What Bad Habits Are Increasing Your Heart Disease Risk?
Annually, the American Heart Association (AHA), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) publish the latest statistics for heart disease and stroke. The most recent updates found deaths due to cardiovascular disease actually decreased by 33% over the past 10 years and deaths due to stroke were reduced 37%.
This goes to show that a significant amount of progress has been made to improve outcomes for those who suffer heart attacks and strokes. Great news!
What’s not so good news are the increasing risk factors of US adults making them more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Did you know 68% of US adults are overweight or obese? Did you know 32% of children are overweight and 17% of children obese? And according to the AHA, CDC, and NIH, 33% of US adults do no engage in any aerobic leisure time physical activity. If you look around, it’s not so hard to believe that a majority of US adults are overweight and sedentary. Where do you fall?
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Midlife Weight Loss Reduces Heart Disease Risk
You are at greater risk of heart disease if you were overweight as a teen, compared to those who gained weight later in life. However, it was never clarified if this was because overweight teens become overweight adults OR does being overweight during your teen years cause irreversible damage.
Good news has come out of recent research published in The Archives of Internal Medicine that indicates losing weight mid-life can reduce heart disease risk if you’ve been overweight since your teens.
This research was conducted by Harvard Medial School reviewing data on 19,000 Harvard alumni who entered their freshman year of school between 1916 and 1950. Follow up on these individuals occurred over 82 years and evaluated at habits, heart disease, body mass indexes.
Study results found the heaviest students were most likely to become overweight adults. Obese freshmen men had almost double the risk of dying from heart disease later in life compared to those of normal weight during their college years. Freshmen men who were overweight their freshmen year also had a substantially increased risk of dying from a heart disease.
The good news came when researchers factored in middle age and any change in weight at that time. Men who began college overweight or obese, but lost weight and were considered normal weight in middle age no longer had an increased risk of dying from heart disease.
Heart Fat – Is the fat around your heart increasing your heart disease risk?
You are probably familiar with the fact that an ‘apple’ body shape puts you at greater risk for heart disease. A new study published August 16th in the online edition of the journal of Radiology has found the fat around your heart may be an even stronger predicator of heart disease risk.
What is heart fat?
Heart fat, or pericardial fat, is hidden behind the rib cage in a pericardial cavity. It appears that pericardial fat releases proinflammatory markers which promote irregular build-up of plaque along coronary artery walls. This plaque build-up leads to atherosclerosis which can result in a heart attack.
Pericardial fat volume is linked to being overweight or obese. The more excess fat you carry, the greater your risk of having high levels of pericardial fat.
The 183 participants of this study were from the community-based Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). All participants were symptom free, meaning they did not show or experience symptoms of heart disease, but the majority of participants were overweight.
How is heart fat linked to heart disease?
Obesity – Where does your state rank?
In 2010 rural Mississippi had the most obese residents for the 7th year in a row. This is according to an annual obesity report published by two public health groups.
Can you guess the thinnest state? Yep, Colorado.
The results of the annual obesity report get worse every year. American’s are getting heavier and heavier as time passes. Here’s an interesting fact that was pointed out:
In Colorado in 2010, 19.8% of the adult population was considered obese. Back in 1995, this would have meant Colorado was the heaviest state in the U.S.
It’s pretty scary how quickly things change in just 15 years.
According to the study results, the states that struggle the most with obesity are located in the South.
Here are the 12 states with an obesity rate of greater than 30%:
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Weight Discrimination – Is your health being affected?
Purdue University researchers conducted a study to evaluate the impact of weight discrimination on health declines for obese individuals. The purpose of the study was to show that extra pounds alone don’t account for all the health problems and overweight or obese individual lives with. It is theorized that individuals with a higher body mass index are more likely to feel discriminated against due to their weight. The more an individual believes they are a victim of weight discrimination the more their health is impacted.
Can You Be Fat and Fit?
A study conducted in the Netherlands found some obese individuals to not be at increased risk for heart disease due to their weight. I’m going to share what they learned because I don’t want you to start seeing headlines saying you can be fat and still be fit and start thinking it’s okay to remain a couch potato.
The Study
Dutch researchers identified a subset of 1,325 obese individuals, between the ages of 28 to 75 years-old, from the 8,356 participants in the Dutch Prevention of Renal and Vascular Endstage Disease study. Out of the 1,325 obese individuals only 90 were determined to be “metabolically healthy”.
Metabolically healthy means the participants did not have risk factors for diabetes and heart disease, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, or the use of cholesterol lowering medication. The Dutch study found only 6.8 percent of obese individuals in a larger population are metabolically healthy.
The Results
