Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart
Book: Every Woman’s Guide to a Heart-Healthy Life. By Suzanne Steinbaum,
D.O. Avery. $26.
A whole-body and
holistic approach to heart health directed specifically at women, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book
offers an extended prescription for better cardiac health from the Director of
Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Steinbaum
views the cardiovascular system in the context of the overall body, which
includes the mind, and is well aware of the psychosomatic elements involved in
heart disease – “psychosomatic” not indicating “imaginary,” which is a popular
misunderstanding of the word, but meaning “mind-body connected.”
Convinced that many
women’s heart problems indicate lives that have gone out of balance, resulting
in symptoms ranging from chest pains, fatigue and panic attacks to vaguely
described “heartsickness,” Steinbaum urges women to use their hearts to keep their cardiovascular systems healthy. Of
course, the body uses the heart constantly in a purely physical sense, but
Steinbaum goes beyond that. She wants women to adopt a diet that is good for
the heart, yes, and to exercise regularly, but she also wants women to practice
better stress management and focus on enhancing interpersonal relationships in
ways that enhance heart health. Her
end-of-chapter summaries, which can easily be read and understood before
looking at the chapters themselves, neatly encapsulate her recommendations.
“Chronic stress is one of the biggest heart disease risks for women,” she
points out in one summary (this is true for men, too). “I would like you to
start your very own Heart Book, in which you will record the details of your
lifestyle choices, like diet and exercise and sleep, as well as the story of
your life,” she suggests at another point – the idea being to get more in touch
with your total being, body and mind, to help pinpoint why you may not be
feeling your best. “It is more important
to be fit than skinny,” she comments in the summary of another chapter, adding,
“Remember that the next time you decide to starve yourself and skip the gym!”
The plainspoken advice
is actually nothing particularly new and is certainly not limited to women, but
Steinbaum’s way of delivering information is upbeat, intelligent and
well-informed, as one would expect (or at least hope) from an attending
cardiologist. She acknowledges that it
is one thing for her or anyone to prescribe lifestyle changes, and another for
people to accomplish them: “Compliance, or ‘sticking to it,’ is one of the most
difficult issues to tackle when it comes to changing your lifestyle
habits.” But she keeps coming back to what
she says (perhaps rather naïvely) will make the difficulties easier: “getting
to know yourself.” For example, when it
comes to exercise, she says that everyone has an “exercise style.” One person
may be an “obsessor,” who needs “a routine that will keep you exercising after
the initial thrill wears off” and must also “guard against overdoing it at
first and injuring yourself.” Another person may be a “variety lover,” and
“Variety Lovers get bored easily, so they absolutely need to mix things up if
they are going to make exercise a regular part of their lives.”
By presenting
straightforward medical advice in an attractive verbal package, and returning
again and again to the issue of stress – identifying it and learning to control
it – Steinbaum gives women a series of road maps for improving their everyday
lives and, in so doing, their cardiac health. Indeed, there may be a few too
many of those maps – she has one for many elements of life. For example, she
offers a guide to five “stress management types,” including “the deliberator,”
“the quantifier” and “the pragmatist,” with suggestions on how to decide which
one you are and what to do about your particular style. Taking all the
self-tests Steinbaum offers – and taking the many medical ones that she also
discusses, which are entirely ordinary and would be recommended by any
competent modern cardiologist – requires considerable time and attention
(worthwhile if you can manage your life and insurance accordingly). Indeed, a few of the self-tests, such as “your
pleasure style,” are genuinely innovative.
Steinbaum’s overall recommendation is that women “de-stress
by taking your life back,” which is an excellent prescription but by no means
as easy to do as she suggests. A few of her notions of what to do are downright
quirky, such as singing a theme song to yourself – one that “expresses how you
feel, or how you want to feel, during stressful situations.” The song is supposed to provide “courage,
motivation, and a better attitude,” and Steinbaum says this works for her. But
she notes elsewhere that what works for one person does not necessarily work
the same way, if at all, for someone else.
Still, it is hard to argue with her assertion that “health care is
self-care” (one chapter title); and she certainly makes some intriguing points,
sometimes almost as asides (as when she remarks that she can tell from heart
monitors when a patient had sex, but sex does not increase heart rate as much
as exercise and therefore “does not
count as your cardio”). At more than 370
pages, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book
is lengthy, and it is information-packed to such an extent that readers cannot
simply enjoy the chatty sections – some of the material here really requires
close, careful reading (and rereading). The strictly medical material in the
book is unexceptionable and unexceptional, but its equal emphasis on
whole-person wellness is unusual and attractive, and its slightly odd elements
actually make it more enjoyable to read (for instance, Steinbaum’s display of
an echocardiogram includes a note that the heart shown is that of her physical
therapist). The book is sometimes an
uneasy mixture of the medical/scientific and the chatty/informal, but readers
who enjoy the eclectic style will find much here to enjoy and much to learn –
and may even be inspired to take some good-for-their-heart actions that
more-straightforward books would not lead them to try.
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