February is American Heart Month, a time when all people are encouraged to focus on their cardiovascular health and take necessary steps to manage their risk for heart disease. Thomas Waterbury, MD, interventional cardiology with the North Central Heart Institute provides some pointers on changes to keep heart disease at bay.
What exactly does heart disease refer to?
Heart disease is a broad term for a variety of different possible cardiac issues. Classically when we talk about managing your cardiac risk, we're talking more so about atherosclerotic coronary disease, which are blockage type issues. But heart disease would also refer to electrical issues with the heart or rhythm disturbances, structural issues with the heart, so problems with the pump in terms of cardiomyopathy or valve issues as well.
How do you know if you have heart disease? What are some of the symptoms?
A variety of different things. Manifestations with exertion or activity. Obviously if you're getting any chest pain or discomfort or shortness of breath or just decreased exertional tolerance, not able to do what you were once able to do, other symptoms like palpitations or fluttering in the chest or lightheadedness; all of those would be potential signs or symptoms of underlying heart disease.
How exactly is heart disease treated?
It really depends on what the other underlying issue is. For coronary disease and a lot of heart disease in general, we usually start with medical therapy. Ideally, we try to be on the primary prevention side to prevent issues down the road. But in patients who have established heart disease, if it is a blockage issue, then we have a transcatheter or percutaneous routes to fix that with balloons and stents. Sometimes more advanced disease or complex anatomy requires surgical intervention. On the structural side, there's more and more capabilities to fix things with transcatheter therapies now as opposed to surgery. It really depends on what the underlying issue is.
What are ways to help lower your heart disease risk?
The most important thing would be trying to make healthy lifestyle changes and decisions. For diet, we recommend more of a Mediterranean-style diet or anti-inflammatory diet, which has been shown to improve mortality and decrease your risk of cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke. Regular exercise, trying to be active 30 minutes a day most days of the week. And then following with your primary care physician or provider to modify risk factors for coronary disease. If you have diabetes, making sure that's well controlled, making sure blood pressure is well controlled, treating cholesterol if it's high, and trying to manage your stress levels as well.
Learn more about heart and vascular care at Avera. You can learn more about your risk by getting a Planet Heart Screening.
