All of this began when glutamate was introduced in the US in 1947 as a product that goes by the name of Accent Flavor Enhancer. From that moment on, people have been reporting of symptoms like chest pain, flushing, or burning sensations around the mouth whenever they eat something that has MSG. This claim was even more scrutinized when Robert Ho Man Kwok wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in April 1968 and disclosed some details of what he experienced after eating in a Chinese restaurant in the United States.

Despite these reports however, the US Food and Drug Administration have classified MSG to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), which was certified back in 1959. The effort of proving glutamates as safe was followed with the review made by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in 1970. The research was sponsored by the FDA, contrary to rumors that Ajinomoto, the MSG Company in Japan, has funded the said research. The Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) has classified monosodium glutamate in the safest category as an additive with “Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) not specified”.

As a matter of fact, contrary to most claims made against it, MSG can lessen the risks of coronary heart diseases, heart attacks, and diabetes because of its low sodium content, which is 33.33% lower than what is found in table salt. Salt has 39% while MSG only has 12% sodium content. Monosodium glutamate is a great option if you want to lessen salt inclusion in meals while maintaining the taste and rich flavor of most dishes. MSG also works well with food that demand the same deep meaty tang without the need to add excessive fat, which lessens the intake of bad cholesterol that gravely affects the heart.

Prevention is always better than a cure that’s why you should do everything to prevent yourself from developing heart disease. This includes daily cardiovascular exercise and the conscious choice to eat a healthier diet that is low in fat and sodium and high in fiber. By consciously changing your lifestyle you’ll reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

Normally, kids do not have any symptoms of heart diseases and and blood vessel problems. Parents have to start early, showing their kids how to start with heart-healthy habits right NOW. Kids will be able to decrease their changes of haivng a heart problem, and wl never have to worry about cardiovascular disease.

What should you do now? For one, DO NOT SMILE. Be sure to eat healthy, exercise, and maintain a healthy weight. Your heart and blood vessels will thank you later!

You can prevent heart disease by following a heart-healthy lifestyle. Here are five strategies to help you protect your heart.

Heart disease may be the leading cause of death for both men and women, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it as your fate. Although you lack the power to change some risk factors � such as family history, age and race � there are some key heart disease prevention steps you can take.

Take steps to avoid heart disease � don’t smoke, get regular exercise and eat healthy foods. Avoid heart problems in the future by adopting a healthy lifestyle today. Here are five heart disease prevention tips to get you started.

1. Don’t smoke or use tobacco products
“If you smoke, quit,” advises Sharonne Hayes, M.D., a cardiologist and director of the Women’s Heart Clinic at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. “That’s the most powerful, preventable risk factor for heart disease.”

When it comes to heart disease prevention, no amount of smoking is safe. Smokeless tobacco and low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes also are risky, as is exposure to secondhand smoke.

Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,800 chemicals. Many of these can damage your heart and blood vessels, making them more vulnerable to narrowing of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Atherosclerosis can ultimately lead to a heart attack.

In addition, the nicotine in cigarette smoke makes your heart work harder by constricting blood vessels and increasing your heart rate and blood pressure. Carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke replaces some of the oxygen in your blood. This increases your blood pressure by forcing your heart to work harder to supply enough oxygen. Even so-called “social smoking” � only smoking while at a bar or restaurant with friends � is dangerous and increases the risk of heart disease.

Women who smoke and take birth control pills are at greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke than are those who don’t do either. Worse, this risk increases with age, especially over 35.

The good news, though, is that when you quit smoking, your risk of heart disease drops dramatically within just one year. And no matter how long or how much you smoked, you’ll start reaping rewards as soon as you quit.

2. Get active
You already know that physical activity is good for you. But you may not realize just how good it is for you.

Regularly participating in moderately vigorous physical activity can reduce your risk of fatal heart disease by nearly a quarter. And when you combine physical activity with other lifestyle measures, such as maintaining a healthy weight, the payoff is even greater.

Regular physical activity helps prevent heart disease by increasing blood flow to your heart and strengthening your heart’s contractions so that your heart pumps more blood with less effort. Physical activity also helps you control your weight and can reduce your chances of developing other conditions that may put a strain on your heart, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. It also reduces stress, which may also be a factor in heart disease.

Federal guidelines recommend that you get at least 30 to 60 minutes of moderately intense physical activity most days of the week. However, even shorter amounts offer heart benefits, so if you can’t meet those guidelines, don’t give up. And remember that things like gardening, housekeeping, taking the stairs and walking the dog all count toward your total. You don’t have to exercise strenuously to achieve benefits, but you can see bigger benefits by increasing the intensity, duration and frequency of your workouts.

3. Eat a heart-healthy diet
Consistently eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products can help protect your heart. Legumes, low-fat sources of protein and certain types of fish also can reduce your risk of heart disease.

Limiting your intake of certain fats also is important. Of the types of fat � saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and trans fat � saturated fat and trans fat increase the risk of coronary artery disease by raising blood cholesterol levels. Major sources of saturated fat include beef, butter, cheese, milk, and coconut and palm oils. There’s growing evidence that trans fat may be worse than saturated fat because unlike saturated fat, it both raises your LDL (bad) cholesterol and lowers your HDL (good) cholesterol. Sources of trans fat include deep-fried fast foods, bakery products, packaged snack foods, margarines and crackers.

Heart-healthy eating isn’t all about cutting back, though. Most people, for instance, need to add more fruits and vegetables to their diet � with a goal of five to 10 servings a day.

“There’s a huge amount of data to suggest that fruits and vegetables are highly effective in preventing not just cardiovascular disease, but cancer and other diseases as well,” Dr. Hayes says.

Omega-3 fatty acids, a type of polyunsaturated fat, may decrease your risk of heart attack, protect against irregular heartbeats and lower blood pressure. Some fish are a good natural source of omega-3s. However, pregnant women and women of childbearing age should avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish because they contain levels of mercury high enough to pose a danger to a developing fetus. But for most others, the health benefits of fish outweigh any risks associated with mercury. Omega-3s are present in smaller amounts in flaxseed oil, walnut oil, soybean oil and canola oil, and they can also be found in supplements.

Following a heart-healthy diet also means drinking alcohol only in moderation � no more than two drinks a day for men, one a day for women. At that moderate level, alcohol can have a protective effect on your heart. Above that, it becomes a health hazard.

4. Maintain a healthy weight
As you put on weight in adulthood, you gain mostly fatty tissue. This excess weight can lead to conditions that increase your chances of heart disease � high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

How do you know if your weight is healthy? One way is to calculate your body mass index (BMI), which considers your height and weight in determining whether you have a healthy or unhealthy percentage of body fat.

BMI numbers 25 and higher are associated with higher blood fats, higher blood pressure, and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

The BMI is a good but imperfect guide. Muscle weighs more than fat, for instance, and women and men who are very muscular and physically fit can have high BMIs without added health risks. Because of that, waist circumference is also a useful tool to assess abdominal fat. In general, men are considered overweight if their waist measurement is greater than 40 inches. And women, in general, are overweight if their waist measurement is greater than 35 inches.

Even small reductions in weight can be beneficial. Reducing your weight by just 10 percent can decrease your blood pressure, lower your blood cholesterol level and reduce your risk of diabetes.

5. Get regular health screenings
High blood pressure and high cholesterol can damage your cardiovascular system, including your heart. But without testing for them, you probably won’t know whether you have these conditions. Regular screening can tell you what your numbers are and whether you need to take action.

Blood pressure. Regular blood pressure screenings start in childhood. Adults should have their blood pressure checked at least every two years. You may need more frequent checks if your numbers aren’t optimal or if you have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Optimal blood pressure is less than 120/80 millimeters of mercury.

Cholesterol levels. Adults should have their cholesterol measured at least once every five years. You may need more frequent testing if your numbers aren’t optimal or if you have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Some children may need their blood cholesterol tested if they have a strong family history of heart disease.

Prevention pays
Heart disease is often avoidable. Following a heart-healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t mean you need to live a life of self-deprivation. Instead, find ways to incorporate heart-healthy habits into your lifestyle � and you may well enjoy a healthier life for years to come.

Source: mayoclinic.com

It is one thing when the terrified survivor of a serious heart attack, still wearing his hospital gown, receives a stern lecture about the health habits he needs to modify and what will likely happen if he does not.

It is quite another to attempt such changes in a fairly ordinary middle-aged person without symptoms of disease. Why wait until AFTER you have the heart attack to make changes?

According to the American Heart Association, about 62 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease, which can include high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (heart attack and chest pain), stroke, birth defects of the heart and blood vessels, and congestive heart failure, and close to a million die from such conditions every year.

Heart disease is by far the #1 killer in the U. S., although 1/3 of those deaths could be prevented if people exercised more and followed better diets, the American Heart Association said in an annual report.

Cardiovascular disease kills more Americans than the next 7 causes of death combined – including cancer – the AHA report states. Overall, slightly more females than males have cardiovascular disease. Heart disease accounted for 40% of all deaths in the U. S. in 1999.(1)

Wouldn’t it be interesting if almost 1/2 of all deaths (those from heart disease) could be delayed, in good health, to a later time in life – then from some other cause?

The truth is that 150 years ago, heart disease was completely unheard of. Almost no one died from heart disease 150 years ago. The truth is that heart disease is a new disease. Even though the average length of life 150 years ago was much less than it is now, there were millions of people who did live past 60 years of age. They lived long enough to get heart disease – but they didn’t get it. None of those people died of heart disease even when they lived to be in their 70s.

Perhaps the greatest evil connected with the problem of heart disease is that certain powerful drug interests deliberately suppress the truth – these are the groups which stand to benefit the most from your illness from heart disease. There is nothing as profitable to a drug company as a patient who is forced to take some drug for the rest of his life – heart medications fit in that category.

These drug interests have manipulated medical education so that even your doctor is completely ignorant of the value of other therapies. Your doctor is almost as much a victim as his patients.

There is an explanation for the terrible mis-information you get from doctors. The drug interests are eager for his prescription business. That explanation starts with the education your doctor has received. That education got corrupted many years ago. Less than 2% of a Harvard Medical School student’s time is spent studying preventive medicine, and only a small part of that time is spent on nutrition.

Intravenous chelation therapy, probably the most effective medical treatment for heart problems, is still called a fraud by the orthodox medical establishment.

Source: healingdaily.com

If you believe you are experiencing a heart attack or stroke, call 911 or contact your emergency response system immediately.

If you are with someone who is experiencing these symptoms and cannot reach 911, drive them to the hospital immediately. If you are experiencing the symptoms yourself, have someone else drive you.
Signs of a Heart Attack�Common Symptoms
Chest Pain, usually radiating toward the left shoulder and arm. The arm may be tingling or numb.
Nausea, vomiting
Cold sweats, shortness of breath and lightheadedness
Feeling of indigestion
Dizziness, weakness, and fainting
Abdominal pain
Signs of a Stroke�Common Symptoms
Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

Source: MyHeartCentral.com

Heart diseases may be acute or chronic. They may be transient, relatively stable, or progressive. They may cause a variety of signs and symptoms that frequently change and/or worsen over time. Chronic heart diseases can have episodes with acutely worsened symptoms; these may resolve (either on their own or with treatment), persist, or even become life-threatening. Patients with early heart disease may experience few or vague symptoms, such as fatigue, shortness of breath with or without effort, dizziness, and/or nausea; however, these symptoms do not indicate the particular type of heart disease present. These symptoms may also be seen with a variety of other conditions.

Source: Lab Tests Online

Heart disease may be caused by so many conditions like

Alcohol use
Anabolic steroid use
Atherosclerosis
Autoimmune conditions
Bacterial infection
Cocaine use
Congenital abnormalities
Diabetes
Diet, especially when high in saturated fat and cholesterol
Hypertension
Injury or trauma
Sedentary lifestyle
Smoking
Thyroid dysfunction (under and overactive)
Toxins, such as mercury, and sometimes chemotherapy drugs or HIV/AIDS drugs
Viral infection

Depending on the type of heart disease, treatment can range from surgery to medication to exercise�recommendation for treatment could differ a lot from those of another person with a similar diagnosis. And for all of these heart diseases, regardless of the cause, it is always recommended to seek professional advice.

Source: LabTestsOnline