The heart is an amazing machine but asking it to do the impossible is not the best way to achieve longevity. The heart needs proper rest and nutrition to do its job.
Imagine a machine that was designed 30,000 years ago and has never needed improvements. The machine, the size of a fist, pumps 1500 gallons of fluid every day for a hundred years without any repairs or adjustments required. The machine automatically pumps harder when extra fluid is needed and slows down when it detects that the need has passed. It sounds almost impossible, yet the human heart is capable of doing all this if it isn’t handicapped by a poor diet or other stresses.
For the last two hundred years, mankind has been moving away from a rural economy where people generally grew their own food to an industrial economy where food was grown by others and brought into cities from farms farther and farther away. The food industry has changed. Fifty years ago small farms brought food a few miles into a local grocery; today huge industrial farms ship produce around the world. Our nutrition has suffered as a result.
The human heart gets all its nutrition from the blood where it finds the fats and proteins to repair itself. As our food loses its nutrients through industrial practices, and our bodies experience stress through modern life, the heart is asked to do more with less. Today the blood that feeds our heart has less nutrients and more toxins. It is asked to work harder because the body that it serves is under stress and keeps calling for more blood to be sent to various tissues that are trying to deal with the stress.
Doesn’t it sound like the heart needs a break?
Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in the USA. The number of people who die from heart disease is greater than the number who die from all forms of cancer combined.
The heart, the coronary system, and the whole body for that matter, need a maximum of nutrition and a minimum of toxins. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is skewed toward heart disease and away from health and wellness. There is too much sugar, too much fat and too much salt, all of which makes the heart struggle to do its job.
Smoking adds toxins to the blood stream, reduces some of the nutrients, and makes the body struggle which increases the load on the heart. Smoking is one of the key predictors of future heart disease. Yet young people still are attracted to this addictive drug even after forty years of warnings about the harmful effects.
Obesity causes the heart to struggle since it has to supply blood to an organism that is much larger than the heart was designed to support. Adding a few dozen pounds of fat to an average person is like always towing a heavy boat with a small car and expecting the car’s engine to last as long as normal. A person who is overweight should do everything in their power to lose the weight.
Excessive alcohol consumption, more than an ounce per day, or maybe two if the drinker is a young man, can lead to heart disease and other problems. A little alcohol seems to have some benefits but even those benefits are best provided by other non-alcoholic foods.
The answer to any health issue is always, at least in part, to lead a natural life—a life that the body was designed for 30,000 years ago and more. This is really an important point—the human body hasn’t changed since we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started farming. In order to maximize our health and longevity we must live a life closer to our ancient ancestors. We don’t have to be cavemen but we can’t force our bodies to do the impossible either.
