This is the perfect time of year to think about your heart – joyful hearts, older and younger hearts, loving and giving hearts. Your heart is a mechanical wonder. It works 24/7 pumping good stuff out to the body, like oxygen and nutrients, while helping remove stuff the body doesn’t need anymore, like carbon dioxide and waste products.

Everyone knows that the heart is a muscle. Like all muscles, it needs good fuel and exercise to keep it strong. The proper fuel in appropriate amounts can keep your heart healthy. Research suggests that the Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of heart disease. This diet lowers blood levels of oxidized low-density lipoprotein, known as LDL, cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol that can build up in your arteries and cause cardiovascular disease. The Mediterranean diet emphasizes eating primarily plant-based foods like fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes. Herbs and spices can be used instead of salt for flavoring food. Use extra virgin or virgin olive oil (the least processed kinds) and canola oil instead of butter. Eat fish and poultry at least twice a week and limit red meat to only a few times a month. Moderate consumption of red wine (women 5 ounces/day and men 10 ounces/day) is optional. Sweets and treats should be limited to only a few times a month.

It’s also important to enjoy meals with family and friends and get plenty of exercise. Enjoying a meal with family and friends increases social connection and decreases loneliness. Research on social connections confirms that socializing is linked to a number of physical and psychological health benefits as well as longer lives. Exercise adds additional benefits to boost heart health by improving blood pressure and blood sugar, reducing body fat, decreasing psychological stress and increasing heart protective HDL cholesterol while lowering artery clogging bad LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

During the cold winter months, it is often easy to find excuses not to exercise. We can all find various reasons for not moving much and not helping our hearts with exercise.  Perhaps you have muscle or joint problems that prevent a sensible exercise program. Musculoskeletal problems can limit you in ways that may not be apparent. Your osteopathic physician can use manipulation to relieve muscular discomfort and maximize joint range of motion. Manipulation can help improve breathing by helping the ribs and diaphragm move. Breathing, a habit you have grown accustomed to, along with moving easier can make you feel better and allow you to start getting more active with family and friends. You may be able to get outside more and enjoy the season by being physically active. This can help improve your mood as well as promote and preserve your overall physical and mental health.

Something as complex as the body has a lot of parts that need to work together. These parts are grouped into various systems — metabolic, behavioral, musculoskeletal, neurological and cardiovascular. Over 100 years ago, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., founded a medical discipline called osteopathy. This has become the field of medical practice known as osteopathic medicine. Dr. Still proposed that the body was an organization of interconnected, cooperative parts. These parts relied on each other to maintain an overall state of health. When it all worked smoothly, health was the result. Disease was the result when any part didn’t function as it should. Osteopathic physicians are trained to approach patients from this perspective of interrelatedness and balance. Symptoms, things that people feel or see in relation to their mind, bodies and spirit, can give clues to the health and function of body systems. Sometimes these can be confusing and need to be sorted out using osteopathic examination or medical tests that doctors order.

You may not be aware of anything bothering you, but at a regular medical exam your osteopathic physician will ask questions and examine your body and its systems to see how things are going. Proper diet can fuel your body with heart healthy foods. Reasonable exercise can promote better cardiovascular fitness. Social connection helps decrease stress and promote well-being. Osteopathic manipulation can be used to keep those vital body “telephone lines” of the nervous system up and working and to improve muscular and joint limitations. They are part of an amazing system that keeps one of the most complex organisms, YOU, vital and active.

So please enjoy the season, eat sensibly, exercise, enjoy family and friends and see your osteopathic physician regularly to achieve and/or maintain good health.. Helping oursevles helps our hearts!

— Nick Phillips, D.O. is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. Bonnie Sendzicki, D.O. is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine.