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New study reveals Americans know little about heart disease, one of the top five leading causes of death in the U.S.
A new study revealed that while most Americans do know about heart disease, some have no clue how to boost their health in order to keep complications at bay. To be more specific, approximately two-third of the U.S. population do not know specifics when it comes to heart disease, risks, and preventive measures.
Cleveland Clinic’s head of cardiovascular medicine, Dr. Steve Nissen says that properly addressing treatable risk factors could prevent a wide range of coronary artery disease incidents.
Among such risk factors for heart disease are body mass index, weight, waist circumference, cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure. A team of researchers conducted a telephone survey and questioned roughly 1,000 adults, aged 18 and older about heart disease and specifics of the condition. Health experts were stunned to discover that white 68 percent of the subjects were worried about the condition, only 18 percent were aware of what BMI stands for, and approximately 23 individuals knew that a BMI exceeding the 25 marker is considered overweight and consists a risk factor.
Furthermore, only 38 percent knew their blood pressure, and only 4 in 10 people were aware of the marker considered to denote a healthy blood pressure, more specifically 120/80 mm/Hg. Further questioning the subjects, the researchers learned that only one in four people knew that HDL was the “good” cholesterol and just over a half of the total individuals knew the levels and how to address “bad” cholesterol, otherwise known as LDL, in order to limit their risks of suffering from heart disease sometime in the future.
About 12 percent of the subjects aged 18 to 24 knew the importance of regular cholesterol screenings, one-third of the participants knew that fat stored in the stomach region is the most dangerous to one’s heart health, and 36 percent were aware how the waist circumference links to increased or decreased risk of heart disease.
More worrying is that approximately 73 percent of the individuals questioned about heart disease were unaware poor heart health is actually the leading cause of death for people with diabetes.
Image Source: Pixabay
Brian Galloway
Brian’s philosophy is pretty straightforward: easy living, wishful thinking, heavy criticizing. Despite the fact that he wouldn’t go as far as describe himself a conspirationist, Brian does take everything with a grain of sand. He loves following every lead when covering a story and mostly enjoys to cover politics and US news.
