Heart disease includes any disorder of the  heart and affects millions of Americans each year.  It is the leading cause of death among both men and women.  Every year about 785, 000 Americans have their first heart attack, and another 470,000 who have already had a heart attack have another one.  By living a healthy lifestyle, heart disease can be highly preventable.  Click here to view a graphic that shows the common types of heart disease, risk factors and ways to lower your risk.

When community and neighborhood design projects come in over budget, it is a common, unhealthy practice to cut funds for important infrastructure items like sidewalks, leading to the design of towns and neighborhoods in ways that offer no destinations within walking distance. According to Dee Merriam, a Community Planner with the National Center for Environmental Health, smarter design and a return to walkable communities represent valuable tools in the fight against obesity. People who walk for just 15 minutes twice a day, five days a week can lose 10 pounds in a year, cut down on body weight by up to 7 percent and cut their risk of diabetes by 58 percent.

Click here to learn more about why developing walkable communities lead to healthier lifestyles.

To learn more about LPHI’s work related to planning for active environments, click here.

The benefits of regular physical activity are hard to ignore. Exercise can help prevent chronic health conditions, give you more energy and even help you live a longer, happier life. These benefits can be yours no matter what your age. Click here to learn about seven specific ways that exercise can improve your life.

Hot weather isn’t just uncomfortable, it can also be dangerous. Excessive heat - when the temperature is at least 10 degrees hotter than average for that region - causes more deaths than any other type of weather. The Red Cross of Southeast Louisiana offers tips to prepare for and stay safe during excessive heat: discuss the importance of heat safety with your family, know who in your neighborhood is at risk (the elderly, young, sick, and overweight), stay well-hydrated, wear light clothing and avoid extreme temperature changes. Read more.

If fear of aggravating heartburn is your biggest barrier to regular exercise, good news: several studies have found that the right type of exercise can reduce reflux instead of provoking it. These exercises are those that are less agitating to the body, such as riding a stationary bike instead of intense running, and that avoid being in a prone position on your back or belly. Other helpful actions are always avoiding eating for two hours before exercise, cutting sugary sports drinks out of your diet, and eating more fiber. Read more.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LOTD) has officially adopted a Complete Streets policy, promising that all new and reconstruction road projects will include space for pedestrians and bicyclists. These Complete Streets will have sidewalks, bike lanes, and safe crosswalks. The aim of the policy is to ensure safety and access for those choosing to use non-automobile forms of transportation, encouraging physical activity and improved safety for everyone on the road. LPHI served as a member of the DOTD advisory committee.  Click here to read the offical DOTD Complete Streets Policy.

At 2:00pm on Thursday, July 22, the New Orleans City Council Transportation Committee will hold a special meeting to discuss the possible approval of officially licensed pedicab services throughout the city. Pedicabs are taxis operated by bicycle that will be used to transport people short distances. They have already been successfully implemented in cities such as New York, NY, Austin, TX, and Charleston, SC. Pedicabs bring health benefits not only for their drivers - who will get substantial exercise pulling the three person carriages - but for the whole city, as pedicabs are an environmentally friendly form of transportation that will not contribute to air pollution. Thursday’s meeting will be held in the City Council Chambers at City Hall, 1300 Perdido St.

UPDATE: The Transportation Committee voted 2-0 to approve pedicabs. The ordinance will now go before the whole New Orleans City Council for a vote, possibly on August 26th.

New research from a team at Harvard University shows that emotions can spread through communities just like diseases. When looking at patterns of both happiness and sadness in a Massachusetts town, the researchers found clusters of people having similar emotions. The patterns they found were close to those that are expected when looking at cases of a disease within a given population. They also found that each happy friend increased a person’s chance of becoming happy by 11%, while each sad friend doubled one’s chance of becoming sad. If sadness starts to infect your circle of friends, exercise may help improve your mood and turn your frown upside down. Click here to read more about how emotions can spread like diseases. Click here to read more about the emotional benefits of exercise.

Two new studies have found that exercise and vitamin D can help prevent Alzheimer’s Disease. In a 20 year study of 1,200 residents of Framingham, MA, people who regularly did moderate to heavy exercise were 40% less likely to have Alzheimer’s. Those who did the least physical activity were 45% more likely to develop the disease, of which severe memory loss is a key symptom. In the second study, British researchers found that vitamin D deficiency made subjects 42% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s. While vitamin D is naturally produced in the body, studies have shown that many older Americans don’t have enough of it because the body’s ability to produce the vitamin wears down. These people could benefit from taking vitamin D supplements. Read more.

You may already know that exercise is good for your heart, but did you also know that it’s good for your brain? New research shows that exercising may increase your brain’s ability to grow new cells and make new nerve connections, a process called neurogenesis. The more neurogenesis your brain does, the better it performs. Scientists say that exercise has this effect by changing the amounts of two brain molecules: BMP, which prevents neurogenesis, and Noggin, which increases this brain cell growth. The researchers say that even moderate exercise can have a big effect on your brain. Read more.