Lower Your Heart Disease and Stroke Risk
What do you think is the leading threat to women’s lives in the United States? If you guessed breast cancer, you are off the mark. Despite increasing awareness, only about half of women know that heart disease is the number one killer. It accounts for one in five deaths of American women.
I write to you as we commemorate the 57th consecutive American Heart Month in February. Today we take a brief look at the statistics behind heart disease before turning to some pro tips about how you can lower your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is widespread, with the risk approaching 50 percent for a 30-year-old without known CVD. It stunned me to read this statistic.
The lifetime risk of coronary heart disease in the Framingham Heart Study at age 40 was 49 percent for men and 32 percent for women.
Atherosclerosis is a hardening and narrowing of our arteries. The condition can put blood flow at risk as the arteries become clogged. It is sometimes called arteriosclerosis and is the usual cause of heart attacks, strokes, and non-heart blood vessel abnormalities (such as in the legs). In aggregate, we refer to these conditions as cardiovascular disease.
Autopsy investigations illustrate the importance of getting lifestyle right early in life. The arteries’ clogging begins early in life, with atherosclerosis seen in the second and third decades of life.
An analysis of nearly 4,000 autopsies of US military personnel (98 percent male, with an average age of 26 years) who died in combat or from unintentional injuries between 2001 and 2011 showed the prevalence of atherosclerosis of heart blood vessels to be nearly 9 percent.
Fortunately, coronary heart disease has been decreasing over time. During the Korean War, autopsies of soldiers in the 1950s demonstrated a heart disease prevalence of 77 percent and 45 percent during the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
Lower your heart disease and stroke risk: Strategies you can use to reduce your risk of dying of cardiovascular disease.
On this occasion of American Heart Month, I want to pivot to some strategies you can use to reduce your risk of dying of a cardiovascular disease. Let’s look at some of the lifestyle adjustments that can meaningfully reduce the chances of your suffering from cardiovascular disease.
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