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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Watch Out Heart Disease Even If You Seem Healthy! Cardiovascular disease is the disease of the heart and blood vessel system. It includes heart disease, stroke, heart failure, arrhythmia and heart valve problems. Many of these problems are related to atherosclerosis, which is a condition that develops when plaque builds up in the walls of arteries. The buildup actually narrows the arteries, making it harder for blood to flow through. If blood clot forms, it could simply halt the blood flow and trigger a heart attack or stroke. There is a common belief that cardiovascular disease can only happen to older folks who have risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, overweight or obesity and smoking. But in reality, even middle-age adults who have seemingly optimal heart health might be at risk for heart disease later in life. According to researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago and University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, Dallas, about 4 in 10 men and 3 in 10 women who had normal blood pressure and cholesterol, did not smoke and did not have diabetes at age 55 developed some kind of cardiovascular disease later in life. Their findings were published on November 7, 2012 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nevertheless, those with optimal heart health in middle age tended to live more years of their life free of cardiovascular disease. On average, men and women with optimal heart health at age 45 developed cardiovascular disease between 8 and 14 years later than those who had at least 2 risk factors for heart disease at age 45.
Previous studies have estimated the lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease for middle-age adults, but they have not included heart failure and hemorrhagic stroke as a type of cardiovascular disease. Heart failure is a condition when the heart fails to pump enough blood to the rest of the body and hemorrhagic stroke is a stroke caused by burst blood vessel in the brain. The new study aimed to fill the gap and it intended to calculate lifetime risk (up to 95 years old) estimates of total cardiovascular disease by index age (45, 55, 65, 75 years) and risk factor strata and to estimate years lived free of cardiovascular disease across risk factor strata. Information from population studies from 1964 to 2008 was analyzed. The studies include Framingham Heart Study, Framingham Offspring Study, Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry Study, and Cardiovascular Health Study. At the start of study, all 49,490 male and female participants were free of cardiovascular disease with risk factor data including blood pressure, total cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking status. Results of analysis showed that only 2 to 8 percent of the participants were in optimal heart health, and more than half of the participants at any age had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Overall lifetime risk for total cardiovascular disease was 60.3 percent for men and 55.6 percent for women. Men had higher lifetime risk estimates than women across all index ages. At index ages 55 and 65 years, men and women with at least 1 elevated risk factor and 1 major risk factor, or at least 2 major risk factors had lifetime risk estimates to age 95 years that exceeded 50 percent. Those who were in optimal heart health at age of 55 had lifetime risks for total cardiovascular disease of greater than 40 and 30 percent for men and women respectively. While the lifetime risk estimates for total cardiovascular disease were high, as indicated in the study, for all individuals even those with optimal risk factors in middle age, maintenance of optimal health in middle age was still associated with substantially longer morbidity-free survival. Hence, it is important that people should adopt healthy lifestyle that includes daily meals with plenty of fruits and vegetables and at least 30 minutes of physical activity everyday.
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