Heart disease, stroke and blood vessel disease kill more Australians every year than any other disease group. They are responsible for almost 40% of all deaths.
Worldwide we don’t fare so badly. The highest death rates from these so-called cardiovascular diseases are in Russia, Romania, Poland and Hungary; with the lowest death rates in Japan, France and Canada. Australia is not far behind, but the total burden of heart disease, stroke and blood vessel disease is likely to increase in the coming years due to the growing number of older Australians among whom these diseases are most common.
So National Heart Week, 4-10 May, is focusing on how we can improve our heart health.
This year the theme is all about families. Two out of three families are affected by heart disease; so the Heart Foundation is using Heart Week to urge parents and carers to get active with their children.
Of course we won’t be able to eliminate heart disease completely, however, a little attention to lifestyle issues can certainly reduce our risk.
Being overweight, having high blood cholesterol levels and/or high blood pressure, having diabetes, being a smoker and drinking at harmful levels will all make cardiovascular disease more likely.
If you need medicines to lower your blood pressure, the possibility is that they will need to be taken forever. Sometimes that is difficult to accept; especially when, in all likelihood, there are no noticeable symptoms of the blood pressure being raised. In fact, occasionally the medicines themselves have unwanted effects. They may make you feel drowsy, dizzy or nauseated.
If side effects with your blood pressure medicines do occur, you should tell your doctor and pharmacist. There may be other medicines that suit you better or another way to manage the problem. Nevertheless, the best single piece of advice you could receive, is to take your medicines regularly day after day.
However, we can certainly reduce the need for medicines, or maybe lower the doses needed, by following some simple self help recommendations. These are all outlined in the series of fact cards available from pharmacies providing the Self Care Health Information. Titles include Exercise and the Heart, High Blood Pressure, Fat and Cholesterol, Weight and Health, and Staying a Non-Smoker. Call the Pharmaceutical Society on 1300 369 772 and ask for the location of the Self Care Pharmacy nearest you or visit the website at www.psa.org.au
When it comes to heart health exercise, the Heart Foundation’s Jump Rope for Heart program is a great way to involve kids from an early age in having fun while staying fit.
This year the program celebrates its 25th anniversary with over 400,000 children from more than 2,000 schools expected to participate, using enough rope to stretch from Sydney to Perth. The aim is to skip right into the Guinness Book of Records with the greatest number of simultaneous rope jumpers.
And recent research has confirmed some of the other simple self care strategies we can employ to reduce our risk of heart and blood vessel disease.
For instance just reducing our intake of salt can make a significant difference. A study published last year in the British Medical Journal online showed that a reduction in dietary sodium by about one half could reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease by 20%.
While most of us don’t sprinkle salt onto our meals so liberally these days, there’s still plenty of salt in processed foods. So check out those products on supermarket shelves.
Meanwhile a study of 35,000 deaths caused by heart disease in St Petersburg in Russia between 1993 and 2000 demonstrated that yearly flu vaccines could prevent thousands of deaths. The research team found that the likelihood of dying from a heart attack increased by a third during a flu epidemic.
So there’s a few simple steps to start with: more exercise, less salt, consider the ‘flu vaccine, and check out the Self Care cards.
