Performance Tips

October is Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month! It makes a great opportunity to provide heart-health information and simple reminders. Hopefully the following information will help you with the basics.

What is sudden cardiac arrest (SCA)? Simply put, it’s a life-threatening emergency that occurs when the heart suddenly stops beating. It strikes people of all ages who seem to be healthy, even teens and children.

What to do if someone has a SCA? Time is of the essence to save someone’s life in this situation. Here are a few tips from to the American Heart Association. Call 911 for emergency services immediately. Begin CPR. If someone is unconscious and having trouble breathing, start chest compressions immediately. Use an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) if possible.

Heart health is important for all of us. Creating healthy lifestyle habits such as getting plenty of sleep, limiting stress, stopping smoking, limiting alcohol, and daily physical activity, all help support cardiovascular health. Another important health factor is choosing good nutrition. Here are some nutrition tips from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that help support cardiovascular health.

• Include sources of dietary fiber: Make half your plate fruits and vegetables at each meal. Choose whole grains instead of refined grains whenever possible.

• Include Omega-3 fatty acids foods: Various nuts, seeds, and oils are great options. Walnuts and walnut oil are another option. Fatty fish such as salmon is good to include weekly in the diet for Omega-3 fatty acids.

• Reduce salt (sodium): Prepare foods at home to help control the amount of salt in your meals. Check the Nutrition Fact Label for sodium and choose products with lower sodium content.

• Cooking tips: When cooking or preparing dishes with fat, use vegetable oil such as olive oil or canola oil in place of solid fats such as butter or lard, which contain higher amounts of saturated fat. Try different ways of cooking foods, such as baking, broiling, grilling, steaming and poaching to add variety.

• Limit saturated fat: Choose lower fat dairy products. Check the Nutrition Facts Label on food packaging for saturated fat content and to see if trans-fat or partially hydrogenated oils are listed. When choosing meat products such as beef, select lean cuts. There are a wide variety of lean and extra lean beef cut options available today. An easy indicator of a lean cut is to look for the word "loin" or "round" in their name. Remember you can also reduce the total fat content of ground meat by draining the fat off cooked products.

With fall in the air, beef chili is a great family meal as well as tailgate option. This Beef Chili recipe from BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com is easy to prepare, can be made in less than 30 minutes and is an American Heart Association certified heart check-mark recipe.

Learn more about lean beef in a physically active lifestyle at BuildYourBase.org as well as lean beef and heart health at BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com.