Knowing Heart Disease Risk May Prompt You Adopting Heart-Healthy Lifestyle

In order to reduce the risk of a heart attack and heart-related death, one should try to lower levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) while raising levels of good cholesterol (HDL). Regretfully, most patients do not obediently follow recommendation from their doctors so as to change their lifestyle or taking their cholesterol reducing medications.

However, when the doctor tells the patients who are at risk of coronary heart disease exactly what their risk is and how they can help lower their risk, they seem to respond better to preventive treatment. This is the findings of a recent study conducted by a group of researchers at the McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The researchers actually found that people who had discussed openly with their doctor about their coronary risk profile achieved better improvement in their cholesterol levels than those who did not discussed with their doctor. As found out by the study, about one-third of people, who are not convinced that they need their cholesterol medications, stop taking them.

In order to ascertain whether boosting patients' knowledge of their heart risk profile might help them to adopt heart-healthy lifestyle, the researchers randomly assigned 3,053 adults being treated for cholesterol problems into 2 groups: one group received usual care while the other group received a 1-page computer printout displaying the probability that they will develop heart disease in the next 8 years based on their current lifestyle, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other risk indicators. The printout group also received ongoing feedback on how much they could cut their risk through lifestyle modification and drug therapy.

There were 2,687 patients completed the 12-month study. Those in the intervention group who kept track of their heart risk profile had small but significantly greater improvements in their cholesterol profiles.

In addition to communicating risk, there are also other means that can be used to improve adherence to heart-healthy lifestyle. These include enhancing self-monitoring and using support of family and friends.

Government Starts Plan To Combat Obesity At Schools

Heart disease prevention is possible if one can adopt heart-healthy lifestyle that combines balanced and healthy diet with regular exercises. And more importantly, one should start this lifestyle when young.

Unfortunately, the majority of the youngsters nowadays are living away and away from the heathy lifestyle that they are supposed to have. Long hours of TV and computer games cause young kids to skip almost all of their physical exercises. Instead of having more fresh vegetables and fish, they choose to have french fries and fast foods like burgers. As such, overweight or obese school children can be spotted easily almost everywhere.

In order to combat the increasing threat of obesity, the British government launched on October 15, 2007 a new programme costing 100 million pounds to encourage greater participation in sports at schools. The campaign aims to increase the number of hours of physical education in schools from 2 to 5 per week.

A government-commissioned research has earlier warned that half of all Britons will be obese in 25 years if nothing is do to change the current trends. Moreover, the report also revealed that 86 percent of men will be overweight in 15 years and 70 percent of women in 20 years.

As a matter of fact, about 2.3 million pounds has already been set aside in the last decade to increase the number of hours of sport in school. Nevertheless, establishing sports facilities alone would not effectively stop the situation from becoming worse. There is no doubt that schools should show leadership but because school kids spend more time at home with their parents, what they do at home matters most. Moreover, it is also agreed that there is more to do for girls so as to encourage them to keep playing sport.

It is evident that parents at home should play their parts by setting role examples for their children, in terms of their living habits. Without their support, it is felt that the effort to stop the epidemic in obesity would greatly be compromised even with the bigger budgets from governments to help kids at schools.