Hi all!

The month of February is all about our hearts. Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women? Who would of guessed. Heart disease is not gender biased. If you are like me, why not give yourself a challenge and see if you can stop adding salt to your meals. Studies show that too much salt in your diet can lead to high blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease.

Now, how many of you have trouble with water retention? I know I do. Decreasing salt intake can lessen water retention and bloating. This will also help shrink your waistline. How about challenging yourself for the next few weeks to see how much water weight you can take off? Then report back and share your success on this blog post. I will start today and will let you know how I’m doing. A great way to start is to eat more vegetables and less processed foods and meats. Remember, when eating vegetables, frozen and fresh veggies have the least amount of sodium versus the canned variety. If you are looking for more ways to lower sodium, why don’t you check out the DASH diet. The National Institute of Health recommends this diet for anyone who has a heart related illnesses. Take a look at their pamphlet here.

For those of you with major heart related illness like congestive heart failure (CHF) – we have the perfect telehealth monitoring program at Western Health. Just fill out our contact form and we’ll work with your doctor and insurance provider to set up the service.

Our hearts are the engines that run our body – we need to make sure our engines are nice and healthy.

-Sue