Smorgasbord Health Column 2024 – This Year’s Focus – Cardiovascular Disease and its symptoms by Sally Cronin

Before I begin the health series for 2024 I would like to share the focus for the column in the first months of the year. 

This headline that prompted my approach to this year is my annual check of statistics around the various government health sites and this Daily Mail article by Colin Fernandez Science Correspondent

“NHS is suffering its ‘worst heart care crisis in living memory’; experts warn as early deaths from heart disease among under-75s hit highest level in more than a decade.”

Some of the main points from the article regarding the statistics for the UK

• The latest figures for 2022 reveal that heart disease killed 80 out of every 100,000 people in England – the highest rate since 2011, when it was 83.
• Heart fatalities in the under-75s have risen for three consecutive years. Including the 45-60 year age bracket
• More than 39,000 people died prematurely of cardiovascular conditions including heart attacks, coronary heart disease and strokes in 2022 – an average of 750 a week. This is the highest annual total since 2008.
• ‘Millions of people are living with undiagnosed risk factors such as high blood pressure, raised cholesterol and diabetes, and nearly two thirds of adults in England have a weight classed as overweight or obese. This is storing up even more problems for the future.’
• Other contributory factors are down to the Covid restrictions on face to face appointments and regular check ups for BP and other diseases. Also the ongoing strikes within the NHS do mean cancelled appointments, delayed testing and therefore treatment.

And the USA has some equally disturbing statistics. Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research & Training Institute

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.
• The highest number of deaths in 2022 were 699,659 from cardiovascular disease (CDC )
• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States and can affect women at any age.
• Every 30 seconds someone in the United States passes away from heart disease
• 25% of all deaths in the United States are linked to heart disease
• Roughly $400 billion is spent on heart disease annually in the United States
• 20% of all heart attacks in the United States are silent.

When expanded globally the figures are staggering..

It’s estimated around 200 million people are living with coronary heart disease. Globally around 110 million men and 80 million women have coronary heart disease. British Heart Foundation

And from the World Health Authority.

• Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. CVDs are a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels and include coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic heart disease and other conditions. More than four out of five CVD deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes, and one third of these deaths occur prematurely in people under 70 years of age.
• The most important behavioural risk factors of heart disease and stroke are unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol.
• Cessation of tobacco use, reduction of salt in the diet, eating more fruit and vegetables, regular physical activity and avoiding harmful use of alcohol have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

My observations after 30 years of study, researching health and nutrition and working with clients for the last 25 years

Since I began practicing nutritional therapy and working with clients there have been shifts in our lifestyle that I believe have impacted our health in a significant way.

There is no doubt that both men and women are smoking less, but drinking alcohol is still a major part of people’s lives according to the statistics. Although recently in the UK it was noted the younger generation seemed to be drinking less.

• The average American drinks 60 percent more hard liquor now than in the mid-1990s, an unheralded surge in spirit consumption that signals changing tastes in alcohol.
• Americans are drinking more wine, too: 50 percent more per person since 1995. The Hill
• An estimated 10 million people in England regularly exceed the Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk drinking guidelines, including 1.7 million who drink at higher risk and around 600,000 who are dependent on alcohol. NHS
  

Millions have moved away from the ‘cook from scratch’ approach to relying on ultra- processed foods with devastating effect as they increase their consumption of artificial additives and unhealthy fats.

• People ages 20-39 years old eat the most fast food on any given day. Men consume more fast food than women. 83% of American families eat at fast food restaurants at least once a week. The Barbecue Lab
• Serving more than 3.8 million customers daily in the UK and Ireland McDonalds UK
  

Men more so than women, have two areas that I believe impact their diagnosis of heart conditions and ongoing health.

One is the fact that many men rely on someone else to provide the food they eat which means they don’t control their diet. This is understandable because even in a family where both husband and wife work, in my experience is it most often the wife who does the shopping and the cooking for the family.

The second one is men’s reluctance to acknowledge they have a problem, and put off going to seek medical attention in the early stages of cardiovascular disease.  Partly because of the silent nature of a symptom such as High Blood Pressure and Pre-diabetes but also the need to take time off work due to the appointment systems offered by GPs.

And thirdly, men may deny it, but perhaps another male trait is the desire not to look weak in front of work colleagues or family and friends.

When I was working with men for weight loss or to reduce the levels of what I consider to be key indicators such as BP and Blood Sugar, I would ask their wife or partner to accompany them to the 2nd appointment when I would go through their dietary programme.

This was after one client came back to me and said his wife was refusing to change the meals as they had been good enough for 25 years and who did I think I was suggesting they were not!  Happily after coming with him on the next visit, we came to an arrangement and at the end of three months both had lost weight and neither required medication.

The other reaction that I have found in more recent years is the reluctance to do the work needed to lose weight by eating healthily and taking moderate exercise, and more of a reliance on the pills prescribed by doctors for BP, Cholesterol and Blood Sugar.

One of the areas of this prescribing that I find concerning is the almost automatic assumption that men and women of a certain age should be on Statins for example. When you consider that cholesterol has an important role to play in the body, particularly in the production of hormones, it seems an unfortunate time when hormones are already in decline to prescribe medication that drops them even further! Smorgasbord Health – Statins the New Research

The symptoms of cardiovascular disease to be aware of.

• Chest pain
• Pain in the neck, jaw, throat, upper belly or back.
• Pain, weakness or numb legs and/or arms.
• Breathlessness with minor activity
• Very fast or slow heartbeat, or palpitations particularly when you are resting.
• Feeling dizzy, lightheaded or faint when bending over or standing up..
• Unusual levels of fatigue
• Swollen ankles
• Wheezing.
• A cough that doesn’t go away or a cough that brings up white or pink mucus with spots of blood.

In conclusion.

Since cardiovascular disease is the number one killer not just in the western world but also globally, I will be sharing posts during the next few months on the areas of health that are the most likely to contribute to the disease.

Of course these posts have been shared before, and I know I am preaching to the choir, as most of you are already only too aware of how a healthy diet and moderate exercise is essential in the prevention of not only heart disease, but other lifestyle related issues on the increase in our modern world.

I hope that they will serve as a reminder of how important it is to take control of diet and lifestyle to ensure a good quality of life as we get older. Even if medication is needed to stabilise a particular symptom such as elevated BP,  we can work towards enabling our health providers to reduce or take us off the pills at some point.

The first series will be on the heart followed by cholesterol and other related cardiovascular issues

If you have any questions about the post, or diet then please contact me direct on sally.cronin@moyhill.com. I no longer work with clients but I am more than happy to help free of charge in any way I can.

©Sally Cronin Just Food for Health 1998 – 2024

I am a qualified nutritional therapist with twenty-five years experience working with clients in Ireland and the UK as well as being a health consultant on radio in Spain. Although I write a lot of fiction, I actually wrote my first two books on health, the first one, Size Matters, a weight loss programme 20 years ago, based on my own weight loss of 154lbs. My first clinic was in Ireland, the Cronin Diet Advisory Centre and my second book, Just Food for Health was written as my client’s workbook. Since then I have written a men’s health manual, and anti-aging programme, articles for magazines, radio programmes and posts here on Smorgasbord.

If you would like to browse my health books and fiction you can find them here Sally’s books and reviews 2024

 

Thanks for joining me for this series and as always delighted to receive your feedback… keep young at heart… thanks Sally.