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Statistically a third of people who suffer a stroke die within 10 days of the event, a third are likely to make a full recovery and a third will be left disabled.

So it seems logical to rather think preventative as you only have a 33.3% of completely recovering from a stroke.

The irony of the situation is that it is very easy to arm your body sufficiently against stroke and other dreaded diseases through proper nutrition but so few people will make the necessary effort to find out about it and to actually follow through on it.

Studies show that by naturally increasing your potassium levels with fruits and vegetables (not supplementation) you are almost twice as likely to recover from a stroke than a person with low potassium levels.

High potassium fruits include apricots, bananas, cantaloupe,and citrus fruits. Veggies are potatoes, cauliflower, lima beans and asparagus. Other foods are grain products, red meat, poultry and seafood.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, found that you can prevent the risk of stroke by increasing dietary levels of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lycopene.

You can naturally increase alpha-carotene levels by eating more carrots, winter squash, tomatoes, green beans and cilantro. Beta-carotene levels can be increased by eating more carrots, strawberries, cantaloupe, broccoli, squash and sweet potatoes. Lycopene can be found in tomatoes, pink grapefruit and watermelon.

There have it prevent stroke naturally and improve your chances for a full recovery by more that 50% should you suffer one.

The question remains, what are you going to do about it?

Your health

Popularity: 14% [?]

Hi there,

I found this very interesting article on heart failure trends in the USA.
As you’ll notice there has been a steady increase in the levels which the study attributes to and aging population, there has also been a slight decrease in the mortality rates.

The fact is that apart from genetics the major cause of heart disease is a bad lifestyle, it is up to you to exercise, drink more water, cancel out stress and improve your diet e.g. less fast/fried foods and more fresh foods.

DURHAM, N.C. – Conventional wisdom holds that as the U.S. population ages, the incidence of heart failure will continue to rise. A new study from Duke University Medical Center challenges part of that assumption, however, finding that heart failure is actually declining among the very elderly. Yet the number of heart failure cases overall continues to rise.

“Heart failure is largely a disease of aging, so we were surprised by the findings,” says Dr. Lesley Curtis, a health services researcher at Duke and lead author of the study appearing in the February 25 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Carefully documenting the incidence of a disease – the rate at which it occurs – and the prevalence – how many people have it at any one time – is critically important, because projections have direct bearing upon planning and resources needed for future health care.

Curtis and her colleagues examined data from a five percent sample of Medicare beneficiaries’ claims between 1994 and 2003 and found that during that period, 622,789 patients
were diagnosed with heart failure.

While the incidence of heart failure fell most sharply among those aged 80 to 84 years old, from 57.5 to 48.4 per 1000 person years, it also rose from 17.5 cases to 19.3 cases per 1000 person-years among those aged 65 to 69 years old.

The study also found that the total number of Americans living with heart failure steadily increased over the ten-year study period, from about 140,000 to 200,000, with more men living with the disease than women.

“From all indications, heart failure will continue to be a major public health burden, consuming billions of dollars each year,” says Curtis. Nearly 5 million people in the U.S. suffer from heart failure, and even though mortality from the disease has fallen slightly, it remains a very serious problem. Nearly a third of those diagnosed with heart failure will die within one year, and
“that figure hasn’t budged over the last decade,” according to Curtis, who is also a member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

###

The study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Aging, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Duke researchers contributing to the study include Drs. David Whellan, Adrian Hernandez and Kevin Schulman, from the Duke Clinical Research Center and Bradley Hammill, Kevin Anstrom and Alisa Shea, from the Center for Clinical and Genetic Economics.

Sources: “EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS”! -Trends in heart failure - 25-February-2008

Also know your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, we are fortunate with all the advancements in alternative and conventional medicine our life expectancy has increased with between 10 and 40 years.

There are numerous natural cures for High Blood Pressure and Cholesterol available today, so there is no reasonable excuse for you to neglect your heart health.

Your health!

P.S. - For a great Free heart failure risk calculator go here.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Life is precious! Andropause need not be a life sentence. So many of our problems are plagued with what if questions. What if I looked after my health? What if I quit smoking years ago? What if it is not to late to do something about it?

Through proper nutrition, natural supplementation, exercise and a positive attitude you can beat andropause. Problems like the lower levels of testosterone can often be boosted natrually with supplements like Tribulus terrestris, a lack of sex drive can always be cured with a little bit of romance, try it!