Tips for preventing heart disease

Transcript

Caitlin Whyte (Host): Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, but there are ways to get ahead of it. So today we are talking about heart disease prevention with Dr. James Ampadu, a cardiologist with Prisma Health Cardiology.

This is Flourish, a podcast brought to you by Prisma Health. I’m Caitlin Whyte. So, doctor to start us off this episode, tell us what are the risk factors for heart disease?

James Ampadu, MD (Guest): So, when you’re talking about the risk factors for heart disease, it’s easiest to kind of categorize them into two different categories. One being modifiable risk factors, and two being non-modifiable. Non-modifiable means things that we can’t change. So, basically our age, our gender our ethnicity, or a family history or genetics. And then modifiable would be things that we can improve and change. And that’s if we’re overweight, if we’re obese, if we smoke, any illicit drug use or excessive alcohol intake, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and poorly controlled blood sugars or diabetes.

Host: And when we’re talking about risk factors, we often see changes based on race or certain populations. So, can you tell us why there’s an increased risk for heart disease if you’re African American?

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah, well, it kind of comes down to those modifiable risk factors that we talked of. In African-Americans, we have a higher prevalence of having these diseases and more importantly, they occur at a younger age, so it increases our overall risk of having cardiovascular disease. But it is important to note that it still is the world leader in terms of death. So cardiovascular disease affects all races and ethnicities.

Host: Absolutely important. Okay. And now aspirin, I know aspirin does help your heart, but just how does it help your heart and who should you be taking that aspirin a day?

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah, that’s a great question. So aspirin inhibits platelets, which are part of the blood clotting cascade. So, basically fancy cascade to basically make you more prone to bleed than to clot. And that’s how it can reduce your chance of having a recurrent heart attack or stroke. And when you’re talking about who should be taking aspirin. So over the past few years, the recommendations for aspirin use have changed. And I emphasized on recurrent heart attack or stroke because those are the people that there’s no question they should be taking aspirin, but if you haven’t had a heart attack or stroke, and you’re under the age of 60, it’s actually not recommended to take aspirin daily to prevent heart attack or stroke because you have an increased risk of bleeding. If you’re greater than 60, it’s recommended that you speak with your physician and they’ll kind of go over your individual risk for cardiovascular disease and your individual risk for bleeding and kind of weigh the risk and benefit for you.

Host: Now. So many people take supplements and vitamins. Are there any certain vitamins that help your heart?

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah. So contrary to popular belief, if you have a balanced diet and you’re trying to supplement with vitamins, there has been no significant benefit or reduction in cardiovascular mortality with doing so. The only supplement that’s been shown is actually folic acid, which is shown to reduce stroke and cardiovascular events. But currently the recommendation is just continue that balanced diet, reduction in trans fats, saturated fats, rich in vegetables and fruits.

Host: I’d love to get into weight gain because I know that has a big effect on your heart. So, does it matter where you gain your weight and how much might you have to lose to improve your heart health? Just tell us about where weight and heart come together.

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah. Sure. So as you increase weight and kind of getting to that category of overweight and or obese increases the stress and inflammation throughout the whole body, and that can add stress to the heart. When you’re talking about what’s good weight and what’s your weight distribution, we look at kind of your waist circumference because you can have a lot of central obesity or abdominal weight that’s linked to having fatty tissue around your visceral organs and stress on the heart. And that’s all been associated with increased mortality from cardiovascular.

Host: And then wrapping up here, what else can you do to protect your heart and what are some critical changes that people should be making?

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah. So we talked about kind of those modifiable risk factors. So, you really want to try to change those and improve those if possible. So if you’re overweight or obese, it’s recommended to lose 10% of your body weight. Kind of not a sprint, but a marathon. So, one to two pound weight loss per week. If you smoke, you want to stop smoking. If you drink excessive alcohol, you want to reduce your intake of alcohol. If you have pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or poorly controlled blood sugars or diabetes, you want to routinely follow up with your physician to make sure those are well controlled. And for those people that have non-modifiable risk factors that we talked about, advanced age or family history; you want to routinely see a physician because early detection is very important and early intervention is important if you do end up developing these diseases.

Host: Last question, doctor, is there anything else we didn’t touch on that you’d like to add to this conversation, especially like that early prevention you said?

Dr. Ampadu: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just be aware and cognizant of your health. Try to do these little tips that we talked about and really focus on those modifiable risk factors. And it’s good to, to know a little bit about kind of your family history in general, so that if you do have those non modifiable risk factors.

Host: Well, thank you so much Dr. Ampadu for your time and for your work in this field. For more information and other podcasts, just like this one, head on over to PrismaHealth.org/Flourish. This has been Flourish, a podcast brought to you by Prisma Health. I’m Caitlin Whyte. Stay well.