February is American Heart Month – There’s Many Ways to Help Our Heart
For the past few years, in February, I’ve written many blogs highlighting American Heart Month. I wrote a blog about getting back to taking care of yourself and your heart a year into the pandemic and one explaining what heart-healthy meant. I wrote a blog about the seven key health factors and behaviors that increase risks for heart attacks and strokes called “Life’s Simple 7”. Another blog discussed recognizing the signs of a heart attack. These were all great blogs . . . ok, maybe just adequately written, but each one passed on some really good information. It might be worth your time to click the various links and read for the first time, or review all of the information about taking care of your heart. You might even be motivated to stop doing one or more of the 7 things that increase your risk of a heart attack and to start doing some of the heart-healthy things that strengthen your heart.
With all the information in the earlier blogs, you may think that there is nothing more to be said concerning your heart, that I’ve covered everything you could possibly want to know about your heart and its health. Well, you would be wrong. My never-ending research has uncovered a couple of other important attributes concerning the health of our hearts that I think might help us as we focus on our hearts during this month.
Let’s talk about CPR. CPR, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, is an emergency procedure that is used when the heart stops beating. We’ve all seen it performed, whether on a TV show or possibly in a real-life situation. Some of you may have been trained and performed it yourself. The bottom line is – it saves lives. On the first page of the American Heart Association (AHA) CPR web page, in two adjacent paragraphs, they state that using CPR can double or triple the chance of survival of a victim of cardiac arrest and that every year it kills 350,000 people. Now, my little mind immediately decided to do the math, and it seemed to me that anywhere from 175,000 to 231,000 lives could have been saved if someone had performed CPR. I could be entirely wrong; I’m most certainly not a math whiz, and some of those who died could have had CPR performed on them, but the fact remains that a lot of lives could be saved if CPR was administered quickly after cardiac arrest.
I’ve never had the experience; maybe some of you have when someone collapses and asks if there’s a doctor available. If the victim’s heart stopped, I have to say that I wouldn’t know how to administer CPR. I had a quick class many years ago when I was an adult leader of Scouting America (formally the Boy Scouts of America), but I can’t remember much of the training, and it has probably changed since then. I can’t imagine how scary this would be, especially if the victim was a loved one. I obviously haven’t thought about it much in the past, but I’m thinking pretty seriously about it now. Maybe you are too. The next question both of us should be asking is, “How can I learn CPR?” Glad you asked.
The AHA has a great web page on CPR. They developed science-based CPR guidelines and are the leader in training. They talk about the six links in the out-of-hospital chain of survival. They highlight Automated External Defibrillators; you’ve all probably seen the defibrillator signs that are appearing more and more often. They discuss both hands-on and high-quality CPR. They point out the difference between cardiac arrest and a heart attack. They include numerous links to access more information on these subjects, but most importantly, they give you a link to find CPR classes near you. It’s really a great place for information and to get started on learning this life saving procedure. It certainly has got my attention.
On a lighter note, I found some interesting information on how owning a pet can make you healthier. Some of you, me included, might have brought a pet into your household at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have to admit that going for rides and walking the dog when our interaction with other people was limited was very helpful in maintaining my family’s sanity. What is even more interesting is that having a pet has some very measurable positive impacts on your health. For instance, and probably the most important statistic, you might live longer if you own a dog. In fact, being a dog owner may reduce the chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke by 31%. A study even showed that owning and regularly walking a dog made you 1/3 as likely to get diabetes as a non-dog owner. You probably can see that one of the benefits of pet ownership is the fact that it gets you to move to get some exercise. It’s also important to note that there are mental aspects of having a pet that has a positive impact on your health. A study showed that the mere act of petting a dog decreases blood pressure. The bottom line here is that both the physical and mental aspects of pet ownership make us healthier.
There’s no lack of information on how to make our hearts healthier, whether it’s stopping unhealthy things, starting to do things that help our hearts, learning how to possibly save lives through CPR, or helping our physical and mental health by owning a pet. As always, it takes action. Our bodies have many back-ups: two lungs, two kidneys, two eyes, and two ears, but we only have one heart, and it is certainly worth taking some action to take care of it.
Best, Thair