We’ve all gone through our “deal making”. Not knowing whether we were going to make it through the heart attack or bypass, we make all kinds of deals with ourselves and our Maker. Not surprisingly, once we’ve come through the crisis, those promises are frequently forgotten.
Those who make good their promises to make some lifestyle changes including diet and exercise experience remarkable recoveries. Those who “forget” those promises are fooling only themselves and may wind up back in the hospital making more promises … if they’re lucky enough to survive the next event.
In a way, it’s too bad that we aren’t left with more of a reminder of that heart attack or bypass. Maybe if there were some sort of recurring spasm in the left toe or something like that, it would remind us of the incredible fear we had back at the time of the event. But the human mind obliterates those memories of fear and horror. And the body gets to feeling better, week after week, month after month. Pretty soon patients get the notion that they are “cured” and some even wonder whether it was really a heart attack after all. Then they go back to their old habits, and the disease insidiously progresses.
All of us who did our rehab in Santa Monica remember a friendly guy named Herb. The nurses called him Herbie. He owned a restaurant in the area and loved his own food. Herb was badly overweight; the fact is, he was quite fat. Exercise was foreign to him, and he hated every moment in rehab. He’d smile and nod his assurances when the nurses would give him advice, but that good advice was ignored. Herb never lost the weight, didn’t change his eating patterns to lower his dangerously high cholesterol count, and dropped out of the exercise program. He started feeling better, and soon was working long hours in his restaurant. About two years after that time, I dropped in to his place with my family to enjoy a meal of hard-shell crabs. But
Herb wasn’t there. I was sad, but not surprised, to hear that he had had another, this time fatal, heart attack.
But the intention of this book is not to scare you into changing your life. That doesn’t work anyway. My intention is to try to show you how you can avoid future heart problems and enjoy every step of the way.
For the next few months, you’re going to have to take my word about “enjoying” every step of the way. Any time you make major changes or modifications in your life, you can expect to go through a period of adjustment.
To use the same analogy I’ve mentioned before, if you were in an accident, wound up in a cast for a while, and then were told you needed physical rehabilitation, you might be angry, but you’d be a fool to rip off the cast and stomp out of the hospital. Yet that’s just about what most heart patients do. They absolutely refuse to make the changes in their lives that can turn those lives around entirely.
Make yourself this deal: play this one by the rules for the next six months. If you’ve just come home from the hospital, rest, enjoy some reading and movies on video, and get your daily walking done without fail. Then sign up for a structured cardiac rehab program, or work with your doctor to design one to do on your own. Finally, move into a long-term program that you can continue for the rest of your life. As your fitness increases, do just a little bit more, staying within your target heart range. Eat properly, avoiding those high-fat foods that keep you heavy and raise your cholesterol levels. Get plenty of rest and relaxation. Make a particular effort to put some fun into your life.
If, after those six months pass, you can’t honestly say that you feel not only OK but absolutely terrific, then feel free to go back to your old ways. In fact, you can even give it the acid test. Stop exercising for a week or two. Then try to go back to it. You’ll find that in just that short period of time you can’t perform as well. And you’ll most likely start feeling a bit more fatigued and less energetic.
If you keep up your good efforts for a year, you’ll be hooked for life. I can honestly say that I’ve never met a single man or woman who got actively into a solid diet and exercise program who quit. If this is addiction, I love it!
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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol
