To keep your heart healthy, follow good habits & drop the bad ones

Most people accept the above as common knowledge. But some, especially people in the medical profession, need scientific proof before accepting it as a truism, and rightly so. And a recent study finally provides some.

The AP article "Lifestyle trumps drugs for a healthy heart: study" reports on a study which will be run in the American Heart Association's journal Ciruculation. Says lead researcher Stephanie Chiuve, Sc.D. of Harvard, "This shows there's no substitute for a healthy lifestyle." According to the results,

Middle-aged men on these medications [for high blood pressure and cholesterol] can reduce their chances of heart problems by 57 percent by eating right, not smoking, drinking in moderation and maintaining a healthy weight while exercising regularly, the researchers said.
Those who do not take the drugs can cut their risk of heart ailments by 87 percent if they adopt these lifestyle choices.

Being a long-term study with a large sample size ("43,000 men between 40 and 75 who were free of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions when the study began in 1986 [who] completed biannual questionnaires and [where] researchers used the data to tease out correlations between heart disease and lifestyle habits.") means the results are more likely to be statistically valid and applicable for the same group in the general population.

Since not smoking alone reduced risk for heart problems by 50%, we would drastically reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes if there were more effective nicotine abstinence programs for the at-risk group and if insurance companies paid them to go.

(My attending at the VA, an oncologist, said today that of all the patients who develop cancer in their lifetimes, fully "1/3rd" would not do so if absolutely no one smoked tobacco. And another side note, a new drug named Varenicline, an antibody which blocks nicotime receptors in the brain and thus prevents the dopamine rush from smoking, seems to be more effective in helping people quit smoking than the conventional therapy Bupropion, or Wellbutrin as it's commonly known, according to a study cited in JAMA. The drawback is that there are some unwanted side effects. Point is there are effective interventions for tobacco addictions already, and it's time they were more commonly used by people who wish to quit.)

Those people & companies who try to help middle-aged and older men & women develop the five beneficial lifestyle factors noted in the study -- eating right, not smoking, drinking in moderation, maintaining a healthy weight, and exercising regularly -- will find that there is a big collective demand for this help that our current healthcare system(s) is not designed to meet.

And any organization that ventures to provide all the parts -- the medical personnel to monitor a person's heart and cardiovascular system and give proper medications, drug-abstinence coaches and support groups, nutritionists, educators, a gym with exercise equipment and trainiers -- will find that there is profit to be made.

Just imagine a YMCA combined with a specialized clinic oriented around heart care, and stocked with the right lab machines and people, providing resources and perhaps more importantly encouragement for people to develop and follow healthy habits.

This concept isn't stuck in the world of ideas, however. It is in fact operating in the real world for diabetes management in Houston at clinics run by Diabetes Centers of America.