Do you have any idea what a hard worker your heart is?
Think about it: At the end of every day, you get to go home, put your feet up, and watch Sons of Anarchy. Just imagine if your heart tried to kick back after a grueling 9 to 5 of pumping blood. While it was relaxing, you’d be busy dying.
In fact, if there were an award for Organ of the Month, we know which framed x-ray we’d expect to see hanging on the wall.
Still, while nobody’s ticker takes time off, some do up and quit. Maybe the workplace conditions are horrible. Or perhaps the boss sits on his ass all day. (Check out the 5 Ways That Sitting All Day Screws with Your Health.)
Whatever the cause, it’s almost always something that was building up for a while. So we asked three guys to bare their hearts for us: They revealed their daily diets, exercise habits, family history—they even guessed which guy’s heart was most likely to go haywire first. (Hint: They were all wrong.)
Then we enlisted the help of Michael Miller, M.D., director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology for the University of Maryland Medical System and the author of Heal Your Heart: The Positive Emotions Prescription to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. He evaluated each man’s current cardiac risk factors to predict who’s first in line for an infarction.
By spotting trouble areas early, these guys—and you—may be able to avoid the chest-clutching equivalent of “I resign.”
Wyatt Genser
Height / Weight 6’1”/200 lb
Relationship Status Married
Job Banking manager and business officer
Family Heart History Maternal grandfather had a heart attack; paternal grandfather had congestive heart failure.
Exercise Three to four days of running, plus weight training in between. “I still have some pudginess even after recently losing 40 pounds.”
Diet Protein-heavy meals, plus nuts for snacking. “Twice a week we order takeout, like Italian. But the miles I log balance it out.”
Self-Assessed Stress Level 3/5
Which Guy He Thinks Will Lose “With both his grandfathers and his father passing due to heart attacks, I would say that Chris is genetically at the highest risk.”
His is a story of nuts versus gut.
Genser’s habit of eating a handful of nuts every day provides him with a steady stream of magnesium, a mineral with anti-inflammatory properties that has been associated with improved heart health. Just 2 to 3 ounces of nuts a day can provide enough magnesium to lower a person’s chance of dying of coronary artery disease by 22 percent, according to recent research from Harvard School of Public Health.
Ultimate Guide to Nuts
But Genser’s lingering gut could be negating some of that benefit: A man’s waist size needs to go up only 2 inches from what it was in his 20s for his risk of heart disease to increase, says Dr. Miller.
THE Rx
“As you age, you have to work harder or eat less to manage your weight well,” says Dr. Miller.
Genser should limit his cheat meals to one day a week and give his belly a different kind of work-out-with laughter. Watching a funny movie boosts vascular function by as much as 6 percent, Greek researchers report.
