What you can do to prevent heart disease

NATIONAL Heart Day on Sunday marked the beginning of the annual ‘Heart Week’.

Starting yesterday and ending on Friday, it will include a series of events aimed at enlightening the public on serious issues concerning heart and brain conditions.

More specifically, Heart Week aims to encourage the public to adopt a healthier way of life in order to avoid potentially fatal heart and brain incidents.

Predictions made by the World Health Organisation show that cardiovascular ailments are responsible for 16.7 million deaths every year, 29.2 per cent of total deaths worldwide.

These ailments constitute the first cause of death in all developed countries.
Twenty million people worldwide survive heart attacks and strokes every year, making medical costs hit the roof and affecting both personal and state budgets.

Apart from malnutrition, other main causes of heart disease include smoking, obesity and immobility.

Experts say most heart-related diseases could be prevented if a proper lifestyle was followed.

With the logo ‘Right Weight = Healthy Body’, this year’s National Heart Day wants to remind us all about one of the major causes of heart disease, body weight, which needs to be kept stable and normal.

It has been proved that the gathering of excess weight around the tummy area can reduce the likely age for a heart or brain episode by four to eight years.

For this reason a limit for waist measurements has been issued – just like blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels – with men at 94 cm and women at 80 cm. Anything over that is considered overweight and represents an increased danger of heart failure.

In Cyprus, statistics show that heart disease is the primal cause of illness and death, meaning that almost half of all deaths are heart-related.
Research conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2000 showed that 44 per cent of men and 29 per cent of women were overweight, while 24 per cent of men and 18 per cent of women were obese. High blood pressure at 22.6 per cent and cholesterol at 55 per cent were the other two main contributing factors.

The Ministry of Health has issued a warning about these statistics and is urging the public to take care of their hearts by eating a healthier diet, exercising and not smoking.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.