Pathway to Better Health: Weight & Heart Health
What is Your Weight?
They say that weight is just a number on a scale, and to a certain extent that is true. The numbers on traditional body mass index scales often do not tell the whole story. Your weight is determined by several factors including water composition, dry lean mass, and fat content. Together, these components make up your current weight, which is the number you see when you step on a typical scale at a doctor’s office.
Weight can be an important contributing factor towards overall health and wellness, but there’s more to how much you weigh than meets the eye. Using biometric screening tools like In Body to break down body composition paints a more accurate picture of what your weight means in relation to your state of health, heart health in particular.
How the Heart Functions
The cardiovascular system is regulated by the heart, which pumps blood to be delivered to every part of the body. A healthy heart is vital to longevity and functional well-being. There are many factors that may impact how well your heart functions. Genetics, age, activity level, smoking, diet, and weight all play a role in heart health.
How Weight Affects Heart Health
How well your heart can do its job depends on several things, some of which you may be in control of. As with most parts of health and well-being, heart health is not determined by a single factor but rather by the combination of stressors that we add to it. Adding stress to your body, whether it is mental or physical, requires the body to work harder to perform its basic duties.
Excess weight may negatively impact heart health because it can add physical stress to the joints, the respiratory system, and all of your organs. Your heart needs to compensate for this added labor, which requires it to work overtime and pump even more blood to the various parts of your body that need it.
Functions of Health
The PLMC’s weight & heart health program consists of one-on-one appointments with a designated provider, group visits, multimedia learning tracks, supplements, lifestyle education, and a food and exercise plan that can help you find the ideal weight to support heart health.
The PLMC Approach to Weight and Heart Health
Here at the PLMC, we prioritize the overall wellness of our patients over all else. Rather than seeing them as a number on a scale or only analyzing one aspect of their physical health, we take into consideration all 5 pillars of health: sleep, exercise/ movement, nutrition, stress management, and relationships/community. By focusing on the following 5 areas, which we call the 5 Functions of Health, we work with patients to establish a baseline that helps them achieve optimal levels of health.
Your weight may be a contributing factor to your heart health, but it isn’t everything. More importantly, it may be something you can take control of if it needs to change.
