In February, American Heart Month will kick off, and hopefully you’ll come across at least one event that will inspire you to not only learn more about your heart health but take positive action to improve your lifestyle and reduce your heart disease risk factors.
Once the commitment is made to get heart-fit, finding a place to start on the path to a healthier heart can be daunting. Where can you turn for help? Why not try the American Heart Association?
One of the misconceptions that many may have is that the American Heart Association, or AHA, is focused on raising money for heart research. While sponsoring research is certainly one of their endeavors, they do a lot more than just sponsor heart-friendly legislation, raise money, and fund research.
The AHA is also the catalyst for many programs aimed directly at educating the public about heart health and then providing tools to help you implement heart-healthy, life-promoting changes. One of those tools is the Go Red Heart CheckUp.
The Go Red Heart CheckUp is one of the initiatives sponsored by Go Red For Women fundraising activities. Go Red for Women is one of the American Heart Association causes.
The Heart CheckUp provides an opportunity to assess your 10-year heart attack risk, and put together a plan of action from the comfort and privacy of your home. The assessment is short and can easily be completed in less than 10 minutes.
The Heart CheckUp takes you through a series of questions designed to assess where your heart stands on 10 different heart disease risk factors. Questions cover topics such as age, sex, family history, weight, body mass index, waist circumference, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, diabetes, and fasting blood sugar levels.
The Heart CheckUp tool then provides you with instant feedback regarding individual risk factors for heart disease along with a 10-year heart attack risk factor rating. All feedback is based on your input so be honest! No one will see the results unless you want to share them.
The report specifically focuses on modifiable risk factors such as smoking, weight, high blood pressure, or unhealthy cholesterol levels, where you can make changes that may change your long term heart -- and life -- prognosis.
For each risk factor, the tool provides you a report that is visually pleasing and language that is easy to understand. The Heart CheckUp even provides users the opportunity to play with the numbers and see how changing your risk factor changes your risk levels.
Using an interactive graphical interface, users are able to view current risk results against the what-if numbers making it easy to see how small changes may have a big impact on your overall heart attack risk.
The Heart CheckUp tool also provides users with information on metabolic syndrome. Users are able to print out a Risk Report as well as a suggested Action Plan Report with recommendations to address individual risk factors for heart disease.
Knowledge is power so if you don’t know what your risk factors are for heart disease, you owe it to yourself to learn more. The Heart CheckUp is an easy way to get a quick-and-dirty reading on the state of your heart.
Take the assessment, discuss the results with your health care provider, and then take action!
To take the Go Red Heart CheckUp, visit https://www.goredforwomen.org/hcu/index.aspx/
“To build healthier lives, free of cardiovascular disease and stroke.” American Heart Association
Sources:
Real People, Working with us in our fight to build healthier lives. American Heart Association. http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Giving/YourDollarsatWork/Your-
Dollars-at-Work_UCM_303641_SubHomePage.jsp#
GoRed Heart Checkup. American Heart Association. 2012. https://www.goredforwomen.org/hcu/index.aspx
Reviewed January 12, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith