OPTIMIZE YOUR HEALTH
Living a Heart Healthy Lifestyle

Cardiovascular Risk Reduction
By Sue Kim-Saechao, RN, MSN, CRNP, and Jannet Huang, MD, FRCPC, FACE

Despite the advances of medicine, heart attacks continue to be the #1 killer in America and strokes, the #3 killer. Reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes requires a holistic and comprehensive multidisciplinary approach that focuses on prevention. Helping you understand your cardiovascular risk profile and coming up with a preventive strategy is an important goal here at The Center.

It is important to realize that there are unmodifiable and modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Unmodifiable risk factors include age, gender, and heredity. Men tend to have heart attacks earlier in life than women until menopause, at which point, the advantage of being female is lost. With regards to ethnicity, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans seem to have increased risk, possibly due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and inherited insulin resistance.

Modifiable risk factors are those we can change, such as our smoking/alcohol habits, cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar/insulin levels, as well as nutrition, physical activity, weight, stress levels and sleep.

It is clear that smokers have a 200-400% increased risk for heart attacks and strokes compared to nonsmokers (cigar smokers are also at a higher risk, but not quite as high as cigarette smokers). It is also important to stress the increased risk of heart disease and diabetes in those who are exposed to secondhand smoke. We remind patients to please note that smoke can still be carried on your clothes and skin, even if you smoke outside your home, and can still increase risk of heart attacks, strokes, cancers and diabetes in your loved ones.

Moderate alcohol intake may be beneficial in some and not in others. We are able to look at the effects of alcohol consumption on cholesterol through the Berkeley Heart Lab’s Apo E genotype testing and we encourage you to have this done, if you have not done so already. The Berkeley Heart Lab advanced lipid testing also takes a more in-depth look at other risk factors, such as cholesterol particle sizes, homocysteine, lipoprotein A, high sensitivity c-reactive protein levels, among others.

The CARDIA study showed that young people whose blood pressure readings were higher during stressful events had higher rates of developing hypertension in their 40's. Using stress management and other holistic therapies may help eliminate or reduce medications required to control blood pressure.

Assessing for risk factors, such as blood pressure, waist circumference, cholesterol, and diabetes/insulin resistance is the essential first step in heart disease prevention. Our team at the Center uses a high tech, high touch approach to help you thoroughly understand your risk profile. With your individual needs in mind, we develop a preventive strategy (including nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, appropriate vitamins/herbs and judicious use of medications) and help you acquire the tools to implement it. Call the Center today to make your appointment. You and your loved ones deserve healthy hearts!

—February 2006

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