Heart Healthy Living: Preventing Heart Disease

As you know, the Community Health Committee wanted to highlight some of the disease concerns brought up in resolutions over the last 10 years. One of the diseases mentioned was heart disease. Heart disease is a major cause of death in the United States and as healthcare professionals we should be award of prevention tips and screening needs.

Prevention Tips: Preventing heart disease starts with healthy living. This includes healthy eating, weight management and exercise. The US Department of Agriculture has created a website that highlights these items: www.mypyramid.gov. It is vital that a healthy diet and exercise be a priority in preventing heart disease. If these are not a part of a daily routine you or those you know may get plaque buildup leading to heart disease.

Screening Ideas: It is also important to be screened for problems early on such as diabetes and high blood pressure that can lead to heart disease. Actual screening for heart disease includes echocardiogram, catheterization and blood tests. If patients (and ourselves and friends) are screened for risk factors early, this devastating disease may not occur.
Risk factors include: alcohol use, nicotine, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Project Ideas: For a project idea, have a community screening day and screen blood glucose, blood pressure and ask questions about diet and exercise to assess risk for heart disease. You might also want to organize a run/walk to raise money for an organization dealing with heart disease (which also has the added benefit of exercise!).