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How Can We Reduce Our Risk of Having a Heart Attack?
Over 80% of heart disease is preventable with lifestyle changes and appropriate medical therapy. But unfortunately, with so much misinformation on social media, it can sometimes be confusing to figure out what to eat, how much to exercise, and what lifestyle is best to prevent heart disease.
Should you be eating low carb? Or low fat? Does exercise matter? Or does it not matter?
Quitting smoking can be one of the most important changes you can make for your health.
Secondhand smoke is a major cause of heart disease and stroke. Low levels of smoking increase risks of having a heart attack; so, the only way to decrease your risk, is by quitting tobacco all together.
See your healthcare provider to help evaluate your risk for heart disease.
1. Find out your blood pressure, cholesterol, hemoglobin A1c (a test for diabetes!) and know where you stand.
2. From there, your healthcare provider can help guide you in the right direction. If you are diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension, or high cholesterol, you may need medications to help control those diseases.
3. Changing your diet and incorporating exercise, can often not only improve, but even put many chronic diseases into remission.
General preventive cardiology services
Evaluate your risk for developing heart disease
Changes in diet and lifestyle can be hard. And for patients struggling with their weight, hearing they should just change their diet and lifestyle as if it is simple to flip a switch, undermines the complexity of diseases like obesity. This is why at our practice in Newport Beach, California, we focus on a multidisciplinary approach to lifestyle change. We have extended patient visits and believe strongly that spending time with our patients are our most valuable asset. Patients often do not feel heard by their provider and feel that they are prescribed a medication as a band aid, and they are left to figure out the rest. We focus on a comprehensive approach, which for some patients may include lifesaving and guideline directed medical therapy, but for ALL patients it includes a focus on lifestyle change and modification.
Both Plant-based and Mediterranean diets, have consistently been associated with lower risk of death from not only heart disease, but mortality as well.
Focusing on increased fruit, nut, vegetable, legume, and lean vegetable protein, (or if you eat animal protein, preferably fish) consumption, with the inherent soluble and insoluble vegetable fiber, has consistently demonstrated to be beneficial for cardiovascular and total overall health.
Often people ask, “what is the best exercise for health”, and the answer is: the one you enjoy the most and will stick with!
Walking, running, biking, dancing, gardening, weights, or yoga, exercise can be a beneficial component of cardiovascular disease prevention.
Ideally, we recommend trying to reach at least 150 minutes of accumulated moderate-intensity physical activity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week but remember that something is better than nothing. But you need to find an activity that you enjoy, so you have less of a barrier to stick with it.
References
2019 American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association Guidelines for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease
