Valentine’s Day Healthy Heart maze

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James Shelton:

A Soldier’s Heart success story

By Shamika Andrew South centra l Founda tion A fter achieving 20 months of sobriety, James Shelton, manager of Southcentral Foundation’s Soldier’s Heart Program, has regained his humor and has been able to rebuild a positive relationship with his wife and two daughters. This powerful transformation is a result of his experience with the Soldier’s Heart Program. Shelton served as a U.S. Marine for 15 years. During his service, he was deployed twice to both Okinawa, Japan and Iraq. While on deployment, he found that his youngest daughter was an inspiration for him to work though his challenges.

Toward the end of his military service, he oversaw recruitment for Alaska and soon after accepted a job at Southcentral Foundation as manager of recruitment. He noticed Southcentral Foundation was different from other organizations and appreciated everyone was willing to build a relationship with one another while focusing on the organization’s vision and mission. At Southcentral Foundation, Shelton learned to share his story and spoke for the first time about his post-traumatic stress and addiction to alcohol. He enjoyed sharing his story because of how he felt after sharing instead of keeping it to himself.

However, his post-traumatic stress symptoms continued.

It wasn’t until Shelton attended Soldier’s Heart training that he was able to take the next step on his healing journey and address the root causes of his distress. After the training, he decided he wanted to quit his job to honor the self-work he needed to do. After sharing with his supervisor, they were able to identify a path that would allow him to stay employed and continue to work on healing. His coworkers were supportive of him and his decision and didn’t treat him differently.

After participating in treatment, he continued to attend weekly meetings at Soldier’s Heart and eventually led one of the meetings. He became involved in the program and enjoyed helping other veterans and first responders.

He hopes every state has a program like Soldier’s Heart and appreciates the importance of including spouses and family to help understand and support their partner or family member who has post-traumatic stress. Shelton feels the more people Soldier’s Heart can serve, the better.

There is a camaraderie within Soldier’s Heart that Shelton appreciates. He has built relationships with other veterans and first responders who are going through similar situations. Before participating in the program, many of them shared they felt alone. The goal of Soldier’s Heart is to provide a structure that creates a community of support.

“Despite the PTS and my experience as a Marine, I would willingly go and do it all over again in a heartbeat,” he said. Shelton has faced many challenges on his journey, yet he remains resilient.

Soldier’s Heart services are available to all veterans, law enforcement, and first responders who have experienced service-related trauma and/or have posttraumatic stress. Preliminary research results are showing great promise and participants feedback is that the experience has been life-changing.

For more information about the Soldier’s Heart Program, call 907-729-6671, or email at soldiersheart@ southcentralfoundation.com. Southcentral Foundation is an Alaska Native-owned, nonprofit health care organization serving nearly 65,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Anchorage, MatanuskaSusitna Borough and 55 rural villages in the Anchorage Service Unit.

‘It looks like your heart has been damaged’

One woman’s topsy-turvy journey for answers

By Aliza Sherman W ho knew an overdue annual exam with a new doctor would quickly turn into a frightening series of events and unexpected battery of tests?

“It looks like you may have had a heart attack.”

An EKG and those words drastically changed the next few months of my life. As a menopausal woman in my mid50s, I am keenly aware of my aging body and my mortality. I make promises to myself to pay more attention to my health, but life gets in the way.

When I began to feel out of breath doing simple things — like tying my shoes — I thought it seemed odd, but I was busy taking care of my work and my family, so I didn’t think much more about it.

When I felt a dull ache under my left lower rib, I made a mental note of it but wasn’t too concerned. The sensation wasn’t sharp or intense. When it persisted, I dismissed it as a strained muscle.

Then I felt a sharp pain in my back, between my shoulder blades, a little to the left. Only then did I think, “Maybe I should see a doctor.”

After my long-time health practitioner retired, getting in to see a new doctor seemed daunting, but I finally made

For more information about heart health, visit the American Heart Association’s website at www.heart.org

time for a checkup. I mentioned the breathlessness and the dull chest ache and sharp back pain as I gave a headto-toe rundown of everything that was changing with my body.

I soon found myself lying on a table with electrodes from an electrocardiogram, or EKG, taped to my chest and legs. The technicians took a reading then left the room only to return to say the doctor requested a second reading. When she came back to tell me her findings, I wasn’t expecting what she said: She saw an abnormality in my heart rhythm. She showed me the jagged waves printed on a piece of paper that recorded my heart’s electrical signals that controlled my heartbeat. “It looks like your heart has been damaged. It looks like you may have had a heart attack. And I think you’re experiencing AFib.”

Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, is an Aliza Sherman is founder and CEO of Ellementa, which fosters wellness in women.

irregular heartbeat or arrhythmia that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart conditions.

She put in an order for me to see a heart specialist.

The ambulance ride According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States, but “women often chalk up the symptoms to less life-threatening conditions like acid reflux, the flu or normal aging.” Also, women’s heart attacks often present differently than men’s. While a man may experience severe chest pains and shooting pain and numbness down his left arm, a woman’s heart attack symptoms might include pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of the chest; some pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach; shortness of breath that may or may not be accompanied by chest discomfort; breaking out into a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.

Once I read the symptoms on the American Heart Association website, I remembered that I had also felt nausea a few times and also lightheaded.

When I made an appointment to see the heart doctor, I was directed to first wear a heart monitor, like a portable, personal EKG adhered to my chest, for one week. The Tuesday before I was scheduled for my heart monitor fitting, I was home alone and suddenly felt a weird fluttering and pain in my chest. All I could think about was my kids coming home to find me dead on the dining room floor.

I thought I should call someone but didn’t want to call 911 — that seemed too extreme to me. Instead, I called the

Above, Aliza Sherman had numerous EKGs and other tests after she experienced shortness of breath and a dull ache in her chest, among other worrying symptoms. She also was fitted with a heart monitor, right, and spent time in the emergency room before another doctor eventually diagnosed the symptoms as stemming from stress, not a heart problem. Courtesy of Aliza Sherman

nearest hospital’s emergency room and explained what I was feeling. I was transferred to a triage nurse and repeated a description of my symptoms to her.

“Should I go to the hospital?” I asked. “I’d feel a lot better if you would call 911 right now,” she replied in a calm but firm voice.

“Really?” I couldn’t believe she was serious.

“Yes, I think you should hang up now, and call 911.”

I felt ridiculous as I hung up and dialed 911. I was annoyed with myself for making a big deal out of nothing and was embarrassed that I would be inconveniencing everyone around me, not to mention racking up medical bills that would create an untenable burden for my family.

When the ambulance arrived at my home, I kept apologizing to the EMTs for being so “silly.” Nothing they said to

me took away the embarrassment I felt for causing this much commotion. I refused an IV but let them lay me down on a stretcher and put a blood pressure cuff on my arm and EKG electrodes on my chest to monitor me on the way to the hospital. The EMT noted that he saw possible signs of heart damage and AFib.

Once in an ER room, I was put on an IV and the ER doctor ran some blood work.

According to my online medical chart, my tests included an EKG; an echocardiogram or heart ultrasound; a standard CBC with differential to measure the number of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets in the blood; a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel to measure my glucose level, electrolyte and fluid balance, and kidney and liver function; and a B Type Natriuretic Peptide test to measure the levels of a protein in my blood that could signify heart failure if elevated. I was also given two blood tests a few hours apart to look for troponin I, a protein that is released into the bloodstream when there is heart muscle damage following a “heart event” such as a heart attack.

All tests came back normal. I went home.

The heart monitor The next day, I received instructions for using my new heart monitor as the technician fixed it onto my sternum with adhesive. The monitor was gray, lightweight, about the size and width of two fingers, with a button on one end. I was told to press the button any time I felt any strange or painful sensations in my chest.

Over the course of the next week, I distinctly felt fluttering in my chest, usually in the morning around 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. A few afternoons, I also felt lightheaded and a few times I felt tingling in my left arm. The dull ache in my chest continued as did the intermittent stabbing pain in my back, but I went about my days as usual.

Midway through my week of heart monitoring, I was working at an outdoor event for a client when I sat down for lunch and began seeing a strange prism-like pattern in my line of sight. At first, I thought the vision disturbance was caused when I moved out of the sun into an indoor shaded area. Then I thought it might be dehydration; however, I had been drinking water all day and had just finished a bowl of soup and another bottle of water.

I got up and walked back outside to start working again and tried to ignore the weird eye issue, but the prism pattern was present wherever I looked. I made my way to an EMT building and explained my symptoms. I was ushered into a room, instructed to lie down, and was soon covered with EKG electrodes and feeling the squeeze of a blood pressure cuff on my arm. The EMTs took EKG readings as I was lying down, then sitting up, and then standing and then lying back down again. One of the senior technicians told me that he saw an abnormality in my EKG, now a familiar refrain, and he advised that I be taken by ambulance to the hospital.

“Am I having a heart attack? Or is it a stroke?” I asked.

“It doesn’t appear so, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable having you drive yourself to the hospital.”

My husband picked me up from the event and took me to the ER. The lab work came back normal, but the ER doctor pointed out the same abnormality in my EKG and said, like others had told me, that it could be a sign of damage to my heart. I went home. A few days later, my heart monitor was removed. A few days after that, I went to see the heart specialist. Somehow, he was

unaware that I had already worn a heart monitor for a week and could not find the results, so I was given a blood test and a new appointment to return a few weeks later.

In between visits with the heart specialist, I received a call from the doctor’s assistant with my heart monitor results but couldn’t understand what she was telling me, and she was unable to explain what she was reading to me. At this moment, I began to freak out. I’ve read that the mind is a powerful thing, and that when faced with a shocking or distressing situation, your mind can go through a process of denial to hold overwhelming emotions at bay.

I was weirdly calm, almost zombielike, through the weeks of not knowing what was happening to me or whether I had heart damage or had experienced a heart attack or if I was about to have one at any moment.

I was now officially terrified. The stress test Two weeks later, I was in the heart doctor’s office again, and he was telling me that the EKGs he had seen to date did not say to him “abnormal” or “heart damage.”

I didn’t believe him. I questioned his expertise and his knowledge of women’s heart attacks. He did share the heart monitor results with me and admitted that each time I pressed a button on the monitor, it recorded a rapid heartbeat, but he didn’t think it was the sign of a heart attack.

I was angry and confused. After everything I had been through to date, how could it be nothing more than an occasional fast-beating heart?

Just to be certain that his assessment was correct and that he had covered all the bases, he ordered a stress test.

Ten days later, I was in another hospital gown with electrodes stuck to my body, but this time I was in comfortable running shoes on a treadmill, walking increasingly faster, then jogging, all the while being monitored by a team of three people. When I couldn’t run anymore, they quickly led me to a table, laid me down, and began running an echocardiogram, taking an ultrasound of my heart.

The hardest part of the test wasn’t the exertion — the hardest part was holding my breath to make my heart more visible as they moved the ultrasound wand over my chest. I felt like my heart and lungs would burst out of my body.

Then the test was over. As I left, the attending physician said that he didn’t see anything abnormal about my heart. “Your heart looks fine,” he said. A fast heart Three weeks later, I was back at the heart specialist’s for my follow up appointment. He reiterated that he could find nothing wrong with my heart other than intermittent tachycardia, or rapid heartbeat, in my heart’s upper chamber. A relatively common disorder, I was told tachycardia does not signify or precipitate a heart attack. “What is causing it?” I asked. He listed three of the most likely things:

1. Stress 2. Lack of sleep 3. Caffeine I admitted that I’d been under tremendous stress over the past year and that between stress and menopause, I wasn’t getting enough sleep.

In terms of caffeine, I am a steady one-cup-a-morning coffee drinker, and I consume no other caffeine and never past noon, so I was pretty sure my main problems were high stress and little sleep.

Reducing stress is an ongoing goal of mine but one that I’m never even close to achieving. I did start up my yoga practice again, and even as little as 10 minutes a day seems to help. Once the ice clears from my neighborhood streets, I’m planning to resume daily walks. For the insomnia, I’ve been taking magnesium and more recently, a little melatonin, both of which seem to be helping.

On the caffeine front, I’m not yet ready to give up my single morning cup since my heart symptoms are now virtually gone. If they come back, I may switch to green tea. I hear it can be beneficial for the heart.

Aliza Sherman is a digital marketing consultant and author of 12 books including Cannabis and CBD for Health and Wellness. When not doing yoga, she can be found watching British detective shows, working on her karaoke skills, and trying to get a good night’s sleep.

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Out of nowhere Early action a lifesaver when heart attack strikes suddenly

By Kyrie Long Ala ska Pulse A laska’s attorney general is coming up on his 61st birthday and on the anniversary of a particularly memorable flight. In April it will be one year since Kevin Clarkson’s heart attack.

“So, I was the last person on the face of the Earth who thought I was going to have a problem with my heart,” he said in a January interview. Clarkson became the attorney general in December 2018. Just a few months later he was in Lafayette, Louisiana, where the National Association of Attorneys General Conference was taking place. He got up the morning he was set to come home, walked 3 miles as per his typical daily routine, and later got on a flight back to Alaska.

He had no history of heart problems in his family and no prior symptoms. He knew his blood pressure and blood sugar were a little high, but he was taking measures to handle that. He said there were no symptoms of anything else going on.

Then, on the plane, he started to exhibit the signs of a heart attack.

“My brother is a doctor … and so he has over the years ingrained in my mind what the symptoms of a heart attack are,” he said.

Despite not wanting to cause a scene, Clarkson pressed the call button above his seat and the crew identified a nurse on board.

What happened? It was a small buildup of plaque in his left coronary artery that led to the heart attack. It wasn’t enough to cause him trouble at first, but according to Clarkson, who later had the whole thing explained by his cardiologist, the plaque ruptured and became a blockage.

Clarkson’s decision to call for help was met readily by the airline staff.

“I think the people of Alaska Airlines were incredible,” Clarkson said. “They were very professional and they knew what they were doing and what they needed to do.”

Because the nurse was able to take his blood pressure, which Clarkson rememKevin Clarkson said he led an active lifestyle and thought he’d be the “last person on the face of the Earth” to have heart problems. Above, he shows a king salmon he caught in Kasilof River in June while fishing with his son, Joey. Courtesy Kevin Clarkson

bers as the “just unbelievable” number 219, the flight crew called paramedics, who were waiting when the plane landed in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The whole way to the airport he had oxygen available to him and the nurse gave him an aspirin, which helped in the meantime.

He left the plane and was in the gate area when the paramedics took an EKG, looked at him and told him he wasn’t going home. Medics from the hospital arrived shortly after. Then, Clarkson told them he was feeling dizzy, which is the last thing he can remember from the incident.

His heart had stopped.

Heart disease facts

Ho w can I red uce my risk of heart disease ? To lower your chances of getting heart disease, it’s important to do the following: • Know your blood pressure. Having uncontrolled blood pressure can lead to heart disease. High blood pressure has no symptoms, so it’s important to have your blood pressure checked regularly. • Talk to your doctor or health care team about whether you should be tested for diabetes. Having uncontrolled diabetes raises your risk of heart disease. • Quit smoking. If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, learn ways to quit. • Discuss checking your blood cholesterol and triglycerides with your doctor. • Make healthy food choices. Being overweight or obese raises your risk of heart disease. • Limit how much alcohol you drink to one drink a day. • Manage stress levels by finding healthy ways to cope with stress.

What are the s ympto ms of heart disease ? Although some women have no symptoms, others may have the following symptoms: • Angina (dull and heavy or sharp chest pain or discomfort) • Pain in the neck, jaw, or throat • Pain in the upper abdomen or back These symptoms may happen when you are resting or when you are doing regular daily activities. Women also may have other symptoms, including these: • Nausea • Vomiting • Fatigue Sometimes heart disease may be “silent” and not diagnosed until you have other symptoms or emergencies, including these: • Heart attack: Chest pain or discomfort, upper back or neck pain, indigestion, heartburn, nausea or vomiting, extreme fatigue, upper body discomfort, dizziness, and shortness of breath • Arrhythmia: Fluttering feelings in the chest (palpitations) • Heart failure: Shortness of breath, fatigue, or swelling of the feet, ankles, legs, abdomen, or neck veins’

If you have any of these symptoms, call 911 right away.

What are the risk factors for heart disease ? • High blood pressure, high LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, and smoking are key risk factors for heart disease. About half of all people in the United States (47%) have at least one of these three risk factors. • Several other medical conditions and lifestyle choices can also put people at a higher risk for heart disease, including diabetes, physical inactivity, drinking too much alcohol, being overweight or obese, and eating an unhealthy diet.

— U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The paramedics used shock paddles to revive him, and Clarkson woke up on his back, staring up. He can recall the professionalism of the paramedics, young guys who were firemen, who saved him. “They were the ones who revived me and brought me back after my heart stopped,” Clarkson said.

From the airport Clarkson was transported to the hospital, where he would undergo surgery. He told the hospital about his brother, the doctor, who lives in Washington and who was able to come to the hospital to see him.

Nurses kept asking Clarkson how old he was and he kept asking them what time it was.

“They thought I was out of it or something,” Clarkson said. “I had to say, ‘No look, if it’s after midnight, I’m 60 years old.’”

What’s changed? The first thing that had to change was Clarkson’s heart, which now has two stents in it.

“It wasn’t open heart surgery or something like that,” he said. “They went through my wrist.”

One tiny little incision to his wrist and the doctors were able to move a tube through to his heart and place the stents inside. “It’s really kind of amazing what they’re able to do and I was awake the whole time.”

Doctors had monitors set up, so he was awake and able to watch the whole process happen on the screens.

Now he can’t even see the scar on his wrist anymore. He keeps a card in his wallet that explains he has the stents, just in case something happens and he’s not able to explain.

The second thing to change was his activity level, but not in the way you might think.

Clarkson described himself as having a normally active, energetic lifestyle. That 3 mile walk he took the morning of his heart attack was routine for him. When he went home after surgery he had dinner with friends and found, on a walk afterward, he couldn’t make it 100 yards without having to stop and catch his breath.

“So I really had to slow down at first and not overdo anything,” he said.

When starting cardiac rehab, Clarkson said he set the treadmill to what he thought was a relatively slow speed, only to have one of the people working there come slow the machine down. The other thing to change was his diet.

“You have a heart attack, it’s a big wake-up call, so I took it seriously,” Clarkson said.

He loves to cook, but he’s had to get the salt out of the kitchen. He started using sugar-free creamer and reading labels on boxes at grocery stores to see how many carbohydrates there are per meal.

As result of the change to his diet he’s lost 35 pounds since the surgery. He joked he might need to have his clothes tailored soon, since they’ve become loose.

Of course, there are still a few things he misses.

“Well yeah, I love ice cream,” he said, laughing, “so I really miss ice cream.”

He used to keep Jolly Ranchers in his desk drawer, but no more. “But those are small things to give up, you know?” He’s said he’s probably more attuned to paying attention to what’s going on with his health as well. He monitors his blood sugar regularly now, something cardiac rehab had him doing routinely, and he gets blood pressure checks.

“My wife, Johanna, worked in the medical area, so she knows how to take

Kevin Clarkson poses with an alligator he encountered in Lafayette, Louisiana, in September. After his heart attack last spring, Clarkson said he made some lifestyle changes, including giving up ice cream and his favorite Jolly Rancher candies. Courtesy of Kevin Clarkson

blood pressure,” he said, “so she does that for me.”

Clarkson said it was an important reminder to keep things in life in perspective as well.

“Spilled milk is just spilled milk, you know, compared to some of the things you might be experiencing.” Awareness Clarkson has determined that when he gets the chance to speak about it, he’ll talk to people about what happened to him.

He wants people to know the symptoms of a heart attack: the pain and pressure throughout the chest, radiating pain down the left arm (or sometimes the right, or even the back), shortness of breath, cold sweat, rapid heart beat, nausea sometimes to the point of wanting to throw up.

“Those are the primary symptoms, and if people have those in any combination they should let somebody know around them so they can get some help if they need it,” he said.

The worst thing he could have done, he said, was nothing. He would’ve walked off the plane and into the airport, with no surrounding paramedics. “I wouldn’t be here if I did that, so for me what saved my life was recognizing my symptoms and hitting the call button.” And for anybody like him, anyone who thinks they’re experiencing the symptoms in public and is worried about how it will look to ask for help, his advice is to get over that feeling quick.

“Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself. Your life is more important than that momentary embarrassment.”

Go Red keeps women’s heart health in spotlight

By Kyrie Long Ala ska Pulse A red dress is a statement piece, and you might grow especially used to the sight of these dresses throughout the month of February, American Heart Month.

The red dress is a symbol of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative.

“Essentially it is a movement that was created because there was a discrepancy, a disparity actually, in research in heart disease for women,” said Janet Bartels, executive director of the Alaska chapter of the American Heart Association. Almost all research on heart disease for the last 50 years has all been done on men, according to Bartels, who added that signs and symptoms are different for women. Also, she noted, most women don’t know that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women.

The Go Red campaign is a year-round effort, with a variety of mini-events as well as a social media and online presence.

During February and into early March, the Alaska chapter of the American Heart Association has a few Go Red activities.

“Within the state we have the Go Red for Women conference and luncheon,” Bartels said, held in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

The conference and luncheon functions as a type of health expo, where women can get screened, visit with product vendors, have a heart-healthy breakfast, attend health seminars, and wrap up the event at the luncheon. The first Friday in February is also “Wear Red” day. Companies will get red dress pins, create awareness opportunities and celebrate women’s health. In all, it “kind of kicks off heart month” Bartels said.

Chris Johnson, founder and CEO of On Target Living, a health and performance organization based in Michigan, was the keynote speaker for the Fair banks luncheon last year.

was the keynote speaker for the Fairbanks luncheon last year.

“The energy of this event is just incredible, and the leadership of this event,” Johnson said. “They just make it really fun and special, and it makes my job very easy to come in and bring our information. It’s not hard to get pumped up about it.”

This year, Johnson is returning to Alaska to speak again at the Fairbanks luncheon on Feb. 21, as well as at the Anchorage luncheon for the first time, on March 4. His daughter, Kristin Brogan, is also joining him in Fairbanks this year. Brogan is a registered dietician who along with her twin brother and mother, make up three more members of the On Target Living team.

On Target Living came into being in 2006. Johnson has written multiple books and toured the country talking about health living.

He’s spoken at a few other Go Red events closer to his home as well. Most of the work of On Target Living focuses

Chris Johnson, CEO and founder of On Target Living, gives a presentation during the American Heart Association Go Red for Women luncheon Feb. 15, 2019 at the Carlson Center. Eric Engman/News-Miner file photo

on the corporate world, according to Johnson, but they’re starting to expand out of that space.

“It’s pretty easy to stay in the financial services arena or insurance arena because there’s just so much business there, but there’s so many people out there who are hurting, who need help,” he said.

Johnson thinks the company will be doing more with Go Red around the country in the future.