“You only have one heart, which has to last your entire lifetime - so remember to look after it.”

HEALTH MATTERSHeart of the issue

FEB

RU

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Y 16-22, 2012

British Heart Foundation

The Voice supplement Page 24 - 27

“The most important thing that you can do to help strengthen your circulatory system is to maintain a healthy lifestyle. It’s all about putting your life into perspective, taking responsibility and looking after yourself. ”

| THE VOICE FEBRUARY 16-22, 201224 HEALTHMATTERS

YOGA AND MEDITATIONYoga is more than a fad activity Hollywood actors do to keep in shape and look good. Yoga is an ancient tradition derived from Ve-dic philosophy with proven phys-ical and mental health benefits.

The British Wheel of Yoga de-scribes yoga as offering ‘a ho-listic approach to body, mind and spirit, which can provide us with the tools to cope with the challenges of daily life.’ And there are not many better ways to improve general health and

well-being than learning this mul-tifaceted practice from a certified British Wheel of Yoga teacher.

A true teacher won’t just make you become more flexible, they will help show you how to live within the present, knowing yourself, and therefore the world, better. Apart from the obvious advantages of gaining a more supple body, yoga enables the practice of meditation. And this is its ultimate aim: prepar-ing the body to sit still and medi-tate. Meditation is impossible if the body is in discomfort, hence yoga

teaches you how to become more accustomed with your own body through breathing practice in con-junction with the various poses. For example, it is no good being able to touch your toes if you rush your breath.

You don’t have to be a yogi mas-ter to meditate effectively. What is important is finding a comfortable sitting position where the back is straight and body even. From there you must tame the mind, releasing what has gone before and not wor-rying about what has to be done,

concentrating on the present, emp-tying your mind of thought.

In Buddhism, meditation is a way to attain enlightenment, a process akin to pulling a boulder up a mountain, hard work yet pos-sible. Whereas aiming to get there with an angry, emotional mind is as easy as trying to control the boulder rolling down the moun-tain. In the short-term yoga and meditation offer a way to dissolve tensions, however, if you practice well you’ll find it can become life changing.

FAQS on heart disease

7

TOO STRESSED?

Here are a

few ways to blow off

steam

What is heart disease?Heart disease is a term which encompasses a number of spe-cific ailments. One of the most common forms is coronary ar-tery disease, occurring when arteries become hardened and narrowed by a build-up of plaque which restricts blood supply to the heart, a process called atherosclerosis. Plaques are a combination of fatty sub-stances, including cholesterol and lipids.

Another condition is Angi-na, a problem related to coro-nary disease, which happens when the heart muscles cannot get enough blood, causing a squeezing pain in the chest that can also be felt in the shoulders, arms, neck, jaw and back. There are two forms of angina: stable and unstable, the latter being a medical emergency.

Other types of heart disease are: heart failure; aortic aneurysm and dis-section; arrhythmias; and cardiomyopathy.

What are the symptoms of heart attack?There are three major signs of oncoming car-diac arrest. Usually, dis-comfort in the centre of the chest occurs during a heart attack, which can come and go, involving a squeezing sensation.

Tight, sharp pains in other areas of the upper body, such as the arms, back and neck, are in-dications.

Shortness of breath also is a manifestation, and can happen before and during an attack.

Other symptoms include: cold sweats; nausea; and light-head-edness.

What should a bystander do if they believe someone is experiencing cardiac arrest?The first action to take is call 999. Thereafter, if you have been trained or are familiar with first aid, perform CPR. If not, you can administer hands only

CPR (see the British Heart Foun-dation’s guide).

Why is there a need to act quickly?The risk of death or permanent damage can be decreased with timely treatment. Due to the heart’s vital function, delay can result in fatal consequences due to the body’s key organs being starved of oxygen.

What are the risk factors of heart disease?The most serious risk factors are: high blood cholesterol; high blood pressure; diabetes; smoking; and obesity. Lifestyle choices may exacerbate or ame-liorate risk, however, there are non-modifiable factors, which are: family genetics, age, and ethnicity. According to the British Heart Foundation, South

Asians living in the UK are al-most twice as likely to die from coronary heart disease before the age of 75 compared to the rest of the UK population while people of African-Caribbean origin have the highest risk of developing high blood pressure out of all ethnic groups.

What can I do to reduce the risk of heart disease?The most effective way of im-proving your chances against heart disease is by sustaining a wise and healthy lifestyle,

avoiding excesses and taking things in moderation.

Diet and exercise are crucial. Maintaining a balanced, healthy diet is a great way to decrease the probability of heart prob-lems. You can cut down on salt, saturated fats and alcohol, eat five portions of fruit and veg-etable a day, oily fish once a week, and choose wholegrain foods and complex carbohy-drates.

Being active enables you to keep your heart healthy. It is widely recommended that you do thirty minutes moderate in-tensity exercise a day for five days a week. You don’t have to sweat profusely and feel the burn - walking and even taking the stairs count!

One of the easiest things to do is avoid smoking, yet much harder to do when addicted. Smokers are seriously upping the odds of heart disease; they are almost twice as likely to suffer a heart attack than those who have never taken a puff.

What are the implications of heart disease to the UK?

Heart disease is a prolific kill-er. In 2009, 180,000 deaths resulted from cardiovascular disease in the UK. That’s one in three of all fatalities. Heart

disease is one of the main causes of death in people under seventy-five. Also in

2009 twenty-eight percent of premature deaths in men resulted from the disease,

and twenty percent in the female population.

Overall, approximately, forty percent of all deaths in the UK are caused by heart disease.

The country is also picking up an expensive bill. NHS statistics from 2006 found that the health service and UK economy faced a £30 billion combined cost from heart disease. The monetary cost to the healthcare system be-ing £14.4 billion, productivity losses £8 billion, and the cost of informal care £8 billion. Ox-ford University estimated that in 2004, heart disease meant 69 million working days were lost.

BY BART CHAN

25FEBRUARY 16-22, 2012 THE VOICE | HEALTHMATTERS

What is the most common surgical procedure against heart disease?

The investigation we do most commonly is a coronary an-giogram. This can be performed from the wrist or the groin and it allows us to visualise the heart arteries (the coronary ar-teries). When we can see these arteries we can decide what is the best treatment – either tab-lets, insertion of coronary st-ents, or bypass surgery.

Which procedure is the most risky to carry out, and why?

In the last two years the treatment of heart attack has been revolutionised in the UK. Instead of administering “clot buster” medication to dissolve the clot causing heart attack, we do an angiogram immediately. If we can see an artery blocked with clot we can open it with a balloon and then lace a stent to prevent it re-blocking. This is called primary angioplasty – the Duke of Edinburgh had one of these procedures recently. (You can see the process illustrated on this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGwiJjiASEY)

What would you say is the best way people can avoid heart disease?

Smoking is the most danger-ous thing that we can do for our long term heart health. Prevent-ing passive smoking by pre-venting smoking in public plac-

es has been a big step forward. Unfortunately, many young people continue to smoke, par-ticularly young girls.

How can the government help reduce the cost heart disease imposes on the NHS?

A lot of money has been spent in the last 10 years on heart dis-ease treatments. We are now starting to see the impact of that with less heart attacks and more people surviving heart attacks and able to resume their lives.

Why did you choose to be-come a cardiologist?

Cardiology is one of the most exciting specialities in medi-cine. It spans everything from emergency treatment of heart attacks, to state of the art imag-ing which allows us to visual-ize the heart and its function, to amazing genetic medicine dis-coveries which have informed us why some patients inherit heart disease from their parents.

What skills are needed to be an outstanding cardiologist?

Patience and stamina are quite important. You also need to be able to talk to people and be able to help them under-stand complex, sometimes scary problems.

What aspect of being a cardi-ologist would you say is most stressful?

We do an on-call rota for heart attacks treatment. In our centre in Oxford the average time from the ambulance arriv-ing to getting the artery caus-ing a heart attack open is 23 minutes. Being on call means you can be rung anytime day or night and the team have to be ready to respond. This is stress-ful but very rewarding.

How do you keep your heart healthy?

Eat sensibly (most of the time) and I run at weekends. Keeping your weight stable reduces the chance of developing diabetes and high blood pressure. Obvi-ously I don’t smoke.

How do you see the future of cardiology developing?

In the last few years we have started implanting new heart valves from keyhole incisions in the groin. This technique- TAVI is hugely exciting and an exam-ple of how technology allows us to treat more and more people.

BEING CREATIVE AND ACTIVEThere are numerous ways of ex-pressing creativity, and each of them can be a valid and valuable means to reducing stress. Many find writing, be it fictional or truth-ful, as a method of releasing stress. The act of writing can help ration-alise experience, helping you gain perspective, or it can be a window of escape where imagination and mind wander freely, decompressing everyday stress. Also, writing can be used as a venting mechanism,

where you can get things that have been bothering you off your chest, instead of merely complaining to the closet person in earshot. Not holding back and getting down everything you feel on paper is a therapeutic exercise, plus reading back what you have written allows reflection.

Creative energy can be chan-nelled into visual art, such as painting. The use of colours, im-ages and shapes help express emo-tion, thus relieving oft compressed tensions that have no other outlet.

By simply filling a blank canvas you can expunge stress that has no verbal foundation.

Likewise, you can find liberation through activities such as making and listening to music, dance and sport. When done with others, such exercises become social, helping foster cooperative spirit in work-ing towards a goal. Additionally, physical activity can aid stress re-duction through the body releasing endorphins, which, according to anatomic pathologist, Melissa Con-rad Stöppler writing on Medicine

Net, lead to ‘feelings of euphoria… With high endorphin levels, we feel less pain and fewer negative effects of stress.’

SEXSex is definitely one of the more pleasurable ways of decreasing stress. As well as releasing endor-phins, studies have shown inter-course to lower stress and reinforce good mood. This can be attributed to the positive cognitive conse-quences of sexual interaction. Also, sex can help lower blood pressure,

a risk factor of heart disease. An Arizona State University study once examined subjects’ blood pressure during stressful activities, such as public speaking and solv-ing mathematical equations. Those who had recently had sex displayed lower baseline blood pressures and less of an increase of pressure dur-ing the activity. Furthermore, feel-ing less stressed can lead to more sex, hence it’s an enjoyable, stress reducing cycle. And if you’re not getting any, you can always book yourself into a health spa.

AN EXPERT OPINIONDr Adrian Banning, a leading Consultant Cardiologist based at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, works in both in-terventional and general cardiology, and is responsible for emergency procedures. Also a pioneer in research, he introduced intravascular ultrasound to his laboratory and has a particular interest in the use of drug eluting stents. In 2010, Dr Banning was named on a list chosen by other top cardiologists asking them who they’d like to perform heart surgery on their loved ones.

Dr Adrian Banning

8

‘Don’t miss next month’s Health Matters focusing on prostate cancer. We talk to people affect-ed by the illness, including 56 year-old body builder, Denton Wilson, who’s battled the cancer for 14 years. Also, we take a look at organ donation, and how demand is outstripping supply.’

| THE VOICE FEBRUARY 16-22, 201126

British Heart Fondation

HEALTHMATTERS

By cutting down on salt I can help protect my heart.Want to know more? Call us.