Heart Month: It’s a Good Time to Concentrate on the Heart of the Problem

There’s a lot of days, weeks and months dedicated to bringing our attention to different aspects of our health and how we can get healthier, or at least ways we can detect possible health problems early. American Heart Month must be really important because it lasts for a whole month. Another thing that makes me think I should be paying attention is the fact that it’s AMERICAN Heart Month. Our country is always singled out as being unhealthy and overweight, with good reason, and we probably need to focus on our heart, maybe not just for a month but all year.

I always try to come up with a reason why we should pay attention to a particular disease’s day, week, or month, and, in this case, it was easy. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and most racial and ethnic groups. It claims more people than all of the cancers combined. It could have been far worse; the discovery of new medicines has been a big part of why the number of deaths attributed to heart disease has dropped considerably.

Over the last century, heart attack (coronary heart disease) death rates in the U.S. have fallen dramatically—and modern medicines are a huge part of that story.

·       Early to mid-1900s – Cardiovascular disease (CVD) became the leading cause of death in the U.S. by 1900 and stayed there. Age‑adjusted CVD death rates peaked around 1950.

·       1950 to1999 – Age‑adjusted CVD death rates fell by about 60% between 1950 and 1999.

·       Since 2000 – The decline continued into the 2000s though coronary heart disease is still the single most common type of heart disease death.

The medicines that were discovered during this period treated different parts of what causes heart disease.

·       Blood pressure medicines - Lowering blood pressure reduces risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure. Hypertension is a major CVD risk factor.

·       Cholesterol‑lowering medicines (especially statins) - Reduce coronary events and deaths in both primary and secondary prevention.

·       Diabetes medicines - Better glucose control and newer agents (like SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP‑1 agonists) reduce cardiovascular events in high‑risk patients.

·       Antiplatelet therapy for high‑risk patients - Aspirin and other agents lower risk of future heart attacks in people with established atherosclerotic disease.

Maybe you take some of these medicines. I don’t want to break any HIPAA rules here, but I’m taking medicine right now that has lowered my cholesterol and my blood pressure and I’m so thankful they are available. I point out how important medicines are because I think that we are on the cusp of a golden age of discovery when it comes to new medicines. We need to remember what an impact they have had when it comes to heart disease and what an impact they can have in the future, on all aspects of our health, if we, as a country, decide to continue to encourage innovation.

So, what can we do to give us the best chance of improving our heart health? As you might guess the American Heart Association has some great tips, they call them life’s essential 8 and they break them out into two categories, health behaviors and health factors. You can get more information on each point by clicking on the links.

Health Behaviors

Eat better - Aim for an overall healthy eating pattern that includes whole foods, lots of fruits and vegetables, lean protein, nuts, seeds, and cooking in non-tropical oils such as olive and canola.

Be more active - Adults should get 2 ½ hours of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week. Kids should have 60 minutes every day, including play and structured activities.

Quit tobacco - Use of inhaled nicotine delivery products, particularly cigarettes, are the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Roughly 40% of U.S. children ages 3-11 are exposed to secondhand smoke.

Get healthy sleep - Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Adequate sleep promotes healing, improves brain function, and reduces the risk for chronic diseases.

Health Factors

Manage weight - Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight has many benefits. Body mass index, a numerical value of your weight in relation to your height, is a useful gauge. You can calculate it yourself. Since the BMI can vary due to differences in body types, I would have your doctor consider your calculation of BMI and alter it as appropriate.

Control cholesterol - High levels of non-HDL, or “bad,” cholesterol can lead to heart disease.

Manage blood sugar - Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose (or blood sugar) that our bodies use as energy. Over time, high levels of blood sugar can damage your heart, kidneys, eyes, and nerves. As part of testing, monitoring hemoglobin A1c can better reflect long-term control in people with diabetes or prediabetes.

Manage blood pressure - Keeping your blood pressure within acceptable ranges can keep you healthier longer. Levels less than 120/80 mm Hg are optimal.

There is another thing that can help you on your quest for heart health. PREVENT is a risk calculator that takes information about you and calculates your risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It requires information from blood tests and a BMI calculation. I got the information I needed from my patient portal that had the results of my past blood tests. If you have trouble getting that information, find out how to get access to your health information from your doctor. It’s one of my pet peeves that it is often difficult to get quick access to your own personal health information, our healthcare system needs to fix this. The results of this test will give you a good idea of where you stand and what you need to work on.

I hope this information has been helpful, it opened my eyes to a few changes I can make. Good luck on getting heart healthy.

Best, Thair