Heart disease and aging
Posted on July 31st, 2007 by Matias
The number one risk factor for dying of heart disease is your age. 83 percent of people who die of coronary heart disease are over 65. From this you can see that by tackling the root cause of heart disease which is the effects of aging we can drastically reduce the incidence of heart disease.
What you can do to cut your risk of getting heart disease:
- Fund aging research - by donating to aging research which is specifically targeted to counteract aging effects you will help ensure that you and your children do not get heart disease.
- Exercise - an inactive lifestyle is a risk factor in heart disease. So with regular moderate or vigorous activity heart disease risk can be reduced, the more vigorous the better, though if you have not exercised for a while it is best to start gradually.
- Lose weight - people who have excessive body fat, particularly around the waist, are more likely to get heart disease and stroke. So if you are overweight you can reduce your risk by eating more healthily and exercising.
- Stop smoking - a smokers risk of developing a coronary heart at is 2 to 4 times more than a non-smoker. Its time to stub it out.
- Monitor your cholesterol - high cholesterol is another risk factor, this can be modified by diet, but its important to find out whether you have high blood cholesterol to start with, so go get a check-up.
- Monitor your blood pressure - a high blood pressure makes the heart work harder, increases risk of heart disease, and when it exists with other risk factor risk of heart attack or stroke increases several fold.
- Control diabetes - if you have diabetes it is essential that it is managed as about 3/4 of people with diabetes end up dying because of heart or blood vessel disease.
- Calm down - stress may be a factor in heart disease, or at least lead to other factors such as overeating or smoking, so if you are stressed out, identify what it is that is stressing you out and work on removing this from your life.
- Drink less alcohol - if you drink too much alcohol you can raise your blood pressure increase risk of stroke or heart attack, if you are drinking more than one or two drinks per day it would help to cut down.
It is sad to note that some people, even with doing all the above, still manage to get heart disease. There are no known factors as to what happens to a person to get heart disease, but the above tips are great for reducing your risks completely.
I’d love to know what the signs of heart disease are, if any? Maybe that’s a topic for another blog post. Good topic!
Unfortunately until the effects of aging are stopped heart disease will still keep occurring.
Here is a good list of the symptoms.
Even if you show none of these symptoms though you still may have a problem brewing. Essential is to monitor your cholesterol once you get older. This again is not so simple though as you have HDL, LDL and triglyceride’s, and also conventional wisdom has been changing on the subject. I will do a post on this to clarify.
Thanks for your comment