Document text
Healthy Heart event set for Saturday By John Darling Some 2,000 people attending the fifth annual Healthy Heart Festival at Rogue Valley Mall Saturday will learn that the right way to eat is now the "Mediterranean Diet": less processed food and meat and more fruits, grains, vegetables, fish, canola or olive oil and � some good news � more fat. Heart disease The American Heart Association says this about heart disease: 60 million people, or one in five Americans, have heart disease. 41 percent of deaths in the United States are from heart disease. One in six deaths from heart disease are people under age 65. Heart disease takes seven years off the average lifespan, making it more than twice as lethal as cancer. 80 percent of those under 65 who have a heart attack will die from it. Half of women will die of heart disease, while only one in 28 die of breast cancer. Your chances of dying of AIDS are one in a million, of being murdered are one in 10,000, of getting killed in a vehicle crash are one in 5,000 � but you have a 50-50 chance of dying of heart disease. On the Web: http://www.americanheart.org The prevailing wisdom for years has been to eat as little fat as possible, so fat-free food flooded the market. The problem was that people ate all they wanted, stayed fat and didn�t decrease their heart-threatening cholesterol, said Mary Stansell, Rogue Valley Medical Center nutritionist. "The no-fat and low-fat diet also was high in sugar and that made the triglycerides go up. Now we�re recommending a little more fat than before and, to copy the Mediterranean lifestyle, less general stress and more walking and biking." Stansell and other Asante health workers will hand out information on the new dietary attitudes at the mall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The festival will offer cholesterol screening, coronary and cardiac risk profiles, diabetes risk test and heart-friendly nutritional information and recipes. A pharmacist will be on hand to answer questions about drugs, and a respiratory therapist will encourage smokers to kick the habit at a smoking cessation booth. To encourage people to exercise, the festival will include salsa dancing, stretching, aerobics, demonstrations of aikido and gymnastics and a one-mile fitness walk around the mall, with the first 100 people getting free T-shirts. There also will be heart-smart food samples, clowns, face painting for kids, and drawings and door prizes for a microwave oven, mall gift certificates, jet boat trip on the Rogue River and a stay at Jot�s Resort in Gold Beach. Great Harvest Bread Co., of Medford, will hold a bread-kneading contest among local television personalities. The event is sponsored by Rogue Valley Medical Center, Three Rivers Hospital of Grants Pass, the American Heart Association, the National Kidney Foundation, the Tobacco-Free Coalition and Mended Hearts. The American Heart Association will hand out heart-friendly cookbooks and educate visitors on the warning signs of heart trouble, the availability of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation classes, how to respond to heart emergencies and the use of defibrillators. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.