5 numbers you should know to keep your heart healthy
Lots of people wake up every morning and check their weight, but there are some other numbers you and your doctor should be keeping a close eye on, according to Elissa Thompson, MD, a cardiologist based at the Cape Cod Healthcare Cardiovascular Center in Hyannis and the Oppenheim Medical Building in Chatham.
“These numbers are signs of predisposing factors to the development of heart disease,” she said. “Heart disease is the number one killer of people in this country, and it has been since penicillin was discovered. We want to try to fix the problems that predispose us to having events like heart attack and stroke before they cause a problem.”
Here are Dr. Thompson’s five important numbers for heart health, with her explanation of each:
1. Minutes of activity
While 10,000 steps is sometimes touted as a magic number, Dr. Thompson said that’s not a vital number to track.
“The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends two and a half hours of moderate-intensity activity per week,” she said. “Throughout your week, in whatever combination of exercises you can do, it should add up to at least 150 minutes of exercise where you're breathing so hard that you couldn't sing or whistle, but you could carry on a conversation. That’s the level of activity we want you to strive for.
“A sedentary lifestyle is a predisposing factor to heart attack, stroke, and sudden cardiac death. It also causes or contributes to hypertension, diabetes, and obesity, so we want you to be aware of your activity level or, more importantly, your inactivity level.”
2. Blood pressure
“The maximum blood pressure that we're comfortable with at rest is 130 over 80. Anything over that is getting into the world of hypertension, a very destructive disease. It can cause dementia, heart attack and kidney failure.
“People who have elevated blood pressures probably need to lose weight and exercise more. Probably most important, you need to limit your sodium intake, which is the biggest driver of high blood pressure. We want people to try to restrict their sodium intake to less than 1,500 milligrams a day. Look closely at the nutrition content of everything you eat because only about 5% of the sodium that we consume is table salt.”
3. LDL cholesterol
“If it's much above 100, then you probably need to see your doctor and consider a structured dietary intervention. You might need statin therapy to prevent heart attack and stroke.
“That number comes down considerably if you have other risk factors for heart attack and stroke. Anybody who smokes, has blood pressure or has diabetes needs to get with their doctor. They can accurately calculate your risk of heart attack and stroke and look at how best to control that number if your LDL (low-density lipoprotein) level is above 70.”
4. Blood sugar
“Anything much above 106 in fasting lab work makes us concerned that you might have a problem with impaired fasting glucose, sometimes called pre-diabetes. You need to discuss it with your primary care doctor right away and further testing is probably indicated.”
5. Hours of sleep
“We disregard its importance, but a full third of our lives should be spent sleeping. When we are truly asleep, it is a very important time for our body, our brain, our heart, our cardiovascular system to regenerate. If you are not getting enough sleep, it can cause some significant problems for us in the daytime, such as high blood pressure, for example. There are relationships that have been established between poor sleep and chronic illnesses.”
