Valentine's Day:  A Day to Reaffirm Love

Valentine's Day feels different to me this year, and I've been trying to figure out why. It's this doctor thing, I guess. Serious so much of the time. I was at the mall this past weekend with my family and after we finished a great ice skating session, my little one and I ran into a cookie cart. Needless to say there was a giant heart-shaped cookie for sale and my son, the sultan of sugar, thought that the cookie would be a great gift for Mom on February 14th.

Of course "Mom" in this case actually meant my son's stomach. I said no, we weren't going to buy this eighteen inch wide, two pound fat gram confection. Quickly trying to think like his mother, I offered a compromise of baking a giant cookie at home.

Actually, in offering the alternative baking scheme I knew that (1) If we could pull this off, a good time would be had by all, and (2) the finished product would be delicious and would have far less fat and sugar than the megatreat we had seen at the mall when made with low fat, low sugar products.

What has happened to Valentine's Day for me is an evolving awareness or consciousness about health and healthy living that has changed how I think. It is not my intent to be the Scrooge here. I am not calling for bouquets of green beans instead of red roses. A box of chocolate-covered chicken breasts would never win my heart. Let us pause, however, and reflect for a line or two on the incredible nature of the fist-sized friend beating in all of us.

•Our hearts beat close to 100,000 times a day, between 35 and 40 million times a year. In an average adult life, about 2.8 billion beats. •Our hearts pump about 4,300 gallons of blood a day. •Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S.

Maybe I'm wrong, but with what we now know about the value of heart healthy lifestyle, I think Valentine's Day should also be a day to reaffirm our love for others by demonstrating our willingness to take care of ourselves. Up to now, the holiday has been a symbolic gesture of heart and mind. We could do more.

What is needed is for Valentine's Day to be about heart, mind and body. Loving couples, friends and families should be walking and talking about heart healthy eating. Thirty minutes of mild to moderate exercise five days a week would send a message that would truly be heart-felt. We parents and teachers should be a demonstration of fitness to our children, now more overweight than ever.

What a difference it would make, for example, for the American Heart Association to use Valentine's Day as a special awareness generating time. Maybe they're already doing that. I'll have to ask them. For that matter, how about a nice Valentine's Day walk by the President and First Lady? If such a demonstration would stimulate even one person to start a lifestyle change program, then congratulations to all of us for a great idea.

How about a heart-shaped nicotine patch to put in with those chocolates? And speaking of chocolate, let's keep bringing our total fat consumption down. Way down below the currently much too high thirty percent of daily calories. Flowers, fruit baskets, poems, a massage…there are many healthy great ways to take care of your heart and the hearts of your loved ones.

"I carry your heart in my heart," a line from a beautiful poem by E.E. Cummings, speaks to the mystical powers of the heart as beautifully as anything I have read. Here is the last verse:

"Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart. I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)."

Take care of your heart for yourself, for those who love you and for those whose lives you touch. To Life!
 

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