Research indicates that heart disease far outpaces breast cancer in terms of annual death rates for women. On top of that, women with disabilities who are physically inactive are likely to be at even higher risk for cardiovascular disease than their able-bodied counterparts, according to the National Council on Disability’s report, “The Current State of Health Care for People with Disabilities.” The good news: your choices can often strongly affect your outcomes.

Take Control of Your Heart Health
Ready to jumpstart your heart health? There are three keys to ensuring the healthiest-possible heart: getting regular exercise, eating the right foods, and avoiding the wrong foods. Here’s what you need to know.

Get Regular Exercise
Your body is built to move, and your job is to find a way to make that happen. Many exercises can be adapted to a sitting environment, and arm movements done strenuously can provide quite a workout. Other ideas:

  • Start your exercise program slowly. Whether you’re in a wheelchair, use a walker, have an amputated limb, or are balance-challenged, there are still exercises you can do to get your cardiovascular system pumping, which keeps your heart in the game. Feel like you’re too tired to exercise? Start small, doing five minutes of aerobic exercise this week, seven minutes next week, ten minutes the following week, and so on. You’ll find that a gradual approach isn’t quite so intimidating, and will lead to more energy, rather than less.
  • Find a type of movement you enjoy. Whether it’s walking (if you can), sit-dancing, swimming, or some other type of adaptive movement, finding an activity you enjoy will go a long way toward ensuring you keep up with it. Consider all the alternatives: for example, hippotherapy (horseback riding) is a surprisingly good workout for your legs and also improves balance, while handcycling provides a terrific workout, and can be done either for fun or on a competitive basis. Or what the heck, check out one of those belly-dancing or salsa workout DVDs, which can be done with energy and enthusiasm from a sitting position.
  • Add strength training. Building up as many your muscles in your body as you can will help ensure not only a stronger body but also one that places more demand on your heart, which will help keep it performing at a high level. Strength training can be as simple as lifting cans of veggies, working with bands for resistance, or working out to your favorite show with some inexpensive hand-held weights. Or, if you prefer, you may want to consider weight machines at the nearest accessible gym.

Eat the Right Foods
A heart-healthy approach to food doesn’t need to be expensive, but it can take some advance planning to make sure the foods you have on hand support your health goals. Some strategies:

  • Know which foods are good for your heart. These include not only fruits and veggies, but also nuts, whole grains like oatmeal, brown rice, and whole-grain pasta, and fatty fish like salmon and rainbow trout. Oils like canola oil and olive oil are also very heart-friendly, used in moderation because of their high calorie count.

And for an inexpensive source of heart-healthy protein, you can’t beat legumes like lentils, kidney beans, black beans, pintos…just insert your favorite bean here! And although the experts go back and forth on the benefits or drawbacks of wine, the most recent research says that a small glass of red wine makes for a happy heart – and cook.

  • Check out some heart-healthy cookbooks at the library for recipe ideas. Some of the best are from the American Heart Association, Weight Watchers, Eating Well, and Cooking Light. Look for recipes that lend themselves to “big-batch” cooking – i.e., those recipes that you can double or triple and then either cook once and eat the rest of the week, or eat one serving and freeze the rest in serving portions for a home-made version of healthy fast food.
  • Figure out your food personality, and embrace it. When you’re trying to eat heart-healthy (or any kind of healthy), it helps to understand whether you food personality is “I need lots of variety in my food” or “the fewer choices I have, the better.” If you’re the former, you’ll find it easier to follow a heart-healthy eating plan that includes lots of new recipes and experimentation, for example, with new fruits and veggies. Go for it!

If you’re the latter, you’ll want to figure out a group of menus that work for you (we all know that friend who’s had oatmeal, blueberries, chopped apples, and walnuts for breakfast for the past ten years), and then not have to think about it much. Not to worry – you can experiment in other areas of your life!

  • Don’t let restaurants derail you. These days, many restaurants have their menus online – take an advance peek and figure out what choices are heart-healthy, and decide what to order before you even arrive. When in doubt, grilled fish (salmon or trout if they’ve got it) and steamed veggies will qualify you for heart-healthy sainthood. And don’t forget, a small glass of red wine can also be considered part of your cardio fitness plan!

Avoid the Wrong Foods
Reality check: this is way easier said than done, given our fast-food lifestyle. But your heart needs you to make the effort, so give the following your best shot:

  • Try to limit the worst offenders. That would be refined sugars, anything made with white flour, anything breaded and/or fried, red meat, and other high-fat foods like ice cream or cheesecake. Your strategy here needs to be damage control, not total denial – no one wants to give up their favorite foods forever. So that occasional steak isn’t going to kill you, as long as it’s really occasional – as in maybe once a month.
  • Find alternative approaches to your favorite recipes. Cooking Light magazine has a regular “makeover” feature that demonstrates how to take that family-heirloom, multi-cheese extravaganza and turn it into an equally delicious but heart-healthy entrée by substituting lower-fat ingredients for high-fat ones, reducing the amounts of high-fat ingredients used, and various other sneaky but effective tactics. Once you get the hang of this, you’ll be able to apply their techniques to your own family heirlooms (without anyone being the wiser).
  • Learn restaurant lingo… for “bad news.” Fried, breaded, creamy, crunchy, and “au gratin” are all code words that translate into “clogs your heart.” There’s a reason that your waiter just described the chef’s special cheese sauce as “to die for!” Think of yourself as a warrior standing between your terrified, defenseless heart and the killer minions known as “double-chili-cheese-fries” – and act accordingly! (If your companions order them, try to stick with just one fry…)

Bottom line: women with disabilities can strongly influence how healthy their hearts are by the choices they make every day. We think we can improve those odds.