The EAT Better Strategy:

1. Build your meals around a healthy protein package
2. Load up on veggies, fruits, legume, and whole grains
3. Balance your meals with healthy fats
4. Avoid ultra-processed foods
5. Only drink the calories you love - learn to love water
6. Stop eating when you are 80% full
7. Go 12 hours without eating

Putting It All Together
​
​If you were to design food to make you fat and sick, you would create ultra-processed food.

Ultra-processed food is defined as “formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes” and containing minimal whole foods (Monteiro et al., 2018). 

In other words, food companies manufacture ultra-processed foods by combining substances extracted from whole foods with additives for taste, texture, shelf life and other factors that enhance the product’s profitability.

Strip the food of fibre, load it with sugar and fat, then add salt for taste, and you have food that will 

• Be digested and absorbed rapidly (no fibre)
• Spike insulin (lots of refined carbs, quickly broken down to glucose)
• Stored quickly as fat (that’s what insulin does - it stores glucose, protein and fat)

And in 2 hours, you will be hungry again - although, given the salt, you may have kept eating anyways!

In other words, ultra-processed foods hack our appetite control mechanisms, making us fat in the process.

In 2019 Dr. Kevin Hall demonstrated this effect of ultra-processed foods in a study showing that eating ultra-processed foods results in increased calories and weight gain.

Hall took ten men and ten women into an in-patient metabolic ward where they were randomly assigned to receive an ultra-processed or unprocessed diet for 14 days followed by another 14 days on the other diet.  The subjects were given three daily meals and could eat as much or as little as desired. The two diets matched total calories, energy density, macronutrients, fibre, sugar, and sodium but differed widely in the percentage of calories derived from ultra-processed versus unprocessed foods.

Hall’s study found that subjects ate over 500 calories a day more and gained about two pounds of fat in 14 days on the ultra-processed diet.  The overeating was almost evenly divided between excess fat and excess carbohydrates while protein intake was unchanged.

Not only did subjects eat more ultra-processed foods, but they also ate faster, and bloodwork showed the effects of this diet on essential appetite control hormones.

Compared to eating whole foods, subjects showed:

• Decreases in the appetite-suppressing hormone PYY
• Increases in hunger hormone ghrelin
• Increases in the storage hormone  insulin

Along with

• Increased glucose levels
• Increase insulin resistance - the process underlying Type II Diabetes

Ultra-processed foods make people eat faster, eat more and gain weight while altering critical appetite and hunger hormones and disrupting insulin function.

Now you may be thinking, “I get it - it’s junk food, but I don’t eat that much of it.”  

But collectively, we do: 50% of the calories Canadians consume comes from ultra-processed foods!

Here is our take - it is all about balance:

1. Balance your energy
​Think about fats and carbs as providing your energy, with protein for repair and maintenance. If you have followed the guide so far, you have built your meals around healthy protein packages and filled out your plates with healthy veggies, fruits, legumes, and whole grains.  Now balance out your meal with healthy fats for taste, satiation, and of course, to meet your energy needs. 

2. Balance your types of fats
​​More than half of your fat should be monounsaturated. 

• Eat plenty of seeds, nuts, and nut butter (peanut, almond, etc.)
• Make olive and avocado oil your default cooking oils.
• Balance the remainder equally from:
  • Polyunsaturated fats - including Omega 3 and Omega 6 essential fats
    • Enjoy fatty fish (salmon, trout, sardines, mackerel) unless, of course, you are vegetarian!
    • Avoid chemically processed seed & vegetable oils - choose expeller-pressed, cold-pressed, virgin, and extra virgin oils.
  • Saturated fats
    • Healthy meats - choose lean cuts, grass-fed, organic if possible.
    • Full fat or partially skimmed dairy (choose grass-fed if affordable)
    • Coconut oil (choose virgin)

3. Balance your Omega 3’s and 6’s

• Be conscious of how much Omega 3’s you are eating.  From an evolutionary perspective, the ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 in the diet was 1:1.  Since the introduction of cheap, industrial vegetable oils - corn, soybean, safflower, etc. into the Western diet - this ratio has sky-rocketed to 25:1.  At these levels, Omega 6's act as pro-inflammatory agents and likely is a significant contributor to obesity, insulin resistance, and heart disease.
• Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) - is the essential omega-3 fatty acid.  ALA can be derived from plant sources - flax, chia seeds, green leafy vegetables, soybean oil, canola, and notably from fish.  ​
• From ALA, we can synthesize the other important omega-3 fatty acids: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA).  There are some challenges to relying on ALA alone:
  • The efficiency of this conversion is low (especially in the presence of high Omega 6’s)
  • The conversion is lower in men as compared to women. 
  • There is also a common significant loss of function genetic variation with the FADS enzyme that converts ALA to DHA and EPA.  
• As a result, you should obtain EPA and DHA are obtained from your diet (fish) and supplementation (fish or algae oil).

Healthy fats come from whole food sources with minimal processing.

• Avoid trans-fats (now banned from foods) due to the increased health risks.  Everyone agrees these are not healthy and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Avoid ultra-processed food - these are more likely to be high in saturated fat or trans-fats from hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated polyunsaturated fats. 
• Avoid any oil labeled as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated.
• Avoid fried foods - heating destabilizes the oil resulting in the formation of unhealthy trans fats.  Deep frying fat in restaurants is reused repeatedly, further increasing the likelihood of eating harmful oxidation by-products.
• Avoid chemically processed oils - the top four vegetable oils consumed are soybean, canola, palm, and corn oil - all are refined, bleached, and deodorized. The refining process uses chemical solvents, usually hexane, to separate the oils.  The heating process results in the creation of some trans fats.

The EAT Better Strategy:

1. Build your meals around a healthy protein package
2. Load up on veggies, fruits, legume, and whole grains
3. Balance your meals with healthy fats
4. Avoid ultra-processed foods
5. Only drink the calories you love - learn to love water
6. Stop eating when you are 80% full
7. Go 12 hours without eating

Putting It All Together

Following the first step, "Start with a Healthy Protein Package” your next step in thinking about healthy meals is to load up on veggies, fruits, legumes and whole grains.

I know, this might sound like your mother.  “Eat your veggies - they are really good for you”, but there are some solid reasons why eating more fruits, veggies, legumes and whole grains makes good sense.

Here are 7 reasons why loading up on veggies, fruits, legumes and whole grains makes sense:

1. They taste really good

• Veggies provide an unlimited of flavours and textures - cooked right, they are simply delicious.  Depending on how you classify them, there are 8 or 9 different categories of veggies, hundreds of individual veggies to choose from, many different preparations and infinite combinations.  Combine a bit of kitchen skill with the variety of veggies and you will never be bored.

​
2. They fill you up​

• ​Veggies are full of water and fibre, providing your meal volume with minimal calories.   Their bulk triggers stretch receptors in the stomach and intestine to signal satiation, while the fibre slows digestion allowing you to feel full longer.  Being full does more than willpower when it comes to weight loss!

3.  They provide sustained energy

• Food provides the energy we need to live primarily from the breakdown of carbohydrates and fats.  (We eat proteins mainly for growth and repair of our own proteins).  For the most part, veggies, fruits, legumes and whole grains take time to digest, are slowly absorbed and provide sustained energy.  This feeling of sustained energy translates into less hunger, less craving, and less snacking.

4.  Some veggies are essentially free

• Some veggies contain so few calories that the energy required for digestion is almost the same as their energy content.  These veggies provide us with flavour and nutrition and make sense to fill up on.  Some examples: green leafy veggies, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, snap peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts.  Still feeling hungry at dinner - add more veg!

5.  They are loaded with micronutrients 

• Vegetables are excellent sources of micronutrients - vitamins and minerals essential growth and our body’s key key bio functions:  energy production, cellular protection, immunity, inflammation & anti-inflammation, blood clotting, stress response & recovery, bone and muscle strength, neurological health, vision and more.  Veggies are nature’s supplements, so save your money and get your vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in a package your body is ready for.

6.  They feed our microbiome

• While there are 10 trillion cells in our bodies, we also host approximately 10 times that many microbes (bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses) on or inside our bodies.  Bacteria in our gut, not only help us digest food, they also help regulate our immune system, modulate our energy metabolism, including nutrient absorption and fat storage, protect against other bacteria that cause disease, and produce vitamins including B vitamins B12, thiamine and riboflavin, and Vitamin K.  The more we learn about the microbiome, the more evidence there is that feeding them properly - with adequate fibre (at least 30 g per day) - is one of the keys to good health.

7.  And finally they are really good for you 

• Mom was right! Fruits, veggies, legumes and whole grains keep you healthy.  There is overwhelming evidence to support their role in decreasing disease risk and improving health.  Diets rich in fruits and veggies can lower BP, reduce cardiovascular disease, prevent some types of cancer, decrease risk of diabetes, help manage weight, preventing obesity and even help your vision.

Convinced you need to up you improve your game when it comes to veggies, fruits, legumes and whole grains but not sure where to start? 
​ 
Here are 12  quick tips to get you started:

1.  Have a fruit bowl

• ​Place it somewhere you will see it every time you enter the kitchen.  Stock it with the fruit you love - washed and ready to eat.  Do the same with berries in the fridge.  Feeling like something sweet - grab some fruit.

2.  Eat the rainbow

• ​On most days try and eat a variety of different coloured veg - green leafy, yellow, orange, red fruits and veggies, dark beans and legumes.  The more colour the better!

3.  Try new veggies

• ​Every week look to try something new from the green grocer that you can either add to a salad, chop up and snack on, or prepare with your nightly meal.

4.  Load up your freezer with frozen veg

• ​Frozen veg are flash frozen at peak freshness and maintain all of their nutrition - they are also incredibly useful as a fall back when you haven’t got to the grocery store.  Keep several bags of you your favourites - spinach, mixed veg, broccoli, artichoke hearts, etc.)

5.  Double up on veggies with your nightly meal

• ​Add a couple of veg side sides to each meal - pair something familiar with something new - look for new ways to prepare your veg.

6.  Prepare a whole week’s worth of vegetables on the weekend

• ​Wash, clean and chop up your veg in one session - store in the fridge so that dinners are even easier to get on the table when the rush of the week begins.

7.  Substitute raw veggies for crackers or chips

• ​Take some of your chopped veg (carrots, peppers, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) and serve with a healthy and tasty dip - like hummus or baba ghanoush.

8.  Use green leafy veg in place of bread or wraps

• ​Collards, kale, lettuce all can work well.  Not only do you get more greens, you also eliminate some refined carbs!

9.  Up your whole grain game

• ​Ditch the white rice - shift to brown rice, wild rice.  Try other whole grains that deliver their energy more slowly - quinoa, bulgar, spelt, amaranth, and don’t forget oats.  

10.  Eat a salad at every meal

• Be imaginative or keep it simple.  Make having a salad a default option for every meal.

11.  Eat more veggie soup ​

• Always good on a cold afternoon or night. This is a great way to load up on veggies and studies show people eat fewer calories when the eat soup.  Remember to have a healthy protein package - think beans or legumes in the soup.  Thicken with canned pumpkin or squash.

The EAT Better Strategy:

1. Build your meals around a healthy protein package
2. Load up on veggies, fruits, legume, and whole grains
3. Balance your meals with healthy fats
4. Avoid ultra-processed foods
5. Only drink the calories you love - learn to love water
6. Stop eating when you are 80% full
7. Go 12 hours without eating

Putting It All Together
​
When we eat food - it is broken down into 3 macronutrients:

• Fats
• Carbohydrates
• Protein

Our bodies are designed to use fats and carbs for energy and we have two different systems to manage the use and storage of these fuels.

When we eat proteins, they are broken down into amino acids - essentially the building blocks for new proteins.
These amino acids are absorbed into the bloodstream and distributed around the body to tissues that need them.

Dietary protein is predominantly used by our bodies for structure and function and not for fuel.  The most important functional molecules of the body - hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes and antibodies are proteins, as are our structural components - muscle, collagen, connective tissue, and even cartilage and bone.

Our bodies need 20 amino acids to be able to create all the proteins that we need for life.  Of these 9 are considered to be essential - meaning that we need to get them from our diets.

• Histidine
• Isoleucine
• Leucine
• Lysine
• Methionine
• Phenylalanine
• Threonine
• Tryptophan
• Valine

And another four are conditionally essential

• Arginine
• Cysteine
• Glutamine
• Tyrosine

Proteins in our bodies are continuously being recycled, degraded back into amino acids and re-synthesized.  

The body is very good at reutilizing amino acids, but is not fully efficient as some amino acids get damage and broken down.  As a result, we always need a to eat some new protein just to maintain our existing proteins.

Unlike fats and carbohydrates, we cannot store excess protein, so we are also  dependent on our diets to provide enough protein for any growth and maintenance.

Excess dietary protein, beyond levels required to restore amino acid balance, are degraded, the amino groups are broken down and excreted as urea, creatinine, uric acid or other nitrogenous metabolites.  The remaining carbon skeleton which are keto acids are either utilized as fuel in the liver or converted into glucose or more likely fat.

That’s right - excess protein will be turned into fat!

This may seem surprising given the popularity of high protein diets for weight loss, but there are two other attributes of protein that may explain their benefit in a weight loss diet. 

First, of the macronutrients, protein is the most satiating.  Meals with high protein feel more filling and decrease hunger for a longer period of time, and a result you will consume fewer calories overall. 

The other attribute of protein metabolism that helps with weight management is the fact that the process to convert protein into fat is inefficient and about a third of the energy in the protein is consumed in the process.

A small percentage of protein is used to maintain blood glucose levels during fasted states.  This process, gluconeogenesis, runs at a fairly constant rate throughout the day using multiple substrates including lactate (released from muscle glycogen) and glycerol (from fat breakdown).  The amount of protein required for this is very small. 

Summary

• Daily intake of protein is essential for growth and maintenance of structural and functional components of our bodies.  
• Protein is not a major source of energy for us; unless we eat too much, in which case it turns into fat.
• Eating extra protein will help make us full sooner, potentially resulting in fewer overall calories consumed.

How much protein do we need a day?
The official answers from the Institute of Medicine are 

• Between 10 to 35% of our daily caloric intake or 
• Or 0.8 g/kg per day is the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) set in both Canada and the US

Let's break this down a bit more.

0.8 g/kg is meant to be the minimum amount of protein we require without becoming deficient.  This is the amount of extra protein our body needs for repair and maintenance or as we discussed above the amount of protein that is lost each day as we recycle our amino acids.

As we are more active we need more protein - however the best evidence we have is that these requirements are still rather modest - with up to 1.6g/kg for strength/power athletes who are training to gain muscle mass.  There is no evidence that we need beyond 2 g/kg per day.

Why is nutrition so hard to figure out?
Why is it so confusing to know how to eat well and be healthy?
When did eating become nutrition?

This is our attempt to cut through the noise and help you learn foundational habits that will make eating better easier. 

The EAT Better Strategy:

1. Build your meals around a healthy protein package
2. Load up on veggies, fruits, legume, and whole grains
3. Balance your meals with healthy fats
4. Avoid ultra-processed foods
5. Only drink the calories you love - learn to love water
6. Stop eating when you are 80% full
7. Go 12 hours without eating

Putting It All Together

This is not about diets.  Diets do not work.

Diets are temporary, highly restrictive programs of eating to lose weight and are unfortunately damaging exercises in futility. (Diets are also about selling books!)

• Low fat-high carb
• Keto
• Low carb-high fat
• Zone
• Atkins
• modified Atkins
• South Beach
• Paleo
• the list goes on.  

These dietary approaches differ dramatically in their macronutrient breakdown, yet hold that their system is the one right way towards weight loss and better health.

Inherent in the ‘diet’ approach is a reductionist mindset that the precise nutrient composition of one’s diet matters most.

Since we cannot see nutrients, we as consumers have to rely on experts to tell us what to eat. These experts have wildly different views that lead to a dogmatic, almost religious element to food advice that divides food into good and bad, demonizing some foods and elevating others to superfood status.

Michael Pollan calls this nutritionism, a term he popularized from the work of Gyorgy Scrinis.

Nutritionism is an ideology, not science - a view that specific nutrients in food determine whether a food is healthy or not. “This focus on nutrients has come to dominate, to undermine, and to replace other ways of engaging with food and of contextualizing the relationship between food and the body," wrote Scinis in 2008. This ideology has even come to overtake nutritional science and government advice, easily co-opted by industry to market questionable food as healthy. “Twinkies now with Omega-3!”

Nutritionism allows the food industry to market highly processed foods as healthy when they add specific nutrients back to the product and market accordingly - think of vitamin-fortified cereals.

Nutritionism may even be one of the causes of the current rise of diabetes, obesity and chronic disease we see in the Western world.  Specifically, the recommendations in the late 1970s and early 1980s for consumers to lower their intake of saturated fats led to profound shifts in Western diets with refined carbohydrates replacing fat in industrially produced food.  This shift is thought by some to be the single most significant causal factor responsible for the epidemic of obesity in the world today.

Pollan counters nutritionism with his simple advice (that we have borrowed):
​"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
This simple advice is the antidote to nutritionism; a holistic counter strategy focused on whole foods.

Ready for the EAT Better Strategy?
EAT Better is our attempt to cut through the noise and help you learn foundational habits that will make eating better easier.

The EAT Better Strategy:

1. Build your meals around a healthy protein package
2. Load up on veggies, fruits, legume, and whole grains
3. Balance your meals with healthy fats
4. Avoid ultra-processed foods
5. Only drink the calories you love - learn to love water
6. Stop eating when you are 80% full
7. Go 12 hours without eating

Putting It All Together
​​​
​Need help applying this to your busy life?
Get a personalized nutrition plan to gain clarity and improve your health:
​
The  TARGET Nutrition Plan takes a personalized, evidence-based approach to help you make better choices.  Our nutritionists assess what you are currently doing and provide you with a personalized plan (including meal plans).  Everything you need to transform your diet.​

As humans, we are wired to be goal oriented.  Have you ever watched an infant child learn to stand?  They will scoot their way to a table or chair, grab on with all their strength, position their legs under their body and pull themselves up. If they fall while in the process, they will try again. . . .. and again. . . .. .and again, until they get it right! 

​Whether it be a task as simple as learning to stand, or a more complicated task like applying for a job, planning a holiday or finally tackling spring cleaning the garage, goals push us forward and provide a constant reminder of what we want to achieve. Goals give us something to focus on and the energy to carry on, even when motivation is low. ​

Academia has written much on the subject of goals. By far, though, the most well-known goal-setting technique comes from the world of business management - SMART Goals.

The acronym encourages us to make goals that are: specific, measurable, achievable (or attainable), realistic and time-bound.  Below are some useful tips for setting Smart Goals.

Make your goal Specific by describing it in detail.  For example, say- “I will walk every week day for 20 minutes after dinner” versus “I will walk more.”  Or- “I will be home by 6:00 pm to eat dinner with my family” versus “I will get home earlier from work to be with my family.”

Make your goal Measurable by using metrics  such as time or distance.  “I will go to the gym and work out for an hour twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday mornings” versus “I will work out at the gym twice a week.”  Using terms you can measure not only helps you to prioritize your goals but also keeps you honest with your progress.

Make your goal Attainable by allowing yourself enough time and energy to achieve it.  Most of us can recall a time when we took on too much, too soon with too little time.  Deciding to crash diet in order to look good in your clothes for a big event in a week may sound like a good idea until ending up with nothing to wear the night before.

Make your goal Realistic by building upon previous success and good habits.  If you’ve never run before, it may be unrealistic to set out to run a marathon.  However, if you have experience running and the time and ability to train, then a marathon or 10K (depending on your fitness level) may be a realistic goal for you. 

Make your goal Time Bound by setting a specific date to measure your progress.  LIfe gets busy and it is all too easy to put off today what can be done tomorrow.  Setting a date also improves accountability by allowing you to track  progress over a given period of time.

Apply what you have learned about goal setting across the Wellness Garage Six Pillars of Health:

• Nutrition
  
• Exercise
  
• Sleep
  
• Stress Tolerance
  
• Relationships
  
• Purpose

Better yet - do a Precision Health Tune Up and create goals based on a personalized health plan.

​

For people trying to maintain optimal health, there is a central paradox when it comes to heart disease:

• The process that causes it, atherosclerosis is ubiquitous (meaning we all have some degree of it)

BUT

• The risk factors for actual disease and preventable

The only logical resolution for this paradox is that we all need to develop a strategy to manage the 9 risk factors that account for 90% of the risk.

But what about genetics?

We have known for many years (at least since 1938) that there are familial risk factors and evidence from twins and large prospective trials confirmed that genetic risk for heart disease is significant.

Since 2007 - more than 50 independent genetic variations have been identified as being associated with the risk of coronary artery disease.  These risk alleles, when aggregated into a polygenic risk score, are predictive of incident coronary events and provide a continuous and quantitative measure of genetic susceptibility.

Many observers assume that a genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease is deterministic.  However, a recent study in the NEJM shows that genetic risk is modified by a favorable lifestyle.

This study compared a polygenic risk score across 50 different genetic variations (SNP’s) with a lifestyle behaviour score across four different healthy lifestyle metrics: no current smoking, no obesity (BMI<30), physical activity at least once per week and a healthy diet pattern.  They made this comparison across four different populations: 

• Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study - a prospective cohort that enrolled white participants and black participants between the ages of 45 and 64 years, starting in 1987.
• The Women’s Genome Health Study (WGHS) - a prospective cohort of female health professionals derived from the Women’s Health Study, a clinical trial initiated in 1992 to evaluate the efficacy of aspirin and vitamin E in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.
• The Malmö Diet and Cancer Study (MDCS) - a prospective cohort that enrolled participants between the ages of 44 and 73 years in Malmö, Sweden, starting in 1991.
• The BioImage Study enrolled asymptomatic participants between the ages of 55 and 80 years who were at risk for cardiovascular disease, beginning in 2008. 

In total 55,685 were studied across these four populations.

Here is what they found, when comparing genetic risk and lifestyle factors:

• Genetics and lifestyle factors contribute independently to the development of coronary artery disease. (in other words - all of the 9 modifiable risks apply regardless of genetic risk).
• Genetics are not deterministic as lifestyle can reduce risk in high risk populations
• Healthy lifestyle reduces risk of heart disease regardless of genetic risk.  Those with the greatest genetic risk have the most to benefit from lifestyle but even those with low risk will get a similar relative reduction in risk.

This last point really drives home why everyone should work to modify these risks - everyone can reduce their risk of heart disease.

Like many complex chronic diseases coronary artery disease involves an interplay between genetics and lifestyle and while we cannot yet change our genes, we absolutely can change our lifestyle.

Adopting a strategy to reduce risk of heart disease starts with an assessment of your current lifestyle and risk.

Our Precision Health Tune Up’s start with a Comprehensive Lifestyle Medical Assessment, where we review your key biomarkers, medical history and lifestyle behaviours known to impact health.  Included in this is a full cardiovascular risk assessment, along with recommendations for change, additional investigations and or follow-up.

From the medical assessment, our team can help you implement the recommendations through a TARGET Nutrition Plan, a TARGET Fitness Plan or a Comprehensive Plan encompassing both nutrition and fitness.

Finally a plan is only as good as its implementation,  and here our six month digital coaching program (myhealthjourney.ca) and team-based support will help you get started, make the changes and fine tune your strategy.

The INTERHEART study found that the top nine risk factors account for 90% of the related risk:

• Smoking
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Abdominal obesity
• Psycho-social factors
• Low consumption of fruits and vegetables
• Regular alcohol consumption
• Physical activity

What is notable is that all of these risk factors are potentially modifiable - in other words 90% of heart disease risk is preventable.  

The challenge is that only 1 in 10 Canadians are in ideal heart health and over 90% of Canadians have at least one risk factor.

Digging further, smoking and high cholesterol account for almost two thirds of the risk - and their importance is highlighted by correlation of declining smoking rates and improved cholesterol management with decreasing incidence of diagnosed heart disease as well as a decreasing incidence of first heart attack observed over the past 30 years.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic disease that begins at birth and progresses throughout life (fatty streaks, the earliest sign of developing fatty plaques are seen in fetal autopsies).  

As a result the single greatest risk factor is age.  

The longer you live the more likely you are to develop complications of atherosclerosis.

Here is the paradox of heart disease:

• The process that causes it, atherosclerosis is ubiquitous (meaning we all have some degree of it)

​BUT

• The risk factors for actual disease and preventable

If you want to live a long and heart disease free life, you need to have an active strategy to avoid or manage these risk factors.

The place to start is to assess your risk:

• Do you smoke?
• What is your LDL-Cholesterol level?
• What is your blood pressure?
• Do you have normal blood glucose levels?
• Do you have any sign of insulin resistance (the process underlying Type II Diabetes)?
• What is your waist circumference?
• How are your stress levels?
• Are you eating >5 portions of fruits and vegetables per day?
• Do you drink more than 5 drinks per week?
• Do you get more than 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week?

Once you have this information, put the data into one of the cardiovascular risk calculators like Framingham.  This will give you the % risk of having a cardiac event in the next 10 years, as well as comparisons between your age/gender average and optimal (all risk factors optimally managed).

The process of doing this will help you get started in taking control of your your health:

• If you smoke - seek help for smoking cessation
• If your cholesterol is high - change your lifestyle, if it is still high consider a medication
• If your blood pressure is high - change your lifestyle, if it is still high consider a medication
• If you have diabetes - seek to reverse it
• If you have abdominal obesity - recognize that you likely have insulin resistance, the process underlying Type II Diabetes and seek to reverse it
• If you are stressed - develop strategies to manage stress
• If you are not eating enough fruits and vegetables - overhaul your diet, learn to cook
• If you are drinking too much - change your lifestyle, and seek help
• If you are not physically active - change your lifestyle and develop a fitness plan

If you need help doing this assessment and developing your strategy,  we can help.

Our Precision Health Tune Up’s start with a Comprehensive Lifestyle Medical Assessment, where we review your key biomarkers, medical history and lifestyle behaviours known to impact health.  Included in this is a full cardiovascular risk assessment, along with recommendations for change, additional investigations and or follow-up.

From the medical assessment, our team can help you implement the recommendations through a TARGET Nutrition Plan, a TARGET Fitness Plan or a Comprehensive Plan encompassing both nutrition and fitness.

Finally a plan is only as good as its implementation,  and here our six month digital coaching program (myhealthjourney.ca) and team-based support will help you get started, make the changes and fine tune your strategy.

Other Posts on Heart Disease:

• Atherosclerosis Part I
• Atherosclerosis Part II
• Evolution Gave Us Heart Disease. We’re Not Stuck With It.
• High Blood Pressure - 7 ways to take control​
• Is Saturated Fat Bad For You?​
• Guide to Fats
  
• 7 Numbers You Should Know About Your Health

Over the years, we have provided the clinical evidence to support each lifestyle behaviour individually:

• Nutrition 
• Exercise
• Sleep
• Stress Tolerance
• Relationships
• Purpose

In our coaching programs, we have always stressed that the power of these behaviours lie in the fact that they are interconnected.

Our clinical health counsellor Noral recently created an internal guide for our team showing just how each behavior is impacted by, and impacts each other behaviour.

Take a moment to go through this grid and assess yourself.

(Apologies, but this grid needs to be viewed from a desktop or tablet - it's worth the effort!)