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Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 12, 2010
Thanks to the stresses of modern life, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) threatens to overload health care and social support systems worldwide.
Sadly, experts acknowledge that treatment interventions are insufficient. Current treatment philosophy involves long-term intervention that often cannot be delivered because of logistics or costs.
Consequently, new approaches to treatment are relying on technology, such as virtual reality, to alleviate the psychologically damaging effects of PTSD.
PTSD is common in soldiers returning from combat duty and may also result from sexual or physical assault, imprisonment or hostage situations, terrorism, surviving an accident or disaster, or diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.
Conventional approaches to treatment, including antidepressant medication and psychotherapy, yield unacceptable recovery rates.
Exposure therapy has been recognized as a highly promising method for treating patients with PTSD.
Rather than relying on patients’ visualization skills to “relive†the traumatic experience, technological strategies such as virtual reality (VR) provide a controlled environment in which patients can experience a situation or scenario while learning to cope with their emotional responses.
Virtual reality has the potential to play an important role in treating survivors of mass casualty disasters, for example. Countries can implement this tool and the available handheld VR technology as part of a comprehensive plan to respond to catastrophe survivors’ mental health needs.
“We are so fortunate in being able to learn from our patients who give us invaluable feedback and important information so that we may continuously improve treatment protocols,†says Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCIA.
“We thank those who have shared their memories and experiences for the benefit of others.”
These innovative solutions are explored in a special issue of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The special issue is available free online.
Source: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/02/12/virtual-reality-for-ptsd/11406.html
 
Article Date: 11 Feb 2010 – 3:00 PST
What goes on in your brain when you’re sleep deprived and how does it affect your ability to process information and make decisions?
A research study conducted at Washington State University into the effects of sleep deprivation on executive functioning the ability to initiate, monitor and stop actions to achieve objectives has yielded surprising results and caused a shift in the current thinking on this topic.
Published in the January 2010 issue of the journal “SLEEP,” the study found that sleep deprivation affects distinct cognitive processes in different ways. The researchers found that working memory a key element of executive functioning was essentially unaffected by as much as 51 hours of total sleep deprivation. Instead, they saw a degradation of non-executive components of cognition, such as information intake, that accounted for the overall impairment in subjects’ performance on cognitive tasks. In other words, the sleep deprived brain appears to be capable of processing information, but this information may be distorted before it can be processed.
These results challenge an existing theory that states that sleep deprivation affects executive functions more than non-executive cognitive processes. They also show that previous experimental support for this theory was hampered by task impurity, the problem that any cognitive performance task involves a number of intertwined cognitive processes that must be distinguished to really understand the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance.
“These findings are significant for our understanding of how sleep deprivation affects the brain,” said Hans Van Dongen, principal investigator on the study and a research professor in the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center. “They show that a large body of research on the effects of sleep deprivation needs to be revisited to verify the conclusions, which may have been drawn incorrectly because of task impurity issues.”
The study looked at 23 subjects, who spent 6.5 consecutive days in a controlled laboratory environment. One group was kept awake for two consecutive nights (62 hours), while the other was on a normal sleep schedule. Three times throughout the experiment, the subjects completed an executive functions task battery composed of tasks that were selected because they allowed for important executive functions to be examined separately from non-executive components of cognition. The task battery measured such executive functions as working memory scanning efficiency, resistance to proactive interference and verbal fluency.
The paper was authored by Adrienne Tucker, a doctoral student in WSU’s experimental psychology program who carried out the study as part of her dissertation research. In addition to Van Dongen, her co-authors were WSU professors of psychology Paul Whitney and John Hinson and research professor Gregory Belenky, director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center. Funding for the research came from the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.
Van Dongen and his colleagues first came up with their new perspective following earlier research studies that examined individual differences in the effects of sleep deprivation, which showed that these differences depended on the task being performed.
“This suggested that sleep deprivation can affect multiple aspects of cognitive task performance in different ways, and that we should look at separate components of cognition and not just overall task performance,” Van Dongen said.
Their recent study was the first step in a new line of research the researchers are pursuing, in which they will investigate the effects of sleep deprivation on a variety of distinct cognitive processes. They are planning follow-up studies that will examine how distinct components of decision making are affected by sleep deprivation and how this influences the overall decisions people make. Ultimately, this may lead to the development of interventions that target the components of cognition most affected by sleep deprivation. Such interventions could improve decision making in situations where getting more sleep is not an option. This work will have important implications for emergency responders, police officers, military personnel and anyone required to make sound decisions in safety-critical environments with little opportunity for sleep.
About the Sleep and Performance Research Center
WSU’s Sleep and Performance Research Center includes a state-of-the-art human sleep research laboratory located on the Riverpoint Campus at WSU Spokane, and two world-class basic sleep research laboratories on the WSU Pullman campus. Also affiliated with the center are three basic sleep researchers who were recently hired to the WWAMI medical education program at WSU Spokane. The human sleep research laboratory is funded entirely with extramural grants and contracts, and accommodates carefully controlled experiments to study the effects of sleep and sleep loss on human cognitive functioning. With the recent addition of a critical job task simulation laboratory, the center’s facility in Spokane is the only one of its kind in the world.
About Washington State University Spokane
WSU Spokane is the urban campus of Washington State University, a land-grant research university founded in 1890. The campus features advanced studies and research in health sciences and health professions, the design disciplines, education, social and policy sciences, and science and technology. Washington State University is one of just 95 public and private research universities with very high research activity, according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifications. In addition, U.S. News & World Report ranks WSU as one of the top public research universities in the nation.
Published on February 10, 2010
The connection between creativity and mental illness is well-established but also hugely exaggerated by the media, particularly thanks to Hollywood. Indeed, when the average layman is asked to think of salient cases of artistic (as well as scientific) talent, he will probably pick from an unrepresentative sample of creative geniuses who are memorable not because of their talents but because these co-existed with a darker side (psychopathic traits, bipolar disorder, anti-social conduct, lack of social skills, etc.). Thus when you think of a maths or physics genius you imediately think of Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind”, when you think of a musical genius you think of Beethoven’s biopic “Immortal beloved” or Amadeus’ portrayal of Mozart (or, if you prefer, “Ray”, “Walk the line”, “Shine”), when you think of big visual artists you think of “Surviving Picasso”, “Pollock” or “Modigliani”, etc.
The bottom line here is quite simple: to portray eminence as a combination of both talent and psychological hardship. The effect is also straightforward: to create the illusion of a causal link between creative talent and psychological disorders. The assumption, then, is that Miles Davis would not have been Miles Davis if he had been a teetotaller, that Ray or Steve Wonder would have been mediocre musicians if they hadn’t been deprived of vision (and, before you say it: blindness is not a psychological disorder but the point is that it’s psychologically taxing), and that Picasso’s talents were boosted by his psychopathic approach to love and relationships. This sends an uplifting message to the average man: being a genius is not really worth it because geniuses are all disturbed – so, we should all embrace normality.
The reality is somewhat different, though. Most talents are more adaptive than maldaptive, and psychological research shows that creativity is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes, including both physical and psychological well-being. From a molecular or micro-psychological point of view, the act of doing something creative has instant positive physical and psychological effects (call it “flow”, intrinsic motivation, natural high, or whatever you want to call it); at a “group-level” analyses, creative activities foster social bonds, including long-term relationships; at a social and sociological level, creativity is the key driver of progress in human society, and even though many people keep trying to persuade us that any form of progress is detrimental to our natural psychological constitution or basic psychological needs, they do not live in North Korea (and, even if they wanted to, they could not). I will not review the vast literature in support of the link between creativity and well-being because this is not the place for it, but, take my word: creativity, in whichever form it is manifested, has happy consequences (this is almost tautological).
A more complex question is the extent to which subjective well-being or happiness (the non-technical word for it) are beneficial for creativity. Yes, research shows that positive emotions can trigger creative impulses – moments of euphoria are usually associated with creative behaviours – but it also shows that periods of hardship (sadness, anxiety, fear, etc) can be used to “incubate” creativity and may even provide the “raw materials” for creative ventures later on. This is what some people call the seashore effects, and why some creative eminences had bipolar tendencies. In fact, there is a much simpler way of looking at this: if everything in your life works fine or your life is perfectly balanced, why bother changing it? Remember: to create is to change or transform something into something else. So, “if it ain’t broken…”. Thus, dramatic events can trigger creative attempts because they motivate us to change and, for the same reason, once the equilibrium has been restored and our life is balanced we may be less interested in creating.
The relationship between emotional hardship (suffering) and creative interests is also reflected in our aesthetic preferences. Indeed, a perfectly balanced life will undermine not only your creative instincts but also your taste for all things creative. This is why individuals with a natural predisposition towards happiness – namely, those who score high on tests of Extraversion and Agreeableness, and low on tests of Neuroticism – have terrible artistic taste! Moreover, the only personality trait that has any salient effects on aesthetic sensitivity and artistic appreciation (the personality trait of Openness to Experience) is positively related to Psychoticism and Sensation Seeking.
Linking personality to artistic preferences is not straightforward unless you classify artistic preferences according to personality-congruent categories or factors. For instance, if different pictures or songs can be grouped or classified according to their “ability” to evoke positive or negative emotions, they could be predicted by emotionally-relevant traits like Extraversion or Neuroticism. Likewise, if you classify artistic products, like films, according to their aesthetic value (how artistic, intellectual, or cultural they are) you will easily predict these preferences by people’s Openness’ score. The fact that open people (who are, by definition, artistic) prefer artistic paintings, photographs, music and films, is no surprise – and, again, tautological. However, the fact that happy people prefer less artistic forms of these products can only be explained by accepting the connection between creativity and hardship. This is why stable, aggreeable extraverts are much more likely to enjoy “Meet the Parents” (or other feelgood movies) than their unstable, disagreeable, introverted counterparts. Moreover, this is why stable, agreeable extraverts are much more likely to dislike (and will probably never bother watching) “Das Boot” or “The Antichrist”.
So, if you have been blessed or gifted with a happy personality, your artistic taste probably sucks!
To take part in our current research on personality and movie preferences (and get instant feedback on your personality and movie preferences), click here!
ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) — People with generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, have abnormalities in the way their brain unconsciously controls emotions. That’s the conclusion of a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, and the study authors say the findings could open up new avenues for treatments and change our understanding of how emotion is regulated in everyday life.
The work is published online in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 18 percent of Americans have an anxiety disorder. GAD in particular is marked by extreme feelings of fear and uncertainty; people with the disorder live in a state of non-stop worry and often struggle getting through their daily lives. “Patients experience anxiety and worry and respond excessively to emotionally negative stimuli, but it’s never been clear really why,” said Amit Etkin, MD, PhD, acting assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and first author of the study.
Etkin said clinical data have suggested that adult GAD patients initially register negative stimuli in a largely normal way, but have deficits in how they then control negative emotions. He and his colleagues conducted their research to better understand these potential abnormalities and to shed light on two theories dating back to Sigmund Freud: that most emotion regulation is done unconsciously, and that a disturbance in unconscious emotion regulation leads to psychiatric symptoms.
Read More …Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100210124805.htm
 
Film-maker Noah Hutton has just released an excellent 15-minute documentary on the Blue Brain project that captures the team as they work and explains the goals of the ambitious attempt to simulate animal, and eventually, human scale neural networks on computer.
It’s an interesting look both inside the scientific mission and inside the mind of project leader Henry Markram, whom it must be said, is largely talking about the potential of the project rather than what it can do now.
It’s probably worth saying that Markram is not known for underselling his efforts, and some of his projections seem a little unrealistic.
At one point he mentions that the project could be used in hospital so doctors can simulate the effects of drugs on a digital brain to see if they’ll work before giving patients the real thing. Best of luck with that chaps.
It’s a great short piece, however, and apparently there are more to come in the future.
Link to Blue Brain: Year One.
Source:Â http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/02/blue_brain_year_one.html
Neuro Case 1 – Using Transcranial Doppler for Basilar Artery Occlusion
By Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD, MD
Welcome to the first of a series of neurological cases to be featured on Brain Blogger. We will periodically choose the most enlightening cases from the Journal of Medical Case Reports (JMCR) for which I serve as an Associate Editor. I will present the case as published, discuss the implications of the findings or techniques employed, and the case author is then asked to comment on our blog to address our readers.Published by BioMed Central, JMCR “is a peer-reviewed open access journal that will consider any original case report that expands the field of general medical knowledge.†To submit a case report for publication, please review the JMCR submission checklist.
 
ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) — New research provides insight into why fragile X syndrome, the most common known cause of autism and mental retardation, is associated with an extreme hypersensitivity to sounds, touch, smells, and visual stimuli that causes sensory overload and results in social withdrawal, hyperarousal, and anxiety. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 11 issue of the journal Neuron, uncovers a previously unknown developmental delay in a critical brain circuit that processes sensory information in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome.
Fragile X syndrome is caused by a mutation that interferes with production of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). FMRP has been shown to play a key role in neuronal development and plasticity, and the loss of FMRP results in the complex and severely debilitating symptoms associated with fragile X syndrome.
“A central feature of fragile X syndrome is an alteration in sensory processing that manifests in early infancy and progressively worsens through childhood,” explains senior study author, Dr. Anis Contractor from the Department of Physiology at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Little is known about how disruptions in the part of the brain that process sensory information, called the sensory cortex, contribute to these deficits.”
Dr. Contractor and colleagues used a mouse model of fragile X syndrome that exhibits hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, similar to the human syndrome, to examine the development of synapses in the sensory cortex. Synapses are the sites of communication between neurons, and the ability of the brain to correctly process incoming information is predicated on the correct development of these structures. Although previous work had shown that there are clear defects in the size, shape, and number of synapses in the sensory cortex of fragile X mice, it was not clear whether the abnormalities had any functional impact on the development of the sensory cortex.
Read in Full:Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100210124755.htm
By Virin GomberÂ
Most businesses start with a commercial focus and then adopt a corporate and social responsibility vision. But some businesses stand out in that they are formed with a long term vision of benefitting the society.
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| Pat Baker with the planner. |
With such a vision in mind, Pat Baker started the I Can Do It! Program about three years ago to help children by teaching them about working as a team while learning life-skills and social values. “It’s a fun and interactive family and school management solution, which employs easy to use, tried and trusted practical strategies,†Pat told BtoB.
“Having a background in product development, I designed and came up with this program for my own family after more than 18 months of research and development,†Pat said.
The I Can Do It! Planner motivates kids to make a valid contribution around the house and enjoy the interactive appeal that engages and motivates the entire family. The Planner, made out of durable, heavy duty recyclable vinyl, hangs on the wall as a constant reminder and visual prompt, for regular everyday use.
Pat believes if children are not motivated, inspired and challenged in their daily lives they may not reach their full potential. “I Can Do It specifically targets all demographics and age groups. It has the potential to benefit entire families, children in classroom environment, and most parents as well,†she added.
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| The ‘I Can Do It’ planner. |
“You can custom-make it to suit to specific environments and individuals, from two year olds to adults; it’s a time and family management system that can help anyone.â€
The program is already quite popular, according to Pat, being used by kinder care centres across the country, special needs homes, schools and families. It’s also endorsed by a few organisations, including Autism NZ.
“I recommend the planner because it incorporates many of the tried and trusted ideas developed over the years. The planner allows families to develop skills for themselves and to move forward. I Can Do It helps children to develop the kinds of self management, time management and organisational skills they need in their daily lives to become successful independent adults,” Registered Psychologist, Alison Kirby, said.
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“I am delighted to recommend the ‘I Can Do It’ Programme to people with special needs, brain injury conditions, dyslexia, autism and other such conditions. This programme incorporates many of the trusted pedagogical ideas in the field of psychology. It’s a good resource for teaching people of all ages goal setting, time management, prioritisation, negotiations and organisation,” Registered Psychologist, Speech and Language Therapist, Prakash Grover, said.
Sounding upbeat about its success, Pat said they are constantly adding value to the program. “With regular inputs from psychologists, teachers, occupational therapists, principals and parents, the program is constantly evolving and new ideas being received through forums,†she said.
Having successfully established the program in New Zealand, Pat is looking for distributors in other countries, particularly Australia, USA and UK.
“We’re not stopping here with this; there are another two programs to be rolled out soon, one diet related and the other one an adult-oriented program.â€
Source:Â http://www.btob.co.nz/cms/news_feature/2010/02/business_with_social_benefits.php
London:Â Autism and related conditions were underdiagnosed in women and teenage girls, UK researchers have observed.
Experts due to speak at Britain’s first academic conference on the issue noticed that up to 80 per cent of diagnosed cases of autism were in boys.
Richard Mills, research director of Research Autism, found that doctors and parents often fail to notice or misinterpret the symptoms of autism and Asperger syndrome, a milder form of the condition, in women and may confuse the signs with eating disorders or other problems.
“Girls are less likely to have language delay than boys with autism, so all the right boxes get ticked when they are toddlers and their autism can get missed. Autistic girls are also more likely to be outwardly social when they are younger whereas boys are less so,†Times Online quoted Mills as saying.
Dr Mills added: “What was happening was that other diagnoses were being made – personality disorder or perhaps schizophrenia. This is possibly because most tests were developed around male characteristics of autism.”
Janet Treasure, an expert on eating disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, pointed out that girls on the autistic spectrum often focused on diet or calorie control, which became their obsession.
She said: “Those who are severely underweight and unwell, with serious disruption of eating patterns, share a lot of the cognitive and emotional styles common to autism. Their poor nutrition means that they can’t see the bigger picture, they focus on detail and have a rigid way of thinking, finding it hard to adapt.”
Mark Lever, the chief executive of the National Autistic Society, said: “We are extremely concerned that many women with autism may be going undiagnosed. So many tell us that trying to get a diagnosis feels like an insurmountable hurdle and they have to fight tremendous battles to get the help, support and services they desperately need. Autism is a serious, lifelong and isabling condition and without the right support it can have a profound effect on individuals and families.†(ANI)
Source:Â http://www.indiatalkies.com/2010/02/autism-underdiagnosed-women-brit-boffins.html
Similar News:
 
In a blog a while ago, I wrote about people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and touched on the distinction between healthy and pathological narcissism. In short, healthy narcissism has to do with a healthy sense of self worth and self-esteem, a healthy sense that you deserve to have and achieve good things and success in life, and that you deserve have positive relationships and to be treated well. Healthy narcissism has to do with a realistic sense of one’s own worth and a realistic sense of one’s own abilities, rights, and obligations. I’d like to go a little bit more into writing about unhealthy – or pathological- narcissism.  You can find a detailed description of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders here.
According to Elsa Ronningstam, author of the book “Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personalityâ€, the prevalence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the general population is considered fairly low to moderate, with different studies reporting between 0.4% to 5.3% of the general population meeting criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Interestingly, the incidence of Narcissistic Personality Disorders has been found to be somewhat higher in people with higher education and in special professions.
Ronningstam describes different types of unhealthy narcissism as characterized by three features: 1.) dysregulated self-esteem, 2.) dysregulated affect, 3.) interpersonal difficulties.
In terms of dysregulated sense of self-esteem, someone with pathological narcissism is exquisitely sensitive and fragile. Â Criticism can feel devastating to them, and they have a very hard time dealing with failure or defeat. Â Often, they protect their fragile sense of self-worth by covering it up with presenting as though they feel special and unique, or have special abilities, and with fantasies of perfect, special, or powerful.
           When it comes to their affect, meaning, what they feel emotionally, people with unhealthy narcissism can get very dysregulated as well. They can feel their emotions very strongly, and frequently are plagued by feelings of intense anger or rage, and painfully intense feelings of shame, or envy.Â
           Interpersonal relationships of someone with unhealthy narcissism tend to be characterized by behaviors that serve the preservation or augmentation of their self esteem. This means they can come across as arrogant, haughty, and entitled. Other are frequently used as a means to bolster their self-worth, so they like to associate with people who admire them, or who themselves are special, accomplished, or famous. This can also take on the opposite form, though, in that some people with unhealthy narcissism are particularly shy and are so protective of their self-esteem and so afraid of humiliation and shame, that they avoid the slightest chance of being criticized by avoiding attention from others, and so they avoid any risk of failure by not pursuing relationships or professional goals.
           Unhealthy narcissism is viewed to appear on a continuum and can come in a very wide range from very mild to extremely severe. Some people only have a few features of narcissism that can get in their way and can cause trouble for them.
In contrast, on the other extreme end of the spectrum is psychopathy. Elsa Ronningstam, as well as another expert on narcissism, Otto Kernberg, view psychopathy as the most severe, most extreme, and most malignant form of narcissism. Psychopaths have most severe difficulties in all these three areas above. They protect their self-esteem through immoral or violent behavior, are characterized by intense rage and envy, tend to be irritable, and to exploit others. They engage in immoral, violent, or criminal behavior, are revengeful and sadistic, and lack any sense of guilt or remorse.  Psychopathy overlaps with the Antisocial Personality Disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Source:Â http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=35523&cn=8
 
Take your health into your own hands today!
- Â
- The food you eat
- The exercise you get
- Whether or not you smoke
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Heart disease is a core issue in our society’s public debate about our national health. Such public health concerns as the obesity epidemic, accessibility to healthy food, and nutrition education are all forefront in the news recently.
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Good luck and here is to a healthy heart and healthy lifestyle!
Resources from Resurrection Health Care
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- Cardiovascular Health – A whole range of heart disease related health topics in our Health Information Library, from cholesterol and high blood pressure to angioplasty and stroke.
- Heart Month Events – our hospitals have a variety of heart health programs during February to take advantage of.
- RSS FeedsCardiac Services – Find out information about cardiac care services at Resurrection Health Care facilities.
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- Find a Cardiologist
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Disclaimer: When you click on the links below, you will be taken to websites outside Resurrection Health Care. Resurrection Health Care is not responsible for the information presented on the websites below.
Statistical Information
- Heart Disease Fact Sheets – Fact sheets on heart disease related topics such as cholesterol, stroke, high blood pressure, and more.
- Interactive Maps (CDC) – These maps present heart disease and stroke mortality rates, county-by-county, for the state, selected racial/ethnic group, and gender of your choice.
Outside Resources
- American Heart Association Home Page
- Healthy Lifestyle (American Heart Association)
- Health Tools (American Heart Association)
- Beat Your Risk for High Blood Pressure (American Heart Association)
- Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease (American Heart Association)
- Guide to Heart Disease (CDC)
- February is American Heart Month (CDC)
- Start! for Individuals – Lead a longer, more heart-healthy lifestyle through walking and other healthy habits.Keep track of what you eat and how much exercise you get by using the online tracker provided. It can also provide a summary of calories consumed and burned on a daily basis.
Other Important Information
- Family History Awareness – Many common conditions and diseases are inherited, so it is important that you have a full family history available if your doctor should ask for it.
Source: http://saintfrancishospital.reshealth.org/yourhealth/alerts/heart_month.cfm
 
Follow the BEAT
Join in with the very first national heart health code to get you on your way to a healthier heart…
Be active
Regular physical activity can help keep your heart healthy. Aim to do at least 30 minutes a day, five times a week. You don’t have to run a marathon – walking, swimming and taking the stairs all count.
Eat healthily
Healthy eating helps reduce your risk of heart disease. We’re all allowed a little of what we fancy, but try to cut down on saturated fats, salt and alcohol. For top marks, eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, oily fish once a week and go for the wholegrain options.
Avoid smoking
Smoking can damage the heart and double your risk of having a heart attack. Stopping smoking is the single biggest step you can take to live longer.
Take the lifestyle check
Our new Heart Health Lifestyle Check can help you find out how to improve your lifestyle and look after your heart.
It’s all part of our free Heart Matters service, helping you keep your heart healthy.
Along with being active, eating healthily and not smoking, many other parts of your lifestyle can affect your heart health.
The check is quick and easy to fill in. When you’re finished, you’ll get a personalised report with tips and support
You can keep a copy of your report and you can even print out a copy for your doctor. And you can take the check regularly, it’s a great way to see if the changes you are making are having a positive effect! on how to improve your lifestyle and areas that you might want to focus on.
> Complete your free Heart Matters lifestyle check today!
http://www.bhf.org.uk/living-with-a-heart-condition/how-can-we-help-you/heart-matters/beat.aspx
 “British Heart Foundation”:http://www.bhf.org.uk/
 
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