Medical expert discusses avoidable heart disease risk factors

Almost all cases of heart disease have risk factors you can address before getting sick. For more on that we're joined by cardiologist and Nine News medical expert Dr. Pyle Coley. Heart disease and of course you being a cardiologist this is your expertise, number one killer. Does it always come with a warning? You know I have patients in my office every single day they say to me oh Dr. Coley I had no idea this was going to happen. So this type of research is really important and what this study did it looked at over 600,000 cases of heart disease, heart failure and stroke. 99% of them had a risk factor that was suboptimal, that wasn't well controlled. And if you look at a broader sort of American perspective out there 90% of Americans have one or more risk factors for cardiovascular disease. So we're really it's the most likely thing that's going to happen to us but it's something that we have such a hard time wrapping our heads around that we don't somehow get ahead of treating the risk factors and that includes physicians as well because things squeaked by without us noticing. What's the most common non-optimal factor that you see? So in this particular study it was blood pressure and most people think that a blood pressure greater than you know 120 is okay so people tell me my blood pressure is 125 over 82 that's high. You want to be less than 120 over less than 80. So if you're already crossing over into that 120 range that's called pre hypertension or elevated blood pressure that's already suboptimal controlled and if you think about how our blood vessels age they get stiffer just like our skin gets wrinkles our blood vessels get stiffer. So the natural history of our blood pressure over time is that it goes up and I know we just talked about menopause but menopause is a big trigger for women to start to change their blood vessel because it changes the tone of their blood vessels as well so the blood pressure can go up after menopause and that's not something that we usually know it just kind of sneaks up on us. Yeah and I feel like you know unfortunately there's not a lot of information that we know you know it's important to go to your doctors so you can stay ahead of it but what according to you what would be the most difficult part of heart disease to treat and detect? It's so abstract right like you're you're both sitting in front of me today I'm telling you it's the most likely thing that's going to happen to you but you probably have no concept of your individual risk right and it's not something that causes symptoms if you think about palpitations or leg swelling or back pain or knee pain urinary infections those all cause symptoms so we know what we have to fix we take the medicine we fix it with heart disease it's all these nebulous risk factors that most of us are going to get that sneak up on us and then we don't really realize and treat them in time so I think the abstract nature of heart disease makes it one of those things that makes it extremely difficult to diagnose unless you're proactive and screen for it and most of us feel good every day so we don't think about screening for our disease and in our 30s and 40s we don't think we're going to drop dead from heart disease so it's not top of mind at all that's alarming I've never even thought about that have you thought about your risk no I've never once gotten my heart checked and like my blood pressure is always good so I'm like yeah me too yeah I don't need to do anything beyond that right there are eight different factors ladies and so I want us to go home today and calculate something called life's essential eight it's the American Heart Association website has the score and it tells you what you're doing well and what you're not doing and includes lifestyle factors as well as things like blood pressure cholesterol our weight you know whether we smoke how much sleep we're getting how much exercise we're getting kind of gives you a little bit of a prescription for heart disease and I find with my patients in my office it's often very difficult to convince them to treat their cholesterol or treat something that's not causing symptoms because the idea of a medication many people attach to aging they say I don't want to be on a medicine for the rest of my life or they need to have like a real active physical symptom right yes and they say well I don't need this medicine or I don't want to crutch I don't want to be on a medicine for the rest of my life medicines aren't aging not taking medicines is causing aging so I really want us to change the conversation around medications because we know that 80% of heart attacks and strokes are preventable by taking those right medicines in your 30s 40s and 50s you're going to prevent yourself from having a stroke in your 60s 70s and 80s so think about it like it's going to make you live better longer it's health span rather than just lifespan and really change that narrative and say hey I'm getting ahead of the disease and I'm being smarter than it I like the way you put me too yeah makes me want to do my homework so life's essential eight calcium score which is an x-ray of your heart and then some blood tests and report back to me oh well do homework we got the homework Dr. Coley thank you you can find more with Dr. Coley always on 9news.com slash Dr. Coley