I’ve always wondered how my overall heart health stacks up when you take all of my various risk factors into consideration. Are some risk factors greater than others? If I lower my cholesterol but am still twenty pounds overweight, how does that impact my heart health? In other words, how do I know what the real state-of-my-heart is and when do I start worrying?
The American Heart Association (AHA) has finally provided the answer to these questions in a simple, straight-forward, easy to use and more importantly, easy to understand format. For the first time in history, the AHA has provided us with a clear, measurable definition of what constitutes “ideal” versus “intermediate” or “poor” heart health. This definition of exactly what constitutes “ideal” heart health was developed to support the AHA’s 2020 Impact Goal.
The 2020 Impact Goal is two-fold: to reduce death from heart disease and stroke by at least 20 percent by the year 2020 and to improve overall heart health. I have to say that I’m impressed with the approach that the AHA is taking. With respect to heart disease, prevention is truly the best medicine and the AHA has chosen to accomplish their 2020 Impact Goals through improving our health and giving us tools and information to help prevent us from developing heart disease. I like it!
As a part of accomplishing the 2020 Impact Goal, the AHA has launched a marvelous website called “My Life Check” (www.heart.org/MyLifeCheck). On the My Life Check website, the AHA lays out the foundation of what constitutes good heart health as measured in seven key areas referred to as “Life’s Simple 7.” These key areas focus on areas of our lives where we can take control and make lifestyle changes which will not only improve our overall health but have a measurable impact on our heart health and long-term quality of life.
Life’s Simple 7 includes the following:
1. Get active
2. Eat better
3. Lose weight
4. Stop smoking
5. Control cholesterol
6. Manage blood pressure
7. Control blood sugar
The My Life Check website contains information about each of the Life’s Simple 7 areas – why they are important – when you should be concerned – what you can do to improve. In addition, there is an excellent assessment tool which takes approximately seven minutes (it only took me 5 minutes) to complete. At the end of the assessment, you are provided with a report containing information about your health in each of Simple 7 areas. The information included in the report included such things as your status (i.e. Excellent, Need Improvement, and Warning) for each area, a statement of where you need to be in order to move your status to “Excellent” in that area, a list of simple commitments to choose from that will bring you closer to the goal of “Excellent” for each area.
Everyone should consider taking the assessment even if they think that they currently enjoy excellent heart health with no or little risk of developing heart disease. An AHA survey found that while 39% of all adults in the USA believe that they have excellent heart health, the reality was that 54% of these same people reported that their physicians told them a different story.
Heart disease is truly one of the most preventable diseases if you are willing to make lifestyle changes. The AHA has done an excellent job of not only breaking these key health and lifestyle areas down into not only understandable pieces but providing clear, easy to accomplish goals and information to accomplish them.
I worked for 10 years as a project manager in IT in a different lifetime. One of the key elements of the job included risk management. I always felt that the best risk management plan was to not only identify the risk early but to plan for it and to prevent the risk from occurring. With My Life Check and Life’s Simple 7, the AHA has given us tools to identify, manage and prevent the risks of heart disease and stroke from occurring and becoming a part of our lives. Is there any reason why you would not check it out? Isn’t your health - your quality of life - your heart worth the same level of prevention?
Until next time, here’s wishing you a healthy heart.
Sources:
American Heart Association, http://mylifecheck.heart.org/