If You Are At Risk For A Heart Attack What Should You Do
If you are at risk for a heart attack, there are steps you can take to reduce your risk. Arteries can start developing plaque in midlife, but you might not have any symptoms for decades. Its also important to know that regardless of your age or even whether you already have known heart disease its not too late to make healthy changes. You can actually reverse heart disease with lifestyle changes.
Here is what you can do to reduce your risk of a heart attack:
Evaluate your lifestyle, which includes your diet, your exercise habits, and smoking.
Consider getting tests done to evaluate your heart health.
Control health conditions, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.
Discuss medications that may lower your risk of a heart attack, such as an aspirin or a statin, with your healthcare provider.
Regularly monitor your heart health.
Five Ways To Reduce Your Risk Of A Heart Attack
Here are five things I share in response, which may help you not only avoid having a heart attack, but live a long and healthy life free from most diseases and disabilities.
1. Get movingAccording to the American Heart Association, only one-third of adults get enough physical activity, which is defined as 150 minutes each week, or a mere 21 minutes a day, of at least moderate activity. We also have to move throughout the day. A recent study showed that sitting more than three hours a day can shorten your life by two years.
Thus, for my patients I recommend taking 10,000 steps in addition to exercising for 30 minutes a day. Even cardiologists need to get moving more as the average cardiologist only takes about 6,000 steps a day.
The best way to get moving is to use a pedometer. Studies have shown that wearing a pedometer increases the number of steps you take by 2,500 each day. Somehow, the act of wearing a pedometer changes your motivation to move more.
2. Eat a plant-and fish-based dietIf we can focus our diets on fresh whole foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, beans and fish, well dramatically reduce the salt in our diets and well definitely lose weight.
5. Maintain a wellness mindsetI cant overstate the link between emotional health and heart disease. For years, its been shown that anger, depression, and anxiety are all strong risk factors for heart disease.
Helps In Maintaining A Healthy Diet
Exercises and a healthy diet compliment each other for heart attack prevention. If you spend time improving regular physical fitness, you would be able to manage your goal towards a healthier diet.
What you eat determines your weight, your hormones, and your overall health. Exercising will help you in sticking to the resolution of a better and healthier diet. Apart from the health benefits, you would be motivated to eat right. Since you spend so much time sweating at the gym.
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Putting It All Together
You can help prevent heart disease by doing four key things and making them into habits:
Strong studies make it possible to link reductions in risk to these habits. Following a healthy lifestyle may prevent over 80% of cases of coronary artery disease, 50% of ischemic strokes, 80% of sudden cardiac deaths, and 72% of premature deaths related to heart disease. In other words, a healthy lifestyle is a good investment in a longer, healthier life.
Cholesterol And Cardiovascular Disease Risk
Cholesterol is a fatty substance produced naturally by your body . It is used for many different things in your body but is a problem when thereâs too much of it in your blood.
High total cholesterol causes fatty material to gradually build up in your bodyâs arteries, making it harder for blood to flow through. It is mainly caused by eating foods high in saturated fats and trans fats.
Your total cholesterol includes two types of cholesterol, which are:
- Low-density lipoprotein â also known as âbadâ cholesterol because it can add to the build-up of plaque in your arteries and increase your risk of heart attack and stroke.
- High-density lipoprotein is also known as âgoodâ cholesterol because it helps to protect you against heart attack and stroke.
Most of the total cholesterol in your blood is made up of âbadâ LDL cholesterol. Only a small part is made up of âgoodâ HDL cholesterol.
You should aim for low LDL cholesterol and higher HDL cholesterol on advice from your doctor. If you are having trouble with your cholesterol levels, a dietitian can help you to eat healthily for your specific needs.
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Gender Age And Cardiovascular Disease Risk
Generally, men have a higher risk than women of developing CVD in middle age. The risk rises as they get older.
However, the risk of developing CVD is an important issue for women, especially as they get older. It is not clear why women tend to get CVD at a later age than men, although it is likely that hormonal changes after menopause, combined with changes in their risk factors, play a role.
Despite your gender and age, you can reduce your risk of developing CVD if you follow a healthy lifestyle and take medicines as prescribed by your doctor.
What Causes A Heart Attack
A heart attack, known as a myocardial infarction, is a serious medical condition which happens when the blood supply to part of your heart gets blocked. Your heart muscle then becomes damaged because of lack of oxygen.
Symptoms of a heart attack vary from person to person. However, common signs include:
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Pain or discomfort in your chest that happens suddenly and doesn’t go away.
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Pain that spreads to your arms, neck, jaw, back or stomach.
You can find out more at myheartattack.co.uk .
The pain or tightness can be severe, but it can also be a feeling of sickness, sweatiness or light-headedness or feeling short of breath.
It’s important to know that not everyone experiences severe chest pain, particularly women. The pain can be mild and mistaken for indigestion.
Obviously having a heart attack is scary and in the short term, your main focus is likely to be on the treatment you’re given during your admission. But it’s also crucial to look to the future – people who have had a heart attack are more likely to be readmitted to the hospital for a second one within five years. The good news is that this risk can be greatly reduced by a combination of lifestyle precautions and medication.
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Do You Need To Worry About Having A Heart Attack
More than half of American adultshave a risk factor for heart disease and are at increased risk of a heart attack. You may be able to change some risk factors, such as smoking and your diet. But there are others that you cant change, like your family history and your age.
There are tools and calculators to help determine how high your risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years is. If youre concerned, talk with your healthcare provider about your personal risk.
The most common risk factors for a heart attack that you may be able to do something about include:
Ake In Physical Activity
Being physically active will also help to prevent a heart attack. According to the American Heart Association, adults should try to get at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise every week when possible.
Adults who are already active can increase their activity levels to give themselves even better prevention against heart attacks.
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What Are Risk Factors For A Heart Attack
Most heart attacks are due to coronary artery disease. Risk factors for coronary heart disease and heart attack include:
- Smoking
- Eating a diet that is high in fat and sodium
- Not exercising regularly
- High blood sugar due to insulin resistance or diabetes
Many of the above risk factors occur together, which can make a heart attack even more likely. Other factors that have been linked to heart attack, but are less in your control include:
- Agegenerally after 45 for men and 55 for women
- Family history of early heart disease
Preventing a heart attack begins with healthy lifestyle changes that can be implemented at the personal level and also with the rest of your family and friends.
Here are five shifts to make today:
Ways To Lower Your Heart Disease Risk
You can do a lot to lower your odds of getting heart disease. Taking action will improve your health — and, possibly, save your life. Get going on these 8 ways to get on track.
1. Quit smoking. If you smoke, you are more than twice as likely to have a heart attack as nonsmokers, and youâre much more likely to die if you do have a heart attack.
2. Improve cholesterol levels. You’re more likely to get heart disease if you have:
- Total cholesterol level over 200
- HDL cholesterol level under 40
- LDL cholesterol level over 160
- Triglycerides over 150
Cholesterol isn’t the only thing that matters. Your doctor will consider the big picture, including all your potential risks. To help lower cholesterol levels, eat a diet low in cholesterol, saturated fat, and refined sugars and high in fiber.
3. Control high blood pressure. More than 50 million people in the U.S. have hypertension, or high blood pressure, making it the most common heart disease risk factor. Exercise and healthy eating as well as avoiding salt help. Some people may need medicine to control their blood pressure, too. And, if you snore or feel extremely fatigued throughout the day, getting tested for sleep apnea may be important. If you have it, treating it also will help control high blood pressure.
You can still eat fish , poultry, and meat, but make it lean and keep the portions modest. Also limit salt and sugar. Most people get too much of both.
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How To Reduce Your Risk Of Heart Attack And Stroke The Research
In 1997, researchers at the University of Kansas published a study with 3,855 participants that compared blood donors and non-donors on several vascular events like heart attack, stroke, angioplasty, bypass surgery, and nitroglycerin use.
They found that only 9.77% of male blood donors suffered from such events, while an alarming 17.72% of non-donors did. In other words, non-donors were 81% more likely to suffer from cardiovascular events than donors.
In 1998, researchers published the result of an evaluation of the records of the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study which followed 2,862 Finnish men aged 42-60 years for almost nine years.
After comparing the occurrence of heart attack in blood donors and non-donors, they found that blood donors reduced their risk of heart attack by 88%. This percentage is roughly similar to that in the previous study. Female donors, however, were hardly at all heart healthier than female non-donors.
Major Risk Factors That Cant Be Changed
You may be born with certain risk factors that cannot be changed. The more of these risk factors you have, the greater your chance of developing coronary heart disease. Since you cant do anything about these risk factors, its even more important that you manage your risk factors that can be changed.
Increasing Age
The majority of people who die of coronary heart disease are 65 or older. While heart attacks can strike people of both sexes in old age, women are at greater risk of dying .
Male gender
Men have a greater risk of heart attack than women do, and men have attacks earlier in life.
Even after women reach the age of menopause, when womens death rate from heart disease increases, womens risk for heart attack is less than that for men.
Heredity
Children of parents with heart disease are more likely to develop heart disease themselves.
African-Americans have more severe high blood pressure than Caucasians, and a higher risk of heart disease. Heart disease risk is also higher among Mexican-Americans, American Indians, native Hawaiians and some Asian-Americans. This is partly due to higher rates of obesity and diabetes.
Most people with a significant family history of heart disease have one or more other risk factors. Just as you cant control your age, sex and race, you cant control your family history. So, its even more important to treat and control any other modifiable risk factors you have.
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The Indications To Heart Disease Risk Factors And Prevention
Heart disease is one of the primary causes of concern behind deaths in the United States and other corners of the world. It is also the leading occurrence of disability and morbidity in many worldwide. There are a few things that can increase the risk of getting a heart disorder. Some of them you can control, and some of them you cannot.
As the saying goes, Prevention is better than Cure. It implies perfectly here, as being aware and cautious early is a positive start that can reduce the probability of getting heart problems.
How To Lower Your Stroke Risk
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Image: Thinkstock Smoking is the No. 1 risk factor for stroke nothing will help you prevent a stroke more than quitting. |
You can do more than you think to avoid a fatal or debilitating “brain attack.”
Strokes don’t usually come out of the blue. True, nobody can predict the precise time when a stroke will strike. But more than two dozen factors make it more likely a person will suffer a stroke.
Some things you can’t do much about, like age and family history of stroke. But even when an underlying medical condition puts you at risk, you might be able to do something about it.
“Stroke is potentially one of the most devastating illnesses that we see, and it’s especially tragic when simply taking good care of one’s blood pressure or some other preventive measure might have averted it,” says Thomas Lee, MD, co-editor in chief of the Harvard Heart Letter.
If you already have had a stroke or mini-stroke , cutting your stroke risk isn’t so much an option as a lifeline. Sadly, far too many people who’ve suffered a stroke or heart attack don’t heed the warning. Don’t be one of them.
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Reduce Your Sodium Intake
Sodium pulls water into your blood vessels, which causes your blood pressure to rise, which Lajole notes can lead to heart attack if not treated properly. “High blood pressure is a stressor on the heart, so it has to work harder to pump blood through the body,” she says.
Bread, cheese, cold cuts, canned soups, and packaged snacks are common culprits of high sodium, so try to limit these foods in your repertoire. To help you stay on track, refer to the USDA dietary guidelines, which say to consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium daily. And for more helpful information delivered straight to your inbox, .
Ways How Exercise Reduces Risk Of Heart Attack
Exercise is the new trend. Your Instagram would be flooded with people showing off their abs, or the lovely morning weather where they jog. But exercising offers a lot more than that. It offers improved heart-health. Besides better appearances and a strong brain, exercise reduces risk of heart attack.Today, we present to you the link between heart attack prevention and exercise.
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Risk Factors That You Cannot Change:
Indeed, there are risk factors in heart diseases that are impossible to change, as mentioned below.