Heart Disease

Picking up Healthy Habits in Your 30s and 40s Can Slash Heart Disease Risk

Support.Healthy.LivingThe heart is more forgiving than you may think – especially to adults who try to take charge of their health, a new Northwestern Medicine study has found.

When adults in their 30s and 40s decide to drop unhealthy habits that are harmful to their heart and embrace healthy lifestyle changes, they can control and potentially even reverse the natural progression of coronary artery disease, scientists found.

“It’s not too late,” said Bonnie Spring lead investigator of the study and a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “You’re not doomed if you’ve hit young adulthood and acquired some bad habits. You can still make a change and it will have a benefit for your heart.”

On the flip side, scientists also found that if people drop healthy habits or pick up more bad habits as they age, there is measurable, detrimental impact on their coronary arteries.

“If you don’t keep up a healthy lifestyle, you’ll see the evidence in terms of your risk of heart disease,” she said.

Spring said the healthy changes people in the study made are attainable and sustainable. She offers some tips for those who want to embrace a healthy lifestyle at any age:

  • Keep a healthy body weight.
  • Don’t smoke.
  • Engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity five times a week.
  • No more than one alcoholic drink a day for women, no more than two for men.
  • Eat a healthy diet, high in fiber, low in sodium with lots of fruit and vegetables.

Read the full story.

Source: Medical News Today.

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Most Important Factor for Women over 30 to Reduce Heart Disease Risk

Body.Disease.Heart1From the age of 30 onwards, physical inactivity exerts a greater impact on a woman’s lifetime risk of developing heart disease than the other well-known risk factors, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. This includes overweight, the finding show, prompting the researchers to suggest that greater effort needs to be made to promote exercise.

The researchers wanted to quantify the changing contribution made to a woman’s likelihood of developing heart disease across her lifetime for each of the known top four risk factors: excess weight (high BMI); smoking; high blood pressure; and physical inactivity.

Together, these four risk factors account for over half the global prevalence of heart disease, which remains the leading cause of death in high income countries.

The researchers found that up to the age of 30, smoking was the most important contributor to heart disease. But from age 30 until the late 80s, low physical activity levels were responsible for higher levels of population risk than any of the other risk factors.

Check the full article.

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal. “From age 30 onwards, inactivity has greatest impact on women’s lifetime heart disease risk.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 May 2014.