The Hindu Business Line : Take heart...

Playing heart-ball: Something beautiful is happening. We may still be able to prevent lifestyle-induced heart ailments with easy lifestyle-infused exercises. Leading the way are Canadian companies presenting their employees with `squeezies' — rubber `heart-balls' attached to their cell-phone covers. The idea is: every time you reach for your cell-phone, exercise your heart. These balls come in bright, cheerful colours painted over with a `smile', and are just pliable enough to be squeezed. As you speak into your phone, you squeeze the ball several times with your left hand, then with your right. It literally gives the heart an able, helping hand.

The rhythmic, resistive squeezing motions strengthen the blood-transporting arteries, elasticise the main myocardium heart-muscle and power the valves that prevent reflux of blood during cardiac contraction. It can't get easier than this, can it? You can strengthen your heart right through the day while commuting, riding the elevator, walking to the water-cooler, reading the newspaper and watching TV...

A self-empowering tip for smokers: pick up a squeezie instead of a cigarette every time the urge hits you. You will smoke less, and may even kick the puffing habit.

Six thousand steps: Another handy lifestyle piece that is finding its way into the Canadian executive's heart is the flat, lightweight and handy pedometer. You clip this pedometer to your waistband at daybreak.

Press the `Reset' to 00000. From then on, the small monitor records the number of steps you take from morning `til night. You need to log a minimum 6,000 steps daily to shift out of the sedentary-lifestyle slot into the average-active mode. Your shift is significant because the heart is not designed to work solo but in tandem with the leg-muscles, referred to by physiologists as `auxiliary hearts'.

Just moving around on your feet contracts the lower-leg muscles that push the blood back to your heart. Constantly receiving blood supply this way makes the heart-muscle work against a blood-load and keeps it firm and strong. Plus, it gets a regular supply of nourishing oxygen via the blood. This is minimum conditioning.

To get the heart to prime conditioning, it still needs a continuous, rhythmic exercise where the leg-muscles pump repetitively. A 42-minute walk or a 20-minute cycling session daily does that splendidly. You'll find the difference of an exercised heart through your pulse.

Over the months, the pulse against your finger becomes more forceful, regular, rhythmic and slower. Slower means the heart has become efficient enough to pump more blood in fewer beats. This is great news.

Cut cholesterol: Why should we cut our cholesterol? Our liver manufactures enough to sustain the body. So, any cholesterol we eat settles in our heart's arteries. Over the years, as the artery's normal channel gets blocked up to 75 per cent by cholesterol and fats, we probably won't have chest pain (angina pectoris). But, since our heart receives only 25 per cent of oxygenated blood, its musculature weakens steadily. If the arterial diameter gets blocked to above 90 per cent, then we head for a heart attack (myocardial infarction or loss of myocardium muscle).

That's why we must stop eating cholesterol-containing foods. It's easy to identify them because all foods comprising or cooked in saturated fats contain cholesterol. They include egg yolk, chicken skin, red meats, shellfish, organs — liver, brain, kidney; whole milk and milk products such as ghee, butter, cheese. Safer foods are egg-white, lean chicken, cow milk and its products, cereals, pulses, soya products, mushrooms, vegetables, and all fruits except avocado and olives.

When you eat cholesterol-free and fatless food, another dividend you get is weight-loss. Thus, a weekly plan could include...

Pre-breakfast daily walk or cycle with a squeezie. Breakfast could contain toast grilled with tomatoes or idlis with low-fat chutney; coffee/tea with cow's milk. (Please refer chart below for the weekly lunch and dinner plan.)

Press out stress: Regular exercise and heart-friendly food give a strong, healthy base. Just don't let emotional stress vitiate it. Even clean arteries are known to spasm due to intense emotional stress causing cardiac damage. All stress is emotional — mostly an inappropriately tumultuous response to trivial events instead of a peacefully balanced one. Follow these tips to press out stress:

Say `No' honestly when you can't get to a meeting or meet a deadline.

Organise your life better. If you're always late to office, leave earlier from home. If you can't leave earlier because you oversleep, stop those energy-heckling parties and late-night TV shows. This ensures a sound eight-hour sleep.

Don't corner yourself by being obsessed with your job. Develop an interesting hobby. It widens your perspective.

Share your anxieties with people wiser than you. Often, a trouble bared is a problem solved.

Keep handy the escape clause, "I can walk away anytime I want." No, it's not being irresponsible, it's providing a private comforting possibility that sees you through your responsibilities. (Use it sparingly though!)

Finally, if you've had an angioplasty or survived a heart attack, think of yourself as a soldier who has fought the war with mortality and won. A medical treadmill test will reassure you that you are tougher than you think. Get an okay from your doctor to exercise. Eat right. Think peacefully. You don't have to recover lost ground. You have to stride towards a healthier, more fulfilling one. You have a strong heart soldier... it won't let you down.

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