Heart disease is the main cause of death in all Americans and provides special concerns for women.
Dr. Alison Bailey is the head of cardiology of the Parkridge Hospital Group and said that she wanted patients to know that cardiovascular diseases should not fear because there are many prevention methods available. However, she has noted changes in the American diet in recent decades, such as an increase in calories, fats and sodium in meals, negatively affects this area of people’s health.
By phone, Bailey discussed the importance of individuals knowing their health number – blood pressure, weight and more, in addition to prevention directives. This interview was slightly modified for conciseness and clarity.
Q: What can you tell me about the importance of heart health?
A: Yes, cardiovascular disease is therefore the number one cause of the death of all Americans, and there are many things we can do to prevent this. We spend a lot of time … in a way to share this information with everyone, but especially women. Women are just as likely to die from heart disease. This is the main cause of death in women, but most women do not realize it, and they still think that cancer or certain other causes of death are the most likely.
Q: Why is it so important in women?
A: When you look at the Americans, we all have a risk of having cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular diseases largely include five things: heart disease – Things like having a heart attack – a stroke, high blood pressure, heart failure and arterry diseases constitute the majority of cardiovascular diseases, and when you look at our lifestyle and our genetics, both have put us at increased risks. Now, for women, we have other specific risk factors that also increase our risk.
Thus, whenever we are pregnant, we can have specific conditions, and these are unfavorable disorders of pregnancy, which can cause increased cardiovascular risk during our life. So, if you are a woman and you have preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, all these increase your future risk. Do not increase it, you know, three or four times, but it is higher than someone who does not have them. It is therefore a great warning sign to be extremely aggressive with prevention.
Cardiovascular diseases are cause 1 of maternal mortality in the United States. If you look at the period of pregnancy, and this period just after pregnancy, women are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than anything else, that women generally do not know, because we think that cardiovascular diseases are an elderly disease frequently, because we are used to seeing heart attacks and blows. Prevention is therefore really great.
Q: Speaking of prevention, what are the methods available?
A: There are a lot of things we can do, and our prevention really depends on our risk. If you are American, the things we are talking about are to optimize the lifestyle, therefore to obtain regular physical activity. This does not mean that you have to go to a gymnasium. The simple fact of walking is great, and we say that you should try to get about 150 minutes per week, 20 or 30 minutes per day, of moderate intensity activity. It looks like a walk, and it shouldn’t be at the same time, but you could go for lunch, then you could walk with your family in the evening.
Eating a healthy diet – and the diet has really changed considerably in the last 30 to 50 years in the United States – we have been, you know, largely repairing food at home to eat food prepared outside the house. This food tends to have more calories, more fat and more sodium, and all three negatively affect cardiovascular health. And then we assure that we know our figures, so that these figures include our number of hypertension, our number of cholesterol and our number of sugar, then our weight.
Seventy percent of Americans are currently overweight or obeseAnd it is a high risk factor to develop many cardiovascular risk factors, things like high blood pressure and high diabetes and cholesterol. We still say no smoking, so you stay away from smoking, in one of our prevention data.
Q: If you have cardiovascular diseases, how do you treat this?
A: In a way, it depends on one of these five categories in which he enters. In general, focus on optimizing the lifestyle, and it goes with it if you try to prevent the disease or you already have it, the rules are fundamentally the same. If you have established cardiovascular disease, which means that you have had a previous heart attack or have had a prior stroke, there are certain drugs on which you should be. Sometimes it will understand things like aspirin, but aspirin is not for everyone.
I always recommend people who are not only starting to take an aspirin, but they have a conversation with their primary care clinician to help them say them, to guide them if they should take aspirin or not. If someone told you to take aspirin, you shouldn’t stop aspirin because you read a title in the news.
And then, you know, the optimization of your figures. If you have had a heart attack or a stroke, we want your number of cholesterol to be less than someone who has not had that. Our number objectives change a little once you have a heart disease. There is no reason why you cannot live a long and healthy life if you have had a cardiovascular event and the optimization of the lifestyle after that really increases the probability that you can do these things.
Q: What are the effects of cardiovascular diseases?
A: It depends in a way on the one we are talking about. If you have a first heart attack, some people die from this. Death is clearly one of those that we try to prevent, then reductions in functional capacity, which means that you cannot do as much as before. Now in 2025, we have more drugs, more procedures and more possibilities to improve results for people living with cardiovascular disease, and many patients can resume exactly the same quality of life. If you think of what are the symptoms of someone who can have cardiovascular disease and not know it, it can be things like chest pain or shortness of breath. Swelling in the legs, not being able to do the same things as people around you, as if you were going to walk, you may not be able to, you know, do so much walking, or that you are tray behind because you cannot follow.
Sometimes they are more non -specific things, such as fatigue, not being able to sleep well. I always tell my patients that it is important that we listen to our body so that we know when something is wrong. The other thing I would say is that, you know, we have gone a long way in the world of cardiovascular disease, but there is so much more on the horizon. This is really important because research plays a key role in everything we have done that has improved cardiovascular health. For example, there is a cholesterol molecule that works in families. This is called Lipoprotein (A), and it has nothing to do with your lifestyle, what you eat or how much you do. These are your genes, and we never had medication to lower this.
Now there are several drugs that are trials, and these drugs have advantages. In a few years, they will probably arrive at the place where I can really prescribe them to patients because when we look at a new medication, he must first pass safety tests: “Is this medication sure to use in humans?” Once we show that he is sure, we must show that he does what we want him to do. Does this lower lipoprotein (A), then if it lowers lipoprotein (A), we have to make one more step and say: “Ok, that’s for sure. He lowered lipoprotein (A), but now, he prevents heart attacks and the features and things we want?” Twenty percent of the American population have this abnormal bile lipid, and the majority of people do not know.
Q: Are there specific guidelines to have your heart health checked?
A: We have a lot of different guidelines for different things. If we think of something like cholesterol or lipids, it is recommended that even children have verified at least once in their childhood. Once you are 18 years old, you should get a reference base and depending on whether it is normal or abnormal, it should not be verified or more than five years, if it is normal. If it is abnormal or if you have undergone a cardiovascular event, it is generally something that we do at least once a year, depending on the figures. If the figures are all good, we will do it once a year, then repeat it again. If the figures are not good, we repeat that every three to six months until we have the figures where we want them.
Blood pressure, in a way, similar guidelines that should be checked from childhood. If the figures are normal, we will generally say that an annual visit with your primary care doctor is an excellent way to follow this or health screening, because high blood pressure does not do that people feel bad. This is why they call him the silent killer. So, unless you regularly check your blood pressure, you will not know that it is high. I tell everyone that it is really a great way to have someone you recognize as the person you are going to for your annual projections, because that’s how you know your figures, then if something does not feel good.
It is really a primary care provider, and this person can help understand … Make the beginnings of everything and follow you throughout this trip. If you need more sub-specialized care, they can bring you to the right person.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: I think it is important that we all recognize that cardiovascular diseases are our cause of death n ° 1, but there are many, a lot, many things that we can do to reduce this risk. This is not really something that we should fear. It is simply a question of knowing that it is a little imminent there, and that if we remain on the trajectory of the standard American, we are more likely to have cardiovascular diseases, but we can change this, especially if we start with changes in lifestyle.
Contact Leah Hunter at lhunter@timesfreepress.com Or 423-757-6673.