11:29 are a product of the lifestyle. 11:32 Then there a bunch of metallomatrix types of 11:38 inflammatory substances that are also lifestyle and they 11:44 tend to cause inflammation and be deposited in various 11:49 tissues such as the heart and the brain in sufficient quantity 11:55 to cause some cellular death in that area, and then you have 11:59 a scar there, a scar in the heart, or a scar in the brain 12:03 or other parts of the body that can cause difficulty for 12:10 you in having a healthy heart. 12:12 There are some of these inflammatory substances that 12:15 will actually soften or even digest collagen, now you may 12:20 have heard of collagen diseases, they are like lupus, and 12:24 rheumatoid arthritis, and a whole class of diseases that go 12:29 under the name of collagen diseases. 12:32 Now if inflammatory substances are deposited in the tissues 12:37 cause damage, may cause us to have chronic ill health, even 12:41 progressive ill health and they are associated with 12:45 lifestyle, then it behooves us to find out what kind of 12:48 lifestyle that is and to make the necessary changes. 12:51 Weight gain, very big weight gain can triple the 13:00 C- Reactive Protein, well that immediately lets you know that 13:04 weight gain, especially as is the case in males, 13:09 a rapid weight gain can triple the C-Reactive Protein. 13:12 A sedentary lifestyle can also triple these inflammatory 13:20 substances, tension and stress are famed for causing an 13:25 increase in inflammatory substances, then competitive 13:30 games, even computer games, but also sports, these competitive 13:35 games are also famed for increasing your inflammatory 13:40 substances. 13:41 An animal based diet is likely to do the same, so as we study 13:47 these inflammatory substances we come to recognize that 13:51 there are things that we can do that can slow down our 13:55 probability of getting into a chronic progressive 13:59 diseased state. 14:02 One of the important ones that people are all the time doing 14:06 that they really shouldn't do is eating A-G-E's, AGE's, 14:14 that stands for Advanced Glycation End Products. 14:21 Advanced Glycation End Products are AGE's occur when you burn 14:26 your toast, when you over cook anything, when you scorch your 14:30 nuts, or when you barbeque things and get some smoke 14:37 flavoring on your food, these kinds of things do produce 14:43 these AGE's and make it so you have more inflammatory 14:47 substances in your blood stream, these include also 14:50 tumor necrosis factor, which is and inflammatory product 14:55 and can cause serious increase in your likelihood of getting 15:00 a chronic progressive disease. 15:03 Now some other things that can cause heart disease 15:07 Dr. Don Miller will talk with you about and at this time 15:12 he has some interesting things that you will find to be also 15:16 very helpful, Dr. Miller! 15:18 - I think most people are getting pretty heart wise but 15:22 there is one thing that we hear a lot about and we wonder 15:25 what does that really mean and it's that thing 15:27 called free radicals. 15:29 It's not some radical person that escaped from a hospital 15:34 or a from a prison, but a free radical is something very 15:36 interesting, I want to go to the board and we're going to 15:39 look at something very interesting about what a 15:42 free radical is. 15:43 If you remember your high school chemistry 15:46 you remember that we have atoms, now basically our human body is 15:50 made up of cells, and the cells are made up of molecules, 15:53 molecules are made up of various forms of atoms, and here I've 15:58 drawn a particular atom on the board. 16:01 Now if you remember from your high school chemistry 16:04 you've got your protons and you've got your electrons, 16:08 you've got your neutrons also, but you basically are going to 16:11 deal here... The main thing in free radicals 16:13 is your electrons, now this is an oxygen atom, 16:19 it's got eight protons and so that tells you how many 16:24 electrons it's going to have, and the electrons come 16:28 in shells, the first shell is going to have two electrons, 16:31 the next shell to be complete will have eight electrons 16:36 but in this case it only has six electrons, 16:39 so it is always looking for somebody to mate up with. 16:43 So what is one of the most common things you know of 16:46 that has oxygen in there, well let's talk about water 16:50 let's add water to it, what is water, water is H2O, which means 16:57 there are two atoms of hydrogen one atom of oxygen. 17:01 The hydrogen has one proton and one electron, it also 17:09 is looking for a mate, and so it comes down and it shares 17:13 a mate with the oxygen, but that gives it only seven, 17:19 this one is now shared with the hydrogen, so another 17:22 hydrogen settles up next to here with it's proton, and it shares 17:27 an electron, and now we have two atoms of hydrogen 17:32 one of oxygen, and we have a very stable or an inert form 17:36 called water. 17:37 Oxygen itself, if the air that you breathe is not an atom of 17:43 oxygen and it's a molecule of oxygen made up of two oxygen 17:49 atoms put together, so you are going to have two electrons 17:53 being shared in this outer shell with the other electrons of the 17:59 oxygen atom, now you have 02 which is what we breathe. 18:05 This is the way it should be, now, what's the problem? 18:09 When we have something going on in the body, 18:12 now our body makes free radicals on purpose sometimes, 18:15 the immune system makes free radicals to attack viruses and 18:21 bacteria's that get into the body, they work very well 18:23 for that purpose, but we also have other free radicals, 18:27 we have a break down of atoms and molecules in the body 18:32 as a result of herbicides, cigarette smoke, pollution, 18:37 radiation, we have these things happening all the time 18:40 which is no problem normally, if we have enough of what we 18:46 call anti-oxidants, see when we oxidize something... 18:48 Let's talk about one of the dangerous things in the 18:51 blood stream called LDL, low density lipoprotein, 18:57 when this becomes oxidized, or that means it is attached to a 19:02 free radical it becomes a major problem, and what we have to do 19:06 is somehow keep this thing from becoming oxidized 19:09 by getting rid of the free radicals in the body. 19:12 We do this by a high intake of vitamin E, a high intake of 19:16 vitamin C, the E is a fat based vitamin and the C being a 19:23 water based, they are very good and they are very 19:25 heart protective, how do you get your E's? 19:28 You take yellow, orange, and green vegetables and fruits, 19:33 and C is in almost everything, plenty of fruits and vegetables 19:36 make you very heart healthy. 19:38 The more anti-oxidants you have in your body, 19:41 the less problem you are going to have with free-radical 19:43 damage, because once an atom becomes a free radical, 19:49 it's lost the electron and it's looking for the electron, 19:52 it will share one with somebody or it will steal somebody 19:56 else's, if it steals somebody else's then it will be looking 19:59 for something and you have a chain reaction and it gets 20:02 worse and worse as a person gets older, and this leads to 20:05 accelerated aging. 20:07 So the older a person gets, the more important it is to have 20:11 plenty of vitamin C, and vitamin E in their systems. 20:15 Now the anti-oxidants foods, what happens to them when they 20:20 get a free radical attached to them and they steal one of their 20:22 electrons, no problem, an anti-oxidant is stable both 20:28 with the right number of electrons in it's outer shell 20:33 or the wrong number, it's stable either way. 20:36 So the idea about eating your fruits and vegetables to protect 20:41 your body, especially from the oxidation of the LDL is 20:44 extremely important so your yellow, your orange, your green 20:48 fruits and vegetables, eat plenty of those things, 20:50 your citrus fruits, your avocados are great in vitamin C, 20:54 eat these foods and you are going to find that your 20:57 anti-oxidant value goes up in your body, and the free radicals 21:00 go down in the body, you are not going to have all this 21:03 problem getting plaques in your blood stream, so a simple very 21:09 brief, very quick look at free radicals, we hear about 21:12 them a lot, hopefully you will know a little bit more by now 21:15 but if not, well, get an elementary or a high school 21:20 chemistry book and read about chemistry it is an interesting 21:23 subject Dr. Thrash. 21:24 - Yes it is, we are made up of chemistry and our food is 21:27 chemistry and water is chemistry the air is chemistry, 21:29 we are chemistry, and we live in a world of chemistry, 21:31 it's really fun to study. 21:35 Congestive heart failure is another of those things that 21:39 you should learn about, congestive heart failure is not 21:43 all that common but when it does occur in a family there are 21:47 things that you can do. 21:48 Congestive heart failure simply means that the heart itself 21:51 is not completely emptying itself with each contraction 21:54 so instead of making a firm contraction that completely 21:58 empties it with every heart beat, the heart is simply 22:02 beating but not completely emptying, and as the pressure 22:07 builds up because the heart doesn't completely empty then 22:10 one develops fluid in various organs, the legs, and finally 22:16 the pelvis, and finally gets into the abdomen and eventually 22:20 into the chest, and the person is swollen all over. 22:23 So how can you deal with a person who has 22:27 congestive heart failure? 22:29 When it first begins try to do what you can to eliminate those 22:34 lifestyle problems that have initiated the hardening of the 22:39 arteries or the high blood cholesterol, or the high 22:42 blood pressure, and a variety of other things that can cause 22:47 congestive heart failure. 22:48 Some things that you can do, first do the lifestyle matters, 22:53 the second thing is to judge how much exercise the person 22:59 with congestive heart failure should have, now I was very 23:03 careful to let you know that exercise is a part of the 23:07 treatment for people with congestive heart failure. 23:10 When I was in medical school it wasn't so, a person with 23:13 congestive heart failure we told the person to prop their feet up 23:18 in their home and be served by someone else from now on, 23:23 and we expected that to last until the end of their lives. 23:26 Now we are expecting to have some rehabilitation for the 23:29 person so we start out with very mild exercise, 23:33 they may get a little short of breath, but day by day 23:36 they just stroll a little bit farther and finally they are 23:40 able to pick up their speed a little bit, so little by little 23:44 they gain some thing that they have lost in the way of 23:48 physical fitness, then another thing that we always do for 23:52 people with congestive hear failure is help them to loose 23:56 weight if that's applicable. 23:57 The way to loose weight is very simple, first you start 24:02 with eliminating all free fats, now since we need some of the 24:06 fat types of vitamins like vitamin E, vitamin E is very 24:12 healthful for the heart so we want to eat all those foods 24:16 that are high in vitamin E, such as grains and beans, 24:20 anything that's fatty itself since this is a fatty vitamin, 24:26 those things will contain vitamin E, and also present in 24:31 fruits and vegetables that are deep yellow, that can be helpful 24:35 for you to know what to eat. 24:37 Then one can take a supplement of vitamin E of maybe 200 or 400 24:44 international units a day, that's very helpful, Arginine, 24:49 also called L-Arginine, can be very helpful in congestive 24:55 heart failure and one can take from one to three teaspoonfuls 25:01 per day of this powder, CO-Q10 can be 25:04 very helpful, it's a cardiac nutrient and can 25:07 help you quite a lot. 25:08 So I hope with these things the person in your family 25:12 with congestive failure can be helped remarkably. 25:15 There is another problem with the heart called angina, 25:18 and Dr. Miller will talk with you about that to give you 25:22 some idea how to deal with angina. 25:25 - You know there are two basic health principles, one, 25:28 the life is in the blood, the second is there is perfect 25:30 health requires perfect circulation. 25:32 A good test for this is get a blood pressure cuff, put it on 25:35 your arm, pump it up, don't let the air out and just do some 25:38 exercises and see how long it takes before pain happens 25:40 in your hand and in your arm, same thing is happening in your 25:43 heart with angina. 25:45 It's basically you are having insufficiency of blood flow to 25:48 the heart muscle itself, and when your muscle starts getting 25:51 starved for blood, it's going to start telling you, and that is 25:54 what it is, it's a signal, pain is signal that I'm being damaged 25:59 down here, now what do you do about angina? 26:02 There is a very good article that came out a few years ago 26:05 in Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and it gave some simple 26:09 steps that you can do to cure, "Cure" they use the word cure, 26:13 angina, and I am going to give you these simple steps: 26:16 1. No free fats in your diet, no butter, no margarine, 26:17 no fried foods, no salad oils, no cooking fats, no nut butters. 26:24 no mayonnaise, anything that has visible fat is out of 26:27 your diet, that is the first second thing, no animal 26:31 products, high is saturated fats, saturated fats will find 26:35 a home in your coronary arteries so you get off of all animal 26:40 products, three, when you start to feel the angina attack 26:44 start coming, you don't stop and lay down, you slow your pace 26:48 and you walk through the pain, you slow down it subsides 26:53 and you stay at that pace right there, and you walk through 26:56 the pain, fourth thing is fruits and vegetables 27:00 in your dietary, in your diet, fruits and vegetables, 27:04 whole grains, nuts and seeds. 27:05 Another thing, keep your arms and your legs from 27:09 being chilled, summer and winter keep yourself 27:11 well clothed, even a cold breeze in your face could precipitate 27:15 a angina attack, and so these simple steps, they've shown 27:21 in the Lancet and in American Medical Journals that these 27:25 things right there can take care of your angina problems 27:28 Dr. Thrash. 27:29 - Yes! Those are very excellent steps to take. 27:32 There are a few other supplements that I like to give 27:36 to heart people and one of those is garlic, not only in the diet 27:41 but also as pills, so make a stock of these things that are 27:46 heart healthy, and if anyone in your family develops any 27:50 kind of heart disease you are already prepared to be 27:53 of assistance to them. |
Revised 2014-12-17