HEART DISEASE
Did you know 26.3% of Australians died in 1988 of coronary heart disease and another 10.4% died from strokes? (National Heart Foundation 1988 Heart Facts).
When you consider that heart disease is largely preventable, we really must be doing something wrong.
The heart is not the fragile organ most of us are led to believe. It is a very strong muscle about the size of a man’s fist which sits in the middle of the chest. Without our heart the blood would not circulate around our bodies. This fantastic organ, beating at more than 100,000 beats per day, pumping about half a cup of blood per beat, pumps around 200,000,000 litres of blood in the average lifetime.
If you car worked as hard as your heart, then it probably would not last the distance, so those of us who just cannot afford to keep buying new cars do something about this problem. We keep up regular services, make sure the correct petrol and oil are used, warm our engines up slowly and do not over-rev them.
Do we give our hearts the same attention and loving care, taking into account the above figures? The average answer would be no, we do not. v
A number of my patients come in to see me with this standard question: ‘My father died from a heart attack when he was only 48 years of age and now my brother has developed angina. Does this mean that I am next and if so, if there anything I can do?
The answer is that family history only plays a small part in heart disease and a change in other risk factors can make all the difference. You are in a high risk group if you have high blood pressure, smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day, have high cholesterol, are overweight, live a stressful lifestyle or have diabetes. You must seek you practitioners advice and have a full medical check-up.
*84\26\8*
