How to Avoid Becoming A Victim of Heart Disease
Even if you are unlucky enough to have heart disease in your family, it does not mean that you have to accept it as a given that heart disease is inevitable. Yes it’s true- due to the gene pool some people are more prone to heart disease than others. However that is just a small part of the tale – if you lead your life correctly, take notice of the tell tale signs, and get regular health checks – then you can make sure the cards are dealt in your favour. You don’t have to one of the 233,000 people who die of heart disease in the UK each year – you just need to know where the risks lie.
Well for a start your age and sex will have a major degree of influence on how prone to heart disease you are. There is a gradual increase in the risk of heart problems as you get older. While the majority of younger people who die of heart disease are male, the increase in risk for women is substantially more after menopause – at which point their risk increase threefold. As you get older the other risk factors become more important as that is when your body gets more vulnerable. So pay attention!
The first and probably biggest risk factor related to heart disease is related to smoking cigarettes. If you smoke at all you are greatly increasing the chances of developing heart problems later in life. For someone who smokes twenty ciggies per day you are twice as likely to develope heart disease than someone who doesn’t smoke. Smoke forty per day and the chances are four times more likely. See a pattern? It doesn’t take a genius to work out that by cutting out the fags you are cutting out a major factor of developing heart problems.
How many of you actually know the situation with your blood pressure at the moment? How many of you have had it checked recently. I would think the answer is not many. Yet having a regular BP check is vitally important in preventing heart disease – especially as we get older. Having high blood pressure is an indicative risk factor of possible heart problems. By having a regular check with your doctor you could get a vital heads up on any possible problems. High blood pressure can be treated if picked up by your GP. You might not have that luxury if the first you know about it you’re lying on the floor holding your chest.
Another indicator that you do not want to be high is your cholesterol level. Cholesterol is a type of fat that is normally present in the bloodstream, so if you have too much of it is probably down to your diet. If you have a lot of cholesterol in your blood stream you could increase your risk of heart problems by as much as three times. The moral of the story – lay off the dairy products!
As with most health issues the risks can be reduced by a little bit of exercise in the daily routine. It gets you fitter, it gets your heart fitter, and it keeps the weight off. The truth is if you are overweight and/or unfit then the chances of you having higher BP and cholesterol levels increase. It basically means you straight away increase the risk of heart disease. As they say prevention is usually better than cure. A little exercise in your life can go a long way to keep heart disease away.
The final major risk factor we want to talk about in this article is stress. Although not an obvious choice, many people believe that stress is an important contributor to heart disease – though this theory is more controversial than other risk factors. The reason stress is a problem is that it can raise blood pressure – again showing how one risk factor can influence another. And have you ever seen a movie where a sudden stress or shock triggers off a heart attack? Well this can happen to someone who already has heart disease, showing that stress is definitely a health risk in that sense.
