Tag: eating healthy

The Silent Killer Continued…..

Sonya Suttle

So, I am attaching an image from the American Heart Association that visualizes the major points that blood pressure effects. There’s hardly an internal organ that does not escape it’s effect somehow. Think of your blood pressure as a plumbing system that has to maintain pressure, which is exactly what it is!

Source: American Heart Association (AHA)

The one common denominator in all of the images above is that they all contain vessels, that transport blood back and forth to the heart. Some of those are arteries and are very tiny and very sensitive to pressure changes. The HEART eventually fails because the pressure is to great to keep up the pace. It can’t pump that hard all the time. High Blood pressure causes arteries to scar and become blocked causing a HEART ATTACK (think stretch marks, with plaque forming on them). The increased pressure eventually damages the arteries in the kidney, which is a constant filtering system, making it difficult for them to remove waste and help regulate your blood pressure (they do that too!!). Unfortunately for males, it makes for a really bad day for bedroom shenanigans (no further explanation needed). It also damages the arteries in the eyes, increasing vision loss. And finally, it can cause a vessel to burst in your head, or become clogged, causing a STROKE—a LIFE-CHANGING event. One of the greatest causes for admission to a nursing facility!

IT IS IMPORTANT to maintain your blood pressure! It should NEVER be shrugged off as not important because you don’t feel well, because you are damaging your insides, whether you feel it or not.

A hypertensive crisis occurs when you have a blood pressure over 180/120 and are symptomatic—headache, blurry vision, chest pain, chest pain, nausea/vomiting, numbness or weakness or other stroke-like symptoms. CALL 911–do NOT attempt to drive yourself to the hospital! Treatment can be initiated earlier with the EMS, you will not have to WAIT in the ER—yes wait, and you won’t have a heart attack on the way to the ER causing a wreck! TRUST ME!

Things to do to reduce your risk, CUT DOWN ON SALT, DRINK WATER-NO SODA, eat, veggies and lean meats, eat a DASH diet or Mediterranean diet. EXERCISE! Maintain your cholesterol. Check your blood pressure, visit your PCP for an annual physical with labs. See the link below for the CORRECT way to check your blood pressure…Now you are pressure wise! No pressure though..😂

https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/understanding-blood-pressure-readings/monitoring-your-blood-pressure-at-home

Sources: https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/health-threats-from-high-blood-pressure

Watercolor, 2021

Health Benefits as Sweet as Honey! 🍯

Sonya Suttle

Alright, hopefully I convinced that honey IS amazing!!! Let’s get down to the benefits of honey!! SO yes honey is about 25% sweeter than regular sugar, it is not empty calories. As, I had said before, it does contain, vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, and organic acids. So, eating honey can obviously have benefits just from the ingredients! But let’s get specific!

Antioxidants According to the National Institutes of Health, honey has the ability to provide natural antioxidants. Antioxidants prevents aging and damage to cells, when cells go through oxidizing stress then age and damage. It appears that the darker the honey the more antioxidant compounds that it has. Science is just beginning in this area but it looks to be promising to preventing damage to cells and to help in treating chronic conditions. One way to visualize the oxidation process is the rusting of metal—So in a way the honey would keep us from rusting! I mean, not really, but you get the point!

Antibacterial Without getting very technical, honey has a lot of physical properties that make it difficult for it to grow germs-including a low water content, super sweetness, and those bees actually produce a little bit of hydrogen peroxide when they make it! 😳 I told you those bees were amazing! But anyway, those same properties that keep it from spoiling also are used to inhibit bacterial growth. We do use honey to prevent growth in wounds. It is known that Manuka honey prevents the growth of Staph and E.Coli. Manuka honey comes from Australia and New Zealand form a bush related to the tea tree. The bacterial properties of Manual honey is 100 times higher than traditional honey.

Apoptotic Activity (Anticancer) So that same, fancy Manuka honey is also being studied as a possible cancer treatment. In very basic terms, it causes some cancer proteins to stop working and increases some anticancer proteins! And it does this naturally! So, I am not saying tha honey is a CURE for cancer! But it is known that it does have anticancer properties. Future studies in this area may lead to better treatments of cancer using the honey compounds! But we CAN EAT it now!

Anti Inflammatory and Immune Defense According to the National Institutes of Health, honey can also prevent inflammation in our joints. This is the primary cause of arthritis and joint pain, along with many other inflammatory diseases in the bowel and elsewhere. It is also suggested that honey helps to increase your immune response by a very complicated cellular system.

Other uses Other uses of honey have included diabetes, type I and type II treatments, wound healing, and asthma and allergies. There are many research articles to validate the research on the topics. This list in not inclusive of all the benefits of honey. It does show you, however, how amazing the organic molecules that make up honey can be. I don’t eat enough honey, but my husband eats it almost everyday. I will say this, I’m not sure an apple a day keeps the doctor a way, but a tablespoon may. I think I’ll buy some Manuka honey-it can’t hurt! After all the bees have been doing it for thousands of years!! And now you are honey wise!

Sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424551/ https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324997 https://health.clevelandclinic.org/manuka-honey-benefits/

Watercolor, 2021

Sugar pie, Honey Bun….🍯🐝🍯

Sonya Suttle

If only bees could talk! They would undoubtedly rave about their products!! Imagine a product that is bacterial, anti inflammatory, anti cancer, and antioxidant properties—all in one! And from a product that tastes good and is “all natural”. It almost sounds too good to be true! But remarkably it’s not! The bees would probably be mad that we steal all of their gold and sell it for our profit and well-being, but then again maybe they made some of it for us!

So let’s talk honey! It is a remarkable substance, in addition to health benefits the bees work hard to make it! They have a “honey stomach” that they store the nectar in, when they get back to the nest, they mix it with their enzymes and regurgitate it several times before refining it into honey—this process takes about 20 minutes, and takes over a 1000 flowers to fill up their honey stomachs! Then the bees have this really cool way to heat up the honey, warm the water content, and then flap their wings create a supercooled environment to evaporate the remaining water and make the honey super dense! This process brings the water content to 15-18%, making it spoil-proof-unless you get water in it! Simply amazing! I mean we knew bees were amazing but did we really know HOW amazing they were? We just thought the hives we amazing!

So how beneficial is honey? A 2017 article from the National Institutes of Health done a vast search of research articles and literature to find uses of honey in medicine. It mentions that the oldest know use of honey goes back to 8000 BC in Spain to a cave painting of someone harvesting honey! So at least, 10000 years ago! After carbs, honey contains many nutrients! Proteins, vitamins, minerals, organic acids and amino acids. That’s a lot of stuff! There are over 320 different varieties of honey in the world and some have better uses than others. On average, an active hive will produce 65 pounds of honey a year.

Have I convinced you yet that honey is amazing and the BEES are even MORE amazing???? Hopefully I have, the next post will be on the benefits of honey. This post became long because I was so amazed by honey I could stop writing!! So now you are honey wise!

Come back for PART II!‘

Sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424551/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

ChubBee, Watercolor, 2021

Female Chest Pain, not a broken heart!

Sonya Suttle

Most people identify chest pain with the crushing pressure or elephant setting on your chest. Did you know that heart disease is the NUMBER ONE killer in the US for women? I bet if you are a woman, you didn’t know that….1 in 5 deaths for women are related to heart disease. I get the feeling that a lot of you feel that heart disease is more of a man’s disease though, that’s why I’m trying to wisen you up today!

First, let’s talk about PREVENTABLE risk factors for heart disease—YES PREVENTABLE! Diabetes, overweight and obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol use, physical inactivity, and unhealthy eating. Does any of those apply to you? We’ve already discussed activity and diet, and I suspect you all are are aware of the dangers of smoking, obesity and excessive alcohol. We still haven’t had a discussion regarding diabetes, but just being a diabetic increases you risk of heart disease and being a poorly controlled one increases it even more. Also, cholesterol—we talked about those numbers, what they mean and how to keep them down—get to work!

So female presentation of chest pain doesn’t always show up as typical crushing chest pain-the kind we often see in men. It is more sneaky and often easier to dismiss as something else. Heartburn, muscle pain, bad sleep, stress, etc. Women are notorious for putting things off, to keep up their roles as caretakers for the family. They may ignore symptoms they think are other things but that can be very serious. Nausea and vomiting, chest pain (not always), neck pain, jaw pain, pain in upper back, fatigue, indigestion, fainting, shortness of breath, or pain in the upper abdomen can be signs of a heart attack in women. They may only have ONE of these symptoms or they may have more than one.

IF YOU THINK YOU ARE HAVING A HEART ATTACK: CALL 911! Don’t wait! Seriously! Do not drive yourself. EMS personnel can provide life-saving treatment at your home, in your home, immediately! If you go to the ER, you will not get inside quickly, you may have to wait—Don’t wait! If you have aspirin laying around, CHEW one up and swallow it. This will help you to prevent clot formation during a heart attack.

Hopefully, this short post will bring to your attention some of the differences with women and chest pain. A lot of this is preventable. I’m going to post a couple of good graphics, the first is female heart disease deaths by county 2018-2020. The darker the color the worse is is-the southeast glows!!! The second is a visual of the chest pain differences between men and women from the American Heart Association. Be heart wise!!

Source: CDC
Source: American Heart Association, Go Red for Women

Sources: https://www.goredforwomen.org/en/about-heart-disease-in-women/signs-and-symptoms-in-women/symptoms-of-a-heart-attack. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/women.htm https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/aspirin-for-heart-attack-chew-or-swallow