This is my first post on the new blog!  So excited to see the impact we can all have on each other in health in the coming years.

I hope this blog will offer practical advice, fun ideas, and bring together all of the information available to us that people just don't have the time to learn.  We are all so busy pursuing life that we forget to pursue ourselves and our loved ones in one of the more important areas, health.  Without a knowledgeable awareness of our bodies and how we are treating ourselves through food and fitness, we cannot hope to provide ourselves with any effective means of fighting this issue.

Recently, my wife's youth pastor from high school passed away from a heart attack.  He was in his early 60's, has kids as well as grand kids, and loved life fully.  Throughout the past decade he has battled heart attacks and had multiple stints put in place to improve his health.  Now for his family they are left prematurely with the thought that maybe something could have been different.  How many times does this occur in America today?

According to Cooper Institute and the American College of Sports Medicine, there are 830,000 deaths annually due to cardiovascular disease with around 400,000 specific to heart attacks.  About 90% of these heart attacks occur at rest as opposed to during physical activity.  They have also stated that there are approximately 1.25 million heart attacks each year in America.  Lastly, since the flu epidemic in 1918, CVD (cardiovascular disease) is the number one cause of death in our nation over the past century.

There is actually a solution to this problem apart from medication and thousands of dollars in healthcare, physical activity coupled with a healthy diet.

• The ACSM states that for minimum fitness an individual should perform moderate activity 5 days per week for 30 minutes per activity or vigorous activity 3 days per week for 20 minutes per activity. 

This is possible!  We must find the time in our busy schedules to work these into our days.