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Nurse Deanna Carlson
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VIDEO: Deanna Carlson, RN, BSN Discusses Examples of Trans Fat

Learn some of the examples of trans fats.

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Visit Deanna Carlson, R.N., BSN, on the web at St. Joseph Hospital Women’s Heart Center in Orange, CA

Deanna Carlson: Some examples for some trans-fats are like cookies and cakes and pastries, fried foods in restaurants, fried foods in your own home, crackers, not that you can’t have those items but you need to choose them wisely. If you’re going to have crackers, choose a wheat cracker. They are better for you. They have some fiber in them, not that I want you to pull back because they don’t but that would be a better choice.

Potato chips -- low in salt -- because a lot of potato chips are putting a lot of salt on them so you don’t have too much salt either. You need to analyze what you are eating. I always want you to gravitate to grains but you have to look at those trans-fats.

A good way of looking at trans-fats is they’re partially hydrogenated fats and oils and they are the worst fats out there. They are going to clog your arteries. Why would we want to do that? So why would we want to eat them?

Our body is like a machine and we want to give it the best food and the best nutrients we possibly can. So that’s why we don’t want to eat trans-fats. We don’t want to eat a lot of things with animal fat in them.

The Women's Heart Center program provides:

* Low-cost personal Heart and Vascular Screenings.
* Free heart and self-health risk assessments.
* Educational Seminars addressing nutrition, exercise and osteoporosis.
* Specialized in-hospital care for women admitted with heart disease.

"Symptom recognition is a key problem," says Women's Heart Center co-director Shalizeh Shokooh, M.D. "About one third of women don't experience the typical symptoms of heart disease that most men experience. Many women report having vague chest discomfort with a sudden onset of severe fatigue or shortness of breath."

"This is one of the reasons St. Joseph Hospital opened the Women's Heart Center," says co-medical director Warren Johnston, M.D. "Participation in the Center provides women with the heart-health protection they need." Women can attend a private heart-health screening provided by a highly trained cardiac registered nurse.

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