Heart Health for a Lifetime
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We are still losing most of our friends, family and neighbors, half a century later, to a disease that can not only be better controlled, but also prevented. What are we doing wrong? Let’s start by reviewing what puts us at risk for heart disease. The risk factors can be divided into two categories: the ones that cannot be changed and the ones that can.
We cannot alter our aging bodies, our gender, or our family history. As we get older, the risk for heart disease increases. Men are at greater risk for heart at- tacks and have them earlier in life than women do. Children whose parents or siblings have heart disease or heart attack at an early age are more likely to develop heart problems in their life. This is not to say that all those children will have a heart attack, but the chances are higher.
The importance of family history is when the male parent developed the disease at age 55 or younger and the female parent at age 65 or younger. Since these are the factors that are out of our control, we need be diligent in the fight against the ones we can modify. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity, obesity and diabetes are the factors that we can control or modify. In recent years the importance of stress as a contributing risk factor has emerged as well.
In the next few paragraphs, let’s focus on one big factor that has its grasp widely on this nation and society: Obesity.
Obesity is an epidemic in this country. Obese people are at higher risk for developing heart disease. They are also more likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. It is the rippling effect high body fat that has finally caused society to pay attention to what our children are eating everyday. The state of California has a higher average for childhood obesity than the nation does. Why is that a concern?
Let’s go back to our infancy and childhood. “Fatty streaks? form in our major artery, called the aorta, as early as in our in- fancy. These fatty streaks are the beginning of atherosclerosis of ar- teries. By age 10, it can be found in the arteries that feed the heart, the coronary arteries. What children eat and how much fat they consume and how overweight they are has a lot to say about their futures and hearts.
Consumption of high fat content food, and overall poor eating habits can lead to inappropriate weight gain and eventually obesity. Obesity puts adolescents at risk for Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes dramatically increases future risk for heart disease, and it is a dis- ease that used to be mostly seen in middle-aged adults, hence the title “adult onset diabetes.? We are seeing more and more adolescents suffering from Type 2 diabetes in recent years. Obesity also puts children at risk for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, both major risk factors for heart disease. Where can we stop the avalanche?
First and foremost, we teach our children by example what “healthy lifestyle? means. If we as adults ignore the risks ourselves, we are setting a deadly example for future generations as well as risking our own lives. Start by controlling your family portion sizes, including vegetables with meals, limiting simple and refined sugar in your child’s diet, learning how to read the food labels and keeping your children physically active.
A healthy heart starts with a healthy life.
Dr. Shokooh is a board certified cardiologist and internist who completed her cardiology training at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in California. She has lectured on women and heart disease and completed EBCT research. She is in private practice at the Orange County Heart Institute and the co-medical director at the St. Joseph Women’s Heart Center in Orange,CA. For the past seven years, she has been on the board of directors of the Orange County American Heart Association chapter.
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