lacking knowledge when it comes to heart
health the new survey shows a
significant gap in how much people know
about heart disease and even their own
risk for heart attack at least 80% of
cardiac events are preventable which
means having basic knowledge about heart
disease could help save your life here
on the show this morning with some
advice doctor Rosa he's a cardiologist
at st. Vincent's so 62% failed the quiz
how does that make you feel well it
means that we have to do a lot more
education we have to really get out
there and tell people you know what is
going to help their hearts there seems
to be a lot of confusion over
cholesterol and heart health and heart
attacks like how they all right so
there's a study out of UCLA about ten
years ago that showed that about 75% of
people don't have high cholesterol when
they have a heart attack so as it is
though it is a marker for heart health
it's not the only thing that's important
other things such as inflammatory
markers oxidative markers those are
things that also come into play when it
comes to a heart attack an inflammatory
marker what is that and how do you check
for it so there's a there's markers like
homocysteine CRP which is C reactive
protein it basically tells you how much
inflammation is in the body the tricky
thing about that is that we know that
having high levels of these inflammatory
markers are are bad for you and increase
the risk of heart attack we don't have
any great medications for preventing for
bringing that down and the ones that do
bring it down we don't know if that
actually prevents heart attack the only
thing that we do know is changing your
lifestyle can improve these inflammatory
markers and also reduce your risk for
heart diet and exercise unfortunately
yes that's the answer okay ever wants to
hear that right but it's the truth last
year only 14 percent got that checked
correct correct that's that I mean
that's it's very low you know there's
there's more and more evidence that that
is important I think the more important
thing is to change your lifestyle change
the way your eating and exercising and
handling your stress I think those are
probably the most important things so
fats and heart disease I know we were
talking on the break about different
foods and some people don't realize
certain foods are worse for you than
others when it comes to heart health
yeah there's different types of fats
there's fats that are definitely bad for
you unsaid
saturated fats foods that are very high
in saturated fats and cholesterol often
do lead to increase rates of heart
disease and heart attacks but there are
good fats fats that come out of
Coldwater fish like salmon nuts avocado
avocado is also a good fat those are
those are the fats that are okay to eat
things that are high in omega threes
actually prevent heart attacks actually
increase okay that's good and what about
gender men and women when it comes to
heart disease so it is true that at
younger ages men are more prone to heart
disease the problem is that women are
highly ignored when it comes to heart
disease so they don't seek help in time
so if if a woman or a man has a first
heart attack the man is much more likely
to survive that heart attack than the
woman oh wow women
so she's just ignoring the simple ignore
the symptoms they have different
symptoms they don't have the classic
chest pressure the grabber that people
call it they have other symptoms like
jaw pain shortness of breath sometimes
they think it's indigestion so they
don't have the classic symptoms and it's
often ignored until it's too late it's
so strange that the symptoms were that
different yeah you know not so much
there's a lot of difference but you
think you know you always think like a
heart attack that you'd be having pain
in your chest but yeah you're right like
not necessarily if the jaw it's kind of
yeah there are some some not so typical
symptoms that are so it's important to
know your symptoms absolutely and the
different steps to prevent I know you
said diet and exercise of course sure so
um you know foods that are antioxidative
anti-inflammatory are gonna be much
better than ones that are the opposite
so up closer to plant based diet cutting
out red meats cutting out fried foods
added sugars things like that just
modifying your diet in some way that's
that's what we're looking to do
sometimes making a dramatic change in
your diet isn't actually the right way
to go because it's not sustainable you
want to make small incremental changes
to improve your diet lifestyle
exercising five times a week 30 minutes
each time it's tough to do but to try to
fit it in it really can even just a walk
it's fun even even just a walk is a good
start you want to try to get your heart
rate up I do that cardiovascular
exercise but even starting with a walk
is good they say that for
every hour you run you had seven hours
to your life wow that's a great stat
just blew my mind well thank you so much
for that thanks for coming on today and
all of your information very helpful