American Heart Month 2025

Announcer:

Welcome to Love Your Heart, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic's Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute. These podcasts will help you learn more about your heart, thoracic and vascular systems, ways to stay healthy and information about diseases and treatment options. Enjoy.

Leslie Cho, MD:

Hi, my name is Leslie Cho, and I am a cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic. February is American Heart Month. It is a month we celebrate raising awareness about cardiac health. And every year, Cleveland Clinic does a national survey, the Love Your Heart campaign, where we try to educate our patients and consumers about how to have good heart health. This year, we surveyed our patients about behaviors and attitudes that may affect heart health, and we're very excited to share our findings.

One of the key findings in this year's survey is that we found 97% of people think taking vitamins lowered heart disease risk, it unfortunately does not. Even though we want it to, it does not. There are vitamins that have been studied, vitamin C and vitamin E and fish oil. And unfortunately, vitamin C and E does nothing for our heart health. Fish oil, unfortunately, increases the risk of atrial fibrillation. And so for those of our patients that have AFib or are at increased risk for atrial fibrillation, where the top part of the heart is not beating in conjunction with the bottom part of the heart, we want you to stop taking fish oil.

The other things we found is that we found that people are unaware of some of the non-traditional risk factors that can increase heart disease. So we know of traditional risk factors like high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, family history and smoking. But there are other things that increase heart disease risk. So for example, lack of sleep is a big one. Air contamination is a very big one. But the other ones that are unique to women, like having high blood pressure during pregnancy or having diabetes during pregnancy, really increases their risk for future development of heart disease.

Family history is one of those very funny things that is very misunderstood. So when we talk about family history for heart disease, for things like heart attack or stroke, we're talking about if you had a heart attack or stroke before the age of 55 if you are a man or before the age of 65 if you're a woman. That's what we mean when we say “family history of heart disease.” There are families that have a history of arrhythmias or valve disease. But in general, the family history for heart disease is 55 for a man, 65 for a woman. It's important to know your family history. Now, some of us do not know our family history. Or they think that they have no family history because people haven't asked or don't know or have kept their family history kind of hidden. Now, it's important to get your risk factor checked. High blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, regardless of your family history.

Another risk factor that's emerging is Lipoprotein(a). Lipoprotein(a) is a genetic cholesterol problem. 20% of us have high Lipoprotein(a). And it increases the risk for early heart attack and stroke. And rarely are people being tested. And of course, in keeping with that, not many people are aware that Lipoprotein(a) increases the risk.

And then lastly, the other sort of interesting and kind of shocking thing we found is that many people stopped taking prescription medicines. 60% of our patients sometimes skip medications that are prescribed. And it's really important if you're going to skip your medicines or not take your medicines to talk to your provider. Heart disease or the prevention of heart disease is what we're talking about. And what I like to talk to my patients about is, of course, we want to use diet and exercise to lower your risk. But there are some people whom we cannot lower their risk just with diet and exercise. And the goal of treatment is not medication. But the goal of treatment is for you to have a long life, to have a good quality of life, not to have a heart attack or stroke or need a stent or bypass. So yes, unfortunately, some of us will need medications to treat heart disease.

There are causes of high blood pressures that are really important to know. So for example, salty foods, if your diet is very salty, you can have an increased risk for having high blood pressure. NSAIDs which are, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, so like ibuprofen, those class of medicine - Aleve, Advil, Motrin - those things increase your blood pressure. Alcohol increases blood pressure. Lack of sleep from sleep apnea increases your blood pressure. There are things that causes high blood pressure, and we need to find the underlying cause. But for many people, unfortunately, high blood pressure is something that they have to use medications to treat.

Now, the problem with high blood pressure is that it's a silent killer. You don't know that your blood pressure is high for most people until they have a heart attack or stroke, or they have heart failure or they have kidney damage. So it's really important to check your blood pressure. The number one cause of death is still heart disease for women. And unfortunately, there are nontraditional risk factors for women that are under-recognized and underappreciated. And those are early menopause, so menopause before the age of 45. High blood pressure during pregnancy or immediately after pregnancy. So three months after pregnancy. Gestational diabetes and adverse pregnancy outcomes are really important risk factors for women, and the reason is that those women end up having heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and heart attack in their 50s and 60s. So that's why it's the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommend that if you had those things during pregnancy, that you go see a cardiologist or your primary care doctor to have your risk factor assessed.

As we wrap up, the number one thing to remember is that heart disease is preventable. Regardless of your family history, you can prevent heart disease by knowing your numbers, high blood pressure numbers, diabetes, cholesterol, never smoking. And knowing your family history, we can reduce heart disease. And then if you're a woman, understanding your risk factors for pregnancy and early menopause is important as well.

Thank you so much for listening and enjoy your Heart Month!

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. We welcome your comments and feedback. Please contact us at heart@ccf.org. Like what you heard? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at clevelandclinic.org/loveyourheartpodcast.