Welcome to the NVFC Heart-Healthy Firefighter E-News. The NVFC Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program was designed to help firefighters become more heart-healthy and lower the incidence of heart attack related deaths in the fire service. We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it benefits not only you, but others in your fire department, family and community.

1. NVFC Participates in National Line-of-Duty Death Prevention Summit
2. NFL Player Erron Kinney Promotes Heart-Health at Firehouse World
3. For National Nutrition Month® 2007, the Best Path to Fitness and Health Is to Be 100% Fad Free
4. Updated Guidelines Advise Focusing on Women's Lifetime Heart Risk
5. Chef Kevin Harris’ Heart-Healthy Recipe: Pollo Y Mojo
6. Health Tip: Am I Really Hungry?
7. Small Steps to Heart Health

NVFC Participates in National Line-of-Duty Death Prevention Summit

The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) was among the 225 participates of the second National Line-of-Duty Death Prevention Summit, held in Novato, CA, on March 3-4. Read about the Summit as well as the draft recommended actions relating to health and wellness, prevention, structural, wildland, vehicles, and training and research at http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?sectionId=46&id=53676.

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NFL Player Erron Kinney Promotes Heart-Health at Firehouse World

Kinney featured in article, Podcast on Firehouse.com

Erron Kinney, tight end for the NFL team Tennessee Titans, is featured in an article and Podcast on Firehouse.com for his efforts to promote heart-health in the emergency services as spokesperson for the National Volunteer Fire Council’s (NVFC) Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program. In addition to his professional football career, Kinney is a dedicated volunteer firefighter and is committed to spreading the message of heart-health to his fellow firefighters.

“It’s something great that I’m glad to be a part of,” Kinney said of the Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program. “Firefighters are having heart attacks at an alarming rate. We need to get healthy and do something about it.”

Kinney spoke to Firehouse.com while promoting firefighter health at Firehouse World in San Diego this week. He was there as part of the NVFC’s Heart-Healthy Firefighter booth, which offers free health screenings, cooking demonstrations, and important heart-health information to firefighters and emergency personnel across the nation. Kinney’s interview is the subject of an article and Podcast on the Firehouse.com web site.

“The goal is to get the overall profession healthier, volunteer and paid and anybody involved in the fire service,” Kinney said. “We want to encourage firefighters to adopt a healthier lifestyle so they can answer more calls and be of better service to their communities.”

Kinney’s own lifelong commitment to the fire service began when he was a child and never stopped. He became a junior firefighter at the age of 13 and has been actively involved in the fire service ever since. He currently serves as a lieutenant in the Williamson County Rescue Squad in Grassland, TN, and as a deputy chief for the Shady Grove Fire Department in Hickman County, TN.

Drafted into the NFL in 2000, firefighting remains a passion for Kinney. He notes that football has enabled him to expand his involvement in the fire service through opportunities such as the Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program. “I have a heart for the fire service and football has given me a platform to be immersed in it and involved in many ways,” he said. Kinney also serves as spokesperson for Fire Safe Tennessee and is a member of the Tennessee State Fire Commission.

One day, when his football career is over, Kinney plans to be involved in the fire service full time. “It’s something I love,” he explains. “It’s near and dear to me. It’s a big part of my life and what I do. It’s a part of me.”

To read more about Erron Kinney and hear the Podcast of the entire Firehouse.com interview, visit http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?id=53632&sectionId=46.

You can meet Erron Kinney at the NVFC’s Heart-Healthy Firefighter booth during the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference (FDIC), April 19th – 21st in Indianapolis, IN.

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March is National Nutrition Month® and the American Dietetic Association is reminding consumers the best way to live a healthful lifestyle is to be 100% Fad Free. Diet fads come and go, and some may help you lose weight – in the short term.

“You can lose weight on virtually any diet,” said registered dietitian and ADA spokesperson Roberta Anding. “If you eat less, you will lose weight. The question is, can you maintain a healthy lifestyle over the long term – your life? The real key to reaching long-term goals is to focus on your overall health.”

Through National Nutrition Month, created in 1973, the American Dietetic Association promotes healthful eating by providing practical nutrition guidance and focusing attention on making informed food choices and developing sound physical activity habits. National Nutrition Month also reminds consumers that registered dietitians are their most valuable and credible source of timely, science-based information.
Anding encourages everyone to keep in mind these National Nutrition Month key messages to enjoy a 100% Fad Free lifestyle:

• Develop an eating plan for lifelong health. Too often, people adopt the latest food fad rather than focusing on overall health. Get back to basics and use the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPyramid as your guide to healthy eating.
• Choose foods sensibly by looking at the big picture. A single food or meal won’t make or break a healthful diet. When consumed in moderation in appropriate portions, all foods can fit into a healthful diet.
• Learn how to spot a food fad. Unreasonable or exaggerated claims that eating (or not eating) specific foods, nutrient supplements, or combinations of foods may cure disease or offer quick weight loss are key features of fad diets.
• Find your balance between food and physical activity. Regular physical activity is important for your overall health and fitness plus it helps control body weight, promotes a feeling of well-being and reduces the risk of chronic diseases.
• Food and nutrition misinformation can have harmful effects on your health and well-being, as well as your wallet. Registered dietitians are uniquely qualified to communicate current and emerging science-based nutrition information and are an instrumental part of developing a diet plan that meets your individual needs.

With approximately 65,000 members, the American Dietetic Association is the nation’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. ADA serves the public by promoting optimal nutrition, health, and well-being. To locate a registered dietitian in your area, visit the American Dietetic Association at www.eatright.org.

Courtesy of the American Dietetic Association

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Update gives definitive answers on HRT, aspirin, supplements

Healthcare professionals should focus on women’s lifetime heart disease risk, not just short-term risk, according to updated American Heart Association guidelines.

The 2007 Guidelines for Preventing Cardiovascular Disease in Women – published in a special women’s health issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association – also include new directions for using aspirin, hormone therapy, and vitamin and mineral supplements in heart disease and stroke prevention in women.

“The updated guidelines emphasize the lifetime risk of women, not just the more short-term focus of the 2004 guidelines,” said Lori Mosca, M.D., Ph.D., director of preventive cardiology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, and chair of the American Heart Association expert panel that wrote the guidelines. “We took a long-term view of heart disease prevention because the lifetime risk of dying of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is nearly one in three for women. This underscores the importance of healthy lifestyles in women of all ages to reduce the long-term risk of heart and blood vessel diseases.”

The guidelines include a new paradigm for risk assessment based on risk factors and family history, as well as the Framingham risk score. (First published in 1998, the Framingham risk score estimates the risk of developing coronary heart disease within 10 years.)

The new guidelines include expanded recommendations on lifestyle factors such as physical activity, nutrition, and smoking cessation, as well as more in-depth recommendations on drug treatments for blood pressure and cholesterol control. 

Furthermore, guidelines on hormone and aspirin therapy and antioxidant and folic acid supplements are revised based on recently published data.

“Since the last guidelines were developed, more definitive clinical trials became available to suggest that healthcare providers should consider aspirin in women to prevent stroke,” Mosca said. “In addition, providers should not use menopausal therapies such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) such as raloxifene or tamoxifene to prevent heart disease because they have been shown to be ineffective in protecting the heart and may increase the risk of stroke.”

A recent American Heart Association survey showed that women are confused about methods to prevent heart disease including the role of aspirin, hormones, and dietary supplements.

“The new guidelines reinforce that unregulated dietary supplements are not a method proven to prevent heart disease. For example, recent studies have shown that folic acid is ineffective to protect the heart despite widespread use by patients and physicians hoping for a heart benefit,” Mosca said. “These recent findings emphasize the importance of using well-conducted clinical trial data to develop national recommendations to help patients and their doctors use best practices to prevent heart disease – practices based on data rather than myth or wishful thinking.”

CVD is the largest single cause of mortality among women, accounting for 38 percent of all deaths among females. The public health impact of CVD in women is not solely related to mortality, as advances in science and medicine allow many women to survive heart disease. For example, in the United States 42.1 million (36.6 percent) women live with CVD and the population at risk is even larger.

In fact, “nearly all women are at risk for CVD, underscoring the importance of a heart-healthy lifestyle in everyone,” the authors wrote. “Some women are at significant risk of future heart attack or stroke because they already have CVD and/or multiple risk factors. These women are candidates for more aggressive preventive therapy and we define them as high risk.”

Physicians can easily identify high-risk women, but tools to determine other levels of risk are limited, Mosca said. The authors have aligned their recommendations with treatments proven to work and give strong advice for what not to do, as well.

“Therefore, we have more aggressive recommendations for high-risk women, and strongly emphasize lifestyle strategies to reduce risk in all women,” she said. “Medicine is still an art but these guidelines are meant to guide healthcare professionals on the best science available.”
Highlights of the changes include:

• Recommended lifestyle changes to help manage blood pressure include weight control, increased physical activity, alcohol moderation, sodium restriction, and an emphasis on eating fresh fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.
• Besides advising women to quit smoking, the 2007 guidelines recommend counseling, nicotine replacement, or other forms of smoking cessation therapy.
• Physical activity recommendations for women who need to lose weight or sustain weight loss have been added – minimum of 60-90 minutes of moderate-intensity activity (e.g., brisk walking) on most, and preferably all, days of the week.
• The guidelines now encourage all women to reduce saturated fats intake to less than seven percent of calories if possible.
• Specific guidance on omega-3 fatty acid intake and supplementation recommends eating oily fish at least twice a week, and consider taking a capsule supplement of 850–1000 mg of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in women with heart disease, two to four grams for women with high triglycerides.
• Hormone replacement therapy and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) are not recommended to prevent heart disease in women.
• Antioxidant supplements (such as vitamin E, C, and beta-carotene) should not be used for primary or secondary prevention of CVD.
• Folic acid should not be used to prevent CVD – a change from the 2004 guidelines that did recommend it be considered for use in certain high-risk women.
• Routine low dose aspirin therapy may be considered in women age 65 or older regardless of CVD risk status, if benefits are likely to outweigh other risks. (Previous guidelines did not recommend aspirin in lower risk or healthy women.)
• The upper dosage of aspirin for high-risk women increases to 325 mg per day rather than 162 mg. This brings the women’s guidelines up to date with other recently published guidelines.
• Consider reducing LDL cholesterol to less than 70 mg/dL in very high-risk women with heart disease (which may require a combination of cholesterol-lowering drugs).

This 2007 update provides the most current clinical recommendations for preventing CVD in women 20 and older and are based on a systematic search of the highest quality science interpreted by experts in the fields of cardiology, epidemiology, family medicine, gynecology, internal medicine, neurology, nursing, public health, statistics, and surgery.

The authors note that these guidelines cover the primary and secondary prevention of chronic atherosclerotic vascular diseases. Recommendations for managing vascular disease before or after cardiac procedures or post-hospital and valvular heart disease are covered in other American Heart Association guidelines. 

Courtesy of the American Heart Association

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Chef Kevin Harris of Food For Love, Inc., has created a series of heart-healthy recipes specifically for the NVFC Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program. You can catch Chef Kevin performing cooking demonstrations at the Heart-Healthy Firefighter booth at industry trade shows nationwide, or get more of his recipes on the Heart-Healthy Firefighter web site (www.healthy-firefighter.org) or in the upcoming Heart-Healthy Firefighter Cookbook.

Ingredients

Chicken
6 chicken breasts, butterflied and pounded lightly

Mojo Marinade
2/3 C sour orange juice and zest      
1 tsp sea salt                            
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/3 C lemon juice and zest      
1/2 tsp dried oregano               
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp lime juice and zest
1 tsp dried cumin
1 Tbsp achiote paste                              
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 Tbsp chopped garlic                              
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Black Bean Salsa
2 avocados, peeled and diced
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 large pink grapefruit, peeled and diced
1 small red pepper, diced
1 small yellow pepper, diced
1 small red onion, diced
1 jalapeno, diced (very small)
1 bushel cilantro, chiffonade
1 tsp Chipotle en Adobo
3 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt

Preparation

Black Bean Salsa
Simply mix all these ingredients.

Mojo Marinade
Combine all of the ingredients except the olive oil in a food processor and blend. Add the olive oil slowly until well incorporated.

Chicken
Coat the chicken with the mojo marinade. Heat sauté pan with 1 tsp of extra virgin olive oil, add the chicken in batches, and sear on both sides. Serve with Black Bean Salsa and enjoy.

For more information, visit www.1foodforlove.com/.

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Health Tip: Am I Really Hungry?

Back to Basics – Hunger signals your body when it needs to be nourished. Let hunger guide when you need to eat and how much to eat.

True Hunger Signals

• Hunger pangs, gnawing, growling, or rumbling in your stomach
• Weakness or loss of energy
• Slight headache or trouble concentrating
• Irritability or crankiness

False Hunger Signals

• Thirst may cause you to think you are hungry – try drinking a glass of water
• Cravings or urges don’t always mean you are hungry
• Emotions like anger, sadness, or feeling lonely may trigger an urge to eat
• Social cues like mealtimes may trigger an urge to eat

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Small Steps are ways you can become heart-healthy without making dramatic lifestyle changes.

1. Avoid food portions larger than your fist.
2. Mow your lawn with a push mower.
3. Increase the fiber in your diet.
4. Walk to your place of worship instead of driving.
5. Walk your kids to school.
6. Adopt a dog and walk it.
7. Join an exercise group.
8. Drink diet soda.
9. Replace Sunday drive with Sunday walk.
10. Do yard work

For more ideas, go to www.smallstep.gov.

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