Two days later, after a test at the doctor’s office, my heart had a new number: 224, lower than the health-club reading but still on the high side. “Look,” my internist told me, “it’s not good number; it should be lower, but it’s nothing to get flipped out about. If you were fat and sedentary, things might be different. I might consider putting you on a cholesterol-lowering drug. But you’re not. The important thing for you to do is work on your diet, cut down on the animal fats and tropical oils. Then we’ll check your cholesterol level again in three months and we where we stand.”
The doctor also gave me the name of a nutritionist I could talk with if I wanted more information. I did.
Susan Natale, a registered dietitian, teaches cardiac nutrition classes at the Washington Hospital Center. Most of her patients have had their hearts stop beating at one time of other, an experience that tends to convince tem of the need to change their diets. She has the directness one finds in hospital personnel everywhere.
“You’ve got three things going against you that you can’t do much about,” she told me over the phone. “One, you’re male. And men have a greater incidence of heart disease than women. Two, you’re getting older. The older you get, the more likely you are to have heart trouble. And three, your family history, from what I gather, is bad. Lotsa heart attacks. That’s the bad news.”
