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There’s a lot of information out there about heart disease and how to prevent it, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there as well, and it’s important to get the facts straight when it comes to your heart, according to a Harvard Heart Letter report.
While it may seem logical to limit physical activity if you have a heart problem, in nearly all cases, a person with heart disease can benefit from regular, moderate amounts of exercise. And while it may also make sense to eat a very-low-fat diet, it is really only saturated fat that is harmful to the heart. A diet rich in unsaturated fat from foods such as fish, olive oil, and low-fat dairy products actually reduces the risk of heart disease.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce cholesterol produced by the liver; they do not reduce cholesterol you get from food, so taking such a drug is not a free pass to continue eating fatty food. Along those lines, even if you take a drug to manage diabetes, the disease still can cause heart disease.
While it is true that women under the age of 60 years are significantly less likely to get heart disease than are men, this disparity disappears over the age of 60, and by age 80 years, women are slightly more likely to have heart disease. It is also true that quitting smoking has immediate benefits, even if you’ve been smoking for years. Heart attack risk drops by 50% after 1 year being tobacco free, and the increased risk disappears entirely after 10 years.
A small heart attack may not do much damage – it may be barely noticeable. But any heart attack is indicative of a big problem. While surgical procedures such as stenting or bypasses do a lot for managing symptoms, they do not fix the problem, and life changes are still recommended.
For more information about heart disease myths, visit the Harvard Medical School website.
There’s a lot of information out there about heart disease and how to prevent it, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there as well, and it’s important to get the facts straight when it comes to your heart, according to a Harvard Heart Letter report.
While it may seem logical to limit physical activity if you have a heart problem, in nearly all cases, a person with heart disease can benefit from regular, moderate amounts of exercise. And while it may also make sense to eat a very-low-fat diet, it is really only saturated fat that is harmful to the heart. A diet rich in unsaturated fat from foods such as fish, olive oil, and low-fat dairy products actually reduces the risk of heart disease.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce cholesterol produced by the liver; they do not reduce cholesterol you get from food, so taking such a drug is not a free pass to continue eating fatty food. Along those lines, even if you take a drug to manage diabetes, the disease still can cause heart disease.
While it is true that women under the age of 60 years are significantly less likely to get heart disease than are men, this disparity disappears over the age of 60, and by age 80 years, women are slightly more likely to have heart disease. It is also true that quitting smoking has immediate benefits, even if you’ve been smoking for years. Heart attack risk drops by 50% after 1 year being tobacco free, and the increased risk disappears entirely after 10 years.
A small heart attack may not do much damage – it may be barely noticeable. But any heart attack is indicative of a big problem. While surgical procedures such as stenting or bypasses do a lot for managing symptoms, they do not fix the problem, and life changes are still recommended.
For more information about heart disease myths, visit the Harvard Medical School website.
There’s a lot of information out there about heart disease and how to prevent it, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there as well, and it’s important to get the facts straight when it comes to your heart, according to a Harvard Heart Letter report.
While it may seem logical to limit physical activity if you have a heart problem, in nearly all cases, a person with heart disease can benefit from regular, moderate amounts of exercise. And while it may also make sense to eat a very-low-fat diet, it is really only saturated fat that is harmful to the heart. A diet rich in unsaturated fat from foods such as fish, olive oil, and low-fat dairy products actually reduces the risk of heart disease.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce cholesterol produced by the liver; they do not reduce cholesterol you get from food, so taking such a drug is not a free pass to continue eating fatty food. Along those lines, even if you take a drug to manage diabetes, the disease still can cause heart disease.
While it is true that women under the age of 60 years are significantly less likely to get heart disease than are men, this disparity disappears over the age of 60, and by age 80 years, women are slightly more likely to have heart disease. It is also true that quitting smoking has immediate benefits, even if you’ve been smoking for years. Heart attack risk drops by 50% after 1 year being tobacco free, and the increased risk disappears entirely after 10 years.
A small heart attack may not do much damage – it may be barely noticeable. But any heart attack is indicative of a big problem. While surgical procedures such as stenting or bypasses do a lot for managing symptoms, they do not fix the problem, and life changes are still recommended.
For more information about heart disease myths, visit the Harvard Medical School website.
